My PhD project, based on Michel Adanson’s scientific travels to Senegal (1748-1754), analyzes how scientific knowledge was shaped through correspondence – the written exchanges between a scientist in the field and his academic correspondent in the metropole.
From the 17th-18th century, scientists undertook trips to the French colonies and trading posts overseas. Their goal was to bring back new knowledge. In their endeavors, they had to rely on the support of the King (known as the “Protector of Science” Adanson, 1763). Another option was to be recruited by the French East India Company in order to travel and explore the trading areas. This was the case for Michel Adanson, naturalist and French academician. Nominated as correspondent of the Académie Royale des Sciences (Paris) in 1749 while he was in Senegal, Adanson periodically sent letters to his academic correspondents Réaumur and Bernard de Jussieu. These were not only reports of his daily activities, but also on his interactions in the contact zones.
Thus, my main interest in this research is to uncover the local systems of knowledge. While research on scientific travels has so far focused on the traveler and his collection, this study highlights his collaborators’ production of knowledge. Adanson’s correspondence allows these knowledge systems to be traced, since he mentions, at various points, his informants’ scientific contributions to his work and offers insights into their understanding.
Looking at correspondence in a transnational dimension, this investigative angle also contributes to the field of scientific epistolary studies. Until now, these studies have focused on the scholarly correspondence networks in the so-called “republic of science”. In addition to its elitist undertones, this approach confined the “public space of science” to the European geographical area. My project, contrary to this tradition, directs attention to the transnational dimension of scientific correspondence.
Ousmane Seydi is a PhD candidate at the University of Basel and member of the Basel Graduate School of History (BGSH). Before coming to Basel, I studied at the Université Cheikh Anta Diop in Dakar (Senegal), from where I hold a Master’s degree in history.
My contribution to the summer school will be to discuss the use of Michel Espagne’s notion de transfert culturel in the context of transnational research. In relation to the focus of the summer school, this is the reading which inspires me the most.
The notion of transfert culturel has the particularity to add to the concept of “circulation of knowledge” giving it a more complete sense. Transfert culturel takes into account not only the circulation of knowledge, but also the direction of changes related to the passage of knowledge from one space to another. One other key point in this short but very dense introduction is the idea that knowledge is always constructed through a contact, a move. Espagne’s notion allows me to transcend the illusion of the eighteenth-century scientific exclusivism. In fact, this encompasses the notion of a confluence of knowledge, by, in my case, pinpointing external cultural ideas that penetrated the travel writings of scientists. Employing Espagne’s approach thus allows me to identify the voices of Adanson’s Senegalese informants in his scientific writings.
Bibliography:
Espagne, Michel, “La notion de transfert culturel”. Revue Sciences/Lettres 2013/1. http://rsl.revues.org/219.
Kapil, Raj, Relocating modern science: circulation and the construction of knowledge in South Asia and Europe, 1650-1900, Houndmills and New york, Palgrave Macmilan, 2007.
Macleod, R., (ed.), Nature and empire: Science and the colonial entreprise, Osiris, seconde série, volume 15, 2000.
Krige, J., Kai-Henrik B., Global power knowledge: science and technology in international affairs, Osiris, seconde série, volume 21, 2006.
Green, E. M., “Plant knowledge at the Cape: A study in African and European collaboration”, International Journal of African Historical Studies, vol. 36, N°2, 2003, pp. 367-392
Hello Ousmane,
Thank you for this stimulating description of your work in progress. Although your research focuses on Senegal geographically while I consider activities in the Arctic, I notice a couple parallel efforts in our work. You and I both wish to understand the transfer of knowledge from ‘non-Western’ origins to a Western scientific culture. In your research, Michel Adanson and his correspondence is the medium through which the Senegalese informants’ scientific knowledge is filtered and transmitted to Europe. In mine, whale hunters from Dundee functioned as intermediaries of knowledge between the Inuit and British polar explorers/scientists.
The impetus for the whaling men to interact with the Inuit was clear — they wanted to maximize profits through efficient alliances. Any achievement in scientific knowledge was a fortunate derivative. No doubt, Adanson’s travel to Senegal was ostensibly for the scientific and potential material gain of the Académie Royale des Sciences and French East India Company. I assume that what he saw and reported would have been filtered through the lenses of his assigned mission and his European cultural background. In addition to tracing the flow of knowledge from Senegal to Europe, are you able to detect any changes imparted on the information by Adanson? Also, as Lynette Russell has noted in ‘Roving Mariners’, every cultural exchange ultimately changes both sides. Did Adanson’s correspondence effect change any changes in European scientific thought? If so, did this absorption of knowledge into Europe’s scientific culture ever reverberate and come back to affect Senegalese thought?
Thanks again for an excellent piece. I look forward to meeting you!
Matthew