From Mobilisation to Normalisation: Scientific Networks and Practices for War (1792–1824)

Abstract

One day people will wonder how a nation, at war with all Europe, cut off from other nations, torn internally by civil strife, could raise its industry up to the level it actually attained….It was in the most difficult circumstances that all these changes occurred; the government, given the urgency of the situation, took a number of scientists one after another from their research laboratories to place them in plants [my emphasis] where in a very short time most of them performed wonders.’ 2 Twenty-five years after the event, Jean-Antoine Chaptal, Count of Chanteloup and a peer of France, a chemist and a member of the Academy of Science, made the scientists’ role in the victory of the Montagnard Republic in 1794 the starting point for the modernisation of French industry. No doubt this is an exaggeration, for under Louis XVIII, the nation’s industry was still aspiring to taking up the British challenge of the industrial revolution. 3 On the other hand, beyond the world of industry, the mobilisation of scientists in Year II contributed enormously to the reconfiguration of relationships between science and politics by establishing scientific networks and practices for war, drawing on the Colbertist tradition, of which Jacobinism and the continental blockade in a way represent the high point. 4 The international context explains easily why the move from mobilisation to normalisation can be seen clearly in the field of scientific research and military engineering. It is this first stage that we will examine here.

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