Raynal, Guillaume Thomas FrançOis
Raynal, Guillaume Thomas FrançOis( 1713–96),French author, usually called Abbé Raynal because as a young man he received orders as a Jesuit. He is best known as the author of L'Histoire philosophique et politique des établissements et du commerce des Européens dans les deux Indes (Amsterdam, 4 vols., 1770), written with the assistance of such philosophes as Diderot. The work lacks unity and proportion and merely summarizes the ideas of others, but its indictment of royalty, attack on the tyranny of the Church, and praise of the English settlers in America made it democratic propaganda, read with enthusiasm by Chateaubriand, Jefferson, and Crèvecoeur. The last's Letters from an American Farmer was dedicated to Raynal and often paralleled his work, whose revised and enlarged edition in French (1772–74) was translated into English (1776), extracts being frequently issued under other titles. Paine's Letter to the...
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