FRENCH SCIENCE OVERSEAS

FRENCH SCIENCE OVERSEAS

著者 Jami Catherine

journal or

publication title

関西大学社会学部紀要

volume 25

number 2

page range 133‑148

year 1993‑12‑05

URL http://hdl.handle.net/10112/00022555

ISSN 0287-6817

FRENCH SCIENCE OVERSEAS*

Catherine JAMI

Abstract

Since the 17th century, France has used science

as a

means to spread its influence to non-European-countries. Three cases are outlined in this

paper.

Jesuit missionaries, who were appointed correspondents of the French Academy of Sciences, were sent to China by King Louis XIV in 1685. There they served the Emperor as "court scientists" and participated in impor- tant projects such as the survey of China. They also provided Europe with much information concerning China.

Bonaparte's military expedition to Egypt(1798-1801lincluded a scientific mission. Its activities there mainly aimed at supporting the French army and at improving knowledge of that country in France. In the 1830s, dis- ciples of the French philosopher Saint-Simon went to Egypt and supported the modernisation of the country undertaken by Mehemet Ali. They repro- duced French educational and cultural patterns, especially in the engi- neering schools that

were

established.

Since the end of the 19th century, France's cultural influence in Brazil was apparent in the importance given to positivism there. French engineers, and Later scientists, went to Brazil and played an important role in the setting up of scientific institutions, especially those of higher education.

These three countries had independent status. While France used sci- ence to enhance as prestige and influence, these states used it as part of their management and modernisation policy.

Key Words: Brazil, China, Egypt, France, Jesuits, Modernisation, Saint-Simonians, Scientific development, Scientific exchanges

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* The author wishes to thank Roy McLeod and Patrick Petitjean for their help in preparing

the final version of this text.

If we regard science as the human quest for knowledge and for the understanding and mastery of nature, it makes little sense to add an adjective giving it a nationality: science is then the common heritage of humankind, to whom anyone can and should have access.

This standpoint, which all of us share, is relevant to ethics. I am beginning with this explicit statement so that it is clear that it is not for any apologetic purpose that I choose to discuss "French science".

But if one claims science to be the common heritage of humankind, then what is the meaning of "French science"? From a historical standpoint, scientific knowledge is produced within cultures and more precisely within certain classes of various societies, and the place and conditions of its production give it distinctive specificities. These are not immutable but change, as knowledge, travelling in time and space, is enriched and modified by other contributions. Knowledge is expressed and circulated by language:

Classical Chinese in East Asia, Sanskrit in India, Arabic in the Islamic world, Latin in medieval and early modern Europe. In this case political or geographical borders are irrelevant. Talking about languages, one should mention that in Europe, the first scholars to write in the vernacular did so not out of any so-called nationalist feeling, but so that their writings should be accessible to more "common people". One can mention Galileo, who wrote some of his works in Italian at a time when there was no such notion as "the Italian nation", or Descartes, who could publish his books written in French (he chose this language because even women could read it) only in Amsterdam, where freedom of expression was then much greater than in his own country. Writing in vernacular languages made scientific knowledge public to a group wider than that of scholars.

Language is only one of the factors which shape the features of scientific knowledge.

In Europe, it was during the 17th century that academies were created in various coun-

tries. These institutions reinforced scientists' perception of themselves as pertaining to

local communities, which in turn were part of the wider international community. Again,

the idea of "French science" should not be taken too simply. Thus, the Academie Roya/e

des Sciences, created in 1666 by Louis XIV's minister, Colbert, recruited prestigious

scientists everywhere in Europe, like Huygens from Holland, Cassini from Italy. It was

through state support and institutions that their scientific productions came to be labelled

as "French science". These few hints may suffice to indicate that the entity I am referring

to in my title is problematic, deeply linked to perceptions of the time, and by no means

a value-laden reality that would exist apart from an onlooker's categories. From the 17th

FRENCH SCIENCE OVERSEAS (JAMI)

century onwards, the centralisation of European nation-states reinforced European elites' perception of their belonging to some proto-national groups, and of their involvement in rivalries between these groups.

