Botany and Provincial Enlightenment in Montpellier: Antoine Banal Père and Fils 1750–1800

On jokes and history, Darnton Robert , The Great Cat Massacre and other episodes in French cultural history (New York, 1984). But see also Chartier Roger , “Texts, symbols and Frenchness”, Journal of modern history, lvii (1985), 682–95, and Mah Harold , “Suppressing the text: The metaphysics of ethnographic history in Darnton's Great Cat Massacre”, History workshop journal, xxxi (1991), 1–20.

[ Crassous Cusson Gouan ], Leçons de botanique, faites au jardin royal de Montpellier; par Monsieur Imbert, Professeur et Chancellier en l'Université de Médicine, et recuëillies par M Dupuy des Esquilles, maître es arts, et ancien étudiant en chirurgerie (Holland [false imprint], 1762).

Ibid., 8.

Ibid., 15.

Censer Jack R. , The French press in the Age of Enlightenment (London, 1994); Crow Thomas , Painters and public life in eighteenth-century Paris (New Haven, CN, 1985); and Ravel Jeffrey , The contested parterre: Public theatre and French political culture (1680–1791) (Ithaca, NY, 1999).

See the essays in Berg Maxine Clifford Helen (eds), Consumers and luxury: Consumer culture in Europe, 1650–1850 (Manchester, 1999); Jones Colin Wahrman Dror (eds), The Age of Cultural Revolutions: Britain and France, 1750–1820 (Berkeley, CA, 2001); and also Roche Daniel , History of everyday things: The birth of consumption in France, 1600–1800 (Cambridge, 2000).

Stewart Larry , “A meaning for machines: Modernity, utility and the eighteenth-century British public”, Journal of modern history, lxx (1998), 259–94; Iliffe Rob , “‘Material doubts’: Robert Hooke, artisanal culture and the exchange of information in 1670s London”, The British journal for the history of science, xxviii (1995), 285–318.

Dobbs Betty Jo Teeter Jacob Margaret C. , Newton and the culture of Newtonianism (Amherst, NY, 1998), 78, and Golinski Jan , Science as public culture: Chemistry and Enlightenment in Britain, 1760–1820 (Cambridge, 1992).

See in particular Goodman Dena , The Republic of Letters: A cultural history of the French Enlightenment (Ithaca, NY, 1994).

Mandlebrote Scott , “Scientific lecturing and the industrial revolution”, History and technology, xiii (1996), 73–81.

For an interesting example see Lynn Michael R. , “Divining the Enlightenment: Public opinion and popular science in Old Regime France”, Isis, xcii (2001), 34–54.

Inkster Ian , “The development of a scientific community in Sheffield, 1790–1850: A network of people and interests”, Transactions of the Hunter Archaeological Society, x (1973), 99–131; Thackray Arnold , “Natural knowledge in cultural context: The Manchester model”, American historical review, lxxix (1974), 672–709; and Schofield Robert E. , The Lunar Society of Birmingham: A social history of provincial science and industry in eighteenth-century England (Oxford, 1963).

Thackray , “Manchester model” (ref. 12), 678; Inkster Ian , “Marginal men: Aspects of the social role of the medical community in Sheffield 1790–1850”, in Health care and popular medicine in nineteenth-century England, ed. by Woodward J. Richard D. (London, 1977), 128–63.

Inkster Ian , “Aspects of the history of science and science culture in Britain, 1750–1850 and beyond”, in Metropolis and province: Science in British culture, 1780–1850, ed. by Inkster Ian Morrell Jack (London, 1983), 11–54, p. 18.

Spary E. C. , Utopia's garden: French natural history from Old Regime to Revolution (Chicago, 2000), 49.

Bibliothèque de l'Université de Médicine de Montpellier Q 8, Imbert to Saint Priest, Montpellier, 13 February 1761.

For a detailed exposition of the social world of the provincial republic of letters see Brockliss L. W. B. , Calvet's web: Enlightenment and the Republic of Letters in eighteenth-century France (Oxford, 2002).

Shapin Steven , A social history of truth: Civility and science in seventeenth-century England (Chicago, IL, 1994); Shapin Steven Schaffer Simon , Leviathan and the air pump: Hobbes, Boyle and the experimental life (Princeton, NJ, 1985).

