Download - ORIENTALISM IN EARLY MODERN FRANCE

Orientalism in Early Modern FranceEurasian Trade, Exoticism, and the Ancien Régime

Ina Baghdiantz McCabe

Oxford • New York

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McCabe, Ina Baghdiantz.Orientalism in early modern France : Eurasian trade, exoticism, and

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Includes bibliographical references and index.ISBN-13: 978–1–84520–374–0 (cloth)

ISBN-10: 1–84520–374–7 (cloth) 1. France—Civilization—Asian infl uences. 2. France—Relations—

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– iii –

Contents

Acknowledgments v

Introduction 1

PART I: ONE NATION, ONE WORLD UNDER FRENCH RULE

1 The First Orientalist, Guillaume Postel 15

2 The Ambassadors 37

3 France in the World 69

4 Orientalism As Science: The Production of Knowledge under Louis XIV 101

5 The Turks and the ‘Other’ Within: The Huguenots 137

PART II: CONSUMING THE EXOTIC

6 Coffee and Orientalism in France 163

7 A “Barbarous Taste”: The Transmission of Coffee Drinking 183

8 Domesticating the Exotic: Imports and Imitation 205

9 The Politics of Pleasure: French Imitations of Oriental Sartorial Splendor and the Royal Carrousels 231

10 Orientalism, Despotism, and Luxury 257

Epilogue 291

Notes 299

Primary Sources 361

Selected Secondary Sources 381

Index 399

Dedication

To Anna and Bill

– v –

Acknowledgments

I was privileged to receive a grant from the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies at Harvard to support the work for this book. My fi rst thanks goes to the Radcliffe Institute and to its dean, Drew Gilpin Faust. The fi rst meeting held at Radcliffe that year was on September 12, 2001. We arrived to sit in a room full of sad and silent peo-ple. Dean Faust, as new to the institute as we were, acknowledged that this was a time like no other; she told us that we would be a special group and forge special bonds. No one knew what was going to happen next on that day. Monica H. Green, new to Boston, was worried about her children, both of whom had Arabic last names; she had just dropped them off in a school where they knew no one. Afsaneh Najmabadi and I, perfect strangers until that moment, did not exchange a handshake but rather a tearful embrace. A fellow who was a New Yorker, a writer who lived on Canal Street, never came to the institute. With infi nite gratitude I write that the year went on and it was one of the best years of my life. I planned and started three books, not one, and fi nished an old project planned since 1998. Yet sadly, as we all knew would happen that morning, views of Islam became topical, and the book took on a new urgency in hopes to show that dialogue and exchanges had long existed between cultures.

One person in the room did something much more extraordinary than any of us there. As I write this, it had just been announced the day before that Drew Gilpin Faust would be the next president of Harvard University. Few words could have been spoken on that day that would not have sounded shallow, but Drew kept us all together and focused us on work in the midst of emotional chaos.

My thanks go to my colleagues at Radcliffe and at Harvard who helped me shape my ideas by commenting on this book project at its inception or who asked important questions that transformed it: Lizbeth Cohen, Monica Green, Wilt Idema, Cemal Kefa-dar, Alice Kessler-Harris, Afsaneh Najmabadi, Irene Silverblatt, and Judith Vicniac.

Many other people, whether privately or publicly, have commented on this book and have read it at least in part; I claim all errors as mine and thank Suraiya Faroqhi, Leila Fawaz, Vartan Gregorian, Alisha Rankin, Edward Said, Robert W. Thom-son, Dirk Van der Cruysse, and Abby Zanger. My gratitude goes to my friend and colleague Jeanne Marie Penvenne for her unfailing support during an especially diffi cult year as I was completing corrections to my manuscript. My thanks also go to Lucette Valensi and Madeleine Dobie for sending me bibliographical information. Special thanks goes to François Moureau for inviting me to present the book to a seminar at the Sorbonne, Paris, where I was once a student myself. Many students

have contributed to this book: Emma Wright from Harvard, Rachel Bingham from the Fletcher School, and most of all my research assistant Julie Foster. Tufts gradu-ate students Jodi Larson and Lindsay Schakenbach helped to proofread the fi nal manuscript. I owe much to my editors at Berg: Ian Critchley, Julia Hall, Julene Knox, and most of all Kathleen May, who commissioned this book. Others who have been instrumental with many aspects of the book are Julia Rosen, Emily Metcalf, Ellie Wilson, and Ken Hassman. Annette Lazzara at the history department facilitated all the administrative aspects of the travel to France that this book required for several years.

This book could not have been written without my nearly twenty years in France. For ten years I lived in Rue Laplace, a few feet from where Guillaume Postel, France’s fi rst Orientalist, had studied at the College Sainte Barbe, now a noisy high school. From my window I could see where Antoine Galland had been buried. The initial idea for this book dates back to the late 1970s, when it would have been near impossible to write; since then so many other books have made this one possible. I would like to thank a fellow historian who has been formative in my life, my friend and classmate Philippe Rivé, whose love for the seventeenth and eighteenth centu-ries made me abandon working on the twentieth; ironically he now focuses on World Wars I and II.

Other friends or family that have helped me in one way or another include my be-loved stepmother Anoush Baghdiantz, Sylvie Merian at the Morgan library, Rubina Saidkhanian and René Jacobs, and in the very last phase of the book Jan Fidjeland. I thank my professors at the Sorbonne Pierre Chaunu, Jean Ganiage, Jacques Heers, and Michel Mollat; although they have taken no active part in this book, my educa-tion in Paris is at its very foundation. The book is dedicated to the two people that are my life, my husband Bill McCabe and my daughter Anna.

February 13, 2007

vi • Acknowledgments

– 1 –

Introduction

Furs, silks and fi ne cottons, stimulants—tea, coffee, sugar, rum, gin, tobacco and spices of all kinds—scrimshaw and curios for cabinets, travel books and atlases, topazes, feath-ers, orientalizing and Americanizing changes in clothing and ornament: these things did not simply “improve the quality of life” in the metropole, they altered it, and altered the people who wore, ate, owned, contemplated, and changed their moods with them. “You are what you eat,” and Europe was cannibalizing the places and peoples that eventually made up its empires.1

Mary Baine Campbell, Wonder and Science

One moment marks the inception of French imperial presence in Asia. In great se-crecy on April 12, 1798, the French Directory ordered the creation of the “Army of the Orient,” naming Napoleon Bonaparte (1769–1821) its commander in chief. On May 19 the French forces left Toulon, comprising 400 vessels, 50,000 men, over 1,000 pieces of artillery, 567 vehicles, 700 horses, and a slew of French scientists and artists, who were not apprised of their secret destination. The aims of the Egyptian invasion were not only to defeat the English and to establish a French empire in the Mediterranean, but also to conduct a scientifi c survey of Egypt. Edward Saïd’s fa-mous book Orientalism begins with Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt. He argued thirty years ago that empire and orientalist science went hand in hand. The mission of the Armée d’Orient’s orientalists and scientists was to study Egypt to advance French knowledge of the world. Most of the orientalists who accompanied the French expe-dition were the students of one man, Sylvestre de Sacy (1758–1838), a man closely studied by Edward Saïd in Orientalism.2

In October 1798, as French cannons were shelling the Al Ahzar mosque, Joseph Marcel risked the fl ames to rescue some invaluable Quranic texts.3 After the end of the expedition, he was appointed director of the Imprimerie nationale in Paris where he as-sisted with the publishing of the multivolume Description of Egypt. Silvestre de Sacy and his many students were of great service to France’s imperial project and were re-warded with peerages and government posts. This well-known Napoleonic expedition to Egypt, and its resulting scientifi c survey, were the products of very long-held French imperial hopes. The earlier history of French Orientalism is less well known.4 This book is as much about the orientalizing of France and the French accumulation and consumption of oriental goods as it is about Orientalism in France. It ends with

2 • Orientalism in Early Modern France

Anquetil Duperron, the man Saïd considered to be the fi rst orientalist.5 The book ends where Edward Saïd’s book began, with the imperial age, the invasion of Egypt.

The history of French orientalism starts after the very fi rst French diplomatic rela-tions with the Ottomans, established by a letter that traveled hidden in a boot in 1526 under Francis I. The Egyptian invasion itself had an older history, a textual one. As early as 1672, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716) traveled to meet Louis XIV (1638–1715) and present him with his pamphlet titled Thoughts on Public Safety, which argued for an invasion of Egypt. Leibniz contended that the states of Europe should not fi ght each other, but conquer the Muslim world. In Leibniz’s plan of global conquest, Egypt was the fi rst stage in the domination of the Muslim world. According to his plan, the rule of Egypt should fall to France and make France the mistress of the Mediterranean; Egypt was the cornerstone of a French empire and crucial for the control of a route to India. Leibniz had depicted Egypt variously as the “eye of countries,” the “mother of grain,” the “seat of commerce.”6 Attacking the Ot-tomans would have spared the German provinces from French aggression. A century later, in 1769, Louis XV (1710–1774) was approached by the Duc de Choiseul, who argued against continuing the costly French colonial efforts in North America and recommended the conquest of Egypt in its stead. As a consequence of de Choiseul’s policies, during the last decades of the eighteenth century, even as a revolution took place in the American colonies and then later in France, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was inundated with reports and accounts from Egypt by French travelers, merchants, and consular agents.

A few years later, in 1777, Baron de Tott was sent by the Foreign Offi ce on a se-cret mission to explore the advantages of securing Egypt as a French colony. He was accompanied by several specialists, including Sonnini de Manincourt, a naturalist who wrote his own travel account.7 Such examples make the relationship between imperialism and travel and Orientalism clear, as Saïd has long argued. However, until the late seventeenth century such direct links between policy and travel ac-counts were not as common, nor always as overt. The birth of French Orientalism was a long and complex process that was not always directly commissioned, fi nanced, or even instigated by the French court. Did this mean that early Orientalism was not im-perial? A scrutiny of Orientalism’s early days answers this question in Chapters 1, 2, and 3 by exploring how it was sponsored and what transformations of knowledge it produced in France. This is a book about France. Early Orientalisms had an immense impact on French culture and on French institutions, not on the “Orient.”8 It is argued here that if the Orient was an object of study, it was France that was the subject of transformations. France shaped itself while engaging with the rest of the world.

Upon Louis XIV’s long-awaited birth on September 5, 1638, the famous astrolo-ger Campanella predicted that Louis XIV would grow to be the hero anticipated by the mystic Abbot Joachim of Fiore, the solar hero who would at last eliminate the Muslim anti-Christ from the face of the earth.9 This is often a predictable cliché in discussing Islam and France. Yet, this was predicted of a monarch who succeeded

Introduction • 3

a line of kings allied to the mightiest of Muslim rulers, the Sultan. Since Francis I, the French were the main European allies of the powerful Ottomans, enemies of the Hapsburgs who loomed large on the borders of Europe. The concept of Gallia Orien-talis, Louis’s dream of empire in Asia, was based on the belief that it was his duty to reconquer Charlemagne’s empire and to extend it, and he fought the Hapsburgs for the title of emperor.10 Louis also wanted to convert everyone in the world, including the king of Siam, to Catholicism. There was a large difference between this predict-able, deep-rooted, and rather repetitious imperial discourse, and actual policy. This makes it all the more important to study Orientalism within its historical context, as the gap between discourse and reality was often a vast one. While discussing cru-sades, as his predecessors had done for over six centuries, everything was done to maintain France’s friendship with the Ottomans for the merchants of Marseilles.

Most of France’s trade depended on the Levant markets. It is stressed here that the Normans ran the Atlantic trade and the Provençeaux ran the Levant trade, quite independently from the court. France’s Eurasian trade grew exponentially during Louis’s reign. The merchants of Marseilles were instrumental. Antoine Galland and many other orientalists were all attached to diplomatic missions funded by the mer-chants of Marseilles, not by the court. The king’s discourse was just one among many. The fi rst three chapters examine France’s contacts with the world and some of the writing it produced, while Chapter 4 concentrates on the creations of institutions under Louis to gather, control, and classify the writing produced by French travelers. It highlights the role of Orientalism in the birth of science and in the creation of the French Academy of Sciences.

Antoine Galland in his Paroles remarquables, bon mots et maxims remarquables des Orienteaux wrote: “[U]nder the name oriental I do not only mean the Arabs and the Persians, but the Turks and the Tartars and nearly all of the peoples of Asia all the way to China, be they Muslims, pagans or idol worshipers.”11 Additionally the Americas were often confl ated with Asia. The French term les Indes referred to both, and despite the adjectives of orientales and occidentales, there was often a fusion of Asia and the Americas in French views. A crucial shift took place over the century. In the 1606 Nicot dictionary, orient only denoted where the sun rises. In 1694 in the fi rst dictionary of the Académie française it becomes geographically defi ned: Orient, Se prend aussi pour les Estats, les Provinces de la grande Asie, comme l’Empire du Mogol, le Royaume de Siam, de la Chine, &c. Les regions de l’orient. les Peu-ples d’orient. les Princes d’orient. voyager en orient. cela vient d’orient. des perles d’orient. une agate d’orient.12 Even the defi nition pointed to oriental goods, pearls, and agates. Orientalism was closely tied to Eurasian trade, and this is how it is stud-ied here, through merchants, travelers and diplomats. The fi st fi ve chapters argue in different ways that France’s trade relations were closely tied to this very diverse and often contradictory textual production.

Chapter 5 concentrates on the Huguenots and their importance as sailors, mer-chants, and explorers. The role of the Huguenots is alluded to in Chapter 3 and is


studied more closely in Chapters 4 and 5 as their role in Louis’s navy and his over-seas ambitions was crucial and has often been overlooked. Several very important French merchants were Protestants and were among the chief purveyors of exotic goods to court. The most striking case was Louis’s new and unsurpassed diamond collection brought from India. Exotic goods solicited a discourse that was both social and economic in nature as they transformed daily life and also had a concrete impact on French society. From Asia came the many exotic luxury goods such as silk, cot-ton, coffee, tea, china, gems, furniture, fl owers, lacquer, and paper, all of which al-tered daily life and transformed French society and culture. From Chapter 6 through 10, these material transformations, the discourse about them, and the epistemologi-cal consequences of exotic goods are explored. Not only did these imports change material life, but the travel accounts written by French merchants, missionaries, and diplomats involved in the trade had a tremendous cultural and political impact on the social structures of French society and how it viewed itself.

It is these views, about what was French and what was foreign, that metamor-phosed the exotic goods of earlier centuries into what the French considered national goods by the end of the eighteenth century. Exotic is used here as a category, as meaning outside of things French; exotisme and its adjective was not part of the French vocabulary until 1845, as it was largely a nineteenth-century phenomenon. How a foreign, exotic good was naturalized is the object of Chapters 6, 7, and 8. A striking example of this transformation is the creation of the café as public space in imitation of the coffee houses in Cairo, Istanbul, and Isfahan. Today the café is seen as a Parisian institution, and coffee is seen as a national drink by the French, its oriental roots forgotten. This cycle of cultural integration was the fate of many luxury goods imported from Asia. This is historicizing objects and commodities. Bruno Latour wrote best about the dilemma that arises when studying the reception of objects in society:

Social scientists have for long allowed themselves to denounce the belief systems of ordinary people. They call the belief system “naturalyzation” (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992). Ordinary people imagine that the power of gods, the objectivity of money, the at-traction of fashion, the beauty of art, come from some objective properties intrinsic to the nature of things, fortunately social scientists know better and they show that the arrow goes in fact in the other direction, from society to the objects … To become a social sci-entist is to realize that the inner properties of objects do not count. That they are a mere receptacle for human categories.13

In studying the exotic and its reception in France, one studies perceptions, not the exotic. Through contact with the exotic an interest in categorizing of the domestic arose; the clearest example is herbalism, later called botany, explored in Chapters 4 and 8, which partly rely on the work of historians of science such as Paula Findlen and Londa Schiefi nger.

Introduction • 5

What was exotic or domestic was an intellectual construct that had little to do with reality. Some domestic products were still perceived as exotic, and vice versa. This is true intellectually as well. Slavery existed in France, but it was silenced and seen as exotic to France and impossible on French soil. Another case in point is ori-ental despotism, a notion present in Greek texts. There was a similar naturalizing in the political cycle that moved from identifying despotism with the oriental “other” to the despotism within in eighteenth-century France, noticed by many scholars work-ing on literature. As importantly, Orientalism also shaped economic writing, much of it concentrating on luxury, once seen as oriental and tied to despotism, as examined in Chapter 10. Luxury was viewed as a marker of class within France, as it was else-where, until the Revolution discourse tied it exclusively to the French monarchy and aristocracy. In the discussions on luxury the Orient was a point of reference. Beyond luxury, through comparison, a whole political system was being gauged. China loomed large in the thought of the famous French physiocrats, while Persia and the Persian kings as oriental despots infuse French political philosophy from Jean Bodin (1529–1596) to Montesquieu to the Abbé Raynal. A dominant issue be-fore the French revolution, as France’s economic defi cit became clear, was the battle between the physiocrats and a group of bankers around Necker (1732–1804) who argued for more investment and for speculation in the French overseas commercial trade companies. The last chapter, Chapter 10, picks up this discussion, begun in Chapter 2 with Bodin’s views on oriental despotism.

Through Louis XIV’s personal efforts Paris became the fashion capital of the world, a center for luxury goods. Paris outmoded Spanish dress in Europe. Louis set the example of wearing shimmering brocades, colorful silks, enormous ostrich plumes, diamonds, and high-heeled shoes. He set a fl amboyant example that he re-quired to be imitated by the courtesans at Versailles, who in turn were imitated by others. There is little question that it was through cooks and coiffeurs that the court of France exercised its cultural imperialism on Europe’s elites.14 Famously, Nor-bert Elias has argued that the extravagant expenses of life at Versailles, including the costumed balls where aristocrats dressed as Turks, Persians, and Moors, were a matter of establishing political control. He argued that Louis used fashion and the extravagant consumption it imposed as a tool of political submission. It is argued here that, ironically, endorsing oriental sartorial splendor at court gave rise to the creation of “Frenchness” through fashion, which became an umbrella defi nition that broke through the class barriers. It can be argued that social mobility was the great-est factor in increased consumption. Social mobility was a matter of policy, as merit was rewarded beyond the aristocracy. Louis gave titles of nobility to many merchant families. Display became a mark of rank. Chapter 8 examines the role of merchants and artisans amending the Elias model, while Chapter 9 concentrates on fashion and display at court as it pertains to Orientalism.

