Les antiquités péruviennes et la curiosité américaine en France sous l’Ancien Régime

Abstract

Peruvian antiquities and curiosity for America in France during the Ancien Regime. Up until its independence in 1821, Peru was officially closed to all Europeans except the Spanish. The country was nonetheless the destination for many maritime expeditions, and numerous French travellers, traders and adventurers stayed in Peru, setting up a trade in Peruvian objects dating from before the Spanish conquest. The study of how this trade developed, and of how curiosity in France evolved with regards such objects allows us to identify the main centres of interest of the French in the Americas, from 1534 (discovery of Canada by Cartier). From the end of the seventeenth century and throughout the eighteenth, maritime exchanges between France and the New World witnessed remarkable growth, but it is only during the eighteenth century that we begin to find mentions of pre-Colombian antiquities in French collections. Antiquities from Peru are more frequently to be found than those from Mexico, a phenomenon which the author of the present article explains by the importance of trade between Peru and France, consequence of the decline in the power of the Spanish from the end of the seventeenth century. The scientific expeditions of the eighteenth century also contributed to these commercial exchanges. Many objects found in Peruvian excavations of pre-Spanish sites find their way directly into the hands of French personalities close to the central state authorities or belonging to the world of science. Otherwise the collections seem to be constituted through public auctions, and it is possible to surmise than many objects circulate by this channel from one collection to another. In 1793, the French Revolution seized many complete collections belonging to nobles who had emigrated, along with the collection at the Jardin du Roi. These collections are today held by the Musée de l’Homme in Paris. The private collections, however, are far more difficult to identify.