Essay Review: Government Patronage of Science in Eighteenth-Century France: Agronomie et Agronomes en France au XVIIP Siècle

Cf. Bourde , Deux registres (H. 1520-H. 1521) du contróle général des finances aux Archives nationales (1730–1736): Contribution à l'étude du ministère d'Orry (Gap, 1965).

Festy , L'agriculture pendant la révolution française: Les conditions de production et de récolte des céréales (Paris, 1947), and other works by the same author.

Also, Bourde , “L'agriculture à l'anglaise en Normandie au XVIII^e siècle,” Annales de Normandie, viii (1958) 215–233.

Agronomie, iii, 1563. Bourde does make use of Young's Travels, but generally for specific details or to point out Young's occasional errors.

A recent contribution to this literature is the important article by Guerlac Henry , “Where the statue stood: Divergent loyalties to Newton in the eighteenth century”, in Aspects of the eighteenth century, ed. Wasserman Earl R. (Baltimore, 1965). Also, Enseignement et diffusion des sciences en France au XVIII^e siècle, ed. René Taton, in the series “Histoire de la pensée” (Paris, 1964). Cf. Duhamel du Monceau, in Agronomie, i, 251.

See Guerlac Henry , “Some French antecedents of the chemical revolution”, Chymia, v (1959) 73–112, and Parker Harold T. , “French administrators and French scientists during the Old Régime and the early years of the Revolution”, in Ideas in history, ed. Herr R. Parker H. T. (Durham, N. C., 1965). Hahn's Roger The anatomy of a scientific institution: The Paris Academy of Sciences, 1666–1803 is to be published by the University of Michigan Press. See also Gillispie C. C. , “The natural history of industry”, Isis, xlviii (1957) 398–407.

Above, n. 6; G. de la Fournière, “Les Comités d'agriculture de 1760 et de 1784”, Bulletin du Comité des Travaux historiques et scientifiques: Section des sciences économiques et sociales, 190c (Paris, 1910), 94–121; and Delorme S. , “Une famille de grands Commis de l'Etat, amis des Sciences, au XVIII^e siècle: Les Trudaine”, Revue d'histoire des sciences, iii (1950) 101–109.

Thouin's papers are at the Muséum d'Histoire Naturelle. In addition to the academic eulogies pronounced in 1825 by Georges Cuvier and A.-F. Silvestre, see Bertemes G. , “Correspondance de Linné Père et Fils avec André Thouin”, Bulletin de la Société d'histoire naturelle des Ardennes, xxx (1935), and Cap P.-A. , Le Muséum d'histoire naturelle (Paris, 1854).

Probably more has been done on this subject in connection with Lavoisier than with any other scientist; see Smeaton W. A. , “New light on Lavoisier: The research of the last ten years”, History of science, ii (1963) 51–09.

Valuable details about the inventors are to be found in the works cited above, n. 6, and in the various monographs by Shelby T. McCloy.

Quoted by Bloch Marc , “La lutte pour l'individualisme agraire dans la France du XVIII^e siècle”, Annales d'histoire économique et sociale, ii (1930) 524; translation by Behrens C. B. A. , The Ancien Régime (London, 1967), 175.

McCloy S. T. , Government assistance in eighteenth-century France (Durham, N.C., 1946), ch. 1, and Pigeonneau Henri de Foville Alfred , L'administration de l'agriculture au Contrôle général des finances (1785–1787): Procès-verbaux et rapports (Paris, 1882).

Tourneux , “Un projet d'encouragement aux lettres et aux sciences sous Louis XVI”, Revue d'histoire littéraire de la France, viii (1901) 281–311. I am indebted to Roger Hahn for calling this article to my attention.

Cap , op. cit., 32–34; Lasègue A. , Musée botanique de M. Benjamin Delessert (Paris, 1845), 53–60; and Chevalier Auguste , La vie et l'oeuvre de René Desfontaines (Paris, 1939), 191–195. Some of LeMonnier's correspondence is at the Muséum d'Histoire Naturelle. See Laissus Y. , “Lettres inédites de René Desfontaines à Louis-Guillaume LeMonnier”, Comptes rendus du 91^e Congrès national des Sociétés savantes, Rennes, 1966 (Paris, 1967), 153–169.

A catalogue, arranged chronologically, is to be found in Bernard Auguste , Histoire de l'Imprimerie royale du Louvre (Paris, 1867), 123–263. Pierre Sonnerat, for example, presumably had to publish his own Voyage aux Indes orientales et à la Chine, fait par ordre du Roi, depuis 1774 jusqu'en 1781 (2 vols., Paris: L'auteur, 1782).

