Jean-Baptiste Labat

French clergyman, botanist, writer, explorer, ethnographer, soldier, and engineer

Jean Baptiste Labat (sometimes called, simply, Père Labat) (1663 – 6 January 1738) was a French clergyman, botanist, writer, explorer, ethnographer, soldier, engineer, and landowner.

On Martinique, Labat devised new methods for the manufacture of sugar, which remained in use for a long time. Labat had a wide reputation as a mathematician and won recognition both as a naturalist and as a scientist. He assisted the botanist Charles Plumier in his work, while Plumier was in the West Indies. He embodied in the history his scientific observations and treated comprehensively and accurately of the soil, trees, plants, fruits, and herbs of the islands. He also explained the manufactures then in existence and pointed out means for the development of commercial relations. His books that deal with America, "best sellers" during their time, are Nouveau voyage aux iles de l'Amerique (6 vols., Paris, 1722; 2d ed., 8 vols., 1742; Dutch translation, 4 vols., Amsterdam, 1725; German, 6 vols., Nuremberg, 1783 '7); and Voyage du Chevalier Demarchais en Guinee, iles voisines, et a Cayenne, fait en 1725, 1726, et 1727 (4 vols., Paris, 1730). He published similar works on other countries, drawing information from the notes of other missionaries. His two works on Africa have become well known: Nouvelle relation de l'Afrique occidentale (Paris, 1728) and Relation historique de l'Ethiopie occidentale (Congo, Angola, Matamba, after the Italian of Father Cavazzi, Cap. (Paris, 1732). The genus of the tropical fruit tree family Sapotaceae Labatia, first described in 1788, was named after Labat. It was maintained as a distinct entity until the 1930s when it was submerged in the genus Pouteria. In 1972, it was proposed that a new genus called Neolabatia be recognized, containing six species formerly known as Labatia, but this classification is disputed.