Abstract
The topic of science and colonialism has recently attracted increased historiographical attention.1 However, both French colonialism in general and European colonialism in the eighteenth century in particular have been largely ignored in this recent literature.2 The present paper begins to fill these historiographical gaps by examining the role of French science and medicine for the development of French colonialism in the Old Regime, as seen in the non-trivial case of the French West-Indian colony of Saint Domingue (modern-day Haiti). Two subsidiary objectives inform this paper: one, to show that science and medicine were not monolithic historical entities, but that they affected colonial development through real institutions with sometimes conflicting priorities; and secondly to illustrate that science and medicine were not wholly progressive historical forces, but that they served to support colonial slavery and the economically retrogressive policies of French mercantilism.
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Notes
Consider the volume by N. Reingold and M. Rothenberg (eds), Scientific Colonialism: A Cross-Cultural Comparison (Washington, D.C. and London: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1987)
on this point see I. D. Spencer, A Civilization that Perished: The Last Years of White Colonial Rule in Haiti (Lanham, Md: University Press of America: 1985) p. iv.
See E. D. Genovese, From Rebellion to Revolution: Afro-American Slave Revolts in the Making of the New World (New York: Vintage Books, 1981) p. 85;
R. L. Stein, The French Sugar Business in the Eighteenth Century (Baton Rouge and London: Louisiana State University Press, 1988) p. 166;
G. B. Hagelberg, ‘Sugar in the Caribbean: Turning Sunshine into Money’, in S. W. Mintz and S. Price (eds) Caribbean Contours (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985) p. 96;
J. Cauna, Au temps des isles à sucre: Histoire d’une plantation de Saint-Domingue au XVIIIe siècle (Paris: Karthala, 1987) p. 11;
S. W. Mintz, Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History (New York: Viking, 1985) p. 239;
M. Devèze, Antilles, Guyanes, la Mer des Caraïbes de 1492 à 1789 (Paris: S.E.D.E.S, 1977) pp. 257, 267–9.
C. L. R. James, The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L’Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution (New York: Vintage Books, 1963) p. 49.
G. K. Lewis, Main Currents in Caribbean Thought: The Historical Evolution of Caribbean Society in Its Ideological Aspects, 1492–1900 (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983) p. 123;
C. L. Lokke, France and the Colonial Question: A Study of Contemporary French Opinion, 1763–1801 (New York: Octagon Books, 1976) p. 29.
A. Hyma, The Dutch in the Far East: A History of the Dutch Commercial and Colonial Empire (Ann Arbor: George Wahr, 1942) pp. 3–4, 37 does not defend the preeminence of Dutch international trade past 1730.
H. I. Priestley, France Overseas Through the Old Regime: A Study of European Expansion (New York: D. Appleton-Century Co., 1939) passim;
J. Hughes, American Economic History (Dallas: Scott, Foresman and Co., 1983) p. 23.
H. S. Klein, African Slavery in Latin America and the Caribbean (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986) p. 295,
M. L. E. Moreau de Saint-Méry, Description physique, civile, politique et historique de la Partie Française de l’Isle de Saint-Domingue (Philadelphia, 1797–8); modem ed. B. Maurel and E. Taillemite (eds), (Paris: Société Française d’Histoire d’Outre-Mer, 1984) p. 478.
A. Cobban, A History of Modern France, vol. 1: 1715–1799 (New York: Penguin Books, 1963) p. 48;
D. Roche, Le siècle des lumières en province: Académies et académiciens provinciaux, 1680–1789, 2 vols (Paris and The Hague: Mouton, 1978), vol. 2, p. 358;
J. Fouchard, Le Théatre à Saint-Domingue (Port-au-Prince: Imprimerie de l’État, 1955) p. 6 goes a bit far, perhaps, when he speaks of Cap François in the latter 1780s as ‘civilization’s most advanced beacon in the Americas’, but he cannot have missed the mark by much.
see B. Hindle, The Pursuit of Science in Revolutionary America: 1735–1789 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1956) pp. 142–5;
J. McClellan, Science Reorganized: Scientific Societies in the Eighteenth Century (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985) pp. 35, 140–4.
On this point see especially L. Pyenson, ‘Cultural Imperialism and Exact Sciences: German Expansion Overseas 1900–1930’, History of Science xx (1982) 1.
L. Feuillée, Journal des Observations physiques, mathematiques et botaniques, faites par Vordre du Roy, 3 vols (Paris: 1712, 1725) vol. 1, p. 1; vol. 3, pp. 365–89;
P. Fournier, Voyages et Découvertes Scientifiques des Missionnaires naturalistes français à travers le Monde (XVe à XXpte siècles) (Paris: Paul Le Chevalier et Fils, 1932), pp. 60–1.
A.-G. Pingré, ‘Rapport des Observations Faites sur mer pour la détermination des longitudes’, Journal de physique 2 (1773) 1–11 discusses all of these voyages.
A. Cabon, ‘Notes historiques sur la détermination de la position géographique d’Haiti’, Bulletin Semestriel de l’Observatoire Métérologique du Séminaire-Collège St. Martial (1916) 51–9.
U. Duvivier, Bibliographie Générale et Méthodique d’Haiti, 2 vols (Port-au-Prince: Imprimerie de l’État, 1941), vol. 1, pp. 102–4 presents an annotated listing of eighteenth-century maps of Saint Domingue;
Stehlé, ‘Evolution de la connaissance Botanique et Biologique aux Antilles Françaises’, Comptes Rendus du 91e Congrès National des Sociétés Savantes (Rennes, 1966),
see Y. Laissus, ‘Le Jardin du Roi’, in R. Taton (ed.) Enseignement et diffusion des sciences en France au XVIIIe siècle (Paris: Hermann, 1964, 1986) pp. 288–92, 321ff; Osborne, pp. 3–5.
see L. Brockway, Science and Colonial Expansion; The Role of the British Royal Botanic Gardens (New York and London: Academic Press, 1979), esp. 3–4.
