Global insects: silkworms, sericulture, and statecraft in Napoleonic France and Tokugawa Japan

Abstract

This article explores French and Japanese sericulture in the context of nineteenth-century industrial development, statecraft and overseas expansion. It examines local and national responses to silkworm pandemics in France and considers transregional and transnational transfers of raw materials and scientific knowledge that helped France sustain silk manufacturing in times of crisis. Focusing on the exchanges of silk for military weapons and technological knowledge between Napoleonic France and late Tokugawa Japan, this study shows how Napoleon III’s regime used the silk crisis to politically and economically empower France over the British and Dutch in Japan. The strategies devised by politicians, bureaucrats, intellectuals, merchants and local organizations led France and Japan to solidify both nations’ administrative hierarchies, craft centralized states and bolster capitalist and colonial enterprises. Two silkworm species—Bombyx mori and Bombyx yamamai—set the conditions for, and played a fundamental part in, these developments.