LABAT, JEAN-BAPTISTE. — Dominican missionary, writer, and traveler, born in Paris in 1663 (or 1664), died there on 6 January 1738. He made his profession in the Parisian convent of the Annunciation (rue St-Honoré) on 11 April 1685. After teaching for several years in Nancy, he sailed for the Antilles (1693). Having spent two years as a parish priest in Martinique, he went to Guadeloupe, and from there back to Martinique.
During the eleven and a half years he spent in the Antilles, he had the opportunity to apply his versatile intellect to the most diverse fields: he was a mechanic and engineer, leader, agronomist, geographer, astronomer, etc., leaving among those populations a memory that remains vivid and has been handed down from generation to generation. Returning to Europe (1705), he remained there until his death, first almost exclusively in Italy, then, from 1716, in the convent of the Annunciation in Paris.
L. left various writings on travels, his own and those of others, in which he reveals himself not only as an acute and shrewd observer,
but also as an elegant writer, though somewhat too indulgent toward witticisms and jests. The following should be remembered: the Nouveau voyage aux Isles de l'Amérique... (6 vols., Paris 1722; various eds. and trans.); Voyage du p. L. en Espagne et en Italie... (8 vols., Paris 1730). He also wrote on West Africa, Guinea, and Western Ethiopia.