Frédéric Passy

Born in Paris in 1822 to a Catholic Orléanist family thick with military veterans and politicians, Passy trained in law, worked as an accountant, served briefly in the National Guard, then left it all to travel France giving economics lectures. After years of watching Europe convulse, he joined the peace movement in the 1850s, writing articles and building curricula alongside activists. While sitting in the Chamber of Deputies from 1881 to 1889, he co-developed the Inter-parliamentary Conference with British MP William Randal Cremer - the seed of what became the Inter-Parliamentary Union - and founded three 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. He died in 1912 after a long illness, his economic writings mostly forgotten, but his peace work earned him the title "dean of European peace activists" - and his son published a memoir of him fifteen years later.