Étienne Clavière (; 29 January 17358 December 1793) was a Genevan-born French financier and politician of the French Revolution. He was the French Minister of Finance between 24 March and 12 June 1792, and again between 10 August 1792 and 2 June 1793.
Career in Geneva and exile
Clavière was born on 29 January 1735 in Geneva, Republic of Geneva to Jean-Jacques Clavière, a cloth merchant. His father was a Huguenot refugee from Serres who was admitted to the bourgeoisie of Geneva in 1735. After a commercial apprenticeship in Christian-Erlang, Clavière became a partner in the company Cazenove, Clavière et Fils. His brother moved to Brussels. Clavière associated with personalities from Neuchâtel and Geneva, among them Jean-Paul Marat and Étienne Dumont. Their plans for a "new Geneva" in Ireland—which the government of William Pitt the Younger favoured—were given up when Jacques Necker came to power in France, and Clavière, with most of his comrades, settled in Paris. In 1785, he collaborated with Theophile Cazenove.
In 1787, Clavière visited the Dutch Republic, together with Jacques Pierre Brissot, and met with the banker Pieter Stadnitski. The Patriots were losing influence and territory and the French politicians went back. He co-founded the with Brissot in 1787.
Clavière also published some pamphlets under his own name, and through these and his friendship with Brissot, whom he had met in London, he was Minister of Finance in the Girondist ministry, from 24 March to 12 June 1792
After the 10 August storming of Tuileries Palace, he was again given charge of the finances in the provisional executive council, but could not offer a remedy to France's financial difficulties (in particular, rampant inflation caused primarily by the excessive production of assignats). Clavière was a casualty of the fall of the Girondins, being arrested on 2 June 1793, but was not placed on trial with the rest in October. He remained in prison until 8 December, when, on receiving notice that he was to appear on the next day before the Revolutionary Tribunal, he died by suicide.