Nairac's French heritage Part 1

Robert Nairac was aware of, and proud of, his French heritage. He spoke French, according to Army records, to Interpreter Standard. He knew France quite well and had relations there. His surname was French; his ancestors had lived in France until the early nineteenth century. Later they lived in Mauritius, a former French colony which remains culturally French, although it was British from 1810 to 1968. Maurice Nairac, Robert's father, was born there, as was Robert.

Although Robert Nairac was a devout Roman Catholic, many of his ancestors were Huguenots; French Calvinist Protestants. This gives a clue to the family's origins; Protestantism was always strongest in the South of France. The Nairac family can be traced with certainty to the Tarn district of Languedoc, where Protestants are still fairly numerous. The surrounding landscape is beautiful, with picturesque medieval bastide villages, built from honey-coloured stone, set against a backdrop of rolling hills, vineyards and fields of sunflowers.

It is likely, however, that the Nairacs, who spelt their name Nayrac or Neyrac before the eighteenth century, had originated in another part of Languedoc; the Aveyron district, with which they had a long-standing connection and where several of them found wives. This rugged and mountainous area has suffered depopulation. Near Aveyron stands the town of Le Nayrac. Once a place of importance, dominated by its castle and former abbey-church, Le Nayrac now has fewer than 600 inhabitants. Robert Nairac's ancestors did not speak French as their first language before the late seventeenth or even the eighteenth century. Prior to that, they spoke Occitan. Occitan, now a dying tongue, is not a dialect of French but a separate Romance language, closely related to Catalan. In Occitan "Le Nayrac" means "high or mountainous place". It is probably here that Robert Nairac's early ancestors lived and died.

The earliest traceable ancestor is Paul Nairac, born around 1530 at Gijounet in the Tarn district. His grandson, David Nairac (1595-1668), was a master-locksmith. David's son, Jean Nairac (born in 1634) became a master-gunsmith in Aveyron. It would appear that the fascination of the male members of the Nairac family with firearms is of long standing. The family were dynamic and upwardly-mobile. In the late seventeenth century Robert's ancestors would move to Bordeaux; then one of the busiest ports in Europe. There they prospered; the palatial Hotel de Nairac, now a court building, was originally a Nairac town-house, while the beautiful Chateau de Nairac at Barsac still produces a famous sweet dessert-wine on its estate. These impressive buildings show clearly how important and affluent the Nairacs once were.

Certain historical events impinged on the Nairacs' rise to riches and political influence. These will be treated further in another blog posting. The first was Louis XIV's revocation of the Edict of Nantes, which had granted Protestants protection and freedom to practice their religion. This act drove many Nairacs to settle elsewhere, including Dublin, The Netherlands and North America. They established themselves in business and remained in touch with the senior branch of Nairac, who stayed in France and re-converted to Roman Catholicism; or in some cases only pretended to. The next event was the American Revolution, in which France became involved in support of the rebelious colonists. The third was the French Revolution, in which the Nairacs belonged to the moderate Girondin Party, and Great Britain's long war against revolutionary and Napoleonic France. All these events would have a serious impact on Bordeaux and its affluent merchant families.

On what was the Nairac family fortune based? Mainly on the sugar trade and the closely associated slave trade. The Nairacs soon became the greatest slave traders of Bordeaux.