Jacques Necker - Early Life

Early Life

Necker was born on September 30, 1732 in Geneva, then an independent republic. His father was a native of Küstrin in Neumark (Prussia, now Kostrzyn nad Odrą, Poland), and had, after the publication of some works on international law, been elected as professor of public law at Geneva, of which he became a citizen. Jacques Necker was sent to Paris in 1747 to become a clerk in the bank of Isaac Vernet, a friend of his father. By 1762 he was a partner and by 1765, through successful speculations, had become very wealthy. Soon, he co-founded, with another Genevese, the famous bank of Thellusson, Necker et Cie. Peter Thellusson (also known as Pierre Thellusson) superintended the bank in London (his son was made a peer as Baron Rendlesham), while Necker was managing partner in Paris. Both partners became very rich by loans to the treasury and speculations in grain.

In 1763, Necker fell in love with Madame de Verménou, the widow of a French officer. But while on a visit to Geneva, Madame de Verménou met Suzanne Curchod, who was the daughter of a pastor near Lausanne and who had been engaged to Edward Gibbon. In 1764, Madame de Verménou brought Suzanne to Paris as her companion. There Necker, transferring his love from the widow to the poor Swiss girl, married Suzanne before the end of the year. On 22 April 1766, they had a daughter, Anne Louise Germaine Necker, who became a renowned author under the name of Madame de Staël.

Madame Necker encouraged her husband to try to find himself a public position. He accordingly became a syndic or director of the French East India Company, around which a fierce political debate revolved in the 1760s, between the company's directors and shareholders and the royal ministry over the administration and the company's autonomy. "The ministry, concerned with the financial stability of the company, employed the abbé Morellet to shift the debate from the rights of the shareholders to the advantages of commercial liberty over the company’s privileged trading monopoly." After showing his financial ability in its management, Necker defended the Company's autonomy in an able memoir against the attacks of André Morellet in 1769.

Meanwhile, he had made loans to the French government, and was appointed resident at Paris by the republic of Geneva. Madame Necker entertained the leaders of the political, financial and literary worlds of Paris, and her Friday salon became as greatly frequented as the Mondays of Mme Geoffrin, or the Tuesdays of Mme Helvétius. In 1773, Necker won the prize of the Académie Française for a defense of state corporatism framed as a eulogy of Louis XIV's minister, Colbert; in 1775, he published his Essai sur la législation et le commerce des grains, in which he attacked the free-trade policy of Turgot. His wife now believed he could get into office as a great financier, and made him give up his share in the bank, which he transferred to his brother Louis.