Lavoisier's chemistry was criticized precisely because it depended on the skills of non-élite craftsmen, see Golinski Jan , “Precision instruments and the demonstrative order of proof in Lavoisier's chemistry”, Osiris, 2nd ser., ix (1994), 30–47, p. 45.

Broman Thomas , “The Habermasian public sphere and ‘Science in the Enlightenment’”, History of science, xxxvi (1998), 123–50, p. 44.

Cooter Roger Pumfrey Stephen , “Separate spheres and public places: Reflections on the history of science popularization and science in popular culture”, History of science, xxxii (1994), 237–67, p. 240.

Secord Anne , “Science in the pub: Artisan botanists in early nineteenth-century Lancashire”, History of science, xxxii (1994), 269–315, p. 284.

Ferrone Vincenzo , “The Accademia Reale delle Scienze: Cultural sociability and men of letters in Turin of the Enlightenment under Vittorio Amadeo III”, Journal of modern history, lxx (1998), 519–60, p. 537.

Roger Jacques , “The living world”, in The ferment of knowledge: Studies in the historiography of eighteenth-century science, ed. by Rousseau G. S. Porter Roy (Cambridge, 1980), 255–84, p. 260.

Secord Anne , “Botany on a plate: Pleasure and the power of pictures in promoting early nineteenth-century scientific knowledge”, Isis, xciii (2002), 28–57, p. 29.

Koerner Lisbet , “Carl Linnaeus in his time and place”, in Cultures of natural history, ed. by Jardine N. , Secord J. A. and Spary E. C. (Cambridge, 1996), 145–62, p. 145.

Koerner Lisbet , Linnaeus: Nature and nation (Cambridge, MA, 1999), 16.

Stafleu Frans A. , Linnaeus and the Linneans: The spreading of their ideas in systematic botany, 1735–1789 (Utrecht, 1971), 31.

Roger Jacques , Buffon: A life in natural history, transl. by Bonnefoi Sarah Lucille (Ithaca, NY, 1997), 374. The Thouins senior and junior operated as Buffon's stewards, a form of subordination that paradoxically gave them a lot of authority.

Brockliss Laurence Jones Colin , The medical world of early-modern France (Oxford, 1997), 87.

AD Hérault C 529, Le Peletier to Bernage, 6 November 1720; Le Peletier to Intendant du Languedoc, 27 August 1727.

AD Hérault C 528, Mémoire sur le Jardin des Plantes, 1755.

AD Hérault C 527, Brevet en faveur de Chicoyneau, 15 November 1740.

AD Hérault C 527, Invoices 1754.

BU de Montpellier, Q 10, Jardiniers to Monsieur Imbert Chancellier de la medicine et intendant du Jardin du Roy, 25 January 1763.

BU de Montpellier, Q 8, Jean-François Imbert to M le Controlleur-Général, 31 October 1768.

AD Hérault C 528, Compte de ce qui j'ay fourni pour le Jardin du Roy de l'année 1759.

BU Montpellier, Q 8, Jean-François Imbert to Antoine Gouan, 14 March 1780.

BU Montpellier, Q 17, Antoine Banal to Jean François Imbert, 11 May 1772.

AD Hérault D 162, [Gouan], Mémoire sur quelques plantes cryptogams nouvellement découvertes dans le bois de Grammont aux environs de Montpellier, 26 July 1781.

Jean-Francois Imbert, Chancelier Juge en l'Université de Médicine de Montpellier, Professeur d'Anatomie et de Botanique, Intendant et Directeur du Jardin Royale de la měme ville (Montpellier, 1762), Affiche de la direction du jardin.

AD Hérault C 528, Morentin to Saint Priest, Versailles, 19 March 1761.

BU Montpellier, Q 8, Note in hand of Imbert.

Rioux Jean-Antoine (ed.), Le Jardin des Plantes de Montpellier: Quatre siècles d'histoire (Graulhet, 1994), 57.

[ Crassous Cusson Gouan ], op. cit. (ref. 2), 8.

BU Montpellier, Q 12, Reine to Imbert, Montpellier, 19 February 1772.

BU Montpellier, Q 8, Imbert to Reine, Paris, 16 October 1779.

BU Montpellier, Q 8, Instruction pour le concierge du Jardin Royal de Montpellier, 11 June 1777.

BU Montpellier, Q 23, Imbert's notes on the Barthez affair, 1778.

