The Colonial Machine: French Science and Colonization in the Ancien Regime

The Colonial Machine: French Science and Colonization in the Ancien Regime

James E. McClellan

François Regourd

2000

Journal Article

James E. McClellan

François Regourd

Journal Article

0369-7827

Although France's colonies were small in number and in size in the eighteenth century, their economic importance made France a major colonial power in the period. The central government, notably the Ministère de la Marine et des Colonies, systematically engaged the elaborate scientific infrastructure of Ancien-Régime France in its colonizing efforts, and French savants provided an essential expertise. This paper examines this bureaucratized scientific arm of France's contemporary "colonial machine" that included the Académie Royale des Sciences, the Académie Royale de Marine, the Observatoire Royal, the Jardin du Roí, the Société Royale de Médecine, the Société Royale d'Agriculture, and the Compagnie des Indes. These institutions and the individuals associated with them undertook coordinated efforts to support and extend contemporary French colonization. Their activities deal with tropical medicine, taxonomic and economic botany, cartography, and a host of related matters. With Paris and Versailles as the hub, by the end of the century an intricate web of institutions and expertise spanned the French colonial world from the Americas to the East Indies. Informal and unofficial colonial networks complemented the official administrative apparatus. The Revolutionary and Napoleonic periods witnessed the destruction of Ancien-Régime colonial structures--scientific and otherwise--yet, the lesson of the utility of science for the creation and maintenance of colonies was not lost on imperial planners who followed.

2016-11-30 23:01:15

2000

00000

Osiris

JSTOR

31-50

Osiris

The Colonial Machine

The Colonial Machine: French Science and Colonization in the Ancien Regime

http://www.jstor.org/stable/301939

15