Dans le cadre du projet de recherche « Héritages botanique des Lumières : exploration de sources et d’herbiers historiques à l’intersection des lettres et des sciences », l’équipe de recherche de l’Université de Neuchâtel responsable du sous-projet « Fusée-Aublet et le voyage scientifique » souhaite proposer un séminaire de recherche consacré au botaniste voyageur. Celui-ci aura lieu au cours du printemps et de l’automne 2022, selon un calendrier qui reste à définir. Le but de ces rencontres est la publication, en 2023, d’un ouvrage collectif (livre ou numéro de revue) de haute tenue scientifique, à l’occasion du tricentenaire de Fusée-Aublet.

Au-delà de la dimension événementielle, ce séminaire a pour but de rapprocher des chercheurs intéressés par la figure de ce voyageur encore mal connu et par les questions méthodologiques et épistémologiques plus larges auxquelles il invite à penser. L’équipe de Neuchâtel, interdisciplinaire, est constituée d’historiens, de littéraires et de botanistes (Perrine Besson, Guilhem Mansion, Thibaud Martinetti). Nos travaux s’articulent autour de trois axes :

l’histoire et l’inventaire qualitatif et quantitatif des herbiers de Fusée-Aublet, les collections des jardins botaniques, l’utilisation traditionnelle et actuelle des plantes découvertes par Fusée-Aublet en Guyane ;

les voyages de Fusée-Aublet et son rôle dans les différentes missions qui lui ont été attribuées (Île-de-France, Guyane, Saint-Domingue) ;

l’Histoire de la Guiane françoise (1775) et les manuscrits conservés au Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle de Paris, l’étude des méthodes de collecte de Fusée-Aublet et la question de l’intermédiation et de l’altérité.

Le séminaire vise à la fois à approfondir ces aspects, en collaboration avec l’équipe déjà en place, et à en explorer d’autres, essentiels pour une meilleure connaissance du personnage et de la botanique coloniale au XVIII^e siècle.

Le séminaire vise à la fois à approfondir ces aspects, en collaboration avec l’équipe déjà en place, et à en explorer d’autres, essentiels pour une meilleure connaissance du personnage et de la botanique coloniale au XVIII^e siècle.

Nous sommes ainsi intéressés par des propositions de communications basées autour des questionnements suivants :

I. Le personnage de Fusée-Aublet, botaniste-voyageur, et son héritage :

Fusée-Aublet apothicaire et chimiste (les années de formation à Montpellier, Grenade, Lyon et Paris ; la carrière de pharmacien à l’hôpital de la Charité à Paris et à l’Île de France) ;

Fusée-Aublet agronome et administrateur (réformes agronomiques opérées à l’Île de France ; travail de prospection des ressources naturelles dans le cadre de l’expédition de Kourou en Guyane) ;

Les collections liées à Fusée-Aublet (botanique et minéralogie) ;

La méthodologie de Fusée-Aublet ;

L’Histoire des plantes, du manuscrit à l’impression (conditions de publication, choix des illustrations botaniques, etc.).

II. Patronage, institution et botanique :

Le réseau scientifique et politique de Fusée-Aublet (sociabilité savante et « machine coloniale ») ;

Les jardins botaniques et les cabinets d’histoire naturelle (jardins d’acclimatation, circulation des plantes, transit des caisses botaniques ; rôle des amateurs et collectionneurs, liens entre institutions et particuliers ; Fusée-Aublet au jardin des plantes de Paris).

III. Questions théoriques et méthodologiques relatives au champ de la botanique coloniale :

Discussion d’options critiques ;

Apport des recherches interdisciplinaires (histoire-histoire des sciences / analyse du discours / botanique, etc.).

On prévoit des séances de 2h – présentation de 40 minutes maximum, suivie d’une discussion. Le séminaire aura lieu en mode hybride (conférencier et équipe à Neuchâtel, public en ligne et en présentiel selon les dispositions sanitaires en vigueur).