This being clarified, what I want to discuss is part of a world-wide process, which started with maritime explorations in the 15th century: the expansion of Europe's civilisa- tion, and of its scienc;e. The organisation of natural knowledge into the entity we call science was one of the products which Europe regarded as a token of its superiority, together with religion. In later centuries religion was gradually replaced by political and economical organisations, as benefits Europeans claimed they could offer other civilisa- tions, in order to "civilise" them.

The phrase "French science overseas" covers a double process: on the one hand, scientific knowledge (often created in other countries), was transmitted from France to non-European cultures. On the other hand, the travels of sailors, missionaries, explorers, to lands hitherto unknown to the Old World, were the origin of an extension of European scientific knowledge in botany, zoology, geography, and astronomy. Not only these men's observations, but also the information they gathered from local traditional knowledge, contributed to this extension.

I have chosen three examples, which concern different geographical areas and periods.

The first will take us back to the Ancien Regime, and to the first diplomatic exchanges

between France and China. The second starts as an episode of the French Revolution

-Napoleon Bonaparte's expedition to Egypt- and continues during Egypt's forma-

tion and modernisation in the 19th century. The third will illustrate how republican

France spread its influence to South America, and more specifically to Brazil, until just

a few decades ago. These three situations have in common that, although they occurred

in the context of European colonial expansion, none of the three countries were French

colonies. A study of French scientific expansion in Vietnam or Algeria would give a

totally different picture.

1. TO CHINA FOR THE GREATER GLORY OF GOD

Jesuit missionaries entered China from the end of the 16th century. Bearing in mind the precedent of the christianisation of the Roman Empire, which followed the conversion of Emperor Constantine in the 4th century A.O., the Jesuits adopted a strategy aiming at the literati, hoping to reach the Chinese Emperor through them. For the purpose, they introduced many elements of European scientific knowledge, but in particular aspects of mathematics and astronomy. At first they were rather successful, not in the number of converts they made, but in being given charge of reforming the Chinese calendar in the 1630s. On the whole, they had a significant influence on Chinese science, but almost none on Chinese religion (contrary to what had happened in Japan a little earlier). When the Ming dynasty was ove~thrown by the Manchus in 1644, the Jesuits kept their position, and even came closer to the Emperor by becoming court savants.

At the time, all Catholic missions in Asia were sponsored by the King of Portugal.

Missionaries came on European ships, the main purpose of which was trade. Several countries were rivals in that respect: England and the Netherlands (neither Catholic) were especially successful, and in the 17th century Portugal lost the mastery of the seas. France also took part in this competition. ·

Exploration and scientific investigation of the remote "East Indies" went together with trade expansion, and were necessary for its development. Not only maps indicating sea routes (which were often kept secret), but also knowledge of the goods produced in the countries explored, and of their political systems were needed for successful trade. In Europe there was a dramatic change in world-view, and an immense curiosity for this wider Earth was aroused. Therefore it is not surprising that soon after the Academie Roya/e des Sciences was created in 1666, it concerned itself with developing knowledge about other continents. Curiosity about China was especially strong: in 1684, the acade- micians of Paris addressed a long list of questions to the Jesuits, among which were:

Whether they had made many observations of longitudes and latitudes in China.

What was the state of the sciences in China: mathematics, astrology, philosophy, music, medicine and pulse taking.

About tea, rhubarb, and other drugs and curious plants. Whether the Chinese used

tobacco.

FRENCH SCIENCE OVERSEAS (JAMI)

What they ate and drank, whether they had bread, wine, mills, turkeys, pigeons ...

Also in this list were questions about Chinese weapons, fortifications, ships, soldiers, and many more concerning the wealth and customs of the people and their Emperor.