French fashion, as constructed by Louis, also profi ted the French silk industry. Colbert reformed an ineffi cient silk industry that had existed since Francis I to turn


it into a major one.15 The silk manufacturers of Lyons produced for the new French fashion, making the brightly colored striped and fl owered silks imposed by Louis on his court, and in turn on the rest of Europe’s elite. France went from an importer of silk textiles to become an exporter. It exported over 30,000 pounds sterling worth of French silk to England in 1674 alone.16 Nevertheless, recent scholarship has rightly moved away from a totally court-centered view of consumption. Merchants and mar-kets, and their mechanisms, are correctly seen as central in transforming demand. Scientists and artisans also had a central role in taming the exotic and shaping it, as Chapter 8 discusses. Yet, court policy, sumptuary laws, imports, mercantilism (and its demand for imitation), and built-up domestic productions in expectation of bans against imports were still central. When and how modern consumption was created is the subject of much debate and disagreement among scholars, but the range was within the early modern period; the sixteenth century at the earliest, the eighteenth at the latest.17

Carolyn Weber’s new book on the woman who was called “Madame défi cite,” Marie Antoinette, was a tremendous boon. The book closes with a few moments spent with the “foreign queen,” guilty of using exotic foreign goods. A decade or two before the French Revolution, the mood had turned protectionist, xenophobic, and nationalistic by all accounts. Foreign goods, foreigners, and foreign ways were publicly reviled, and Chapter 10 argues for a longer history of this discourse. Marie Antoinette and her abandonment of the French court dress and its silken sartorial splendor was seen as causing the economic distress of France.18 It is argued here that resistance to things foreign had a very long history in France’s political economy.

While the process of Westernization and resistance to it in the Middle East, espe-cially in the nineteenth century, has long attracted the attention of scholars, there is scant literature on the adoption of oriental goods, manners, fashions, techniques, and modes of thinking by European society. The orientalization of France and the resis-tance to it deserve study. This is just a beginning, as the material is vast. Here only a few examples were chosen. The custom of drinking coffee was imported via Cairo, the Ottoman empire’s chief marketplace. These manners were of course transformed by European adoption, yielding a myriad of hybrid cultural customs that arose in that age of archaic globalism. These new beverages are only the most striking and evident examples of many goods that had an effect on French manners, daily life, economic policy, trade, and industry. Their adoption and integration apparently speaks of a cosmopolitan society open to change, yet there is a whole discourse of resistance to the exotic to study. Looking at the adoption of new goods by the French helps diffuse the binary model used in many works on Orientalism, and already amended by Homi Bhahba’s views on “hybridization” and by Marie Louise Pratt’s “contact zones.”19 Latour’s work adds the very useful view of networks and hybrids, well suited for studying the Early Modern period.

A few good books look at French Orientalism in the arts and in literature, cen-tered on France looking at the “other” through theater or painting, but not on the

Introduction • 7

transformations within French society instigated by these contacts.20 Closest to the focus of this book are the works of Madeleine Dobie and Michèle Longino, although they are concerned with the literary. Nothing has been written on the material trans-formations that occurred in French daily habits by the adoption of some oriental customs, with the notable exception of a small passage in Madeleine Dobie’s book about orientalist literature containing a fascinating mention in passing about how furniture and chairs transformed by Ottoman models might have changed body pos-ture, as sofas and ottomans were adapted and adopted in France.21 In Furnishing the Eighteenth Century, Dobie has continued to look at stylistic transformations in furniture.22 Stylistic change and imitation is another way Orientalism has been well studied. In this category the taste for chinoiserie has the largest literature devoted to it. Most works are on the eighteenth or nineteenth century, with the exception of Michèle Longino’s study of Orientalism in French theater in the seventeenth century. It is an exceptional study, as it ties literary production and historical circumstances.23 Another very relevant work on the seventeenth century is Dominique Carnoy’s work on the representation of Islam in France.24

Contrary to the impact of the Ottomans on Europe, the impact of France on the Ottomans and their tastes has been well explored: Fatma Muge Göcek has studied the effects that this encounter produced on Istanbul and on Ottoman customs and views.25 Here it is argued that Paris was just as affected, if not more so, and trans-formed by its contact with Asia and the Americas. Both were seen as the Orient, and both were labeled les Indes, even as there was a clear division in the seven-teenth century between les Indes orientales for Asia and les Indes occidentales for the Americas; the confusion existed even in the eighteenth century. This is one of the issues explored throughout the book. For France the effect of contact with les Indes has been presented as textual and stylistic but not transformative. Perhaps because of the European view that progress belonged to Christianity and to Europe alone after the Age of Exploration, in the wake of Europe’s very successful expansion and colonialism, there has been some reluctance to give the Orient, save for China, any agency in transforming Early Modern Europe.26

Yet, there was a dialogue in the exchanges between Asia and Europe. Even as Europe started dreaming of empire, it was integrating the world it lusted after into its own domestic sphere. It did this through the accumulation that characterized early capitalism: cabinets of curiosities, collections of objects, books, manuscripts, and exotic plants and fl owers. These goods brought not only epistemological innovation, but orientalized Europeans and changed their consumption habits. The second part of this book examines these material changes. New consumption habits created demand, which in turn brought technological innovation to create imitations and new industries within France. The collection of exotic plants and animals marked the birth of zoology and herbalism, later called botany. France’s exchanges with the Orient produced profound socioeconomic and intellectual changes. Of all the new oriental goods, the one that had the largest impact and was chosen for study in


this book—coffee consumption—brought on innovations in social institutions and medicine. But all of these new goods and information collected in travel books had the largest impact on the birth of sciences in France, despite resistance from the Sor-bonne, as explored in Chapters 1, 2, and 4.

How to plant a tulip or sip a cup of coffee became part of the vocabulary of daily life in France. Contacts with other societies stimulated a whole discourse around new goods. This study of the transformation of French material, intellectual, and cultural life is infl uenced by recent scholarship on patterns of consumption.27 Eurasian trade is explored for its cultural, material, and intellectual ramifi cations in Early Modern France. With one look at the scant scholarship there is on the effects of Orientalism or oriental goods on Venice, Antwerp, the Portuguese, and the Dutch, one realizes that this silence is not unique to France.28

There is an inspiring precedent for analyzing the Ottoman empire’s impact on European material life. Lisa Jardine’s Worldly Goods successfully challenges a monolithic view of European life by integrating knowledge about the Ottoman em-pire through the work of scholars such as Gülru Necipoglu.29 Previously held ideas about the East and West have been dismantled in some important corrective efforts for the sixteenth century: the works of Kim Hall for England, of Jerry Brotton for the Portuguese, and the well-known contributions of Lisa Jardine bring a global view of the Renaissance.30 Lisa Jardine and Jerry Brotton have also dissolved the alien exotic “other” in the same breadth as they have dismantled clichés of the Renaissance man.31 Mary Campbell’s book Wonder and Science breaks disciplinary boundaries in every sense, reminding us that the disciplines did not exist then. This book hopes to express the same spirit of exchange and dialogue between cultures and disciplines.32

In contrast to Eurasian trade, the literature on production and trade, and on slavery and plantation life at this later stage of European exchange with the New World is too vast to cite in this introduction; it highlights European expansion and is readily studied. Europe’s taste for exotic goods was not only at the root of Europe’s colonial plantations, but of many new manufactures that imitated foreign luxury goods and strived to produce them domestically. Many of these innovations and imitations were in textiles and were at the root of a proto-industrial revolution. Many travelers were sent to study, or less politely put, spy on manufacturing techniques in Persia, India, and China and report home. The oldest effort of imitating oriental goods in France began as a fascinating experiment that involved planting mulberry trees in the garden of the Tuileries palace under Henri IV. Manufactures, gardens, shops, public spaces, guilds and their organization, economic theories, and philosophical writings were all deeply affected by the commercial exchanges that France had with Asia. Each aspect would demand a book of its own.

The main sources used here are travel accounts combined with some archival sources and with many secondary works on France. The many secondary sources by historians of France that helped me along the way are acknowledged in the notes. French travel accounts have attracted the attention of major literary scholars;

Introduction • 9

François Moureau, Dirk Van der Cruysse, and Frank Lestringant are leaders among a group of researchers that have unearthed and studied many forgotten texts at the Centre de recherché sur la literature des voyages at Paris IV, Sorbonne. Based on Boucher de la Richarderie’s Bibliothèque universelle des voyages, compiled in the nineteenth century, Daniel Roche gives us the prodigious number of travel accounts produced in Europe in the Early Modern period. The accounts that appear in the repertory made by the Bibliothèque universelle are numbered at a total of 5,562. For the sixteenth century, one counts only 456 travel accounts in European languages and 1,566 in the seventeenth, then 3,540 for the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century.33 The numbers alone speak of the growing engagement of Europe with the rest of the world. This was not a space where I could linger on an account, nor create a complete list of them. I attempted to choose relevant travelers to look at their networks. Famous travelers are often viewed alone, in a heroic tradition, but they were part of a network of exchange that was all-important to the birth of science in France. Chapter 4 concentrates on the birth of the French Academy of Sciences and its links to travel and Orientalism. One cannot write about France alone, as nôtre Europe, our Europe, is a concept found constantly under the pen of French travelers to Asia.34 The network of exchange between travelers was European.

I have tried to keep the freedom of spirit to think simultaneously of some of the multitude of concrete transformations that occurred in Early Modern Europe and of the desires and hopes and dreams that were not always directly tied to any real results. For French commerce in Asia the latter category is prodigiously large. This is a dis-continuous history, one punctuated by accident and interruption, and as far as policy and discourse goes, one fi nds at least two voices if not more. Nevertheless, if most of the French court’s ventures in Asia were miserable failures, they had immense cultural consequences domestically. Much of the court’s discourse about its role in the world was about how it was destined to rule it, while policy did not follow this agenda. This book considers discourse, stated policy, and action on the terrain cap-tured at different moments. Beyond the court, there were many other voices writing about the Orient: merchants, doctors, jewelers, and adventurers. The court did, how-ever, consider them informants, once it got organized to do so. Was the information collected used? If so, how? Did this collection serve imperial aims? Did it ever help any imperial projects that took into account the observations sent in by travelers? Was there any true utility in writing about Asia? Did the travelers themselves participate in any imperial hopes? These may not be the right questions, but they are summoned by the word Orientalism, now marked by Saïd’s defi nition of it since 1978.

Early Orientalism was shaped by a multitude of voices writing about les Indes, and they are full of contradictions. They slowly built up the modern dichotomy so well described by Latour as the divide between culture and nature, between science and society. The quarrels between the ancients and moderns was apparently won by the moderns. The travelers, many of them doctors, in this book are the moderns, building a new worldview as observers. According to Bruno Latour, we have never


been modern: “Seen as networks … the modern world, like revolutions, permits scarcely anything more than small extensions of practices, slight acceleration in the circulation of knowledge, a tiny extension of society, minuscule increase in the num-ber of actors, small modifi cation of old beliefs.”35 The way Orientalism has been studied is linked to modernity, to conquest, and to imperialism. Modernity linked power and knowledge together in the monism invented by Hobbes, borrowed by Foucault, and used by Edward Saïd and many others in his footsteps. This view itself is a modern construct in which we all participate.

Bruno Latour sees that we are only beginning to critique modernity now as we are hoping to escape from its consequences of global warming, ecological disasters, and genetically modifi ed foods that bring modernization under criticism. Before Hobbes and Boyle wrote out the contract that defi ned the modern world, and eventually made us view the sciences as distinct from the humanities, how was knowledge utilized? How was knowledge linked to power? Was the knowledge gathered by French sci-entists and travelers used by those in power? Did the court and its institutions use scientifi c knowledge under Louis XIV when the French Academy of Science was born? This book has no pretension to uncover how modernity was built in France, but it hopes to uncover the role of travel and Orientalism in building that modernity through transforming both France’s political and scientifi c institutions and its pat-terns of consumption. This book argues in Chapters 1, 4, and 8 that Orientalism was at the inception of the Collège de France, and of the Academy of Sciences. The world before modernity and after it has been described as another world:

When we see them as networks, Western innovations remain recognizable and impor-tant, but they no longer suffi ce as the stuff of saga, the vast saga of radical rupture, fatal destiny, irreversible good or bad fortune. The antimoderns, like the postmoderns have accepted their adversaries’ playing fi eld; another fi eld—much broader much less polemical—has opened up before us: the fi eld of nonmodern worlds, it is the middle kingdom as vast as China and as little known.36

Latour falls in the trap of modernity, seeing the nonmodern as a foreign country. Many preceded him in looking for Europe’s past across the world, or better still for paradise lost. This was the legacy of modern social science built up slowly after Early Modern exploration: the primitive, the other without modern ideas or modern tools to transform his world. Latour argues that until recently, modern Europeans felt invincible, that only now in the face of a world invaded by “frozen embryos, expert systems, digital machines, censor equipped robots, hybrid corn … when our daily news papers display all these monsters on page after page and when none of these chimera can be properly on the object side or the subject side.”37 Who would divide science and social politics today? Universities still do. Yet, the binary order of things established in the modern period is daily questioned by contemporary reality.

Introduction • 11

With new hybrids, these new “monsters,” the modern dichotomy created between natural laws and political representation can no longer withstand serious scrutiny.

In Early Modern Europe, in an era of primitive capitalist accumulation, travel-ers and scientists were in close correspondence and formed cosmopolitan networks. Speaking in terms of Europe and being cosmopolitan did not exclude national senti-ment even as early as the sixteenth century, whether in collecting or writing patriotic sentiment; and imperial hopes were clearly expressed.38 Religious aspirations were also inherent to Orientalism. There was as yet no difference between religion and science, and it was acceptable to observe as a modern and to have religious faith, as Postel’s path demonstrates.39 A century later Pierre Gassendi wrote in order to rec-oncile modern observation and skepticism with religion; Abelard had tried centuries before him to marry reason to faith and was condemned. One life exemplifi es all the dimensions of the nonmodern orientalist quest very clearly. One of the most cosmo-politan of Europeans, with an agenda for France and his king, was the inimitable and mysterious Guillaume Postel, the king’s royal professor in mathematics and Arabic. Through an overview of the complexity of Postel’s thought and remarkable destiny, the book opens with what many consider to be the beginnings of Orientalism in France.

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Part IOne Nation, One World under French Rule

–1–

The First Orientalist, Guillaume Postel

En occident nous éléverons icy l’estandart israelogallique. [In the Occident we will carry the Israelogallique fl ag].

Guillaume Postel1

The man considered to be the fi rst French orientalist walked to Paris from a village in Normandy to become a renowned humanist at the court of the king of France. Guil-laume Postel (1510–1581) is remembered as a visionary and a mystic. His pacifi st universalistic vision was the city of God on earth. He envisioned a world at peace, with Muslims and Christians united in harmony under one rule. He longed for a return to the long-lost primordial unity before Babel. His vision was as political as it was religious. It is his contemporary, Jean Bodin (1529/30–1596), who is re-membered as the father of universalism, yet Guillaume Postel’s view of a universal religion and of a unifi ed state preceded Jean Bodin’s by two entire decades. In Guil-laume Postel’s writings, there was to be no East or West, and no divisions between Christianity and Islam; he had a universal vision of a united world at peace, albeit one with a clear hierarchy: France was at the helm of the universe. Postel imagined a world state under the rule of the French monarch, Francis I (r. 1515–1547), who would unite all Christians, Jews, and Muslims once they understood what they had in common and forgot their differences.2

This was a rather novel stance in France, as most crusading literature advocated salvation only after the world was set free “from the dreadful tyranny of this bru-tal and barbarous sect,” as the Muslims were often described.3 As we will exam-ine, this idea places Postel closer to some Orthodox theologians of the Byzantine Church than to the French crusaders. The imperial theme in his writings, however, had precedents in golden age propaganda in association with the crusading tradi-tions of France. The notion of the king of France as world emperor had roots in previous literature about the French monarchy. Charles VIII’s (1483–1493) Italian conquests gave way to the writings of Marsilio Ficino (1433–1499) and André de la Vigne, who both associated the universal king, Christ, with Charles during his royal entry into Florence in 1495.4

King Charles’s triumphal entry into Florence was described by Marsilio Ficino as the second coming of Christ. Ficino modeled his account on the Adventus of Christ

– 15 –


into Jerusalem. King Charles was Christ bringing eternal salvation to Florence. Yet, Ficino perceived no contradiction between Christianity and classical tradition: he also equated the French king with the Roman God Jupiter, capable of reordering the world with one nod of his head. Masilio Ficino was one among several writers who described the French king as the king of kings. In this tradition of religious imperial propaganda, the king of France must not be called merely the ruler of France, but ruler of the whole world.5 The Kingdom of God was not only possible but imminent—a millenarian idea that Postel shared with Columbus and many others after the discov-ery of the New World. He envisioned a universal monarchy. Yet, despite his universal views, some of Postel’s deepest beliefs were acquired in Normandy. Normandy had a strong millenarian eschatology, a tradition kept alive by its sailors and explorers. Postel had utopian visions and implied the teleology of a “great instauration” under a just ruler in the New World.6 One such utopian aim was the instauration of universal unity and peace under the rightful king as world ruler. In Postel’s view this king was none other than his own monarch, Francis I.

