The Colonial Machine: French Science and the Ancien Regime
Author(s)
McClellan, James E., Regourd, Francois
Abstract
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 Ministere de la Marine et des Colonies, systematically engaged the elaborate scientific infrastructure of Ancien-Regime 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 Academie Royale des Sciences, the Academie Royale de Marine, the Observatoire Royal, the Jardin du Roi, the Societe Royale de Medecine, the Societe 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-Regime 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.
