.

Anne Robert Jacques Turgot, b. May 10, 1727, d. Mar. 18, 1781, was a French economic theorist, provincial administrator, and controller general of finances (1774-76) whose bold reforms of the nearly collapsed financial structure of France were blocked by the forces of privilege. Having abandoned theological studies in 1751 to become a royal magistrate, he held various administrative posts until his appointment as intendant (1761-74) of impoverished Limoges; there he vigorously pursued road building, scientific farming, town planning, and equitable taxation. A friend of the Enlightenment and a disciple of the physiocrats, he wrote Reflexions sur la formation et la distribution des richesses (Reflections on the Function and Distribution of Wealth, 1766), articles in Diderot's Encyclopedie, and other works advocating national prosperity by freeing landed wealth from governmental controls. At the outset of Louis XVI's reign, Turgot took over (1774) the controller generalship and reduced the government's massive debt by curbing court and military costs; his conservative slogan was "No bankruptcy, no new taxes, no loans." But his bold freeing of the grain trade from internal tariffs in 1775 was ill-timed because a crop failure drove prices too high and triggered riots. The military was used to restore order, and in 1776, Turgot introduced the even bolder Six Edicts, abolishing guilds and replacing forced peasant road work (the corvee) with a tax on all landowners. Opposition by the privileged clergy and nobility and the Parlement of Paris brought about his project's collapse and his own dismissal.