The pacifi st who dreamed of a united Europe and of world peace, at a time when Europe was torn by war and divided over the Reformation, had many incarnations. He was a vagrant, a schoolteacher, a student, a Jesuit, a heretic, an orientalist, a traveler, a royal professor, a geographer, an astronomer, a historian, and a mystic who witnessed a miracle that transformed him into a prophet. Like Jean Bodin after him, Postel had a religious vision of history. He perceived history as revelation. He was deeply interested in geography, yet many of Postel’s contributions, such as his forgotten map of the world and his very early maps of Japan and France, have never been examined by scholars.7 Postel’s rich and multifaceted existence was extraor-dinary, even for the Renaissance. His life was dominated by a quest for primordial unity through astronomy, alchemy, geography, languages, and anything else he could master in order to reach the primordial fi re of creation. In this quest, both the study of languages and traveling would play key roles. Postel’s career as an orientalist was not distinct from his mystical quest or his strong political agenda. His worldview had practical political aspects, which are usually far less noticed than his mysticism by his biographers.8

Guillaume Postel’s interest in oriental languages was closely tied to his quest for France’s origins. Tracing and narrating the biblical origins of France through the study of language and sacred texts was a quest for the role of the French nation in the world.9 Postel believed that it was God’s will that made him write one of his major works, Orbie terrae concordia. This immense tome on achieving universal peace took him a scant few months. Postel remarked about his own book that it was only slightly shorter than Augustine’s City of God. Discourse about the Turks and the Muslim Orient appeared predominantly in Postel’s works on universal peace, yet it was tied to a discourse about the role of France. He presented his ideas about the role of the French nation to the king. He went to visit the king in his palace to present

The First Orientalist, Guillaume Postel • 17

a political program. Postel viewed human history through ecclesia, and he saw it in four stages: nature, law, and grace, followed by restitution. Restitution in his views, the “cordial harmony of the world,” was also refl ected on earth.10 Postel’s theory of sovereignty, however, was not that unusual; he held that monarchy was a hierarchical emanation from the universal sovereignty of God.

In 1544 Postel went to meet King Francis I in Fontainebleau to argue that should the king reform himself, his court and his realm would attain true universal sover-eignty. In Postel’s reformed republic of God, the angelic pope would be sovereign in spiritual affairs and the monarch, guided by reason, would rule temporal affairs. Guillaume Postel’s belief in the role of a universal monarchy on earth was so strong that he argued for it in several of his works. His idea was that the republic of the world was to be divided into twelve seats, with another twelve seats as alternates, and that the entire realm should be administered as a theocracy. Twelve was seen as the perfect number; it represented the apostles, the tribes of Israel, and the signs of the Zodiac. The signs of the Zodiac were seen as twelve doors represented by the twelve seats. Each seat should have six ministers, giving the republic seventy-two judges. The politia, or state in which God is revealed to man, is ars artium, the high-est state. It is no small wonder that these beliefs did not appeal to Francis and raised the king’s suspicions. Postel seemed to advocate a republic under a monarchy. Postel maintained that the French nation had a prominent universal role and that Francis would rule this republic of God. He was seen as seditious and had to make a formal retraction to the queen, Catherine of Medici. Postel had to apologize for his political ideas, as they seemed to suggest that if there was no reform within the French mon-archy, dissidence, and worse, revolution would be justifi ed.11

Postel’s concept of nation was biblical; it had its roots in his reading of the Old Testament in Hebrew. Nevertheless, Postel’s quest for the origin of all things, es-pecially of language, was a discourse about the French nation.12 Yet his choice of France’s origin was unusual. Postel’s theory was that the French nation descended directly from the Hebrew nation. After his return from the Ottoman empire, Postel devoted much time to discussing what he saw as the rightful role of the French nation at the helm of the world. His views were not nationalist or imperial in the modern sense; rather, it was a religious imperial project, but certainly an imperial one even at that. The major sources for Guillaume Postel’s worldview, his vision of the French state and the French king’s universal monarchy, were Jewish. He drew his fi rst in-spiration from the Zohar, the Midrashim, the Old Testament, and the Kabbalah.13 His personal interpretation of these Jewish texts, however, was totally heretical and unique. How could a poor boy from Normandy draw from Jewish sources to form a personal vision of the king of France as universal monarch, and see a second Jeru-salem in the city of Venice? The Jews had been banned for over a century in France. How did he learn Arabic when it had never been taught in Paris? Postel is remem-bered as having an uncanny aptitude for languages. It was coupled with an enormous


dose of perseverance, as his extraordinary destiny proves. Even his entry into the University of Paris was extraordinary.

Postel’s Intellectual Milieu: Sainte Barbe

Guillaume Postel was born in Normandy in 1510 or earlier. His contemporary, the fa-mous geographer André Thévet, knew Postel during his lifetime. Guillaume’s family was poor and his parents were illiterate. Orphaned at the age of eight, both his par-ents lost to the plague, he became the ward of several unnamed tutors. What little he inherited from his family permitted him to study unfettered for two years, after which he had to work for a living. He left home at thirteen, earning his way to Paris as a schoolteacher. Rejected and laughed at in many places, he was nevertheless hired as a maître d’école in the village of Sagy near Pontoise. He was not an excep-tion; the vast efforts toward increasing literacy that France undertook in the early sixteenth century counted many young masters like him.14 The geographer André Thévet, famous for writing a cosmography of the Levant, wrote about Postel’s early youth. Thévet’s version was repeated in many sixteenth- and seventeenth-century biographical dictionaries. There is nothing else with which to trace his birth to the district of la Dolerie in the village of Barenton, Normandy.15 Later in his reign, Fran-cis I established the custom of keeping parochial records, but when Postel was born no records were kept.

Postel had saved his earnings to study in Paris, where he arrived at the age of fi f-teen or sixteen. The average age to begin studying at the university was thirteen. He hoped to become a university student and join the prestigious Collège Sainte Barbe. On his fi rst night in Paris, Postel met some rogues posing as students. After dining with them they stole all his money and his clothes when he was asleep. They left him naked to freeze. As a consequence of this incident, he became severely ill with dysentery. He was put in a hospital, which was a refuge of the sick and the poor, for over a year and a half. When he was strong enough, he went to work as an agricul-tural worker in Beauce. Postel returned to Paris dressed in new clothing. At last, on his return to Paris, Postel entered the gates of the University of Paris to enroll at the Collège Sainte Barbe.16 This was the account of Postel’s early life as told by Thévet, who heard it from Postel himself.

At the time, Sainte Barbe was the center of geographical knowledge in Paris. It had strong links to the voyages of discovery by the Portuguese and Spanish. The Collège Sainte Barbe was run by Jacques de Gouvea, a member of an eminent Jew-ish Portuguese family. De Gouvea’s family had been in Paris since the 1500s as New Christians. In 1526, once his fear of the Inquisition had vanished, de Gouvea took a trip back to Portugal. Through his many contacts, he arranged for Sainte Barbe to be subsidized by the king of Portugal and by some of the Portuguese gold from the over-seas trade. Many of the teachers at Sainte Barbe were also Spanish and Portuguese.


It was at the collège that Postel came into contact with the Basque Inigo Lopez de Loyola, often referred to as Ignatius Loyola. The future founder of the Jesuits, Loyola was studying theology with the Dominicans after abandoning a life of luxury and adventure. Loyola attended some classes at the collège, where he was an older student. Loyola’s views linked geographical knowledge with evangelical spiritual-ity, and they had signifi cant infl uence on Postel’s intellectual formation.17 For a short period, Postel would become one of the fi rst Jesuits.

Knowledge of the world through travel and the study of languages became a divine edict for Postel, as it was for Loyola, and later, for the Jesuits. Shortly before he graduated at Montmartre in the year 1534, Loyola and six friends founded a com-munity who pledged to convert the Turks to Christianity, and when they felt this was too limiting, they pledged to defend the kingdom of Christ everywhere. Loyola graduated in 1535 and was ordained a priest two year later. In 1540 the group he headed was recognized as the Society of Jesus by Pope Paul III. The pope probably could not foresee the future political impact of this new order, which like all others demanded vows of obedience, poverty, and chastity. By Loyola’s death in 1556, there were more than a thousand Jesuits who were based on four continents.18 The Jesuits were to play a pivotal role in France’s foreign policy for centuries to come and were especially important to Louis XIII in New France and to Louis XIV in Asia. By the end of the sixteenth century there were 10,000 Jesuits in thirty-two countries. French Jesuits experienced an era of infl uence and prosperity in the seventeenth cen-tury when their numbers doubled.19

Postel’s views, however, were quite different from the reforming and prosely-tizing zeal of his fi rst Jesuit mentor, and his inclusion within the order was very temporary. Postel’s ideas were infused with mysticism, which was a dangerous bent during a period of inquisitor popes. Loyola was one of his infl uential con-tacts at Sainte Barbe. The other important contemporaneous student lodger at the collège was none other than John Calvin. Both Calvin and Postel were poorer than most of the wealthy students of the collège, and of the two, Postel was by far the poorest. Calvin, son of a provincial lawyer, entered the lodgings of the collège as a companion to a young nobleman. Postel entered as a domestic servant. In the records it appears that Guillaume Postel was “Chargé de balayer et décrotter le collège,” [in charge of sweeping and taking fi lth away]. Between chores he had to fi nd the time to get an education. Though both were among the poorest students, there is little to no evidence of Calvin having the kind of contact and infl uence that Loyola had on Postel.

There were several kinds of students; the cameristes were rich students with valets, and they lived outside the collège. The teachers and professors also had valets, who were allowed to attend classes in return for their services. These domestic servants were the lower tier of a second group, the boursiers, who lived in the collège and received fi nancial aid from either religious institutions, patrons, or the collège itself. Last, there were the galoches, gypsy students who came and went in Parisian institutions as


they pleased, to the great irritation of teachers and administrators. Loyola was in his forties. He was one of these detested galoches, whose infl uence on the other students incited much fear in the governor of the collège, Jacques de Gouvea.20 He was quite right; within Sainte Barbe, Loyola had successfully recruited the core of the spiritual army that he would later form as the Jesuits. From his classmates at the collège came the famous Jesuits-to-be: Pierre Lefèbre, Francis Xavier, Jacques Layne, Simon Ro-driguez, and fi ve more Jesuits, some of whom would go as far as India.21

Loyola had come to Paris from Castille, and he was not the only Spanish master to infl uence Postel at Sainte Barbe. Classes began at fi ve o’clock in the morning. Guillaume Postel rose at 4 A.M. to do his chores. Soon he became the valet of his renowned Spanish master, Jean Gelidius. Some of Postel’s new chores as Gelidius’s personal valet consisted of preparing his master’s courses with him. At 5 A.M., the students gathered in empty rooms where they sat on the fl oor at their teachers’ feet. The fl oor was made more comfortable with fresh hay in the winter and by grass in the summer. Still responsible for providing clean hay and sweeping away garbage and fi lth, Guillaume also made translations from Greek for his master.22 Initially, Guillaume’s main interest was Greek philology, which the collège excelled at teach-ing. His fi rst works were translations of Greek epigrams into Latin.23

At Sainte Barbe, Postel was immediately noticed for his gift of learning lan-guages. He picked up Spanish and Portuguese effortlessly as it was spoken around him. We are told that he also had learned Greek and Hebrew on his own. According to André Thévet, Postel was passionate about learning Hebrew. He had heard from a companion that there were still Jews living in Paris.24 He borrowed a book with an alphabet from them, and learned Hebrew on his own. This account is of course possible, even if Charles VI had banned all Jews from France in 1394. Some could have visited Paris clandestinely or even lived in hiding as New Christians. Many autonomous provinces received Parisian Jewish refugees for a time, such as the Dauphiné or Provence. Alsace and Avignon had Parisian refugees until the Revolu-tion. Adrien Baillet, in his Enfants célèbres, writes that in Paris there were Jews still using the Jewish alphabet and that Guillaume obtained an alphabet and learned it by heart, and he then bought himself a grammar book. Baillet adds that he learned Hebrew without anyone’s assistance.25

Jewish Orientalism

Some of the earliest books in oriental languages published in Europe were in He-brew. According to André Thévet’s account, Postel had access to a grammar without having to break the law. Several Hebrew grammars were published in Europe by that date. There were about fi fteen books about the Hebrew language printed before 1530. The fi rst, Rudimeta hebraica, was published in Germany in 1479. Francis Tissard’s Opuscula grammatica hebraica was published in France in 1508. Just as Postel


was studying at Sainte Barbe, there appeared in 1526 another grammar published in Lyon: Paginus’s Instituto hebraica. These books were rare and, it goes without say-ing, very expensive. Hebrew had become a rare language in Paris; so much so that some biographers considered that Postel had received it by an act of divine grace.26

The fuss made about Postel’s access to Hebrew by his biographers might have a simpler answer than divine grace. How could he have convinced a Parisian Jew in hiding, or a New Christian, to put himself in danger and give a perfect stranger an al-phabet? How would a poor student, a domestic servant, have access to priceless books like a grammar? Printing was relatively new and books expensive. It seems safe to speculate that Guillaume Postel had become a protégé of the governor of his collège. According to Thévet, Jacques de Gouvea (a New Christian) took note of Postel’s uncommon gifts, and even took him to Portugal on his next trip to show him off to the Portuguese king, John III. The Portuguese king immediately offered Postel a chair at the University of Coimbre. He was asked to teach there, a well-paid offer. Postel, a domestic servant at Sainte Barbe, refused, saying that he wanted to fi nish his degree and return to France.27 The ties between the student and the New Christian governor must have been strong for them not only to take a trip together, but to return together, despite such a prestigious offer. Jacques de Gouvea’s family had arrived in Paris in 1500—less than a generation before Postel’s acquisition of Hebrew. Con-version to Christianity did not erase knowledge of Hebrew in such a short time. Yet, to expose de Gouvea’s mentorship, albeit for the historical record, was certainly not advisable under the reigning political climate.

We know nothing about Guillaume Postel’s real identity beyond what is recorded in Thévet, which is essentially Postel’s own version. William Bouwsma, his biogra-pher, fi nds a pattern, a slew of biographies so similar to Postel’s that he doubts the authenticity of what little we do have. As Marion Kuntz, who has spent over fi fteen years on Postel, has noticed, there are no names given for anyone in Postel’s past; not a single name for his parents, or for his tutors. He arrived in Paris as an orphan. Who Guillaume Postel truly was remains a mystery. Not one of his biographers, old or new, speculates on this, but he could have just as easily come from abroad. The closest ports to Paris were in Normandy. Postel arrived in Paris claiming an origin from Barenton in Normandy. Because he signed his books “Barontonius,” after the village, or “Doleriensis” after a district within the village of Barenton, it is believed he was born in Normandy. Later, he would sign his books as Guillaume Postel cosmopolite to mark his universal consciousness of the world.28

His excellent command of Spanish, Portuguese, and Hebrew could make perfect sense, and be less miraculous, were he instead a Portuguese Jew in hiding. His secret origins would then justify de Gouvea’s unique mentorship and unusual protection, as well as explain his dysentery in the Paris hospital if he had just come off a ship. This is speculation as there are absolutely no real traces of his true origins, and his biographers doubt the little there is. What is certain is that he undoubtedly was one of the best scholars of the sixteenth century. His ardent feelings for France and


the role of the French nation would argue in favor of his birth in Normandy, as do some of his ideas about the Virgin Mary, as will be discussed further, but nothing is certain about his origins except what he himself wanted posterity to know. Postel constructed his own past, and presented himself as Norman and cosmopolitan.

New Knowledge and Court Sponsorship of Orientalism and Humanism in France

Postel was born during a moment of extraordinary change in European culture. Between 1480 and 1520, a mutation in culture was marked by the advent of printing, the rise of capitalism, the new discoveries of maritime exploration, the transformation of religious aspirations among the elite, and the rise of a secular historical con-sciousness. This new historical consciousness manifested itself outside the scrip-tural tradition of the Church by constructing narratives about national origins. The construction of an imaginary origin for European culture in Greece and Rome, as ar-gued by the humanists, eventually eroded the power of the Church, as did the new intimacy of faith brought by the Reformation that allowed man to directly worship God. Both humanism and the Reformation validated a central role for human obser-vation and for the interpretations of the world by man.29 Much has been written about humanism and the fl ourishing of scholarship at this time; it need not be repeated here. What does need emphasis is the contribution of Orientalism to humanism. Once he completed his degree, Postel became part of a group of sponsored humanist scholars at the court of Francis I, and, after a certain amount of time, Postel became a private tutor in a grandee’s household. Throughout he was protected by the French king and his sister, Marguerite de Navarre. France followed Italy’s example in sponsoring scholars at court; Francis I’s court would be a safe haven for humanists challenging the Church’s monopoly on the production of knowledge in France.

Sixteenth-century France was marked by a diplomatic power struggle between the French monarchy and the pope. The monarchy fought for political prominence in the affairs of France. Once the French monarch won, Pope Julius III wrote bitterly to Francis’s successor, Henri II (1547–1559): “Now at last you are more than the pope in your kingdom.” Henri proved his Catholic fervor and kept the pope’s good graces by persecuting the French Protestants, the Huguenots, massacring them, burning them alive publicly or cutting their tongues out for keeping their faith. He had not won the power struggle with the Vatican over supremacy within the French kingdom alone. A fi rst decisive breach had occurred as early as 1516, when the French king had obtained the prerogative of naming all the holders of offi ces and benefi ts within the kingdom, even the clergy. The French monarchy would reach a zenith in its new autonomy from the pope a century later, in 1614, when during the reign of Louis XIII the French king was declared sacred and he had no one but himself to answer to. Louis XIV would be remembered as a monarch who succeeded in imposing absolutism and


imposing royal power on all spheres, but the roots of French absolutism started with Francis I. Appointing offi cers, both lay and ecclesiastic, was one battle; the other was the control of intellectual production. Postel and early Orientalism played a major role in establishing the preeminence of the king of France in a long struggle between the French court and the French Church; a power struggle that entailed having con-trol over both the production of new knowledge and its censorship.