At the time, the French Academie was sending geographical expeditions to the main ports of the Atlantic ocean and of the Mediterranean sea. Sending people to Asia was also considered, but it was not known how they would be received. In the early 1680s, attention was drawn to the Jesuit mission of China by a letter from Ferdinand Verbiest, a Jesuit who was then official astronomer in Peking. He was asking for reinforcements, pleading that the mission needed more fathers versed in the sciences. Therefore three goals -French diplomacy, the development of French science and the progress of the evangeli- sation of China (France, "the eldest daughter of the Church", claimed to have duties in this last respect)- were combined in Colbert's project, which was only carried out after his death. Two of them are apparent in what he said in 1683 to the Jesuit Jean de Fontaney, who was to head the first group of French Jesuits in China:

Science, Father, does not deserve that you should bother to cross the seas and be reduced to live in another world, far away from your fatherland and friends. But as the wish to convert infidels and to win souls over to Jesus Christ often leads your Fathers to embark upon such travel, I should wish that they took the opportunity, and that at the time when they are not so busy preaching the Gospel, they gathered on the spot a number of observations that we lack for the perfection of arts and sciences.

In 1685, a group of six Jesuits left France for China. They had been appointed correspondents of the Academie and given the title of "the King's mathematicians", which meant that they were sent to the Chinese Emperor as learned ambassadors, but also that Louis XIV, the Sun King, provided them with allowances as well as with scientific books and instruments. They had many grandiose plans, one of them being to establish an observatory in China similar to the one founded in Paris in 1667, another being (to put things simply) to convert Kangxi by impressing him with the might and power of the Sun King.

From their arrival in China in 1688, the French Jesuits were in conflict with the rest

of the Jesuit mission. A diplomatic rivalry between France and Portugal (the sponsor of

all Asian missions), and an authority quarrel between Paris and the Vatican, were both

reflected in scientific issues. When de Fontaney and his compatriots reached Peking, the

"Portuguese Jesuits" (actually there were men of many European nations among them) tried to confiscate their instruments and forbade their use, arguing that the French had not taken the oath of allegiance to the King of Portugal which the Pope requested all missionaries working in Asia to take. In that quarrel, de Fontaney argued that since they were sent by Louis XIV to the Kangxi Emperor as his mathematicians, they were not breaking the Papal rule.

Some of the French Jesuits stayed at the Imperial court, others were allowed to reside in the provinces. In 1701, a second group joined them, and there were a few French Jesuits in China until the Pope dissolved the Society of Jesus in 1773. Many of them regularly wrote to the Academie Royale about various subjects: astronomical and meteorological observations, geographical accounts, descriptions of animals (tigers) and plants (ginseng).

In the 18th century, the flow of scientific information went mainly westward: the Jesuits played a crucial role in the European discovery of China. Moreover, after they published Chinese chronology in Europe, the historicity of the Bible was seriously challenged, as mythical Emperors of. China, then believed to be historical characters, had apparently lived in times prior to the Flood. Here the Jesuits contributed to the demise of the Bible as a historical account of the origin of humankind, a step nowadays regarded as fundamental in the construction of the modern world view. Discussions relating to this and other "Chinese" matters were especially important in France, where philosophes such as Voltaire and Montesquieu used the example of China many times in their arguments.

In their letters to Academicians, the Jesuits sometimes apologised that they could not

send more information because they were too busy working for the Emperor. They also

told what they were doing in his service. Throughout the Kangxi reign (1662-1722), they

tutored him in "Western studies" (this was the term used in China to refer to the scien-

tific knowledge introduced by the Jesuits): mainly mathematics and astronomy. For

mathematics they relied on a French textbook, which they translated first into Manchu,

then into Chinese. Part of it was later inserted in an important compendium of

mathematics, astronomy and musical harmony. Up to the second half of the 19th

century, the imperial textbook of geometry followed the style and order of teaching the

Jesuits had adopted in their colleges in France, a style quite different from that of Euclid's

Elements of Geometry, which had been translated into Chinese at the beginning of the

17th century. In astronomy, the Jesuits also used French books and the reports of the

Academie des Sciences. This caused further conflicts with Jesuits of other countries,

FRENCH SCIENCE OVERSEAS (JAMI)

especially those in charge of the calendar, who thought there was no need to use the most up-to-date information, and accused the French of "taking every opportunity to glorify French science".

