Louis Félix-Auguste-Beaujour, (Louis-Auguste Feris) (28 December 1765 Callas, Var – 1 July 1836, Paris) was a French diplomat, politician, historian, and French ambassador to the United States.
He studied in Aix-en-Provence and Paris, and entered the diplomatic service. He was successively secretary of legation in Munich in 1790, and Dresden in 1791, then consul general in Greece in 1794, and Consul General in charge of business in Sweden in 1799.
Back in France in 1800, Abbe Sieyes, appointed him a member of the Tribunat, where he was successively secretary and president of the Tribunat in 1803. Upon the dissolution of the assembly, he went to the United States as Commissioner General, with a mission to raise the money for the French government, that had been delegated to Mexico, by Spanish subsidies. After consul general in Washington from 1804 to 1811, he returned to France in 1814. Talleyrand made him Consul General in Smyrna in 1816, then Inspector General of the French Establishments in the Levant in 1817. In 1818, Louis XVIII gave the title of baron, and he then changed his name (Feris) to (Félix).
He was then deputy of the Bouches-du-Rhône from 1831 to 1834, and a peer of France in 1835. In 1836, he was elected member of the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences. He founded a five-year prize, called the Felix Beaujour Awards, and awarded for the first time in 1832, awarded by the Academy, to the author of the best book on how to prevent or alleviate poverty.[1]
The tomb of Félix de Beaujour in Père Lachaise Cemetery, is a 20-meter high chimney-shaped tower.[2]