Civilizing Mission: Exact Sciences and French Overseas Expansion, 1830-1940.

Abstract

For much of the 19th and 20th centuries, France maintained its position on the world stage by undertaking cultural projects abroad, both in its colonies and in foreign spheres of influence. From Shanghai to Madagascar to Quito, scientific norms dominated institutions of higher learning. In Civilizing Mission, Lewis Pyenson offers a reappraisal of intellectual expansion during the crucial period from the conquest of Algeria to the fall of the Third Republic. Drawing on sources in a dozen languages and archives on five continents, Pyenson examines how the practitioners of the exact, as opposed to descriptive sciences, performed in relative isolation - how, in one sense, science was driven by its own imperatives. At the same time, Pyenson explores the connections between scientists and the geopolitical realities of their time, showing the ways in which even refined scientific study in such fields as physics and astronomy ultimately contributed to the business of colonialism. Pyenson concludes that the centralized scientific activity, organized and - to a significant extent - financed under military administration, set the tone for what we now call the military-scientific establishment. As historians of science begin to examine indigenous work in places North Americans and Europeans consider to be far-flung corners of the world, this book aims to provide a new understanding of a time when French intellectuals engaged in a mission to civilize the world.