In this struggle between Church-controlled knowledge and court-sponsored hu-manism, Orientalism played a fundamental, but hitherto unnoticed, role, in favor of tipping the balance toward the French court and secular knowledge. Orientalism and humanism were court-sponsored. Initially Orientalism was to serve a religious purpose, as Greek and Hebrew were at fi rst needed to study the Bible in its original languages. Early Orientalism was initially simply philology, the study of language. The study of Greek was most common, as it was often combined with mathematics and philosophy. The humanists sponsored at Francis’s court were also the print-ers of Greek and Hebrew books and of their translations into French. Essentially considered a literary movement in previous studies, the importance of Orientalism to the development of early science should be recognized.30 The study of early sci-ence and humanism did not happen without friction between the Church and the Sorbonne, but in France it would have never happened without Francis I’s court sponsorship.

For centuries, intellectual production was the domain of the learned doctors of the Sorbonne. Censorship was formally supposed to function in the following way: initially the professors of the Sorbonne denounced a text, the Parliament of Paris passed judgment, and the king had the last call to censor or privilege. Consequently, if you were a humanist at court, you were protected from the Sorbonne’s censorship. If the king commissioned your work you were automatically under royal privilege and therefore theoretically safe. In practice, however, as the competition between the pope and the French king advanced, censorship became much more complicated.31 The mechanisms put in place under Francis I would be the same under Louis XIV, but the power relationship between king and Church would be radically different, with the king having gained supremacy. Translation and Orientalism would play a major role in the struggle over censorship and in establishing the monarchy’s role as primordial in the mechanisms of censorship.

Under the reign of Francis I, the Sorbonne had gone through several crises. First came chaining the books of William of Ockam and other nominalists, a procedure routinely followed at the time so the books could no longer be opened and taken from the shelf to be read. In the process of condemning Ockam, scholasticism and its use of Aristotle was imposed as a doctrine. The doctors of the Sorbonne (or at least a faction of them) struggled hard to impose Aristotle, but only to reverse this in 1481 when another faction supporting nominalism won the upper hand. The Sorbonne, therefore, was not the bastion of scholasticism it is often said to have been; rather, it was deeply divided. Scholasticism was not an established dogma.


The quarrels within the Sorbonne were intense. The political purges it lived through over scholasticism, which was a very old debate, called for the Parliament of Paris to intervene within the university for the fi rst time. In many ways the interventions undermined the university’s authority. At the height of this quarrel, when the Parlia-ment of Paris interfered, it did so by modifying the university’s inner bylaws, sud-denly giving the Parliament of Paris and the city authority. The court, the Church, and the university were already tied in a struggle, and they now had the Parliament of Paris as a rival for control of intellectual production.

At this juncture it also became evident that French foreign policy would play a role in this domestic battle. When the conditions of the peace signed by the French king at Bologna in 1518 were highly protested by both the Parliament of Paris and the Sorbonne, rising royal authority came under fi re. This led to strikes. At the end of the ensuing debate, both the Parliament of Paris and the Sorbonne lost the power struggle and had to give in to the king’s authority. This episode marked the beginning of successful absolutist political aspirations for the French monarchy, and the power to exercise royal censorship over knowledge, a privilege that was previously the privileged domain of the doctors of the Sorbonne.32 Orientalism, the study of the lan-guages and cultures of the Orient, was new to France, and this new knowledge was now protected under royal sponsorship. As will be demonstrated later, once censor-ship became a royal privilege under Francis I, nothing would impinge the progress of humanism and Orientalism. Because of Orientalism, Latin, the language of the theologians of the Sorbonne, ceased to be the only language taught in Paris. Ori-entalism became a branch of learning that would grow in importance as Greek and Hebrew (and later Arabic) were offered on the king’s orders, but most importantly, the era that brought teaching of oriental languages to France also opened the door to the usage of French, a cause the monarchy championed by imposing it as a national language. French was declared a national language at precisely the same time as ori-ental languages started being taught in Paris. Both were royal initiatives.

The Translation of the Bible into French and the Birth of Censorship

As the battle for controlling knowledge continued, the granting of permissions to go to print became the central issue. The “privilege” that a book had to obtain before it was allowed publication in France had appeared as a novel practice in 1480 by royal initiative. At the Vatican, a constitution dated June 1, 1501 called for the censorship of works that might corrupt the Catholic faith or create scandal. This papal initiative sought to supersede royal privilege. It was instituted by the infamous Alexander Bor-gia, a pope less remembered for his attempts to prevent seditious books from being circulated than for his own scandalous life.33 It was the translation of the Bible that started the mechanisms of censorship in France. The translations of the Bible into the


French language caused much more unease than Luther’s writings did, which were, at fi rst, even well-accepted by the Sorbonne before being banned. After the papal bull of June 15, 1520 that condemned Luther, it took months for the Sorbonne to ban his writings in April of 1521.34 The Latin Vulgate remained the only acceptable version of the Bible, and other translations were censored as interpretations contrary to those accepted by the Church. Fighting against translations in the vernacular and fi ghting the Reformation became the same cause.

Postel’s work was caught in the battle against the theologians that stood against translations, and Postel himself came under fi re. After 1547, Postel reinterpreted what being a true Christian meant, and because of his problems with the Sorbonne he took his new work on Christianity, unity, and world peace elsewhere; his De Orbie terrae concordia was never published in Paris. His quest for a new religious truth went back to Christianity’s origins, away from the “corruption” of the Catholic Church. This quest was to mark French Orientalism for centuries. The hope to reach the origins of Christianity is present in the writings of Huguenot orientalists as late as the eighteenth century. It became a Protestant agenda very early in the Reforma-tion to seek true Christianity at its source, away from Rome and the pope, in the distant Orient of its origins. Postel took his work to be printed outside of Catholic France. De Orbie terrae concordia was published by Postel’s friend, the Protestant Johannes Oporinus (1507–1568) in Basel in 1544.35 He had many friends among the printers and geographers of his time, many of whom were of the reformed religion. The participation of French Protestants in the development of Orientalism as a disci-pline is extremely important as a consequence of this religious quest. Despite close ties to the Basel group, Postel was not an admirer of Protestantism; he was adamant that clear parallels existed between Protestantism and Islam and had published an attack against both religions in Paris entitled Alcorani seu legis Mahometi et Evan-gelistarum concordiae liber to point to the many common elements of Islam and the reformed religion of Calvin and Luther. Yet, later in life Postel would join the Family of Love, a group of Flemish Protestants that contributed later to the birth of Quaker-ism. They advocated views much like his own.36

Translation, therefore Orientalism and Protestantism, were the twin pillars of a new intellectual tradition against which the pope and theologians affi liated to Rome enforced papal censorship in Catholic Europe. It was not only Luther’s transla-tion into German that had made all translation unacceptable. The new concept of prohibited books was only formally inaugurated by the papacy in the latter part of Guillaume Postel’s lifetime. Yet the pope had recommended the burning of sedi-tious books as early as 1501, as well as excommunication and severe punishment for the publishers of unacceptable books. However, nothing was enforced until many decades later. The rise of Protestantism changed the Vatican’s lax attitude toward books. The popularity of Luther’s writing led to the creation of the fi rst catalog of banned books after 1522: the Index. A fi rst formal version of the Index appeared in 1557–1559, to be fi nally offi cially published after the Council of Trent on March 24,


1564.37 It would not cease to torment those striving for new knowledge and hoping for translations. Translations of the Bible into langues orientales were key in this search for new religious knowledge.

Perhaps the harshest blow to the Sorbonne was not, as has traditionally been argued, the binary opposition of court-sponsored humanism to Church-sponsored scholasticism, but rather court-sponsored Orientalism, as it permitted translations of the Holy Scripture. The papacy did not accept this radical departure from the Latin Vulgate. When Francis I instituted chairs at the royal collège in Paris in 1530, he founded the Collège des trois langues, which was devoted to teaching oriental languages. Later, after the Revolution, the Collège des trois langues became the Collège de France. Its origins were modest; the royal professors, lisans du Roi, did not even have a building, and they barely had funding or salaries. Yet, the institu-tion of royal professors to teach oriental languages, a move recommended to King Francis I by the famous humanist Guillaume Budé, was one of the most remarkable episodes of France’s intellectual history. This episode deserves more attention than it has received.38 It would be instrumental later for the introduction of the teaching of sciences and would bring an unprecedented innovation: instruction in the French language. This was not encouraged by Rome, quite the contrary. Not until the papacy created the Propaganda Fide in 1622, nearly a century later, would the Vatican di-rectly allow the teaching of oriental languages, even for the propagation of the faith. In 1530, Francis chose two “royal readers,” lisans du roi, to devote their lives to the study and teaching of Hebrew and two others to the public teaching of Greek.

The royal professors, who were to be paid by the king, offered public courses, which were held outdoors at no fee to the students. Both the teaching of Greek and Hebrew were feared by the theologians of the Sorbonne, who hoped to keep scho-lasticism a dogma. Their elitist view of knowledge and the exclusive use of Latin and the Vulgate was being challenged by the orientalists teaching in the street a stone’s throw away from the Sorbonne. In the same year that oriental languages were taught for the fi rst time in 1530, Francis I declared French the national language of his kingdom, further challenging the Church’s control and the university’s monopoly on the production of knowledge in France.

The Chairs for Oriental Language

As a result of his trip to the Ottoman empire, Guillaume Postel was the only scholar in France that Francis could rely on to teach Arabic in the sixteenth century. Francis’s court had a tradition of attracting foreign scholars, and once again, he would call on foreigners to occupy the new chairs he created in 1530. Hebrew was taught by Paul Paradis, a converted Jew from Venice, and another chair was also given to a foreigner, Agathius Guidacerius from Calabria. Except for Postel, only a few of the lisants du roi were French, including Francis Vatable. Paul Danes held a chair in


Greek and befriended Guillaume Postel. Postel held the title of Mathematicorum et peregrinorum linguarum regis interpres lisan du Roy en l’Université de Paris. His chair was in Greek, Arabic, and mathematics.39 Since medieval times, Arabic and mathematics were tied together, because reading Arabic was indispensable to the new mathematics and astronomy that interested the humanists. Postel also brought some new knowledge in mathematics to France, but he fi rst worked on trying to fi nd the language of origin. After Postel’s fi rst trip to the Ottoman empire in 1536 and his subsequent acquisition of Arabic, Francis later named Postel holder of a chair in les langues orientales in 1539.

Soon after his appointment, Postel classifi ed languages in his work on the twelve alphabets, Linguaram duodecim characteribus differentium alphabetum.40 He dis-tinguished three languages of scholarship—Latin, Greek, and Hebrew—from nine foreign languages that he classifi ed as les langues étrangères. The most familiar of these foreign languages to us are Arabic, Armenian, and Georgian. Languages using the Arabic alphabet, such as Turkish and Persian, were not mentioned and fell under Arabic in his system, because his classifi cation was based on alphabet alone.41 This started an orientalist tradition that was still practiced in the eighteenth century; Postel’s comparative methods continued beyond the alphabet and continue to this date. This work alone defi nes Postel as the father of the science of comparative phi-lology.42 Philology became the backbone of departments in oriental languages in universities worldwide well into the twentieth century.

What was later to become the Collège de France was an institution independent of the Sorbonne and its theologians. The royal lisans holding the chairs were also pro-ponents of the use of the French language in intellectual exchanges and philosophy, a project dear to king Francis’s aims, but in direct competition with the elitist use of Latin imposed by the Sorbonne. In reaction to this new scholarship, a new edict giving the theologians of the Sorbonne wide powers of censorship over all scholar-ship was enacted in 1542. The new Collège des trois langues grew until mid-century; between its inception and 1541, Francis made sixteen appointments. Even after the Sorbonne reacted with its censorship edict of 1542, between 1541 and 1551 the king made seven more appointments, but many of these nominations were fl eeting ones.43 Thanks to the edict of 1542 the royal readers, the lisans, were constantly harassed. They were often accused of heresy and of Lutheranism, while the lisans and their defenders, steeped in Greek thought, characterized the Sorbonne theologians and scholasticism as the realm of the barbarians.44

Despite some fl eeting appointments at the onset, the Collège des trois langues and its royal professors in oriental languages would not be a fl eeting institution. Two and a half centuries later at the onset of the French Revolution in 1789 the Collège royal, soon to be called the Collège de France, had one inspector and nineteen professors. In 1789 ten of the nineteen professors were devoted to the humanities. There was one professor in Hebrew and Syriac, one in Turkish and Persian, two in Greek, one in Latin eloquence, one in Latin poetry, one in common law, one in natural law, and


one in history and morality. Nine professors were teaching the sciences: geometry, astronomy, anatomy, chemistry, natural history, and experimental physics, and two taught courses in general physics. Chemistry was the newest science introduced to the curriculum, these new courses were not on the Sorbonne’s curriculum. From its inception in 1530, the Collège des trois langues or Collège royal had all the pro-fessors teach in French, so even later, every subject, both in the sciences and hu-manities, was offered in French.45 The inception of the royal professors in oriental languages marked a turning point for French as an acceptable medium for scientifi c writing and teaching.

Although earlier, Charles VIII (1470–1498) had ordered a French translation of the Bible by his confessor, Jean de Rély, bishop of Angers, and it had known several editions since, the French language was still not a language of learning before Francis’s reign. Texts produced in the vernacular were sponsored by King Francis over Latin. Many famous literary texts in the French language were pro-duced by humanists under Francis’s reign, most famously by François Rabelais (1494?–1553). Under the now famous pseudonym of Alcofribas Nasier, the fi rst of the Gargantua series, Rabelais’s Pantagruel was published in 1532 and had a devoted readership despite its ban. All three of Rabelais’s fi rst books were con-demned by the Sorbonne. It is around this tense time, in 1530, that France had chairs in Hebrew, Greek, and Chaldean, the latter an additional language that the council of Vienna had settled upon much earlier. In 1539 Francis added the chair in Arabic that Postel occupied. These innovations were dear to Francis and his sister Marguerite de Navarre, both for the sake of the new knowledge and for establish-ing political control. Interest in oriental languages and translation, however, was not novel; France had a tradition of translation from the Arabic dating back to the fi rst crusade. Other initiatives to teach oriental languages had very different aims from the domestic politics pursued by Francis.

Oriental Languages in France from the Twelfth to the Sixteenth Century

There had been a tradition of studying oriental languages in Paris, but it had been forgotten. Since the early days of the Arab invasion in the eighth century, stopped in Poitiers by Charles Martel, the Catholic Church in France had taken a keen interest in condemning Islam as a heresy, and therefore in learning the languages necessary to combat its advance into Europe. The Orthodox Greeks were at the forefront of this movement, and they were to remain an inspiration for early Orientalism in France. The earliest text condemning Islam as a heresy was writ-ten by Saint John of Damascus (late seventh century to 749). He was a doctor of the Greek Orthodox Church, whose De heresibus liber condemned Islam as a major heresy, a position that was later adopted by the Council of Nicea in 787.


His work had immense impact in conjunction with another text written by a Byz-antine chronicler who also condemned the new religion: Theophanes the Confes-sor (758–818). His chronicle entitled Chronographia was transmitted to Rome by a Greek librarian by the name of Anastasius. During this same period, Niketas Byzantios wrote Confutatio Alcorani, and as the title indicates, this was a refuta-tion of the Qu’ran. Saint Eulogius of Córdoba (810–859) was also instrumental in condemning Islam by propagating the idea of martyrdom in combating it. To read Greek was essential.

None of the texts condemning Islam as a heresy emanated from Rome in this early period.46 Greek became important, but the study of Persian, used in the Mon-gol empire, Turkish, and Arabic, were all considered important, although only since the end of the thirteenth century. The fi rst language to attract attention was Arabic. The fi rst initiative to teach oriental languages was a sporadic and short-lived order from the Vatican. The aim was to free Christian captives. The Dominicans took the fi rst initiative in the study of language and created a fi rst school for languages, the Studia Linguarum. It was inaugurated in North Africa in the city of Tunis by Raymond Penaforte, a monk who participated in paying ransoms for the Christian captives held on the North African coast. Like the Protestant participation in Oriental-ism, the fate of the French and Spanish captives played a direct role in shaping Ori-entalism, as the creation of this Dominican school for interpreters indicates. A papal order urged the Spanish Dominicans to open language schools, but only a few were opened in Murcia, Barcelona, Valencia, and Jativa. They all closed, but Raymond Lulle (1232?–1316) soon published his famous Tractatus de modo converti infi deles, where he advocated the creation of centers for the study of oriental languages in order to conquer the heresy of Islam and convert Muslims.47 Decades later, in 1311, the decision was made at the Council of Vienna to create centers for oriental languages in Paris, Bologna, Oxford, Salamanca, and Rome. The avowed aim of the language instruction was to educate monks to be able to refute the doctrines of the heresy of Islam in appropriate languages spoken by Muslims.48

A translated text was available as a main source for the doctrines of this heresy to most scholars by the twelfth century. This text was the fi rst European translation of the Qu’ran. Often referred to as Corpus Toledo or corpus toletanum, early transla-tions from the Arabic were from the corpus of Islamic texts held in Toledo, many of them scientifi c, but among them was a Qu’ran. The materials for translation were assembled by the famous Abbot of Cluny, Peter the Venerable (1109–1156), whose spiritual, intellectual, and fi nancial reforms restored Cluny to the highest status among the religious establishments of Europe. Peter the Venerable traveled to Spain from Cluny to look for scholars capable of translating the Qu’ran, as he himself did not know any Arabic. A twelfth-century compendium made under his direction was established as an authority for Islamic doctrines and beliefs for centuries to come. The compendium, a loose translation of the Qu’ran in over a hundred folios, became a reference text for anything having to do with Islam in France. It remained so even


as late as the eighteenth century. Mention of the ascendance of Cluny points to the Crusades.

