Talk:Jean-Baptiste Colbert

Nicknames

He was nicknamed "le Nord" (i.e. "the North") by some people who found his persona too cold. Some of his enemies would call him "la couleuvre", which bears the same Latin etymology as the name "Colbert" ("coluber" in Latin). "Couleuvre" is the French vernacular for the colubrid family of snakes. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.132.251.87 (talk) 20:01, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

de Soto Reference

The cited source for the claim that his "technocrats put to death 16,000 small entrepreneurs whose only crime was importing or manufacturing cotton cloth in violation of French law" is Hernando de Soto's "The Mystery of Capital." De Soto does not cite any sources in the book for this rather bold claim. I came here looking for substantiation but just found a circle of references... I'm going to delete it because it either sounds like hyperbole or a typo without proof. Kronick (talk) 01:21, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Rothbard also covered what he called the Calico strugglers in his 'History of Economic Thought before Adam Smith' volume 1. See the chapter on mercantilism, and the section in the bibliographical essay for detailed sources. Although Rothbard's claim is tamer.

"Literally thousands of Frenchmen died in the calico struggles, either being executed for wearing calicoes or in armed raids against calico-users." Wikieditortheguy123 (talk) 09:42, 19 May 2026 (UTC)

Reason also quotes Felicia Gottmann on the subject.

https://reason.com/2018/06/25/before-drug-prohibition-there/

"Long before the more famous debates about the liberalisation of the grain trade, about taxation, or even about the monopoly of the French Indies Company, philosophes and Enlightenment political economists saw the calico debate as their first important battleground," writes the historian Felicia Gottmann in Global Trade, Smuggling, and the Making of Economic Liberalism (Palgrave Macmillan).

SEE MORE here :

https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/46905/did-jean-baptiste-colbert-finance-minister-of-louis-xiv-sanction-mass-executio Wikieditortheguy123 (talk) 09:46, 19 May 2026 (UTC)

Untitled

Does the esternal link look like spam?

• Find-A-Grave profile for Jean-Baptiste Colbert

It seems to give almost no information.

• Agreed, and deleted. That page gave no more information, it just served to advance a company's business. Fasrad 01:04, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

WikiProject class rating

This article was automatically assessed because at least one article was rated and this bot brought all the other ratings up to at least that level. BetacommandBot 03:55, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

When Wikipedia says that this article needs to be improved, I am a bit surprized, As a French scholar, I find this article of a better quality than the French equivalent. It is excellent in the sense that it studies BOTH Colbert's biography and his economic policy.--Alexandre Rongellion (talk) 15:35, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

Style Needs Fixing

The writing style of some of this article is, shall we say, a little flowery. I tried to fix some of it, but ran out of steam... --ukexpat 18:56, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

--Agreed. I continued the process of improving style, and there are also some NPOV issues that need to be addressed. Historymike 23:34, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

Date / Age Mismatch?

The dates at the top are (August 29, 1619 — September 6, 1683) yet the Death section references "...at the age of 68..." and "By 69 he was bedridden..."

Cleanup

Added cleanup tag - poor citations, poor language - was it an EB import? High importance IMHO. --mervyn (talk) 13:48, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

Oddities, internal contradictions

Are libertarians hijacking this page? The POV becomes quite hysterical when it gets to the Colbertism section. -dkan

Are modern-day Mercantilists hijacking almost the entire rest of the article? The POV of most of the rest of the article is quite hysterical. The most noteworthy summary of the significance of Colbert as a figure is that his actions reflected a system (Mercantilism) that was on the verge of being totally invalidated by the development of classical economics. The majority of this article reads as a high school book report by someone who has no direct knowledge of the subject of economic policy and polical economy. 12.117.246.10 (talk) 19:12, 8 July 2010 (UTC)

Stephen

Louis XIV: Great King, or Greatest King? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.235.186.51 (talk) 03:02, 15 November 2010 (UTC) stephen colbert: predictable overrated comedian or the most predictable overrated comedian? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.126.178.74 (talk) 09:17, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

no reference to: Woolsey, R. James. "Why We Spy on Our Allies." Wall Street Journal,

Seems there should be a reference to the article "Woolsey, R. James. "Why We Spy on Our Allies." Wall Street Journal, 17 Mar. 2000." I'm no expert on this guy, however why is he linked to this article related to industrial bribes ? I can't image he's as saintly as this article portrays... Mwarner88 (talk) 05:48, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

You will have to come up with a specific reason why the article you mention is notable in reference to Colbert. A passing mention in a political opinion piece doesn't seem relevant enough to me (especially not since the content of that piece is evidently plain gibberish). I can't decipher the meaning of the second half of your post, you may have to elaborate. --Saddhiyama (talk) 10:33, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

"Code noir": no reference to laws re. slaves

See also discussion started here. Arminden (talk) 15:14, 22 November 2023 (UTC)