Les propositions de communication (1 p.), accompagnées d’une brève présentation des participant.e.s, sont à adresser jusqu’au 20 septembre 2021 à :

Thibaud Martinetti (thibaud.martinetti@unine.ch)

Guilhem Mansion (guilhem.mansion@unine.ch)

Nathalie Vuillemin (nathalie.vuillemin@unine.ch)

Télécharger l'appel en PDF.

Exiled in Môtiers in the Principality of Neuchâtel, Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) was over fifty years old when he was initiated into botany. This developed into a lively and genuine scientific passion that accompanied him during the last fifteen years of his life, as revealed by his abundant correspondence. His letters and manuscripts comprise a remarkably diverse botanical work, documenting his pedagogical and philosophical thinking, his scientific readings and his practice of plant collecting.

When he died in Ermenonville on 2 July 1778, the philosopher left behind a herbarium, of which nearly three thousand specimens remain today. This collection is interesting for several reasons. Scientifically, it contains some of the oldest plant samples collected in French Guiana between 1762 and 1764 by the French botanist Fusée-Aublet, which were passed on to Rousseau in 1778. Its study is likely to significantly enrich our knowledge of the flora of South America and its state in the 18th century (see the Fusée-Aublet and the scientific travel sub-project). Historically, the herbarium offers a quasi-photographic account of the work of an experienced botanist (Fusée-Aublet) and a meticulous amateur (Rousseau). Herbarium specimens deposited in Neuchâtel suffered from further handling after Rousseau’s death, but they remain close to their original state at the end of the 1770s. Rousseau had certainly undertaken to study the specimens received from Fusée-Aublet, in order to include them in his own collections. From freshly dried specimens to carefully crafted boards, all stages in the making of an ancient herbarium are thus illustrated.

Rousseau’s last herbarium has never been studied in detail. The reason is its complexity, its dual nature of scientific and historical object, and the fact that it is scattered in several museums and archival institutions: the Bibliothèque publique et universitaire of Neuchâtel, the Muséum national d’histoire naturelle (Paris), the Bibliothèque Inguimbertine (Carpentras), the Musée Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Montmorency), the Musée Jacquemart-André (Chaalis), the Musée Carnavalet (Paris), and the Botanical Museum of Berlin (where specimens were destroyed during the Second World War). Other herbaria or specimens belonging to Rousseau are deposited in Lyon, Montmorency, Zurich, and at the Musée des Arts décoratifs in Paris. The works of Alexandra Cook and Takuya Kobayashi on Rousseau’s botanical activities provide a valuable starting point. Today, we know about only a few of the species included in this fragmented herbarium. We do not know the exact proportion of plants collected by Fusée-Aublet, their collection locality, or the possible occurrence of plants obtained by Rousseau from other botanists.

Analysis and virtual reconstruction of the herbarium

These issues will be resolved through the systematic study of the herbarium by bringing together the skills of two botanists (Pierre-Emmanuel DuPasquier, Jérémy Tritz), a historian of scientific knowledge and practices (Dorothée Rusque), and a literary historian (Timothée Léchot). In addition to the herbarium contents analysis, we aim to understand the different stages that led to its creation over the years, using the philosopher’s correspondence, other available textual sources, and material data (such as the type of paper used for preservation). We would also like to test the hypothesis that the herbarium was fragmented after Rousseau’s death, which entails identifying its different owners in the 19th and 20th centuries. The case of Rousseau offers the opportunity to better understand the functions of the amateur botanist within the literary circles and scientific community of the 18th century. Embodying the dialogue between literature and science, the Rousseau-Aublet herbarium forms a promontory for studying botany at the crossroads of scholarly sociability, scientific practices, and epistemology.

