Les commissions coloniales rattachées au Comité des travaux historiques et scientifiques

Abstract

The colonial Commissions connected to the Comité des travaux historiques et scientifiques. In the late nineteenth century, the Comité des travaux historiques et scientifiques became a bigger and bigger research organization, always closely linked to the successive political governments. With each new French conquest, a commission of parisian scientists and local correspondents was created and attached to it, as in 1864, the scientific commission for Mexico, in 1884, the commission for Tunisia, in 1908, the archeological commission for Indochina. The example studied here is that of the commssion for Tunisia, which coordonated researches in archeology and epigraphy in North Africa, thanks to the support of the Army. The action of this scientific institution in a colonial background enables us to bring to light the power at stake in historical monuments. For instance, the protection and valorisation of the archeological site of Carthago is the object of a conflict between the administration and the civil sociéty of which a non professional archeologist Louis Carton is the main actor. The commission for Tunisia has to be the arbitrator in this quarrell ; generally speaking, it is the forerunner of the archeological services which will be instituted in 1942 under the care of Jérome Carcopino.