The Emperor also employed the Jesuits for tasks quite similar to those fulfilled by the Academie Roya/e des Sciences in Paris. Thus, between 1708 and 1718, some French Jesuits supervised the great survey of China, and the making of the map known in Europe as "The Kangxi Atlas". This Atlas is regarded as the best cartographical work done in the world at the time. Two points are worth mentioning: first, the Jesuits did not transmit their technical knowledge of cartography: only the result of their work was made available to the Emperor and to Chinese scientists. Secondly, copies of the Atlas were sent to Europe, where they considerably improved knowledge of Chinese geography.

The Jesuits in China were very much aware of national differences among themselves, and to them "French science" was an obvious category: it meant the scientific know- ledge found in books published in France (some of which were still in Latin), and the framework of French institutions, although not always by Frenchmen. The name of the Italian astronomer Cassini (who had supported Colbert's project to send Jesuit mathema- ticians to China), often appeared in their works in Chinese. In contrast, Chinese scholars and officials with whom they were in contact never perceived a specific subset of Western studies corresponding to the French missionaries' contribution: the latter usually charac- terised it as new discoveries and inventions from Europe, not as "French science".

So maybe this category was relevant for Jesuits in the context of European rivalries, but meaningless to the Chinese who, in the process of assimilating Western learning, perceived no significant internal differences. It remains that science was the means used by Louis XIV to establish diplomatic relations with the Kangxi Emperor. These relations were not continued after their deaths, but French Jesuits remained the main source of information about China in 18th century Europe.

2. EXPORTING THE FRENCH REVOLUTION TO EGYPT

The second example I would like to discuss takes place on a completely different scene,

after the French Revolution, in the late 1790s, when Napoleon Bonaparte was a victorious

general of the French republican armies. In 1798, the French Republic seemed no longer

endangered by the European monarchies leagued against it. However, England was still threatening. The confrontation was to take place on colonial ground. In April 1798, the French Directoire (the executive power, consisting of five directors named by the deputies), issued an edict specifying that a new military expedition would be set up, with the aim of conquering Egypt. The choice of Egypt, justified by its alliance with England, was Bonaparte's, who entirely planned the campaign. Egypt was to remain an important stake in the colonial rivalry between France and England throughout the 19th century, partly because of its importance as a passage to East India, first by land, and then through the Suez canal, built in the second half of the 19th century.

When an army of over 30 000 men set sail for Egypt in May 1798, Bonaparte appointed a group of 167 civilians to join them: they formed the Commission des Sciences et des Arts. Many of them were already famous scientists at the time. Two academicians, the chemist Berthollet and the mathematician Monge, had been in charge of recruiting the others, some of whom were professors of the main scientific institutions in Paris. Among others, Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire from the Museum National d'Histoire Nature/le, Mechain, from the Paris Observatory, Conte from the aeronautic establishment in Meudon, where aerostats were built. As the King's mathematicians a century before, but on a quite different scale, they were equipped with scientific instruments, including "clocks, telescopes, barometers, hygrometers, surgery instruments, an astronomical observatory, a chemical laboratory ... ". In other words, the scientists and engineers going to Egypt carried the material means to transform the country into a model State, as conceived by the Enlightenment: science applied to progress. According to the mathematician Joseph Fourier, famous for his contributions in mathematics and physics, who took part in the Egyptian campaign as a member of the Commission, Napoleon's aims were:

To abolish the Mamluk tyranny, to extend irrigations and cultures, to open a perma- nent communication between the Mediterranean sea and the Arabic gulf, to set up trade establishments, to offer to the Orient the useful example of European industry, and finally to render the inhabitants' condition more agreeable, and to provide them with all the advantages of an advanced civilisation.

A century earlier, science and religion were the two products of Western civilisation, the benefits of which were offered to the Chinese. Here we find science and freedom (the latter inseparable from industry and trade) as the pair proposed to the Egyptians.

The armies of God had been replaced by the armies of the Republic: the French model

FRENCH SCIENCE OVERSEAS (JAMI)

was to be offered to the Orient with or without its consent. So much for the proclaimed intentions of the Commission of Sciences and Arts. Another crucial difference was that Egypt had no strong government of its own, but was instead the object of a military competition with another European power, England.

