Henri-Benjamin Constant de Rebecque (25 October 1767 – 8 December 1830), or simply Benjamin Constant, was a Swiss-born French politician, writer on politics and religion. He was the author of a partly biographical psychological novel, Adolphe. He was a fervent liberal [1] of the early 19th century who influenced the Trienio Liberal movement in Spain, the Liberal Revolution of 1820 in Portugal, the Greek War of Independence, the November Uprising in Poland, the Belgian Revolution, and Liberalism in Brazil and Mexico.

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Henri-Benjamin Constant was born in Lausanne to descendants of Huguenot Protestants who had fled from Artois to Switzerland during the Huguenot Wars in the 16th century. His father, Samuel Constant de Rebecque, served as a high-ranking officer in the Dutch States Army, like his grandfather, his uncle and his cousin Jean Victor de Constant Rebecque. When Constant's mother died soon after his birth, both his grandmothers took care of him. He was educated by private tutors in Brussels (1779), the Netherlands (1780), and at the Protestant University of Erlangen (1783), where he gained appointment to the court of Duchess Sophie Caroline Marie of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel. He had to leave after an affair with a girl, and moved to the University of Edinburgh. There he lived at the home of Andrew Duncan, the elder and became friends with James Mackintosh[2] and Malcolm Laing.[3] When he left the city he promised to pay back his gambling debts.