Jefferson et Dupont de Nemours : les valeurs communes de deux savants à travers leur correspondance / Jefferson and Dupont de Nemours: the common values of two scholars through their correspondence

Abstract

Pierre-Samuel Dupont de Nemours (1739-1817) and Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) used to meet in Paris in the years 1783 – 1789 and maintained a correspondence from 1801 to 1817. It highlights their mutual esteem. Men of the Enlightenment, they belonged to the international network of agriculture and other learned societies and they shared many common values. One of their main debates focused on the economic future of nations. Jefferson and the Physiocrat Dupont first thought that their country must remain an agrarian society. Nonetheless they came to aspire to equilibrium between trade, industry and agriculture. It is about democracy that their conception differed. Dupont de Nemours assumed the right to vote on the payment of property tax while Jefferson intended to extend it to non-owners.