R. A. Donkin, ‘Spanish Red: An Ethnogeographical Study of Cochineal and the Opuntia Cactus’, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 67 (1977), pt. 5, pp. 11, 14.
S. M. Edelstein, ‘Spanish Red — Thiery de Menonville’s Voyage to Guaxaca’, American Dyestuff Reporter 47 (1958) 1–8; Donkin, pp. 46, 52.
R. Auvigne and J. P. Kernes, ‘Nantes, herbier des Isles: Ou le rôle joué par les botanistes nantais dans l’introduction en France des végétaux exotiques au 18e siècle’, Histoire de la médicine 6 (1956) 7–13; Laissus, p. 293.
On ballooning in France, see esp. C. Gillispie, The Montgolfier Brothers and the Invention of Aviation (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983), passim;
H. Castonnet des Fosses, L’Île de Saint-Domingue au XVIIIe siècle (Nantes: Mellinet, 1884) p. 31;
D. Belle-garde, Histoire du Peuple Haïtien (Port-au-Prince, 1953) p. 49;
J. Fouchard, ‘Les Joies de la lecture à Saint-Domingue’, Revue d’Histoire des Colonies 41 (1954) 103–11.
On Mesmerism in general, see R. Darnton, Mesmerism and the End of the Enlightenment in France (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1968), esp. pp. 3–10, 47–52.
and letters reprinted in G. Debien, ‘Profils de Colons: Jean Trembley,’ Revue de ‘La Porte Océane’ 11 (1953) 8–10 and 14–19,
and G. Debien, ‘Une Nantaise à Saint-Domingue’ Revue de Bas-Poitu et des Provinces de l’Ouest 83 (1972) 413–36;
B. Maurel, ‘Une société de pensée à Saint-Domingue: Le “Cercle des Philadelphes” au Cap Français’, Revue française d’histoire d’outre-mer 47 (1961) 234–66;
P. Pluchon, ‘Le cercle des Philadelphes du Cap-Français à Saint-Domingue: seule Académie coloniale de l’Ancien Régime’, Mondes et Cultures 45 (1985) 157–91.
F. Thésée and G. Debien, ‘Un colon niortais à Saint-Domingue: Jean Barré de Saint-Venant’, Bulletin de la Société Historique et Scientifique des Deux Sèvres 7 (1974) 398–9.
Cercle des Philadelphes, Prospectus du Cercle des Philadelphes (Cap François: Imprimerie Royal, 1784), p. 3.
Among the several historians who have written on the medical history of Saint Domingue, one needs signal P. Pluchon, ‘La santé dans les colonies de l’Ancien Régime’, in P. Pluchon (ed.), Histoire des Medecins et Pharmaciens de Marine et des Colonies (Toulouse: Privat, 1985), pp. 89–129;
and R. Léon, ‘Tableau des maladies dans l’ancienne colonie française de Saint-Domingue’, Bulletin de la Société de Médecine d’Haiti 5 (1931) 84–7.
P. Brau, Trois Siècles de Médecine Coloniale Française (Paris: Vigot Frères, 1931) pp. 71–3, 91–2.
R. Léon, ‘Une Esquisse de l’histoire de la médecine en Haiti’, Conjonction 47 (1953) 5–17;
Z. Loker, ‘Professionnels médicaux dans la colonie de St. Domingue au XVIIIe siècle’, Revue de la Société Haïtienne d’Histoire et de Géographie 39 (1981) 5–33;
R. Léon, Notes Bio-Bibliographiques: Médecins et Naturalistes de l’ancienne colonie française de St. Domingue (Port-au-Prince: Impimerie Panorama, 1976) pp. 58–9;
Dr. Gros, ‘Un médecin des colonies au XVIIIe siècle: Poup-pée-Desportes’, Archives de Médecine Navale et Coloniale 66 (1896) 345;
P. Pluchon, Vaudou sorciers empoisonneurs de Saint-Domingue à Haiti (Paris: Karthala, 1987) p. 146.
see C. C. Gillispie, The Edge of Objectivity: An Essay in the History of Scientific Ideas (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1960) pp. 8, 74, 78;
J. B. Conant, On Understanding Science (New York: NAL, 1951) pp. 35–6, 109–10, 120;
B. Hessen, ‘The Social and Economic Roots of Newton’s “Principia”’ in Science at the Cross Roads (London: Kniga, 1931) pp. 54–62;
J. D. Bernai, Science in History (Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T. Press, 1971) pp. 4–5, 27, 42–8, 55–6; 535, 541–2, 1231, 1237, 1242, and Table 8;
N. Dryakhlov, The Scientific and Technological Revolution: Its Role in Today’s World (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1984) pp. 15, 22–6
E. Williams, Capitalism and Slavery (London: André Deutsch, 1964) pp. 24–5;
On this point, see F. W. Knight, The Caribbean: The Genesis of a Fragmented Nationalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978) pp. 128–9;
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© 1991 Teresa Meade and Mark Walker
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McClellan, J.E. (1991). Science, Medicine and French Colonialism in Old-Regime Haiti. In: Meade, T., Walker, M. (eds) Science, Medicine and Cultural Imperialism. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-12445-9_3
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