Improving useful species: a public policy of the Directoire regime and Napoleonic Empire in Europe (1795-1815)

Abstract

When the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Armies conquered most of Europe, they found unknown or hardly known plant and animal species. French naturalists, particularly the so-called agronomists led by botanists and zoologists, supported by the financial and political backing of the State, shaped an ambitious “Nature Policy”. They imported new species of plants and animals from the occupied territories to introduce them into France. The biological regeneration of French herds and agriculture was the main goal of this public policy. A unidirectional circulation from throughout the European continent towards France occurred from 1799 to 1815. But the continental blockade in 1806 cut off the supply of certain products and raw materials such as sugar, indigo and cotton. On a continental scale, in the most adapted parts of its Empire the Napoleonic State implemented an impressive policy of introducing and acclimatizing exotic plant species from many regions of the world. Many questions arise from this unprecedented circulation of plant and animal species within “French Europe”: How was it organised? On which circuits and networks did it rely? What was the role of the French state in that biological challenge? Finally, why were the results of that biological policy so disappointing?