The conserved portion of the herbarium at the Bibliothèque publique et universitaire de Neuchâtel (BPUN) is the starting point for the study. A preliminary analysis conducted by Dorothée Rusque and Jérémy Tritz has estimated the number of specimens to be close to nine hundred. These plants include Phanerogams, Pteridophytes and Bryophytes, probably collected by Rousseau himself. A significant number of tropical or European specimens can be associated with Fusée-Aublet, according to their collecting locality or their annotations. Finally, forty-nine plates were entirely prepared by Rousseau, similarly to his other herbaria, such as those occurring on Montmorency and the Central Library of Zurich. Further specimens are in various states of work and identification. Most of these have missing data, such as date or locality of collection.

The aim of this research is twofold. First, the identification or confirmation of specimens should shed light on the historical aspects of this collection (Who were the plant collectors? What uses did Rousseau make of such a herbarium?) and the floristic aspects (Which taxonomic groups predominate? In which regions were the specimens collected?). In addition, the ongoing work and analyses will lead to the creation of a virtual herbarium available online, which will provide access to all digitised specimens including their botanical and historical information. This database is designed to collect all herbarium specimens produced or received by Rousseau, in order to virtually recreate the philosopher’s comprehensive herbarium. Furthermore, the partnership between botanists, historians and BPUN staff aims to define appropriate measures for the long-term conservation of the Neuchâtel collection.

Timothée Léchot

Selected bibliography

See also the publications related to the project.

Jean-Baptiste-Christian Fusée-Aublet (1723-1778) described more than 240 genera and 550 species and today he remains an authority in the field of tropical botany. He was first sent to the Ile de France (Mauritius) in order to establish a pharmacy with the title of “Botanist and first Apothecary-composer of the Compagnie des Indes” (1753-1761) (Fusée-Aublet, 1775, t. 1, p. 5). He was then appointed botanist by the King and stayed in French Guiana (1762-1764) within the framework of preparations for the Kourou expedition (1763). Unlike his predecessor Pierre Barrère, Aublet succeeded in assembling and identifying a substantial collection of plants. On his return to Paris in 1765, he published the voluminous Histoire des plantes de la Guiane françoise in four volumes (1775) with the help of Bernard de Jussieu. When he died in 1778, a large part of his herbarium collection ended up in the hands of Joseph Banks (1743-1820); another part ended up somewhat mysteriously in the collection of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) (Lanjouw, Uittien, 1940; Lourteig, Joyet, 1997). Its scarce remaining parts were redistributed to a few European institutions. Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s herbarium at the Bibliothèque publique et universitaire de Neuchâtel contains some of Aublet’s specimens in the form of notebooks.

The inventory of the Aublet herbarium

In order to better understand the importance of Aublet’s collections from a quantitative and qualitative point of view, we surveyed the various digitised collections available, either on site at the institution concerned, or on general databases (e.g. JSTOR Global Plants, eReColtNat).

Quantitative approach. We counted 2600 specimens distributed across 22 institutions. Among these samples, 900 (35%) correspond to original material and can be considered as potential types (T), i.e. specimens that have been used to describe new species. From a numerical point of view, the so-called “Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s” herbarium (P-JJR: 1602, 131 T) contains the largest number of specimens, followed by the British Museum (BM: 414, 375 T), and the Smith collection at the Linnaean Society of London (LINN-SM: 135, 105 T). These three institutions comprise more than 80% of the specimens collected by Aublet (70% of types). Other important collections are French (MPU, P-JU) or Swedish (S, UPS).

Qualitative approach. The samples attributed to Aublet are of diverse geographical origins and are composed primarily of his tropical and extra-tropical collections. The former includes material from French Guiana and most types, which are divided between BM, LINN-SM and P-JJR herbaria. We find also plants collected by Aublet in Santo Domingo during his stay there on his return from French Guiana (1764) (Fusée-Aublet, 1775, pp. 19-24). Among the non-tropical collections, which are abundant in the P-JJR herbarium, we find species of diverse origins, many of them endemic to regions that Aublet never visited. The presence of such material in the naturalist’s collections has lead to numerous hypotheses that will be tested throughout the project.

