Jacques Necker: Biography, Achievements & Lasting Legacy

Jacques Necker (French: [ʒak nɛkɛʁ]; 30 September 1732 – 9 April 1804) was a Genevan banker, financier and statesman who served as finance minister for Louis XVI. He was a reformer, but his innovations sometimes caused great discontent. Necker was a constitutional monarchist, a political economist, and a moralist, who wrote a severe critique of the new principle of equality before the law.

Necker initially held the finance post between July 1777 and 1781. In 1781, he earned widespread recognition for his unprecedented decision to publish the Compte rendu – thus making the country's budget public – "a novelty in an absolute monarchy where the state of finances had always been kept a secret." Necker was dismissed within a few months. By 1788, the inexorable compounding of interest on the national debt brought France to a fiscal crisis. Necker was recalled to royal service. His dismissal on 11 July 1789 was a factor in causing the Storming of the Bastille. Within two days, Necker was recalled by the king and the assembly. Necker entered France in triumph and tried to accelerate the tax reform process. Faced with the opposition of the Constituent Assembly, he resigned in September 1790 to a reaction of general indifference.