It is crucial to stress that Peter the Venerable’s translation and the call for cru-sades, even if they were contemporaneous and both located at Cluny, did not ema-nate from one voice. In fact, they were the product of two opposing views about Islam and about intellectual life in France. Peter’s claim to posthumous honor lies in a fi rst translation of the Qu’ran into Latin and in his generous treatment of Abelard, and not in the Crusades. He received the humiliated Abelard kindly after his public defeat in a debate over the use of reason in religion by their common enemy, the zealous Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153). After the pope condemned Abelard’s inclinations for the use of rationalism and reason, Abelard was almost universally shunned for his ideas. Peter cared for him until the day he died, and delivered Abelard’s body to Heloise.49 Peter the Venerable himself had also been attacked by the fanatic Bernard of Clairvaux for allegedly allowing laxity in the Benedictine order. Peter shared Abelard’s love of learning and his aims for Cluny were schol-arly, not belligerent, but that is not how the powerful center of Cluny would come to be remembered by history.

The chief call for a second crusade was made at Cluny. The call for battle against Islam did not come from Peter, who had made Cluny the religious center of Europe, but from none other than his own enemy, Bernard of Clairvaux. Bernard was famous for his sermons, yet this call to battle for the crusade would later be remembered for its false accusations against the “infi dels” rather than for its eloquence.50 The papal bull for the Second Crusade was issued December 1, 1095. The French king Louis VII was not committed to starting the fi ght; he only spoke in favor of a cru-sade without actually preaching for it. Because of the French king’s lack of enthusi-asm, the pope referred the matter to the fanatical Bernard of Clairvaux. In contrast to Bernard’s bellicose voice, Peter was interested in Islam as a humanist and for the sake of scientifi c knowledge. The translation of the Qu’ran at Cluny occurred simultaneously under Peter’s directorship just as his enemy Bernard was calling for a crusade. That it was simultaneous does not mean it was politically related. The Corpus Toledo was not, as it has been argued, a case of “know thine enemy.” Rather, Peter and Bernard of Clairvaux were arch enemies and represented two sharply dif-ferent approaches to Islam that coexisted in the same period of time. The king’s luke-warm attitude was yet a third political view. There was a diversity of positions about Islam within France that was erased in the wake of the memory of the crusades.

Peter wrote a Refutation of the Sect or Heresy of the Saracens in which he argued that Islam was a heresy of Christianity, a position later echoed by Postel.51 Peter the Venerable did not work alone on this translation of the Qu’ran; he had several collab-orators in the translations of the Corpus Toledo, among them a sarrasin, as the Arabs were called during the crusading period. Traces of the many native informants that shaped European Orientalism are rare, and facts about them even rarer; the sarrasin is only identifi ed by his fi rst name, Muhammad.52 Two other collaborators are far


better known. Herman the Dalmatian (c.1100–1160) was a member of a small elite circle of occidental scholars who explored Arab libraries and could read texts in Ara-bic and extract literary and scientifi c data. He translated over twenty Arabic works, mainly astronomical, into Latin, including A General Introduction to Astronomy by Abu Ma’shar, Euclid’s Elements, and Ptolemy’s The Planisphere. Herman himself authored several scientifi c works, including On Substances, On Precipitates, and On the Astrolabe. As Peter’s chief collaborator, Herman the Dalmatian’s interest in natu-ral philosophy was stimulated by his close friendship with the Englishman Robert of Ketton (c. 1100–c. 1160), the archdeacon of Pampelona, an expert in Arabic. Once it was fi nished, Robert of Ketton’s translation for Cluny became the most impor-tant text on Islam in Europe. It was called Lex Mahumet pseudoprophete [Law of Muhammad the pseudo-prophet] and it was the fi rst translation of the Qur’an into Latin that would have long-standing consequences on future writings about Islam in France and elsewhere in Europe.

We know very little about Robert of Ketton except that he was an Englishman recruited in Spain by Peter the Venerable for the task of translating at Cluny. Robert of Ketton had acquired his Arabic by traveling, as did most, if not all, orientalists. An anonymous English chronicler described the goal of Herman the Dalmation’s and Robert of Ketton’s journey to the Orient as a quest for the sciences and knowledge via the acquisition of the Arabic language. By translating Abu Ma’shar’s General Intro-duction to Astronomy in 1140, Herman the Dalmatian served as a direct conduit for the introduction of Aristotle into Western Christian thought. Right up to the sixteenth century, the only version of Ptolemy’s Planisphere available in Europe was Herman the Dalmatian’s 1143 translation from the Arabic. The aim was to facilitate a better understanding and exchange between Christian and Muslim scholars to enhance the transmission of scientifi c knowledge. These aims were germane to Peter’s love of the humanities at Cluny. They stood in contrast to those of the Dominicans, who started language schools with the aim of taming a heresy, freeing captives from the Mus-lim captors, and converting Muslims to Christianity.53 Nevertheless, the Dominicans were both innovative and unique in the teaching of the liberal arts; some went as far as teaching logic and Aristotle.54 There was a close relationship between oriental languages and the transmission of new knowledge.

The translations of the Corpus Toledo would have an impact not only in France, but beyond. It was the fi rst time that the Qu’ran became accessible to Europe. This Latin translation was not a close translation; it transformed the original 114 surats into 124 azoara. Robert of Ketton had not done a literal translation; he broke down the long suras to make them more intelligible to the reader. Latin is ill-adapted to the style used in the Qu’ran, but this was further aggravated by all kinds of literary allusions and metaphors that were diligently added on by the translators. Despite its fl aws, it was to be regarded as the defi nitive reference text, even after a better translation by Mark of Toledo (1193–1216) came out in the thirteenth century.55 This second, much supe-rior translation did not fi nd an echo among scholars, perhaps because Cluny’s great


power as a religious institution helped promote their own translation. This fi rst Cluny version of the Qu’ran remained better known by theologians, and it was the version adopted by scholars; when print became available centuries later it was Peter the Venerable’s Latin Qu’ran that came into print and not Mark of Toledo’s. When it was printed it was further transformed.

The Cluny translation was the one printed in Basel in 1543 by the reformed printer Theodore Bibliander after some severe modifi cations that deformed it even further from the original Arabic. Its title speaks for itself. In translation it read: The Life of Mahomet, prince of the Sarrasins, and his complete doctrine, that is called the Ismaelite law and also Alcoran, translated from the Arabic into Latin 400 years ago and only now reedited and published under the authority of some of the most learned and pious doctors of our true religion, for the glory of Jesus-Christ our Lord and for the exaltation of the Christian faith …56 The famous Protestant scholar Mel-anchton (1497–1560) wrote the introduction to this edition celebrating the virtues of knowledge and affi rming his hope to rationalize the false legends about Mohammad that were rampant throughout Europe. This new printed version of the Qu’ran co-incided with the early Protestant movement toward a better knowledge of Islam. Melanchton was a famous orientalist who held the chair in Greek and Hebrew in Wittenberg.57 His interest in the Qu’ran was not surprising, as he also translated the Bible in 1522 in search of new religious knowledge. Melanchton was also collabo-rating with the main sponsor behind this new printing: Martin Luther had instigated and supported the publication of this new version of the Qu’ran by Bibliander.58

Luther and a Protestant Translation of the Qu’ran

Martin Luther wrote the preface to the new printed Qu’ran that appeared in Basel in 1543. He had several writings on the Turks before this last piece written in 1543. In Luther’s view the Turks were for Europe what the Babylonians had been for Israel: the punishment of God. Even before the conquest of Hungary by Sultan Süleyman at the battle Mohacs in 1526, and the unsuccessful siege of Vienna in 1529, Luther had become the target of many accusations in Europe. His opponents had accused him of having created a reluctance among Lutherans to fi ght the invading Turks. To counter this, Luther wrote On War Against the Turk (1529) to show that one could fi ght the Turks with a clear conscience as a Lutheran. In light of the siege of Vienna, he wrote a Sermon against the Turks (1529). A decade later he published Appeal for Prayer Against the Turks (1541) after the Sultan’s conquest of Hungary and the threat to Turkish Germany became clear. As the threat to Germany came closer, Luther even translated a medieval tract against Islam into German, Refutation of the Alcoran of brother Richars, Preaching order (1542), in order to spread awareness of the threat of the spread Islam in Europe. Luther’s writings on the Turks are not well known and have only recently been translated into English.59


The Turks were the rod of God’s punishment, to discipline and teach the fear of God. Consistent with such a view, Luther urged more knowledge about the cus-toms of “Muhammadanism.” According to Sarah Heinrich and James Boyce, Luther expressed great delight when he fi nally got his hands on a Latin translation of the Qu’ran, which he could read fi rst-hand. Luther exercised his considerable infl uence in 1542 when the Council at Basel banned the fi rst printing of the Cluny version of the Qu’ran in Latin, which was to be released by the print shop of Oporinus, a famous Protestant printer who had also published Postel. The ban was lifted by the council, provided that the printing be given to Theodore Bibliander and that it would include a preface by both Luther and Melanchton. It could also not be distributed locally.60 The preface by Luther begins:

Grace and peace in Christ, I gladly accepted this little book on the religion and customs of the Turks when it was offered to me. Now I have decided to publish it, not without good reason it seems to me. Although I have desired for some time to learn about the religion and customs of the Muhammadans, nothing has been available to me except a certain Refutation of the Alcoran and the Critique of the Alcoran by Nicholas de Cusa; I have tried in vain to read the Qu’ran itself. The authors of the Refutation and the Critique seem to have intended through pious examination to frighten sincere Christians away from Muhammadanism and hold them secure in their faith in Christ. Still while they ea-gerly take pains to excerpt from the Qu’ran all the most base and absurd things to arouse hatred and can move people to ill will, at the same time they pass over without rebuttal or cover over the good things that it contains. The result is that they have achieved too little credibility or authority, as it were cheapening their work, either because of hatred of the Turks or because of their own lack of powers of refutation.61

Luther’s support for this edition of the Qu’ran is perhaps the earliest example of what was later to be termed “Turco-Calvinism” by Catholics. Luther on the other hand amalgamated papist Catholics and Turks: “So now be off with you tyrants and pon-tiffs, and for the sake of faith in Christ—for the sake of your ceremonies—kill, burn, suffocate, proscribe, and rage in full force, since you see that the splendor of your cer-emonies is no splendor at all along side the excellent splendor of the Turks …” Despite Luther’s pretense to being just when examining Islam, his tone changes substantially as the preface progresses. Luther’s vociferous attacks against the Jews are common knowledge and need no repeating, but it is worth noting that they occupy most of the beginning of the preface and that Jews, papists, and Muhammedans are seen as one:

Therefore, as I have written against the idols of the Jews and the papists and will continue to do so to the extent that is granted to me, so also I have begun to refute the pernicious beliefs of Muhammad … Accordingly I have wanted to get a look at a complete text of the Qu’ran. I do not doubt that the more of the pious and learned persons read these writings, the more the errors and the name of Muhhamed will be refuted. For just as the folly, or rather the madness, of the Jews is more easily observed once their hidden secrets


have been brought to the open, so once the book of Muhammad has been made public and thoroughly examined in all its parts, all pious persons will more easily comprehend the insanity and wiles of the devil and will more easily refute them.62

John Calvin’s views were not very different from Luther’s; Calvin regarded Moham-mad as a false prophet and wrote several passages amalgamating Jews, pagans, pa-pists, and the Turks, as he called Muslims, together as people who “blaspheme with open mouth.”63 In turn, Turco-Calvinism was a Catholic accusation, a false amalgama-tion of the interests of Protestants of Europe with the Muslim enemy that was current in Calvin and Luther’s lifetime. The assertion that the Protestants were not fi ghting the Turks was a prime accusation. Some elements of Turco-Calvinism reached their height in France after the evocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685 by the “Roy Tres-Chrétien,” Louis XIV. The revocation took freedom of religion from Protestants in France. In its wake and even before it, Louis sent members of both groups to the royal galleys—Muslim Turks as captives of war and Protestant Frenchmen as religious prisoners. They were chained together until they converted to Catholicism or died.

The early interest that Protestants had expressed in Islam and the Orient helped shape later accusations of their sympathy for it. Despite Luther equating Turks with the devil in his preface, what was remembered was Luther’s sponsorship of the print-ing of the Qu’ran. In the English struggle against Catholicism, many Protestants wrote favorably about Islam’s tolerance.64 Yet, as is clear from the passages quoted earlier, early Protestant views of Islam certainly did not all justify accusations of sympathy for Islam’s tolerance or superiority. For example, Melanchton’s efforts to remain rational while studying Islam fell short. Even his Catholic audience of cen-sors could not have expected more empathetic statements, as in his preface he wrote: “If you want to know who Mahomet is, the greatest precursor of the anti-Christ, the favorite disciple of the devil, read this prologue carefully …” There had been a zeal to translate in order to refute Islam and the encouragement had come from Martin Luther himself.65

It was this Protestant edition of the Qu’ran that became familiar to Guillaume Postel. It was printed merely four years after Postel received his chair in oriental lan-guages. Postel does not stand alone in his mind; Islam was a form of Christian heresy and had to be “brought back” to unity with Christianity. As we will see in the next chapter, his travel account about the Ottoman empire opens with a call to be just and not cover the virtues of the Turks that eerily resembles Martin Luther’s beginning of the preface to the Qu’ran.

Before Babel: The Quest for the Original Language

A special place belongs to Postel for his revival of Hebrew studies. The search for the original language or the perfect language, however, was not new. Pico


Mirandola’s (1463–1494) ideas on language and religion might well have in-fl uenced Postel’s view of the world. The unity of Christianity and Islam echoed Mirandola’s studies of the Hebrew language, which led to his belief in the unity of God as demonstrated by the sacred name of God in Hebrew; Yahweh turned into the name of Jesus with just the simple addition of the letter sin. Postel adopted Mirandola’s ideas on syncretism, as well as his beliefs in the power of the Hebrew language, not only as the language of Adam and as the original language, but as a language endowed with magic. Mirandola believed that words in Hebrew appeared as forces of sounds, which as soon as they were unleashed, infl uenced the course of world events.66 In his De originibus seu de Hebraicae linguae et gentis antiquitate (1538) he argued that from this fi rst language of Noah all the other languages de-scended; Arabic, Chaldean, Hindi, and indirectly, Greek. He argued for the return to Hebrew as the instrument of a peaceable fusion of all peoples. There was one God, one world, and there should be one language. He clearly states in his De orbis terrae Concordia (1544) that his language studies would help lay the foundation on which universal concord would be created.67 When Postel translated the Lord’s Prayer into many different languages, such as Arabic and Armenian, he had a spe-cifi c quest in mind: he was looking for the original language before Babel. While he proclaimed his own addiction to Greek and Roman letters, he believed that Hebrew was the parent of all languages.

His enthusiasm for Hebrew, Syriac, and Arabic, coupled with his following of a female mystic in Venice, made Postel the Inquisition’s target with accusations of heresy. To his critics, he replied that language was God’s gift to Adam and that he was studying divine languages, an argument acceptable to the Catholic Church, as it had sided with Augustine’s conviction that Adam and Eve spoke Hebrew in Para-dise.68 Postel wrote on the origins of languages and peoples, equating them.69 This view equating languages with peoples remained a tradition for centuries. It was not until 1866 that Max Müller pointed out in his lecture, Lectures of the Science of Languages, that confusing the history of languages with the history of races falsifi ed things. It was an erroneous misinterpretation of passages in the Bible.70

The quest for the world’s original language was to have other proponents in the next century. Postel’s vision of linguistic unity for a humanitarian cause—world peace—was to capture Leibniz’s imagination, and he was much infl uenced by Pos-tel’s longing for order and syncretism. Leibniz was also set on a “global religious organization”; in his Dissertaton sur l’origine des langues (1710) he called for the principles of science to be applied to linguistics. He gathered information about the languages of the world though reading missionary reports and travel accounts. As early as 1670, he took a stance against Postel’s belief that Hebrew had been the fi rst established universal idiom and instead favored German or Teutonic, a language he himself wrote, but in which he refrained from publishing.71 This model would have many other proponents. Many thinkers chose their own language; Flemish and Chinese have also been proposed as the original language. Collecting books


and languages from the “old world” and pilgrimage were seen as the twin roads to wisdom and secret knowledge.

Postel also took this path; he was not chosen to be among the royal professors for his knowledge of Hebrew acquired in Paris, but gained a chair in languages only after he returned from extensive travel in the Ottoman empire. He dedicated his new work to the king’s sister, Marguerite de Navarre, a scholar and a poet herself.72 Postel was sent with the fi rst formal French embassy on her recommendation, and on the recommendation of the famous Hellenist scholar, Francis Budé. Yet, Postel was not sent to the Ottoman empire as a scholar. The formal reason for his trip was entirely a commercial one. He was sent to settle the estate of a French merchant. Just as Ori-entalism shifted from a Church-sponsored branch of knowledge to a court-sponsored one under Francis I, Orientalism in France became fi rmly tied to trade and the com-mercial ambitions of France in the Ottoman markets. Collecting and acquiring ob-jects, books, and goods became a central preoccupation, and the fi rst embassies sent to the Ottoman sultans were sent to establish trading privileges. Postel became part of the suite of the fi rst French ambassador to Istanbul.

– 37 –

–2–

The Ambassadors

L’histoire est le mirroir de la vie humaine. [History is the mirror of human life.]