Methods and network

The Muséum national d’histoire naturelle in Paris holds numerous manuscripts by Jean-Baptiste Fusée-Aublet concerning his travel in French Guiana. The systematic study of these documents will allow us to highlight how Fusée-Aublet carried out his fieldwork: Where did he collect plants in French Guiana? Which local networks, both French and indigenous, did it mobilise? What methods did he use to identify the plants he gathered? How was the drafting of the Flore de Guiane carried out? What role did Bernard de Jussieu play in this work?

These questions are addressed by two post-doctoral researchers, Thibaud Martinetti (literature), and Guilhem Mansion (botany), and a PhD student, Perrine Besson. Interdisciplinary collaboration is crucial to this project’s goals. The reconstruction of Fusée-Aublet’s working methods within the framework of a social history of science can only be achieved by tackling the writings he left in his herbaria. Guilhem Mansion has gathered valuable data on the particularity of Fusée-Aublet’s botanical work by carrying out with great precision an inventory of his herbaria, an analysis of their contents and type specimens, and by carefully investigating the inscriptions and metadata of this material. Thibaud Martinetti examines as closely as possible the naturalist’s work in the field. In particular, he is developing a digital mapping project based on encoded travel manuscripts from Aublet’s expeditions inland in French Guiana, and on descriptions of the collecting sites reported in the Histoire des plantes de la Guyane françoise. The aim is to generate an interactive map of Aublet’s travels in chronological order, with the names of plants and localities as provided by the author. Digital cartography will allow to reconstruct the different stages of his botanical collections, to visualise the structure of his travels, and to recreate their temporality. It should thus constitute a valuable tool for representing and understanding botanical travel in the 18th century colonies.

Perrine Besson will study Fusée-Aublet as part of her PhD thesis on indigenous knowledge and its use in 18th century travel reports and geographical works. The Histoire des plantes of Fusée-Aublet contains, in fact, a vast and richly illustrated catalogue of local plants, several essays and observations, part of which describes the local therapeutic uses of the plants studied. The study of these indigenous practices by Europeans is currently attracting renewed interest from researchers. Perrine Besson will make a comparative study of texts by different naturalists, travellers, and philosophers in order to determine how the sources of knowledge are highlighted, or, on the contrary, hidden; what type of dialogue is established between European and indigenous perspectives; how a rhetoric of secrecy is set up in these texts; and finally, what image of the indigenous is produced by the knowledge conveyed. Some figures warrant our attention: from the simple guide to the village chief or the sorcerer, the traveller’s interlocutors are numerous, sometimes, becoming commonplaces expected from the story. What, then, is their precise function, both in documentary terms and in the narrative economy? The study will not be restricted to lists of “recipes” or observations on the medicinal uses of plants. Its aim is to suggest a more global approach of the exotic territory and the remnants of the indigenous knowledge it transmits.

Nathalie Vuillemin

Selected bibliography

See also the publications related to the project.

10 February 2022
Online lecture by Alexandra Cook (University of Hong Kong):
“Décoloniser l'histoire de la botanique au XVIII^e siècle”.
Poster

8 October 2021, University of Neuchâtel
Workshop:
“Le traitement numérique des collections botaniques : pour un dialogue entre histoire, informatique et botanique”.
Talks and round tables.
Programme and information

16 September 2021
Online lecture by Gilles Geneix (EHESS, Centre Alexandre Koyré):
“Antoine Laurent de Jussieu – fabrique d'une science botanique”.
Poster

17 June 2021
Online lecture by Thierry Hoquet (Paris Nanterre University):
“Système, méthode et caractère : penser les classifications de Tournefort à Linné et Buffon”.
Poster

5 March 2021
Third plenary meeting of the “Botanical Legacies from the Enlightenment” project.

28 September 2020
Second plenary meeting of the “Botanical Legacies from the Enlightenment” project.

3 February 2020
Inaugural meeting of the “Botanical Legacies from the Enlightenment” project.

Update: 30 October 2021.

To be published

Published studies