However, when looking at the Commission's accomplishments, the work done seems to have been concerned more with the exploration and knowledge of Egypt by Europeans than with the country's modernisation. On landing, a war against hostile locals had to be fought. It was in this climate that the Commission started to work. Within a month, Bonaparte created the Institut d'Egypte in Cairo, organised after the Institut national des sciences et des arts in Paris (created in 1795, it replaced the Academie royale des sciences, which had been suppressed in 1793). The first tasks set to it by Monge, its president, were extremely concrete: improving the baking of the army's bread, finding a substitute to hops for its beer, purifying the Nile's water ... Medicine and surgery played an important part: the army was confronted by all sorts of epidemics, some specific to the country, which killed more than 4000 men. Directed by the physician Rene Desgenettes and the surgeon Dominique Jean Larrey, the medical section of the Commission combined medical innovation with statistical studies in its activities.

The Institut d'Egypte, like its French model, published Memoires. These give us an idea of the type of research it conducted, in which pure and applied science were combined.

Thus, Monge gave a physical explanation of the phenomenon of mirages. Geoffroy Saint- Hilaire studied local birds, especially the ibis, the sacred bird of ancient Egypt, of which he found mummies. Berthollet studied natron (Na2CO3), used in embalming. Some of the work reported in the Memoires was completely unrelated to the Egyptian environ- ment, such as Fourier's papers on the resolution of algebraic equations. Conte established workshops in Cairo reproducing various manufactures as they existed in France, which provided for the needs of the army.

Bonaparte himself was a member of the Institut, in the mathematical section. In August 1799, he returned to France: from the military point of view, the Egyptian campaign was a failure. Three months later, by the Coup d'Etat du 18 Brumaire (9-10 November 1799), Bonaparte put an end to the Revolution (he became Emperor Napoleon in 1804). The lnstitut d'Egypte, and the French scientists' presence in Cairo, however, lasted until 1801 when the English drove the remains of the French army out of Egypt.

The main outcome of the French savants' work in Egypt was the famous Description

de l'.Egypte, published over 15 years. It consisted of 20 volumes of text and 12 volumes of plates. Much of the work included in it was of remarkably high level. The research undertaken was relevant to a wide range of scientific fields, including: archeology (the Rosetta stone), historical astronomy and astronomy, geodesy, cartography, mineralogy, botany, zoology, historical hydrology, hydrological engineering, agronomy, musicology, chemistry, optics, medicine, and climatology.

In contrast with its proclaimed aim of liberating and modernising Egypt, the Commis- sion and the Institute never established any contact with local elites. It almost seems that they were interested in everything in Egypt except its living population (despite some anthropological studies). According to some historians, the Bonaparte expedition had no immediate effect on Egyptian scientific and intellectual life. However, it seems that its impact was felt indirectly, notably in terms of the image it conveyed of the French Revolution. About 30 years later, a group of men, influenced by the epic of Bonaparte's expedition, attempted to bring French science to Egypt. These were the Saint-Simoniens, disciples of the French philosopher and economist Saint-Simon (1760-1825), often regarded as a precursor of a form of socialism. They formed a group reminiscent of religious orders -combining science, the development of industry and the rejection of private property, as well as some mystical elements in their doctrine. Condemned in France, some of them (about 130 altogether) went to Egypt, where they hoped to imple- ment their ideas to help the modernisation of the country, dreaming of a reconciliation between "Orient" and "Occident".

Between 1805, when Mehemet-Ali (1769-1849) became pasha, and 1882, when it was

de facto colonised by Britain, Egypt was an independent country undergoing a slow

process of modernisation. Land reform, irrigation works, the reorganisation of the army,

all were undertaken, and Mehemet-Ali turned to the Europeans, and especially to the

French, for support. In the 1820s, young men were sent to Europe -mainly to the

Egyptian school in Paris- and to various French engineering schools. Former members

of the Bonaparte expedition supervised their studies. In the 1830s, several of them, after

returning home, had become higher civil servants. French instructors trained the new

Egyptian army, supervised by Captain Seves. Such was the context in which the Saint-

Simoniens reached Egypt in 1833. Although they actually had little political influence,

some who were competent scientists and engineers participated in the modernisation of

the country. Two projects were then considered by Mehemet-Ali: the construction of a

FRENCH SCIENCE OVERSEAS (JAMI)

railway between Cairo and Suez, and a dam on the Nile, for irrigation purposes. French and English engineers put forward competing proposals for both. Finally, it was the French engineer Linant de Bellefonds, close to the Saint-Simoniens, who was put in charge of building the dam, whereas for the railway, the English project was chosen.