Grosclaude P. , Malesherbes, témoin et interprète de son temps (Paris, 1961). Malesherbes , Observations … sur l'histoire naturelle générale et particulière de Buffon et Daubenton (2 vols., Paris, 1798); published posthumously, this work was begun soon after 1749 and is an attack on Buffon's anti-Linnaean views.

Duveen Denis I. Hahn Roger , “Laplace's succession to Bézout's post of Examinateur des Elèves de l'Artillerie: A case history in the ‘lobbying’ for scientific appointments in France during the period preceding the French Revolution”, Isis, xlviii (1957) 416–427. This article begins with a valuable discussion of some of the ways in which a scientist could earn a livelihood.

Tourneux , op. cit.

Chinard Gilbert , ed., Le voyage de Lapérouse sur les côtes de l'Alaska et de la Californie (1786) (Baltimore, 1937), p. x. Chinard goes on to say that government interest in exploration declined again after Kerguelen's voyage and revived after 1783; i must disagree, as will appear below.

Justin Emile , Les sociétés royales d'agriculture au XVIII^e siècle (1757–1793) (St.-Lo, 1935). Similar views were held by Bertin in connection with the geological survey he commissioned; see Rappaport R. , “Guettard, Lavoisier, and Monnet: Conflicting views of the nature of geology”, in The history of geology before Darwin, ed. Schneer Cecil J. , in press.

Dehergne J. , Les deux chinois de Bertin: L'enquête industrielle de 1764 et les débuts de la collaboration technique franco-chinoise, unpublished thesis (Paris: École Pratique des Hautes Études, 1965). i am indebted to M. René Taton for calling this study to my attention and allowing me to consult it.

Oeuvres de Turgot et documents le concernant, ed. Schelle G. (5 vols., Paris, 1913–1923), ii, 523–533.

Archives nationales, Chartrier Tocqueville, 154 AP II, dossier 149, pes 37, 371. I am grateful to M. le Comte de Tocqueville for permitting me to consult these papers.

d'Aussy P.-J.-B. LeGrand , Voyage d'Auvergne (Paris, 1788), 25–26.

Dakin Douglas , Turgot and the Ancien Régime in France (London, 1939); Hahn Roger , “The chair of hydrodynamics in Paris, 1775–1791: A creation of Turgot”, Actes du dixième Congrès international d'Histoire des Sciences (Paris, 1904), ii, 751–754; and Henry Charles , ed., Correspondance inédite de Condorcet et de Turgot, 1770–1779 (Paris, 1883). Also, Guerlac Henry , Lavoisier—The crucial year: The background and origin of his first experiments on combustion in 1772 (Ithaca, N.Y., 1961), ch. 5.

Hamy E.-T. , Joseph Dombey (Paris, 1905); Bertemes , op. cit.; and Oeuvres de Turgot, iv, 88. Also, Muséum d'Histoire Naturelle, MS 1987, pc 523.

Muséum d'Histoire Naturelle, MS 1992, pes 425, 426. In these letters, Gouan couples the names of Turgot and Malesherbes.

Chartrier Tocqueville, dossier 157, pc 67. A valuable discussion of Malesherbes as naturalist and agronomist is in Grosclaude , op. cit.

A study of the two Michaux, begun by the late Léon Rey, is in process of completion by Yves Laissus; Gilbert Chinard gives a brief description of its content and valuable information on earlier Franco-American relations in his “André and François-André Mïchaux and their predecessors,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, ci (1957) 344–361. Also, Mitchell Julia Post , St. Jean de Crévecoeur (New York, 1916), 101–106.

Voyage de La Pérouse autour du monde, ed. Milet–Mureau M. L. A. (4 vols, and atlas, Paris, an V [1797]). The list of equipment published in vol. i should be compared with that at the Muséum d'Histoire Naturelle, MS 1928, i, no. 1; the savants generally were given all they asked for and more.

Adams H. B. , “L'Académie des Etats-unis de l'Amérique”, The academy, ii (1887) 403–412. On Rouelle, see Sigerist Henry , “The rise and fall of the American spa”, Ciba symposia, viii (1946) 313–326. The Academy was not meant to limit itself to matters scientific, as its title indicates, but the Committee of Correspondence in Paris was dominated by scientists and the first (and only) professorial appointment was to a scientific chair.

Cf. Bourde , Agronomie, esp. ii, 597–741.