BU Montpellier, Q 23, Petition of the medical students, 6 August 1779.

BM Avignon MS 1269, Mes souvenirs ou détails historiques des époques principales de ma vie, 23.

Rioux (ed.), op. cit. (ref. 44), 53.

BM Avignon MS 1269, Mes souvenirs ou détails historiques des époques principales de ma vie, 27.

Ratte fils, “Éloge de M Venel”, Assemblée publique de la Société Royale des Sciences (Montpellier, 1777), delivered 2 March 1776, 78.

AD Hérault D 117, Guillaume Nissole, Discours sur l'utilité de la botanique, avec la description d'un phascolus et d'un litophyton, delivered to Société Royale des Sciences, 31 March 1707.

AD Hérault D 116, François Chicoyneau, Discours sur la conformité des parties des plantes avec celles des animaux, 10 December 1706.

AD Hérault D 117, François Chicoyneau, Discours sur les plantes, 17 March 1707.

Roger Jacques , Les sciences de la vie dans la pensée française au XVIIIe siècle: La génération des animaux de Descartes à l'Encyclopédie (Paris, 1993), 112.

AD Hérault D 161, Pierre Magnol, De la circulation du suc dans les plantes, 1 January 1708.

AD Hérault D 161, Pierre Magnol, Dissertation sur la différence qu'il y a entre les plantes et les animaux, 12 January 1708.

Martin Julian , “Sauvage's nosology: Medical enlightenment in Montpellier”, in The medical enlightenment of the eighteenth century, ed. by Cunningham Andrew French Roger (Cambridge, 1990), 111–37, p. 188.

BU Montpellier, Q 30, Mémoires du citoyen Gouan relatif au Jardin Botanique, An II [1793/4], 262.

Brockliss , Calvet's web (ref. 17), 392.

AD Hérault D 119, Registers of the society, 20 April 1731, 22 November 1731, 30 April 1733.

Linnean Correspondance Online, Linnaeus to François Boissier de la Croix de Sauvages, Leiden, 2 November 1737; François Boissier de la Croix de Sauvages to Linnaeus, Montpellier, 1 December 1739.

Fitzgerald was born in Limerick in Ireland and had acceded to the chair of medicine in 1732. He had been tutor to the younger Chicoyneau.

AD Hérault C 527, Brevet for François Chicoyneau, Versailles, 15 November 1740.

On éloges see Outram Dorinda , “The language of natural power: The éloges of Georges Cuvier and the public language of nineteenth-century science”, History of science, xvi (1978), 153–78; and Paul C. B. , Science and immortality: The éloges of the Paris Academy of Sciences (1666–1791) (London, 1980).

Ratte Éloge de M Fitzgerald , 16 December 1751, Séances publiques de la Société Royale des Sciences (Montpellier, 1752), 19.

AD Hérault C 529, Mémoire in the hand of Sauvages, 24 January 1748.

AD Hérault C 527, Morentin to Saint Priest, Versailles, 22 August 1752.

Stafleu , Linnaeus and the Linneans (ref. 28), 27.

Mayr Ernest , The growth of biological thought: Diversity, evolution and inheritance (Cambridge, MA, 1982), 173–8.

Gouan Antoine de Linné Éloge , 28 December 1779, Assemblée publique de l'Académie Royale des Sciences (Montpellier, 1780), 102.

Ibid., 109.

Sauvages , Projet d'une nouvelle méthode pour connaître les plantes par les feuilles, 21 November 1743, Séance publique de la Société Royale des Sciences (Montpellier, 1744), 50.

Mayr , Growth of biological thought (ref. 73), 194–5; Duris Pascal , Linné et la France (1780–1850) (Paris, 1993), 140–2.

AD Hérault D 162, Report by Gouan and Broussonet on submission by Sibthorp, 13 March 1783.

Montpellier, Q 30, Mémoires du citoyen Gouan relatif au Jardin Botanique, An II [1793/4], 262.

Gouan Antoine , Herborisations des environs de Montpellier, ou guide botanique à l'usage des élèves de l'École de Santé; ouvrage destiné a servir de supplement au flora monspeliaca (Montpellier, An IV [1792/3]), 6. His full list comprised “Rondolet, Pena, Lobel, Clusius, Gaspard et Jean Bauhin, Pison, Rauvolf, Fuchsius, Gesner, Bellon, Burser, Ruel, Dalechamp, Raj et après eux Belleval, Tournefort, Magnol, Jussieu, Sauvages. On peut encore mettre de ce nombre des savants distingués, tels que Séguier, Amoreux, Broussonet, Dombey, Bruguière et Olivier, qui tous deux voyagent à présent aux ordres de la République, de měme que Riche et Labillardière, tous sortis de l'école de Montpellier”.