At the time, the great Saint-Simonien project for Egypt was the building of a canal linking the Mediterranean to the Red Sea, which had already been considered by Bonaparte's expedition. The project appeared much more crucial to those, who viewed the canal as "the wedding bed of Orient and Occident", than it did to the Egyptian government, who had good reasons to give priority to irrigation and industrialisation. The main advantage of such a canal would be to shorten the sea-route to India, or in other words, to facilitate colonial trade. In the 1830s, Linant de Bellefonds submitted a project for the canal, and in 1846, Enfantin, the head of the Saint-simonien school, founded a Societe d'etudes pour le canal de Suez. Various studies came to the conclusion that the two seas were at the same level. It was only in 1854 that Mohammed Said, Mehemet-Ali's grandson, gave the French consul Ferdinand de Lesseps the concession to build the canal.

The construction took ten years, during which the British succeeded in stopping the work for some time. The capital mainly came from France, and it was the French empress Eugenie who inaugurated the canal in 1869. One of the most famous Italian operas, Giuseppe Verdi's Aida, was commissioned by the Egyptian pasha for this occasion.

Another aspect of Saint-Simoniens' part in the modernisation of Egypt was their contri- bution to the training of engineers. The first engineering school had been created in 1815, and employed professors from Istanbul, who had been trained by French instructors.

Their textbooks were translations of those of the Ecole du genie de Mezieres, written prior

to the French Revolution. When Egyptian students returned from France in the 1830s,

they could in turn train the staff needed by the state. Together with them, a few Saint-

Simoniens who had chosen to stay in Egypt set up the main training institutions. When

the whole education was reorganised in 1837, one of them, Charles Lambert, became

director of the Egyptian Ecole polytechnique. Giving the school its main orientation, he

followed the model of the French Ecole centra/e. At the same time, he gave priority to

practice over theory, since in his view Egyptians were more inclined in the former direc-

tion (this argument is typical of European attitude to non-Western and their own colonial

cultures). Other Saint-Simoniens headed other schools - e.g. Linant de Bellefonds was

in charge of the Corps des Ponts et Chaussees. The organisation and curriculum of these

schools were inspired by French models, and many French textbooks were "classics", including Monge's Geometrie descriptive. A special Bureau of Translation was estab- lished, and the high quality of its translations was due in part to the liveliness of classical Egyptian science, so that Egyptian scholars working on translations had a set of refer- ences within their own language and culture, such as a pre-existing scientific terminology, which only had to be extended. Between 1835 and 1850, about 800 engineers were trained in these schools.

The advent of French science in Egypt was linked to political projects: whereas bringing modern science appears as a mere justification during Napoleon's expedition, the Saint- Simoniens worked with the Egyptian state and elite and promoted not only hydraulic projects but also national institutions modeled on those created during the French Revolu- tion. However, it was still a Western-centered conception of what was good for Egypt which they proposed, as is clear with the Suez canal. Strong centralisation, a characteristic common to French and Egyptian states, might be one reason why the French institutional model was quite adapted to the needs of Egypt at the time. After the British occupation of Egypt in 1882, French influence subsided. Thus, the Ecole Polytechnique was reduced to the bare minimum. On the whole, it appears that the presence, on the Egyptian side, of a political will to use foreign science and technology for the modernisation of the country under the auspices of the state was crucial in the way French influence was received.