—Guillaume Postel in the preface of De la Republique des Turcs, Poitiers, 1559

The Secret Letter to the Ottoman Sultan

Once the unusual talent of the orphan from Normandy attracted the attention of the king of France, Guillaume Postel was sponsored to travel with the fi rst French embassy of 1536 to the Ottomans. France’s fi rst diplomatic contact with a Muslim potentate after the Crusades was codifi ed by a treaty between Francis I and Süley-man the Magnifi cent, the most renowned of all the sultans of the Ottoman empire. To the horror of all Catholic Europe, and despite papal bans on trade and contact with the “infi del,” the Ottomans became the allies of the French king. Many ties existed before the treaty of 1535. At fi rst, the contacts were informal and secret. In 1526 Louise de Savoie, Francis I’s mother, sent a letter to the Ottoman sultan asking for help. Her son was a prisoner of Charles V in Spain. The two monarchs were tied in a struggle for supremacy over Europe and title of emperor. The French king had attempted to become the Holy Roman Emperor but had lost the battle. To Francis’s frustration, the Hapsburg Charles V became emperor of Europe. Now, as Francis sat imprisoned with his two young sons in a tower in Madrid, his mother made the sul-tan the arbiter of European affairs by asking for Ottoman support against Charles V. This secret attempt to topple Charles V as emperor of Europe marks the beginning of France’s long relationship with the Ottomans.

Sultan Suleiman responded to the secret letter. His response remains in the archives of the Bibliothèque Nationale, and it diplomatically states: “It is not un-usual for Emperors to be defeated and imprisoned, do not lose your courage.”1 This form of long-distance recognition from the powerful Sultan notwithstanding, a de-cade later Francis was still not the Holy Roman Emperor of Europe. Yet indirectly, he had accomplished a smaller feat by being granted commercial capitulations by the Ottomans. France prepared her fi rst formal embassy to the most powerful em-pire in the world in order to mark this new privilege. France was granted a formal presence in the capital even before Venice. The previous French embassy, if it can


be called an embassy, had been a secret one. It bordered on the ridiculous. A Croat gentleman by the name of Jean Frangipani carried the French king’s mother’s letter for help, hidden in his boots, all the way to Istanbul.2 The secret letter inaugurated Turkish correspondence with a European monarch and opened the door to several centuries of trade.3 French trade in the Levant marks the birth of court-sponsored Orientalism in France, and the fi rst orientalist to be sponsored by the French court was Guillaume Postel.

The Contacts before the First French Embassy to the Ottomans

The fi rst French embassy of 1535 was preceded by many contacts that consoli-dated the tie created by Francis’s mother’s letter to Süleyman, or she would never have thought of attempting it. Ottoman power was well known in France. In 1533, the small town of Puy-en-Velay witnessed the arrival of an Ottoman messenger. He was sent by the ruler of Algiers: Khair-ed-Din, called Barberousse by the French. Barberousse was seen as the leader of the corsairs, and was responsible for the cap-tivity of many Christian captives. There were a good number of French captives, as the Catholics were a favorite target of piracy. Barberousse was a privateer of Greek origin who had taken the name Khair-ed-Din upon his conversion to Islam. He was a protégé of the Ottomans and he was also the admiral of Sultan Süleyman’s navy. France was not important enough for the ruler of Algiers to come onto French soil. In 1533 Khair-ed-Din’s messenger brought an African lion and a group of French cap-tives in chains to Puy-en-Velay. After this spectacular display of power, he offered the liberation of the animal as well as of the prisoners from their chains. This was a gesture of goodwill from Khair-ed-Din to the king of France.

In return for this gesture, the French king sent envoys led by Antoine Rincon to greet Khair-ed-Din in Algiers, and to meet another favorite of Sultan Süleyman’s, a certain Ibrahaim Pasha of Aleppo. A year later, after Khair-ed-Din’s conquest of Tunis in 1534, the fi rst offi cial Ottoman envoy from the sultan arrived in Marseilles to join the French court in Chatelleraut. The envoy was received with great pomp and ceremony by the French, to the amazement and displeasure of the rest of Europe. These negotiations were aimed at a French allegiance with the Ottomans and their close allies, the corsairs of Barbary, who were at the service of the sultan. An alle-giance was essential to commercial navigation in the Mediterranean, as the corsairs, under Ottoman protection, controlled the sea. Privateers of all nations were part of the lucrative trade of the corsairs, which consisted of theft on the seas. The merchan-dise was resold and European captives were sent to the slave markets of the Ottoman empire. Some Europeans joined the corsairs, converted to Islam, and became priva-teers. Among others, many Protestant natives of the Low Countries were attracted to this form of privateering. Converted corsairs of Catholic origins were exceptional, but some became extremely prominent. The familiarity of several Flemish converts

The Ambassadors • 39

to Islam with the Barbary Coast was perhaps what prompted of the Hafsid Bey of Tunis, Mulay Hasan, to visit Brussels in 1534, right after he was ousted out of Tunis by Khair-ed-Din.

Just when Khair-ed-Din sent an envoy to France, the vanquished Bey of Tunis, Mulay Hasan ran to France’s enemy in the same year of 1534. He took refuge in Hapsburg territory in Brussels. He stayed with the Count of Taxis in order to have a safe haven and to seek Emperor Charles V’s help against France’s new unoffi cial ally Khair-ed-Din. While living in Brussels Mulay Hasan made quite an impression. Both he and his European host would go out hunting dressed in Arab garb. He used ambergris as a meat sauce for eating delicacies such as peacock and pheasant. Ambergris was a very rare expensive luxury. Used in perfume, it was an extravagance to spice dishes with it. He also had the habit of listening to music blindfolded, which was common in his world but very startling to his European hosts.4 One must not be misled by the effect he had. It was a matter of class and not origin or religion. The received opinion that visitors from the Ottoman empire or North Africa were rare is now clearly demonstrated to be erroneous.5 Neverthe-less, Mulay Hasan was a grandee, not a mere traveler, and his taste for luxury was fascinating to his hosts and reinforced their fantasies of a wealthy land of luxury somewhere across the Mediterranean Sea. This extraordinary visit inspired many artists and gave rise to several paintings. Mulay Hasan’s son served as a model for the Ethiopian king in Peter Paul Rubens’s Three Magi. Shortly after this, Mulay Hasan forged the allegiance he had come for and returned to Tunis to fi ght for his lost throne. As the Hapsburg protégé started his way back, his enemies Khair-ed-Din and the French were forming a loose allegiance. Just as, in 1535, the French sent an embassy to the Ottomans to sign the fi rst capitulations with the sultan, Charles V offered to help the dethroned Bey fi ght against Khair-ed-Din (Barbarousse) and restore Mulay Hasan as the ruler of Tunis.6

France wanted a powerful ally against Charles V and hoped that through a treaty with the Ottomans, French trade with the Levant would benefi t Marseilles. The fi rst formal French embassy consisted of twelve men sent to Constantinople, among them Guillaume Postel.7 Guillaume Postel was thus sent away from Paris in 1536 in the suite of the fi rst ambassador, Jean de la Forest. He was not sent as a translator because he did not yet know any Turkish, but as someone who was to protect France’s new commercial interests acquired through the capitulations of 1535. Postel’s mission was to gather rare manuscripts for the royal library at Fontainebleau, which the king had opened to scholars. His trip, however, came as a direct consequence of nascent French trade in the Levant, as his formal mission was to recuperate the lost fortune of a rich gentleman jeweler from Tours, and to have the new French capitulations applied for the fi rst time to this specifi c case. The jeweler had dealings with Ibrahim Pasha of Aleppo, to whom he had sold gems after his return from India, and he had kept a diary of his transactions in India and in the Levant. The jeweler’s commercial diary was given to Postel. The attempts made by Postel to recuperate the material


legacy of the Frenchman for his heirs in Tours were aborted by Ibrahaim Pasha’s prompt execution at the Sultan’s orders.8 Nevertheless, Postel was elated to stay in the Ottoman empire and learn both Arabic and Turkish. In his own words, he wrote that he learned Arabic so quickly that the Turks who were teaching him called him a demon. He also writes that he had learned the language of the Moors, the Egyptians, the Syrians, the Persians, the Turks, and the Tartars, and went on quite brashly to state that he could converse anywhere in the world without an interpreter.9

The tradition of the mystic East was also strong in this period, and traveling East was associated with a spiritual quest. The search for unity and origin was a quest common to alchemy and humanism. Collecting was another aim: medicine, religion, and alchemy were important areas of book collecting. There was, however, another incentive for studying things oriental: the Ottomans were Europe’s most powerful enemy, and then, as now, it was important to know one’s enemy. The capitulations had not eliminated the possibility of an Ottoman threat to French territory. Indeed, after the capitulations of 1535, the Levant trade established Marseilles as the princi-pal international port for oriental goods, and by fi scally enriching France, it helped Francis I compete with the Italian cities and the Hapsburgs. Yet Marseilles and Tou-lon witnessed the power of the Ottomans fi rst-hand.

The Turkish Occupation of Toulon in 1543

The Turkish occupation of Toulon in the south of France made the town a Turkish colony for eight months. It was a strong reminder that the Ottoman empire was the most powerful empire of the time. “The transformation of a Christian town into a Muslim one, complete with mosque and slave market, caused amazement in the rest of Christendom.”10 This resulted in the complete humiliation of the inhabitants of Toulon and made them hate the French king’s new allegiance with the Turks. This allegiance was clear in the Turkish attack on Nice and the occupation of Toulon. During the Turkish occupation of Toulon, the population of the city was made to evacuate their houses except for the head of each household, who stayed hostage to provide food and lodgings for Khair-ed-Din’s men. The overwhelming number of Turks in Toulon made it a Turkish town. They arrived in Marseilles in July of 1543 on 110 Ottoman galleys. The galleys had left the Dardanelles with the French ambassador on board. Upon arrival on French soil, Barberousse and his fl eet were warmly welcomed by Francis de Bourbon, Comte d’Enghien, who was one of the four most important noblemen in France. Aboard the ship was a French captain, Capitaine Polin, who headed the Ottoman troops in the galleys. Also on board was a French priest, Jerôme Maurand, who left a fi rst-hand account of this journey.11

The Turkish “invasion” of Toulon was in fact led by the French. It is interest-ing to note that it is precisely at this time that Postel chose to write in Latin his Alcorani seu legis Mahometi et evangelistarum concordiae liber (1543), a work in


which he examined Islam as a Christian heresy and tried to reintegrate it into Chris-tianity. It also coincided with Luther’s sponsorship of the Basel Qu’ran published by Bibliander. Postel’s views were much milder than Luther’s; there was no condemna-tion, no talk of the devil in Postel. He examined points of dissent and concordance between the two religions, only to proclaim Christianity as the sole religion, but he argued that Islam was a branch of Christianity. This last point, though not a novel idea, fell at a politically convenient time for the king; Francis had opened the door to the Turks. Postel’s stance clearly mirrored the political events of the French court. To the dismay of the inhabitants of Toulon who were evacuated from their dwellings in order to lodge the Turks, Francis I had aided the Ottomans in conquering a major port under France’s protection. It was therefore politically convenient to view the Ot-tomans, who had been condemned as infi dels by the pope and had been called many harsh names by Calvin and Luther, as merely Christian heretics.

This is how events had unfolded for Toulon to become a Turkish town for eight months. On August 6, 1543, the Turks had launched a surprise attack on Nice. On the 22nd of the month, Nice surrendered to Turkish occupation. Not content with the provisions in Nice and unable to refi t his fl eet, Khair-ed-Din demanded more coastal territory in September. Rather then lose his ally against the Hapsburg king, Charles V, Francis I gave Khair-ed-Din the use of the port of Toulon. Barberousse, as he was called locally, entered Toulon on May 23, 1544. Nevertheless, perhaps because of his evident and blatant collaboration, Francis I had been greatly embarrassed by this Turkish presence, as the Duchy of Savoy was his protectorate. Therefore, Francis granted Barberousse that in exchange for a swift departure, all the Turkish captives and other captured corsairs serving on French galleys be released. Francis hoped to see the corsair captain leave Nice and Toulon immediately. This sudden embarrass-ment was political. Francis no longer felt that he wanted to help the Ottomans. In December, when the Turks had been in Toulon for six months, Charles V had signed a treaty with the English King Henry VIII to invade France. From the start of the English invasion that May, Francis I desperately sought peace. The allegiance with the Ottomans could have made a peace treaty with Charles V totally impossible. On September 18, 1544, the secret Peace of Crépy was signed between the French king and Emperor Charles V—the Ottomans were not made aware of the treaty that saved Francis from the battering of Charles V one more time.12

Memories of the Ottoman Siege of Nice in 1543

The Ottoman attack on Nice and the surrender of the port of Toulon were not easily forgotten, but instead of remembering the humiliation of Nice and Toulon, a heroic legend has been forged as compensation. The memory is vivid: the departure of the Turks from Provence is commemorated to this day through the local cult of a wash-erwoman, a lavandière, turned into a folk heroine. Every year in the city of Nice,


concurrent with Saint Catherine’s Day on November 25, Catherine Segurane Day is celebrated with great ceremony. The Ottoman departure from Nice, and not the Otto-man invasion, is remembered by evoking how Catherine Segurane chased the Turks out of Nice, but her very existence remains to be established. By all contentions her cult was born with nationalism, as most of the evidence we have is in nineteenth-century literature. Catherine Segurane (Catarina Ségurana in the Niçois dialect) is now a beloved heroine of the city of Nice, with a bas-relief statue erected to her name in a stone the inhabitants of Nice have nicknamed the monolith. In 1923, a period of fervent nationalism, a monument to Catherine’s memory was carved in the Saint Au-gustin square across from the church of the same name. She also had a street named after her. On the corner of the street one can see a cannonball lodged into the wall. Next to it the plaque reads, “Cannonball from the Turkish fl eet in 1543 during the siege of Nice, where Catherine Segurane ‘heroïne niçoise’ distinguished herself.”

At the time, Nice was part of the Duchy of Savoy, a duchy nominally independent from France but dependent on France’s armed protection, and as such Savoy had no standing military to defend Nice. The duchy had been a French protectorate for a century, but one of the dukes, Charles III, angered Francis I by marrying into the Hapsburg family of Charles V. As ruler of Savoy, Duke Charles’s marriage to Bea-trice of Portugal took place in the city of Nice, and in retaliation Francis invaded the Duchy of Savoy in 1536. Francis had military control of the region when his allies, the Ottoman fl eet, arrived in the port of Nice in August of 1543. Catherine allegedly took the lead as the women of Nice defended the city against the Turkish invasion and successfully chased the invaders away. A distorted version of the story said that she did so by standing before the invading Ottoman forces and exposing her bare buttocks. Rather inexplicably, allegedly this mooning was said to have so completely repulsed the Turkish infantry’s Muslim sense of decency that they turned and fl ed. In other equally unbelievable versions, Catherine Segurane used a beater or her wash board. The details matter little, as all are equally incredible, since she was unarmed against an invading army. Yet, what is of importance is the idea that a mere woman, alone and unarmed, defeated the mightiest army on earth.13 No one ever mentions that the French king’s army failed to protect Nice.

In reality the local populations were defeated by the Ottomans. Yet, the memory of the Turkish invasion of Nice and Toulon has been inverted into a tale of bravado and victory by a population who suffered a major humiliation and had to meekly sur-render to the enemy save for small pockets of resistance in the highest elevation in Nice, the Chateau de Cimiez. In this commemoration the Ottomans are depicted as ridiculous, weak enough to be chased away by a mere woman, prudish enough to fl ee from the sight of the bare buttocks of a mooning washerwoman. The image de-picts a lack of strength or virility. Unfortunately, in recent years, fascist youth and other groups allied to the extreme right have adopted Catherine Segurane to serve their specifi c cause against immigration. She is viewed as another southern reinca r-nation of Joan of Arc, as a symbol against foreign invasion. From a nationalist icon


celebrated by poems and plays, Catherine Segurane has become a symbol of local identity threatened by the recent Muslim immigration from North Africa into Pro-vence. It seems no one remembers that the king of France was the ally of the Ottoman invaders of Nice and Toulon, and that the French army not only did not save Nice, but gave Toulon away to the Turks.

The actual resistance was military; Duke Charles III, the ruler of the Duchy of Savoy, was appalled at the French king and raised an army in Piedmont to liberate Nice. The real miracle in Nice was the resistance of the château in Cimiez after most of Nice had fallen to the Franco-Turkish coalition. After pillaging the city of Nice and taking many of its inhabitants into captivity as slaves, the Turks retreated to Toulon on September 8. This pocket of resistance soon became seen as a super-natural event. The main battles occurred on August 15 and September 8, both days traditionally dedicated to the Virgin Mary in the Catholic calendar. Initially it was the Virgin Mary who was seen as the savior of Nice. A statue of the Virgin was erected commemorating her intercession to save the city, but it was destroyed in 1784, after the French Revolution, in the construction of what is now called Garibaldi Square. Catherine’s myth arose in the seventeenth century, shortly after the battle. Half a century after the attack she was fi rst mentioned by a prominent local notable, Honoré Pastorelli (15??–1620), who wrote an early history of Nice at the beginning of the seventeenth century. The initial religious cult of the Virgin could have been replaced by the more secular folk hero Catherine in the nineteenth century.

Meanwhile, while the Turks were living in Toulon, a secret peace was about to be signed. The secret peace of Crépy would mark the ambiguity of French attitudes to the Ottomans, an ambiguity that was to persist for long centuries. The damage done by Francis’s betrayal of the Ottomans at Crépy had to be controlled by a gesture of good will. Another French embassy to the Ottomans was in order.

