Frédéric Passy (20 May 1822 – 12 June 1912) was a French economist and pacifist who was a founding member of several peace societies and the Inter-Parliamentary Union. He was also an author and politician, sitting in the Chamber of Deputies from 1881 until 1889. He was a joint winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1901 for his work in the European peace movement.
Born in Paris to a prominent Catholic and Orléanist family, Passy was surrounded by military veterans and politicians. After training in law, he worked as an accountant and served in the National Guard. He soon left this position and began travelling around France giving lectures on economics. Following years of violent conflicts across Europe, Passy joined the peace movement in the 1850s, working with several notable activists and writers to develop journals, articles, and educational curricula.
While sitting in the Chamber of Deputies, Passy developed the Inter-parliamentary Conference (later the Inter-Parliamentary Union) with British MP William Randal Cremer. Alongside this, he founded several peace societies: the Ligue Internationale et Permanente de la Paix, the Société Française des Amis de la Paix, and the Société Française pour l'Arbitrage entre Nations. Passy's work in the peace movement continued into his later years, and in 1901, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize alongside Red Cross founder, Henry Dunant.
Passy died in 1912 after a long period of illness and incapacitation. Despite his economic works gaining little traction, his efforts in the peace movement resulted in him being recognised as the "dean of European peace activists". His son, Paul Passy, published a memoir of his life in 1927, and his works are still being republished and translated into English in the 21st Century.
Passy was born in Paris in 1822 to an aristocratic Catholic family, which had strong ties to Orléanist politics.
His father, Justin Félix Passy, was a veteran of Waterloo. His paternal grandfather, Louis François Passy, had been Receveur Général des Finances (Receiver General of Finance), an important office in the Ancien Régime. His paternal grandmother was Jacquette Pauline Hélène d'Aure, whose brother, the Count d'Aure, was a riding master who fought for France in Egypt and Saint-Domingue.
Passy's mother, Marie Louise Pauline Salleron, was from an aristocratic Parisian family. His maternal great-grandfather, Joseph Salleron, was deputy mayor of the 6th arrondissement of Paris, and his maternal grandfather, Claude Louis Salleron, created a highly-profitable tanning business and was proposed as an officer in the National Guard in 1814.
After getting married in 1821, Félix Passy moved into the family home with Claude Louis Salleron. They went into business with each other and Félix eventually became an equal partner. Frédéric Passy's mother died in 1827, and in 1847, Félix married Irma Moricet, his son's widowed mother-in-law.
From 1846, Passy worked as an accountant in the Conseil de Droit. In 1848, he served in the National Guard. He resigned from his Conseil position in 1849 to start a career as an economist.
He was unable to secure a full-time position in education; he refused to swear the mandatory oath of loyalty to French monarch Napoleon III, believing his rule to be illegitimate. However, Passy published several books on economics during this time, the majority of them compiled from his lectures at universities in Pau, Montpellier, Bordeaux, and Nice.
Passy was trained in law, but soon became interested in moral and political economy. As he contemplated the effects of war, he was inspired by the works of several liberal economists and reformers: Frédéric Bastiat, Richard Cobden, and Daniel O'Connell. Passy was most impressed by Bastiat, who developed his ideas from Cobden's Anti-Corn Law League. Bastiat held the belief that the conscription and high tax which often accompanied militarism had a largely negative effect on the poor, and Passy further developed these ideas on class conflict throughout his work.
Being raised in a family of military veterans, Passy described in his autobiography how he "might easily have been drawn towards militarism". Instead, the stories about the horrors of the French conquest of Algeria pushed him to consider the effect that war had upon humanity. Years of violent discontent in Italy, Poland, and Austria and Prussia led to calls for a Europe federation from prominent liberals and socialists: Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Émile de Girardin, Passy, and Michel Chevalier were all advocates of this idea. In 1859, Passy condemned the idea that military action could be a solution to political issues, suggesting instead that Europe should have a "permanent congress to oversee the general interests of humanity" and an international police force.
Recognising the importance of journalism in the fight for peace, he conceived a plan to create a journal devoted to "pacific propaganda". This led to him working with Edmond Potonié-Pierre on Le Courrier International (The International Mail), an English/French periodical devoted to the European peace movement. Passy's association with Potonié's Ligue du Bien Public (League of Public Good), a liberal and socialist group aimed at attacking monopolies and high taxation, ended when Potonié began to call for a sweeping change in social policy. He advocated for the separation of church and state, a free press, equality of the sexes, the abolition of the death sentence.
In April 1867, the Paris newspaper Le Temps published three letters attacking the actions of the French concerning Luxembourg, the third of which was written by Passy. The letter invited readers to join a "peace league", and was given enthusiastic support by:
Henry Richard, secretary of the Peace Society, visited Paris in that year and urged the Minister of the Interior to allow an international peace congress during the 1867 Paris Exposition. The idea was rejected, but the government eventually allowed lectures on the general principles of peace go ahead, with the condition that no questions were asked afterwards.
In May 1867, Passy and Chevalier received permission to organize the Ligue Internationale et Permanente de la Paix (International and Permanent League of Peace). It was in the Ligue that Passy declared "war on war", believing that liberal economics would bring social change once military spending was eradicated. This differed greatly with the ideas of previous conservatives like Friedrich von Gentz, whose anti-war stance was concerned with maintaining the status quo.
On 21 May, Passy delivered a lecture at the École de Médecine (School of Medicine) in Paris, discussing his views on pacifism. He explained that his views were not from a religious or political perspective, but from an economic, moral, and philosophical one. While he did suggest that defensive or independence wars could be "the most noble and magnificent task in life", he strongly condemned wars of conquest and expansion as disadvantageous to a country's wealth and moral character.
In the same year, the French Saint-Simonian Charles Lemonnier founded a similarly named League in Geneva. This group was far more political than Passy's, founded on republican views and strongly advocating for the separation of church and state. Passy made efforts to differentiate his Ligue from this one, repeating their "anti-revolutionary aims" and avoiding political questions over human rights.