3. "ORDER AND PROGRESS": A FRENCH PHILOSOPHER'S MOTTO ON THE BRAZILIAN FLAG

Again we move to a different part of the world, and to a more recent time. Until 1822,

Brazil was a Portuguese colony. It then became an independent empire, under the strong

economic influence of Britain. In 1889, Emperor Pedro II was overthrown, and the new

republic adopted the motto of Auguste Comte (1798-1857) -"Order and Progress"- as

its emblem. This reflects the special importance of Comte's philosophy -positivism- in

Brazil at the time. This philosophy reflected an age when one could believe that scientific

progress would go on indefinitely, and solve all problems yet unsolved, including those

inherently political and social. Whereas theology and metaphysics had been imperfect

modes of knowledge, positive knowledge, which followed them in time, was based solely

FRENCH SCIENCE OVERSEAS (JAMI)

on natural phenomena, their properties and relations as they could be verified by the empirical sciences. I won't go into this more deeply, but this may be enough to suggest that positivism was in many ways appropriate for the new Brazilian political regime, which, towards the end of the 19th century, claimed its scientific and modern foun- dations, and its pursuit of social harmony based on scientific truth: militaries and bureaucrats viewed themselves as the enlightened elite who was to lead the whole society to this harmony. The success of positivism in Brazil was only one aspect of French cultural influence, which goes back to the end of the 18th century, with the propagation of the Enlightenment and of encyclopedic movement, and then of the French Revolution.

Many aspects of French culture and many political tendencies were carried to Brazil through this influence.

As had been the case in Egypt, one finds French scientists contributing to setting up scientific institutions reproducing French models. In 1871, when Emperor Pedro II travelled to Europe and to the United States, he visited many engineering schools, universities and laboratories. In Paris, he saw the Ecole centrale and the Ecole des mines, and asked the director of the latter to provide him with mineralogists and geologists. This request reflected a political choice rather than an urgent need: Pedro II wanted to train high level Brazilian specialists in order to exploit, in some future, the mining resources of his country. Brazilian students were sent to France, and in 1874, a French geologist, Henri Gorceix, arrived in Brazil to found a school at Ouro Preto, taking the Ecole des mines of Saint-Etienne as a model. The curriculum as well as the teaching methods took the opposite course to the Brazilian habits, using the standards of the French Grandes Eco/es: strict selection of students and exams, and laboratory work complemented by field work. Most professors were young French scientists recruited by Gorceix. At the same time, he combined teaching and research, which took place in only two institutions:

the National Museum and the Observatory in Rio de Janeiro. Most other Brazilian estab- lishments of higher education were hostile to what was then an experiment, and a few years after the Emperor's abdication, Gorceix returned to France, and his school declined. Pedro II had taken many initiatives to promote scientific development, such as sending missions, and in particular young scientists, to Europe, and setting up institutions in Brazil.

In the early years of the republic, the fields of medicine and medical research underwent

important developments. In 1899, the Oswaldo Cruz Institute was founded in Rio de

Janeiro; Cruz was a disciple of Pasteur, and the Institute's structure was modeled on the Pasteur Institute in Paris and the Koch Institute in Germany. Scientists of this institu- tion, as well as of the National Museum and the Observatory, opposed the influence of positivism. A mathematician, Oto de Alencar, used Poincare's work to refute Comte's results in the field of mathematics. All these antipositivist scientists contributed to the creation, in 1916, of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences. Several of the founders were in close contact with French scientists, who formed a majority of the foreign correspondents of the Academy in the beginning. The introduction of the theory of relativity and the debates it aroused (according to positivists, it could only be an "imaginary theory") marked the decline of positivism as a dominant epistemology for Brazilian science. In 1922 Emile Borel, and then in 1925 Einstein himself, came to Brazil to give lectures on the subject. Positivist ideology had given priority to applied and technical knowledge:

professional schools, rather than universities, were developed. In contrast, the anti- positivist movement advocated the study of "pure science", which had to be independent of possible uses. This latter trend eventually led, in 1934, to the foundation of the Univer- sity of Sao Paulo, which provided teaching more oriented towards theoretical knowledge than the existing engineering schools.

France had no exclusive control of scientific exchange with Brazil and Latin America, but took them especially seriously. In 1908, a ''Group of Universities and Grandes Ecol es for the Development of Relations with Latin America" was set up in Paris. The Brazilian response, only a year later, was the creation of the Franco-Paulist Schools Union, which sent Brazilians to study at the Sorbonne before the outbreak of the First World War.