Postel and the Second French Embassy

The second embassy to Istanbul of 1547, in which Postel once again participated, was brought after the Sultan threatened to cut diplomatic relations with France. But it was more than an embassy for appeasement. The second French ambassador left with the explicit mission to avoid what was a new dangerous possibility: a treaty be-tween the Ottoman sultan and France’s old enemy, Charles V. Even if Charles V was now allied to France through marriage, France still prized its privileged position with the Ottomans. The impact and importance of the embassy of 1547 on France would not be matched until the Noitel embassy of 1670 that was sent to Istanbul under Louis XIV.14

Guillaume Postel was also part of this second French delegation for the Levant, albeit informally. This time he was not sponsored by the French court. Postel left Venice for the Ottoman empire a second time in 1549, bankrolled by orientalists and


scholars.15 On his second trip to the Ottoman empire, Postel showed a great preoccu-pation with Arabic. He proclaimed in his writings that two-thirds of the world spoke Arabic. At this point Postel had held the Arabic chair for a decade, the fi rst in France. His vision was grandiose and ambitious: to reconstruct the unity of the world under God’s rule and preach reconciliation between Moslems and Christians. Postel’s trav-els to the Ottoman empire abetted his knowledge of oriental languages. The ideas he had discussed with the Jesuits at Sainte Barbe also formed his view of travel. It was a quest, and his personal quest was for the language that would restore humanity’s lost unity. During his fi rst trip Postel had absorbed information with remarkable thor-oughness and speed. His closest informants were a Turk and a Jewish doctor. The Turk, who remains anonymous like most native informants, was a man with whom Postel made a lasting friendship. He describes him as a convert to Christianity and a scholar who shared Postel’s passion for Arabic manuscripts on mathematics and medicine. At this time Postel showed no interest in religion except for Jewish texts. He had heard that there were Talmudic and Kabbalistic books written in the Chal-dean alphabet, but he was only able to acquire a Kabbal given to him by the Jewish physician Moshe Almuli. Postel studied with both men.16

Universal brotherhood became a calling force and his guide for the second trip. Among his works during this period was a concordance of the Qu’ran and the Gos-pels. This calling did not completely conform to the usual Jesuit attempt to convert the world to Christianity, although there were clear resonances of it. Ignatius de Loyola had spent two years trying to cure Postel of his eccentric ideas about a univer-sal religion, but it had been to no avail. Postel wrote a Pater followed by the Islamic Fatiha, the fi rst surat of the Qu’ran. He believed that he could make a universal con-cord happen through the concordance of religions and unity of language.17 He openly declared that he was the only one to be able to do so. He had been chosen.

Postel’s Views of Knowledge Condemned by the Inquisition

After returning from Istanbul, Guillaume Postel was imprisoned by the Inquisition because he immodestly proclaimed himself a prophet in a climate where all religious tolerance had vanished due to the Reformation. In the 1550s such was Postel’s belief in the illumination brought to him by his Levantine peregrinations that he vocally proclaimed himself supreme comprehensor and congregator: his mission was noth-ing short of uniting the people of the world as one. Postel believed that the viator [the wayfarer] could, through travel, comprehend the world of God and of his own self. From medieval alchemy, Postel retained the importance of the four elements. To him, the most important element was water. Because Venice was on water and between East and West, it was to be the New Rome and the New Jerusalem from which the message of this world harmony would spread. Of the Inquisition he wrote: “A Venise je reçu sentence pour laquel je fus déclaré fol” [In Venice, I received a sentence in


which I was declared to be crazy]. Fol in its Renaissance context might also mean a clairvoyant and an illuminated being and not simply its literal meaning denoting a madman. Since the verdict was insanity he was not persecuted.18

As one of the most respected scholars in Europe, his biographers speculate that Postel was left alone. Postel had an established reputation and held a chair, but he saw this second journey as a mystical one, a view that was a far cry from the rest of the group in the embassy. Their aims were intellectual and commercial, not mysti-cal. Many texts left by the 1547 embassy showed some interest in observation, and most showed a novel interest in Greek antiquities that would later help in arguing for France’s Greco-Roman origins. The second embassy was one of the most fruit-ful ones for acquiring new knowledge for France, as well as for forging new myths about France’s imagined classical past. The knowledge it brought was not simply through the texts of the travelers, but it arrived in France through the manuscripts, books, and objects they collected. It was not simply knowledge about the Ottoman empire and the customs and religion of the Ottomans. It brought in new ideas about astronomy, medicine, mathematics, botany, and zoology.

The Meaning of Travel Accounts: The Ramus Questionnaire

The accounts written about the 1547 embassy were written before humanists devised a model and a methodology for all travelers. This methodology, called Methodus Apodemica, or Ars apodemica, method of travel, or the art of travel, is an aspect of Renaissance humanism, which despite its immense impact on European society, has been neglected by scholars until Justin Stagl’s detailed book devoted to its develop-ment.19 What emerges from a closer study of this methodology is that the question-naire format was both central to recording the art of traveling and to the emergence of scientifi c inquiries tied to it. The questionnaire, later the corner-stone of fi eld work for the ethnologist or anthropologist, was a tool elaborated centuries earlier by hu-manists in order to gather knowledge for the curious. The founders of this travel methodology were Renaissance empiricists. The collection of facts and fi gures was made in order to improve humanity in wisdom, virtue, and happiness as was commonly proclaimed in the humanist agenda. Two such collectors of knowledge for the advancement of humanity were Guillaume Postel and his contemporary, the better-known Ramus, Pierre de la Ramé (1515–1572). To both men travel was seen as a spiritual and intellectual journey to increase knowledge, wisdom, and happiness. The Jesuit missionaries shared this view. The humanists, however, wished to gener-alize and systematize advice on travel in order to increase the intellectual impact of reporting knowledge, which was not to remain an individual endeavor, but had to be shared with others for the progress of humanity. Enough has been written about the republic of letters that no further explanations are necessary as to how collecting was shared. As travelers, they also wanted to improve the manner of presenting data


in order to reach a higher degree of knowledge. This hope marked the beginning of modern historical methods.

Typically, what was considered historical knowledge, historia in the sense that Herodotus had inaugurated, was a successive series of facts and observations strung together in a series of journeys that were chronologically organized. Chronology was often referred to as the natural order. Much later medieval travel reports derived their order from a diary and kept chronology at the center of the travel account through the use of a travel diary. The travel diary was closely tied in its origin to the daily expenses recorded by some pilgrims or the more elaborate accounts kept by some merchants on the road. This habit of bookkeeping was transferred to the psychologi-cal and scientifi c sphere by some humanists, and emphasis was put on memorabilia, insignia, curiosa, visu ac situ digna (memorable, striking, curious things worth see-ing and knowing). Rare were the extraordinary cases such as the French embassy to the Ottomans in 1547, when several travel accounts were produced simultane-ously during the same journey. This helped fact-checking and establishing authority. Yet, even within the same journey the accounts produced widely different results, and chronology was only one element of organization. The other factor was choice. The choice of what constituted things memorable to observe was left to the traveler alone. Authentication soon became a problem for travel accounts; the traveler was solely the sovereign of his data, as he no longer was to refer to earlier texts. The sudden rise in popularity of the travel account in the late sixteenth century led to new editions of Greek, Roman, and Arab geographies in order to search for reliable models of observation and description. In addition to this trend in the late sixteenth and throughout the seventeenth century, an enormous amount of literature appeared, most of it in the form of tracts, that methodized different activities. They spelled out correct forms and methods for activities in all the areas of life and of travel “down to the correct way of dying” on the road.20

The will to apply rational planning to travel appeared in two literary forms that are more familiar, the advisory and the compendium. The fi rst compendium, a col-lection of travel accounts, was printed very early, by the German printer Valentin Fernandez in Lisbon in 1502, to set scholars to work on the accounts of the new voyages of discovery.21 The compendia of travel accounts undertaken by Ramusio in Italy and by Hakluyt in England, both in the sixteenth century, and by Melchisédec Thévenot in France in the seventeenth century, were examples of an attempt to gather and organize information to advance knowledge. These compendia are better known than the questionnaire, which is at the heart of the evolution of ars apodemica, the art of travel. According to Stagl the questionnaire is a very old tool, with its roots in “list science.” It emerged in ancient societies for recording natural phenomenon, such as Babylonian astronomy.22 The questionnaire applied to travel had its begin-nings in the sixteenth century as travel accounts in the vernacular started to appear. Ramus adopted a scientifi c model for his travel questionnaire; meant to help modern observation, it was based on a model used in medical classifi cations.


The Huguenot Ramus had much in common with Postel. Born noble but poor, he aimed to study at university despite the odds and was admitted to the Collège de Na-varre, where, like Postel at Sainte Barbe, he worked as a servant by day, or as a valet to more affl uent students, and studied at night. His intellectual impact on humanism far surpasses Postel’s. In his thesis in 1536 Ramus showed the fl aws of scholasti-cism, still a dogma at the Sorbonne. In 1543 Ramus had published a very infl uential work, which made him many enemies, the Dialecticae Institutiones, printed in Paris, despite strong opposition from the Sorbonne, where Aristotelianism was dogma. Ramus claimed to have found a new universal method, which he called dialectics, applicable to the arts and sciences. It was an improved version of Aristotelian logic for the classifi cation of new useful knowledge.

His method required every topic to be investigated through a standard of ten ques-tions. The questions were called loci, places (these places replaced Aristotle’s cat-egories), which helped derive propositions to be tested by experience. The sum of the propositions arrived at for each topic was called a discourse. The discourse had then to be ordered starting from the most general proposition to the more particular in “natural order.” This way of organizing knowledge was represented in his book by a synoptic table, or a synopsis. Ramus had adopted the use of synoptic tables from the medical school in Padua, where they had been in use for quite some time to make classifi cations.23 He encountered huge opposition. Nevertheless, he opened lectures within the University of Paris, but the conservative theologians accused him of undermining the foundations of theology and knowledge. It gave way to so much controversy that his case went the Parliament of Paris, to be fi nally judged by Francis I. Ramus left France. He returned to Paris, called by Henri II, to occupy a chair at the Collège du Roi in 1551, as had Postel before him. Innovation was possible at the collège. He was very successful and had audiences of 2,000 listeners, but because he espoused Protestantism he had to leave Paris. His book on dialectics, Dialectique, was translated into French in 1555, the language used for teaching by the lisans du roi. It was the earliest work on philosophy in the French language.24

Ramus left for a lecture tour of Protestant universities in Germany but based him-self, as had Erasmus before him, in the intellectual capital of Basel in Switzerland. Many Basileans fi nished their education in Padua; in both these intellectual centers Ramus was applauded, while in his native France, Paris continued to show great hostility. Ramus made the mistake of returning to Paris on an invitation to debate. He arrived during the terrible massacres of Saint Barthelemy on August 24, 1572, and like many Protestants was assassinated that night. The invitation at that specifi c moment had been at the instigation of his enemies at the Sorbonne.

As a lisan du roi for Henri II Ramus had written a French grammar, which ap-peared the year of his death.25 His humanist dialectic method has been called the most important book of the sixteenth century. It would take some time for his infl uence to infi ltrate France beyond travel accounts and their vernacular medium. His thought had major impact on philosophy only two centuries later, on higher education and


on the eighteenth-century encyclopedists. His work was left unfi nished; some of his German and Dutch Protestant disciples were to apply Ramism to their own work and make it into a formal doctrine of travel.26

Among those disciples under his infl uence were Theodor Zwinger (1533–1588) from Basel and the Dutch scholar Hugo Blotius (de Bloote, 1534–1608). Together with Ramus, all three aimed to organize the growing mass of empirical knowledge in the wake of the age of discoveries and printing, a preoccupation that had already alarmed the Spaniard Juan Luis Vives (1492–1540). Vives had been teaching in the Netherlands and was also a major infl uence on all three. Five years after Ramus’s death, in 1577 Theodor Zwinger, his close friend, published Methodus apodemic in eorum gratiam qui cum fructu in quocunque tandem vitae genere peregrinari cu-piunt, in Basel, a hefty tome that was to be reprinted and would remain the main authority on theory of travel. Ramus’s methodology was followed by Zwinger: the book is divided in three. Book I was an overview of the different forms of travel and defi nitions of travel, with examples arranged in tabular form. Book II was a book of advice, both moral and practical, for all travelers to improve themselves; this book was also arranged in synoptic table form. Book III described four cities, perceived as the most important centers of the world for humanists: Basel, Paris, Padua, and Athens. They are model cities to be followed by all travelers for the description of the cities they encounter in their journeys. The model dictates that the traveler should record facts such as the ancient and new names of the city, the territory, the history, the constitution of the city, and also the principal sights and the occupation of the inhabitants. The order of these facts was an important element of the model. Book IV contains plans for organizing the description of life abroad, locus, place, or geographical location and its subdivisions, locatum as in buildings and monuments, and actio, as in the arts and crafts practice, such as printing. The many texts of the Ottoman embassy of 1547 were composed in the 1550s and even as late as the 1560s, so they were not infl uenced by the questionnaire itself, but the ideas of Ramus were well known to Postel’s milieu since the late 1530s. As such, Ramus’s views of the scientifi c utility of travel and some of his methods apply to the texts produced by the second French embassy in the Ottoman empire.

The Texts of the Second French Embassy to the Ottomans

The vast suite of the ambassador included the physician and botanist Pierre Belon (1517–1564), the naturalist Pierre Gilles d’Albi (1490–1555), and the future cos-mographer André Thévet d’Angoulême (1516–1590), as well as the now famous traveler Nicolas de Nicolay (1517–1583). Many of the accounts printed by the members in this expedition would have important consequences for new knowl-edge and early science in France.27 Soon after his return, Postel also made several important scientifi c contributions; he wrote the fi rst Arabic grammar and had his


travel account about the Turks published. Postel is perhaps the third most famous of the sixteenth-century travelers to the Ottoman empire, the most renowned being Nicholas de Nicolay, and next would be André Thévet. Postel is followed at a great distance by Pierre Belon du Mans, Pierre Gilles, le Sieur de Villarmont, and Jean Palerne.28 Postel’s account is for the most part forgotten, but it is has recently been partially and incompletely published for the fi rst time since the sixteenth century.29 Postel wrote this account in French, although the majority of his work is in Latin, to honor the king’s wish for the use of the national language in scholarship.

Jacques Gassot’s was the fi rst description to be put in print in 1550 after the em-bassy returned. It made a total abstraction of the Ottomans in order to concentrate on Greece and its antiquities, a point of view shared, albeit more moderately, by Thévet.30 It was followed by Pierre Belon’s account printed in 1553, André Thévet’s cosmology in 1554, Guillaume Postel’s account, written in 1551 but printed in 1559, and Nicolas de Nicolay’s, printed in 1567. Pierre Gilles’s accounts of his trip were printed nine years after his death, by his nephew in 1565. Finally, Jean Chesnau, secretary to Ambassador d’Aramon, wrote his account later than all the others and took entire passages from each of them. Printed in 1566, Jean Chesau’s work remains in manuscript form.31 Two members of the d’Aramon expedition died shortly after they returned to France. Pierre Belon ended up assassinated in the Bois de Boulogne. Pierre Gilles died an untimely death due to fever and was buried in Rome before he could publish anything on the observations he made. His nephew Antoine Gilles took care of his work written after the embassy trip.32

After this trip, André Thévet, who would include an account of Postel’s youth in his biography of great men, wrote a work entitled Cosmographie du Levant.33 Thévet’s work was published fi rst in Lyons in 1554, and then in Antwerp in 1556 by the printer Gilles Van Diest. This text was very important, because André Thévet established a major trend that would shape European views well into the twenti-eth century. Jacques Gassot had printed a work with essentially the same message about the neglected ruins of Greece and Rome. Although mostly derivative, very dry, and descriptive of antiquities sites and monuments, Thévet’s was a pioneer-ing work for its imperialist tone: it denuded the landscape of the people inhabiting the land and focuses on monuments that are claimed to belong to Europe’s Greco-Roman origins.34 Thévet saw these markers of Greco-Roman glory in ruins during quick trips to Egypt and Jerusalem while in residence in Istanbul with the em-bassy. Thévet claimed that these monuments belonged to France’s past. He called for their protection by inviting the European princes to reclaim their patrimony and save these Greco-Roman monuments from what he claims to be the destructive-ness of the Turks. Not surprisingly, large parts of the account are devoted to Greece under the rule of the Ottomans. This does not mean that Thévet held a uniformly negative view of the Turks. There are passages of praise, as is the case for most of the travelers in this group. Some, however, like Nicolas de Nicolay, spent some of their time and energy observing the terrain for other reasons.


Nicolas de Nicolay, born in 1517 in the Dauphiné, was an adventurer who had traveled extensively before. He was a secret agent.35 In 1546 he was in England, of which he has left a very precise map. Nicolay was at the service of the French crown and of the Scots, and became part of the 1547 French embassy to the Ottomans. When he returned to Europe, he still worked for the French, and after the French captured the city of Bologna, he went there in 1550 as a royal envoy in charge of translating a navigation treaty by Pedro Medina.36 Knowledge about navigation became crucial to France as its worldly ambitions for trade came to the forefront. The second edition of this work on navigation was augmented by his travel account of the Ottoman em-pire, if it can be called a travel account. He relied heavily on Greek sources such as Herodotus or Xenophon to describe the Persians, and there is scant evidence of any real observations in Persia during the Safavid-Ottoman war in Tabriz. Yet, he spends much time on fortifi cations and landscape, and so his observations are to be seen as practical and in line with his purpose as an agent. There is no proof that anyone but Nicolay had this form of assignment in the embassy.37

Some of the travelers were naturalists and left many descriptions of animals, which were to capture the European imagination a century before the animals them-selves were captured for the zoo of the Jardin du Roi. Francis I had a small menag-erie with an ostrich and lions, but it was relatively limited compared to the animals described by two other travelers in this embassy: Pierre Belon and Pierre Gilles. The view of the sultan’s menagerie gave way to a discourse about lions and elephants and other exotic animals that would not only become a common element in the travel genre, but inspired the collection of exotic animals. The collection of animals was an important element in the creation of royal zoos.38 No description left by the texts of this embassy rivals the story of Pierre Gilles’s elephant.

