The maintenance, repair and construction of ships in the French Empire during the eighteenth century

Abstract

The history of maritime trade has been the subject of considerable research since the 1950s, but the technical artefacts of this trade have not received the attention they deserve. While historians have paid plenty attention to ships – their features, tonnage, etc. – and port infrastructure overseas, the issues relating to naval repair and construction in the Empires have rarely attracted interest. However, this is a key factor in understanding the dynamics of trade, which encompasses the interplay between economic history, social history and the history of technology. Drawing on the example of the French Empire, this article aims to provide a first approach to this economy of maintenance, repair and shipbuilding overseas. The first step is to identify the places where these complex tasks were carried out and to establish the temporality of equipment in overseas ports. Did the French Empire offer a network of ports equipped to maintain, repair and build ships? What equipment does this include? But while the question of infrastructure is crucial, insofar as it raises other issues related to the role of the State and its relationship with economic stakeholders, it is also essential to consider that a significant share of maintenance, repair and construction tasks were not associated with any specific infrastructure. The question of knowledge, know-how and their exchange within the Empires is also important and is the subject of the second part of this article. The aim is to demonstrate that the identification and breakdown of shipbuilding workers, the establishment of their occupational mobility and the technical discussions they engaged in with other Europeans, settlers or natives, provide challenging research opportunities that may help us to understand the maintenance, repair and construction of ships in the Empires.