Gouan Antoine , Projet d'un ouvrage de botanique qui a pour titre: Antonii Gouan, Professoris Medici Monspeliensis, Observationes Botanicae, 12 December 1772, Séance publique de la Société Royale des Sciences (Montpellier, 1773), 22.

For another intersection of practical skill and claims to authority see Secord Anne , “Artisan botany”, in Jardine Secord Spary (eds), Cultures of natural history (ref. 26), 378–93.

Banalfils Antoine , Catalogue des plantes usuelles rangées suivant le méthode de M Linnaeus demontrées par le sieur Banal, fils ainé, Jardinier-Botaniste au Jardin Royal (Montpellier, 1786), 5.

BU Montpellier, Q 18, Note by Imbert on Barthez, 1773. For Barthez's contributions to vitalism, see Brockliss Jones , Medical world (ref. 30), 427.

BU Montpellier Q 17, Antoine Banal fils to Imbert, Montpellier, 4 November 1779.

BU Montpellier Q 23, Banal to Imbert, 10 November 1777.

BU Montpellier Q 12, Reine to Imbert, Montpellier, 3 November 1779.

BU Montpellier Q 23, Reine to Imbert, Montpellier, 17 June 1779.

Outram Dorinda , “New spaces in natural history”, in Jardine Secord Spary (eds), Cultures of natural history (ref. 26), 249–65.

Crosland Maurice , The Society of Arcueil: A view of French science at the time of Napoleon I (London, 1967); Fox Robert , “Science, the university and the State in nineteenth-century France”, in Geison G. L. (ed.), Professions and the French State, 1700–1900 (Chapel Hill, NC, 1984), 66–145; and Outram Dorinda , “Politics and vocation: French science, 1793–1830”, The British journal for the history of science, xiii (1980), 27–43.

AD Hérault 7 M 94, Membership lists 1798–1820.

BU Montpellier Q 29, Extrait des procès verbal des séances publiques du Directoire du District de Montpellier, 23 vendemiaire An III [1794/5].

I owe this information to Beale Georgia Dr Douglass Gina Dr . Of the thirteen, five (Broussonet, Gérard, Gouan, Dorthes and Banal) were based in Languedoc. See Beale Georgia , “Early French members of the Linnean Society of London, 1788–1802: From the Estates General to Thermidor”, Proceedings of the annual meeting of the Western Society for French History, xviii (1991), 272–82.

Linnean Library, Smith Corr. 1/53, Broussonet to Smith , London, 8 August 1782.

On Banks's co-ordinating role see Miller David Philip , “Joseph Banks, empire and ‘centres of calculation’ in late Hanoverian London”, in Visions of empire: Voyages, botany and representations of nature, ed. by Miller David Philip Reill Peter Hamms (Cambridge, 1996), 21–37.

Linnean Library Smith Corr. 1/62, Broussonet to Smith, Paris, 3 August 1787.

Linnean Library Smith Corr. 5/36, Antoine Gouan to James Smith, Montpellier, 30 December 1788.

AD Hérault C 5359, Pepinieres de muriers de la province de Languedoc (1723). le Jeune Capon , Moyens d'encourager la culture d'olivier et d'en multiplier l'espece (Nîmes, 1785).

AD Gard 9 M 6, Anon., Notice sur les produits de l'industrie du département du Gard (Nîmes, 1808).

AD Hérault C 5392, Anonymous set of notes and observations on improvement in Languedoc, 17 January 1768.

AD Hérault C 5397, Etat des depenses faittes par le Sr Joannis Althen a l'occasion de la plantation de coton, 1751.

AD Hérault C 5392, Expérience physique, 6 August 1767.

Bourde André , Agronomie et agronomes en France au XVIIle siècle (3 vols, Paris, 1967), i, 107.

BU Montpellier Q30, Memoires du Citoyen Gouan relatifs au Jardin des Plantes An II [1793/4], 4.

Gouan , Herborisations des environs de Montpellier (ref. 80), 9.