Patriotic natural history and sericulture in the French Enlightenment (1730–1780)

Abstract

Rural practices of silk cultivation came under increasing scrutiny from French savants, state administrators and agricultural improvers during the eighteenth century. The lacklustre performance of the French sericultural industry greatly concerned state administrators at mid century, who viewed dependence on foreign supplies of raw silk as a major source of political and economic weakness. Practitioners of natural history came to champion the disciplined observation of silkworms as vital to the reform of the domestic sericultural industry. Amateur naturalists and provincial savants turned their attention to the anatomical structure and behavior of silkworms, in an attempt to codify sericultural practices that were consistent with the “natural œconomy” of these precious insects. The various techniques that constituted the rapidly expanding field of natural history – dissection, microscopic observation, experimental manipulation and classification – provided a set of tools for making the French sericultural industry materially viable in the face of stiff international competition. Encouraged and rewarded by various bodies of the royal administration, namely by the Bureau de Commerce and the Intendance de Languedoc, these investigations were configured as civic-minded and patriotic pursuits that would contribute to the regeneration of the patrie. By enhancing domestic productivity and public welfare, natural history seemed to offer state administrators a solution to the problems that racked French state and society under the ancien régime. Patriotism provided a powerful social and moral validation for the practice of scientific observation, at a time when natural history was still widely ridiculed as an anti-social pastime for the idle and the eccentric.