After the war, a French military delegation, led by General Gamelin (1872-1958, who had contributed to the victory of the Marne during the First World War, and later was to head the Franco-British troops to their defeat in 1939-1940), was invited to Rio to reform the Brazilian army. Between the two World Wars, an impressive number of out- standing French scientists travelled to Brazil, where they stayed for about two months, giving lectures. Among them, let me just mention that in 1926, Marie Curie went and gave a series of lectures, including one at the Brazilian Federation for Feminine Progress (she also had Brazilian PhD students working in her laboratory). At the same time some Brazilian scientists also went to France and taught at the Sorbonne: this shows that the exchanges were beginning to take place on a more equal footing.

When the University of Sao Paulo was created in 1934, a mission of seven French

FRENCH SCIENCE OVERSEAS (JAMI)

scholars was sent to Brazil to be among its first professors. All of them belonged to the social sciences. Despite a rivalry between France, Germany, and Italy to get the scientific chairs at the newly founded university, it seems that no young French scientist was willing to teach at Sao Paulo. Quite a few social scientists who went there in 1934 refused to stay on after one year and had to be replaced in 1935. On the Brazilian side, it seems that for political reasons (Hitler and Mussolini were both in power), French scholarship was preferred as far as social sciences were concerned, so that "the University's soul would be of French essence". Again, a number of outstanding scholars (among whom Fernand Braudel and Claude Levi-Strauss are famous), who were extremely devoted to the success of the University, were among the professors of the early years.

The main source of the French scientific influence seems to have resided in the

"Francophilia" of Brazilian elites throughout the country's history: it was one of the effects of the image of France that came out of the French Revolution and of the Third Republic, an image of decentralisation and social progress. This image was not devoid of contradictions: positivism advocated a "scientific and republican dictatorship", quite contradictory to the French Republic's motto: "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity". French influence served to counterbalance Portuguese, then British, and later, North American predominance. It is all the more remarkable as, according to many historians of science, French science was declining at the time: its influence was felt mostly in areas were it was relatively strong: mathematics and bio-medical sciences. However, it remained fragmen- tary and uncertain, as the organisation of Brazilian science itself at the time. Despite the visits of so many outstanding French scientists, in the 1930s France proved incapable of providing professors to support long term collaboration in the field of exact sciences.

After the Second World War, French scientific influence declined and the United States gained more importance.

In the three cases I have discussed, science travelled from France together with a

broader model that was supposed to reflect the superiority of the country's culture, soci-

ety and political regime. In ·china, France wanted to appear, through its science, as the

most powerful and prosperous nation of Christendom. In Egypt it claimed it would free

the people as the Revolution had done in France, with the help of scientists. In Brazil,

it provided, in discourse, the foundations of a social order that would necessarily induce

progress.

A common feature of the three cases is that the countries into which French science was imported were independent states, which inserted this importation into their scientific policies. Another common feature is that it was not scientific innovations that were transmitted, but rather patterns of practice and of reproduction through teaching. This may suggest that the expression "French science", rather than the content of knowledge, is first relevant to its context, and to its place inside culture, often reflected in myths regarding the power of science. In other words, this expression reflects an ideology, which changed during two centuries, and which, in turn, influenced the body of knowledge that France elaborated and exported.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCES

ALLEAUME, Ghislaine, "Les ingenieurs en Egypte au XIXe siecle, 1820-1920. Elements pour un debat", in Longuenesse, Elisabeth ed., Botisseurs et bureaucrates. lngenieurs et Societe au Maghreb et au Moyen-Orient. Etudes sur le monde arabe n°4. Lyon, Maison de l'Orient, 1990, pp. 65-80.

PETITJEAN, Patrick, JAMI, Catherine, and MOULIN, Anne-Marie eds., Science and Empires.

Historical Studies about Scientific Development and European Expansion. Dordrecht, Kluwer Acad. Publ., 1992.

"Dossier. Images du Bresil", in Prefaces n° 14, (July-September 1989), pp. 78-114.