Pierre Gilles had set out on a mission to collect oriental books for the royal li-brary. There was great friction between Gilles and Guillaume Postel, who had ful-fi lled this task during the fi rst embassy and believed it was still solely his role. The king had not even funded Postel on this second mission. Unfortunately the court had not funded Gilles either. Gilles failed miserably at his role of royal collector because he had insuffi cient royal funding despite a formal order to collect. Unlike Gilles, Guillaume Postel was well-funded: even if he had no royal mandate, he was sponsored by the famous printer of Hebrew books in Venice, Daniel Bomberg, who wanted him to work on translations of the Bible.39 Postel was therefore more suc-cessful at acquiring books and manuscripts, while Gilles had to resort to extremes. The scholars in the suite of the embassy were so poorly funded that they had to be resourceful to survive, let alone collect.

When Henri II succeeded Francis I, he sent his own envoy and this created some tension. In the end the initial embassy prevailed, but Henri II ordered Gabriel d’Aramon to follow the Ottomans in their war path. The French followed Sultan Süleyman into Persia, where Süleyman was fi ghting a war with the Safavids. They arrived at the camp of the sultan in Erzerum, and joined it on June 28, 1548. They


crossed the river Aras and traveled all the way to Tabriz where they arrived on July 25. When the embassy returned to France, the French were stupefi ed upon dis-covering that Pierre Gilles, whom they only knew as interested in antiquities and animals, had enrolled in the Ottoman army. Poverty had compelled him to become a soldier fi ghting on the side of the Ottomans.40 He had acquired an elephant in a battle against the Persians, and in one of the most striking scientifi c episodes of this embassy, Gilles dissected the elephant upon its death. Thanks to this prowess, Pierre Gilles is considered as the father of French zoology.41

Francis I died before the embassy returned, but the composition of d’Aramon’s suite bore Francis’s mark. Petrus Gyllius, as Pierre Gilles is called in his Latin texts, remains a mysterious fi gure. Not much is known about his youth and education. Judging from his later work, he shared the education and enthusiasms of the new generation of French humanists sponsored by Francis I. This circle included his con-temporaries François Rabelais, Jacques Lefèvre D’Etaples, and Guillaume Budé. Humanists in the Renaissance did not know political borders, and many in this em-bassy had contacts all through Europe. They were either disciples of Erasmus and the Italian humanists, or in close contact with them; typically humanists had contacts in Antwerp, Basel, Padua, Bologna, Leuven, Leiden, Montpellier, and many important centers of learning. Gilles was sent to amass the books he was given little money to buy. He managed to buy a Greek work that shaped his own travel account. In Gilles’s travel account, his own archaeological and topographical observations were entirely molded and structured in the footsteps of Denys of Byzantium.42 Many travelers, including the famous Antoine Galland, visited sites with book in hand and tried to observe whether the older text was a refl ection of what they saw. This was a typical form of observation. Pierre Gilles cannot be seen as an antiquarian who relied solely on text rather than observation; his last work as a naturalist was very much in the new tradition of scientifi c observation.43 Many travelers shared this mixed methodology. Like his travel account, most of Gilles’s earlier work on the natural world had Greek and Roman sources.44 Yet, Pierre Gilles’s dissection of his war elephant fell very much within the new scientifi c experimentation of the time.

Gilles used observation, as was advocated by the new art of travel. Dissection and anatomy were becoming a challenge to Galenic orthodoxy in the medical fi eld, as observing from nature challenged some long-held beliefs. Francis I had appointed Johannes Winter (1505–1574) as royal physician. Like Winter, one of his disciples, the physician Andreas Vesalius (1514–1564), a precursor of the science of dissection and anatomy, would also turn to Paris, the best medical school north of the Alps. Even in Paris, despite Francis’s protection, practical dissection was rare and novel. The dissection of a corpse either in secret or before a group of students had long been forbidden by the Church. Anatomy was primarily learned from books. It is in this new context of the natural sciences that Pierre Gilles’s dissected elephant must be understood. This second French embassy left many accounts, and the impact of the texts on humanism and new scientifi c learning cannot be overestimated. Yet,


most travel accounts were centered on Greece and its antiquities and saw Greece, as Gassot and Thévet did, as France’s past, its antiquities as their own patrimony. This established a long tradition of viewing France as a descendent of the Greeks and the Romans. Nevertheless, the impact of the novel ideas of the two naturalists made a great scientifi c contribution to the nascent fi eld of zoology and anatomy.

Frédéric Tringuley has argued that the second half of the sixteenth century pro-duced about twice the amount of texts on the Orient as compared to those devoted to the Americas.45 Many of the accounts of this 1547 embassy were written in French, which was a novelty. Francis I’s efforts to establish French as a national language and as a language of scholarship were vastly furthered by the new knowledge published in the vernacular by these travelers to the Orient. The study of these texts is very prob-lematic and remains to be undertaken; not only do they have many borrowings from ancient Greek and Roman texts, but many passages resemble each other in the work of this contemporaneous group. This intertextuality is problematic; passages such as the description of Turkish baths are identical in texts left by Belon and Thévet and even Postel.46 Guillaume Postel’s travel account stands in stark contrast to Nicolay’s and Thévet’s, as it cites no Greek sources and is mostly based on observation. Postel’s biographers have not tackled his rather repetitious and convoluted travel account. Even without an in-depth study, as his work on the Ottomans remains to be studied, a reading shows there is immediately something quite unique about Postel’s views.

Postel’s Travel Account about the Ottomans

Guillaume Postel’s account stands alone among the entire writings of the embassy of 1547. Not only does the account not concentrate on Greece or Greek sources, which is unusual for a humanist of his milieu, it is the only account concerned with the Turkish language. Postel analyzed, albeit naïvely, the language of the Turks. Postel’s account De la Republique des Turcs: & là où l’occasion s’offrera, des meurs & loy de tous Muhamedites par Guillaume Postel Cosmopolite, was marked as printed in December of 1559, but in catalogues the date is given as 1560. It was written in French and not in Latin as were many of his previous works, and Postel was self-conscious, as he was more at ease writing in Latin. It was clearly a gesture to please the court. The embassy was part of the court’s efforts to sponsor humanists and to foster knowledge away from the censorship of the Sorbonne’s theologians, who wrote exclusively in Latin and frowned disdainfully at any use of the vernacular. Within the vast body of work produced by this embassy to the Ottomans, as always, Postel’s vision stands alone as the most unacceptable to the theologians.

Postel’s travel account is in three parts; the last part is dedicated to the Duc de Lorraine, and the fi rst two parts are dedicated to the dauphin, son of Henri II (1519–1559), and to the future Charles IX (1550–1574). There is a strong passage remem-bering Marguerite de Navarre, Francis I’s sister. Postel clearly states his purpose:


I, as much as I be made a Cosmopolitan Gaulois, having cures and cares for all the world, do not think that I could do anything more agreeable to God and more useful to you, future Emperor of my country, than to help in every way I can in adding to your wisdom, the knowledge and the real use of which will be necessary in the government to which you are destined.47

Travel brought him wisdom, but this wisdom could be textually transmitted to the king as politically instrumental. He was also certain that knowledge of the world would help France rule it—the role of informant in the making of an empire was one that Postel relished. His signature of Cosmopolite denotes that he viewed himself both as worldly and as a citizen of the world. Yet, Postel’s identifi cation as a Gaulois and his designation of France as mon pays (my country) can be read aloud in the same breath. There was no contradiction in this dual identity for the mystical traveler who saw his mission as uniting the Muslim world with Christendom for the glorifi -cation of France. In his mind he was undertaking nothing less than a history of the Turks for the benefi t of knowledge about the Muslim world in the service of France’s imperial destiny. Postel wrote that:

In as much as does not take effect the concord of the world (for the universal peace of which I name myself Cosmopolitan, hoping to see it attained under the French crown) it is not possible to reason with his enemy without knowing his state as he does himself, and the greatest power, be it in religion, be it in arms, that ever was is Ismaelique and among the Ismaelites it is the Turquesque of which I bring you knowledge here.48

It is not a clear case of know thine enemy. He saw the origins of France in the nation he called Ismaelique, as was discussed at the beginning of this chapter, but he sees the successors of the nation Ismaelique as the nation Turquesque. This gives a common origin to France and the nation Turquesque, at the very least, and the even more radical notion that the French descended from the Turkish nation. There is no question about the hegemonic tone of this discourse. He admonished the future king to acquire both knowledge and wisdom, and especially recommends the knowledge of history and of the past in order to rule over the world. Postel believed that history was the mirror of human life.

Postel’s De la République des Turcs, in a second Paris edition of 1575, acquired the new title of: Des histoires Orientales et principalement des Turkes ou Turchikes et Schitiques ou Tartaresques et aultres qui en font descendues.49 It is under this sec-ond title that it has partially been reprinted in Istanbul in 1999. The change of title in 1575, while he was still alive, is an interesting political shift as it takes away the subtitle about Muslims, but makes the whole thing into “oriental stories.” Gone was the positive reference to the “Republic of the Turcs” and its tie to ancient classical political traditions of Greece and Rome through the word republic. In French the terms story and history share the same word histoire; with the adjective orientales,


histoire can still be read as either one. Nevertheless, the adjective encourages the reader to understand the new edition as a collection of stories rather than a history. The content of both editions, although a critical edition remains to be made, appears to be identical.

The beginning of Postel’s travel account is startling. Postel asks the reader to be objective (neutre), and he affi rms to have accomplished this himself. He wrote that in the past authors have been very eager to cover up the virtues and point out the faults of the Turks. He holds that it is important to be informed and to be just in order for one’s testimony to have real authority. This entire stance taken by Postel was remarkably similar, including in the wording, to the beginning of Luther’s preface to the Qu’ran printed in Basel in 1543. As discussed before, Luther had written that previous works “eagerly take pains to excerpt from the Qu’ran all the most base and absurd things to arouse hatred and can move people to ill will, at the same time they pass over without rebuttal or cover over the good things that it contains. The result is that they have achieved too little credibility or authority.”50 Since no one has exam-ined his text closely, this similarity has never been noticed. Could some of his trouble with the inquisition stem from this, as he had written the text as early as 1550–1551? Marion Kuntz and his other biographers are careful when discussing Postel’s close-ness to the Reformation. Kuntz’s cautious stance after fi fteen years of reading him is that Postel can be seen neither as a Catholic nor a Protestant.

Despite all of Postel’s precautions to be an equitable and just observer, the book opens with marriage as the fi rst subject of scrutiny. This is again similar to Luther’s preface. Luther saw three paths through which the Turks were a threat to Europe: war, religion, and the last one mentioned, marriage.51 Postel soon resorted to the Eu-ropean trope of concentrating on polygamy and the seraglio, an element that makes Postel one of the several precursors of the long-lived genre of histoire orientales and harem literature. The fi rst in a long line to argue that polygamy was a threat to the state, an argument so dear to Montesquieu, Voltaire, and Diderot centuries later. When he examined the status of women, Postel wrote that men can have a dozen wives, and because they hold that a dozen women are not worth one man and women are “marvellously submissive” in Turkey.52

Postel’s interest in travel accounts was extensive and went beyond his own work. A few years before his De la Republique des Turcs, Postel had written a little-noticed work, one of the many neglected pieces among the seventy works or more that he produced: L’histoire memorable des expeditions depuys le déluge faictes par les Gauloys ou Fràçoys depuis la Fràce iusques en Asie, ou en Thrace & en l’oriétale partie de l’Europe ...; A la fi n est L’apologie de la Gaule contre les malevoles es-cripuains, qui d’icelle ont mal ... escript ..., & en apres Les tresanciés droictz du peuple Gallique, & de ses princes. The work was dated to 1552 and aimed to be a compendium of all Gaulois and French travelers and the roads to Asia, as well as a vindication of the superior rights of the Gallic nation.53 This ninety-seven page manuscript, like much of Postel’s work, remains to be studied and published, but it is


worth mentioning. Its encyclopedic intent was to keep a repertory of travel accounts written by the French, from classical times to the sixteenth century. It was much in the spirit of Giovanni Battista Ramusio (1485–1557), cosmographer and secretary to the Council of Ten in Venice. The compendium of travel made by Ramusio, entitled Delle navigationi et viaggi (1550–1559) is well known because it contained the trav-els of Marco Polo, Leo the African, and many other gems of travel writing, such as Nicolas da Conti’s.

Postel was living in Venice in the 1550s, just as Ramusio was making his famous travel compendium. Postel was familiar with orientalist milieus all across Europe. There was another member of the Ramusio family interested in the East. He was translating Avicenna’s canon of medicine, Kitāb al-Qānūn f ī al-tibb, already widely read by Europeans in the Latin translation of Gerard of Cremona (d. 1187). Girolamo Ramusio, an orientalist and expert in languages, was well-versed in Arabic. He set out to improve upon Gerard of Cremona’s Latin translation of Avicenna by compar-ing it with an Arabic manuscript. In 1527 Ramusio’s new translation was published.54 With his own expertise in Arabic and his interest in medicine, Postel certainly knew Girolamo Ramusio. It would not be too much to risk speculating that Guillaume Postel, who lived in Venice around 1550 where the Holy Inquisition found him, knew of both of the Ramusios and their work on the Orient. His own compendium of travel accounts, L’histoire memorable des expeditions depuys le déluge faictes par les Gauloys ou Fràçoys depuis la Fràce iusques en Asie, might well be very much in the vein of Giovanni Battista Ramusio’s, yet his accounts were far more modest.

His short captivity in Venice affected Postel’s own travel account, which he fi n-ished in 1551 but did not publish until eight years later in 1559. In 1550–1551 Postel was struggling with the Inquisition. Most probably many of the views expressed in the work would have further aggravated his case, as the Inquisition had no love lost for the “infi dels.”

The Ottoman Empire As a Mirror of France

Historian Frank Lestringant has made an unparalleled analysis of some of the writings of this 1547 embassy in which he highlighted the views French travelers expressed about the Ottomans. The piece was justly called l’Obsession turque.55 Lestringant ar-gues that there were paradoxes and contradictory views, even within the same author’s body of writing. Lestringant points to the general quest for the origin of the Ottomans in all the accounts as a way of compensating for France’s relative insignifi cance in the world. France had no empire compared to the Ottoman’s glory and might. Using Paul Jove’s work of 1538, Turcicarum rerum commentarius, Lestringant shows that the Turks were assimilated by Jove and those who later read his work, into the descen-dants of the Scythians in French travel accounts.56 The reference to the Scythians was as described by Herodotus in his book IV of the Histories.57 André Thévet wrote: “The


Turks are therefore Scythians, or Levantine Tartars, who lived in their natural country more off larceny than anything else.”58 The assimilation was so strong that the Otto-mans were interchangeably referred to as Scythians or Turks, scytique or turquesque, in Thévet’s passages describing their cruelty. Lestringant focuses on André Thévet, but he touches on Guillaume Postel, Pierre Belon, and Nicholas de Nicolay, who all obsessively, as was fashionable in their day, looked for the origin of the Ottomans. The absence of the Ottoman Turks from the classical Greek and Roman record, as op-posed to the ubiquitous Persians in Greek and Roman writing, was compensated for. The argument was that Scythian bows and arrows and that dwellings near the Caspian Sea were reminiscent of Ottoman ones. This image persisted in texts as well as in actual staged events. Lestringent cited the Carnaval des Romans (1580) in which the Turks were interchangeably referred to as Scythian and represented in the carnival as the devils of hell.59

Beyond mere representation, this assimilation to the Scythians helped to defi ne the Turks in contrast to the Europeans. The contrast was as it had been in Herodo-tus’ view: the Scythians were a people without a history.60 Herodotus gave four hy-potheses on the obscure origins of the Scythians, because they were not historically traceable. This Greek view of the Scythians, once adopted, also defi ned the Turks as a roaming people, as nomads without a set territory, without a settled roof, without cities and therefore without civility. Scythians had habits such as drinking blood and raiding for a living, which was an image superimposed on the Turks in the texts of the French embassy to the Ottoman empire. Despite the perceived differences in European and Turkish heritage, this theory of Scythian origin was often advanced along with parallels between the Roman empire and the Ottoman empire. This was a startling contrast, and stemmed from having to accept the reality of the power of the Ottomans. As Frank Lestringant put it, the twin comparisons that coexist within the texts equating the Ottomans to the Scythians, a nomadic people subsisting by raiding, and simultaneously to the powerful Romans and their imperial civilization, was a total paradox.

Indeed, in some texts the comparisons made to Rome were very strong. Pierre Belon du Mans and Guillaume Postel both had many positive views of the Ottomans and made the parallel with the Roman empire. They made this parallel differently. Pierre Belon, as argued previously, was so focused on the antiquities in the lands he visited that the new inhabitants simply became the subconscious depositaries of an antique tradition; in many ways this was another way of making an abstraction of who the Ottomans actually were. Frank Lestringant has argued that the Roman model found in the writings of this generation was not a coincidence and corresponds to the rising admiration in Europe for Ottoman military organization and success.

There were other elements in the admiration that some travelers expressed for the Ottomans. Pierre Belon devoted most of Book III in his travel account Observations de plusiers singularitez et choses memorables ... to the manners, habits, and crafts


of the Turks and to the Ottoman Jews, Armenians, and Greeks. He marveled at the cleanliness of the Ottomans, at how well their goods were crafted, how perfectly their clothing was sewn together, and at the impressive forces the Sultan could summon, which demonstrated Ottoman cohesion at time when Europe was desperately divided both religiously and politically.61 He even looked at the present manners of the Turks for vestiges of times past, the golden classical age, such as wrestling, about which he wrote: “La manière de lutter des Anciens est encore en usage chez les Turcs.” [The way the Ancients wrestled is still used today by the Turcs.]62 Here was the paradox found in many observations: The authority of the ancients was revered in the Renaissance, so this was a positive view in one sense, as the Ottomans were like the ancients, and an Orientalist view in the other as it depicted a retrograde culture where customs did not change through time. A further paradox lies in the fact that if Europe was to look for its classical roots in Asia, it had to adopt this view that time had stood still.

Some travelers criticized their own society and viewed the Ottomans as having superior habits. Pierre Belon marveled at how healthy the Turks were, which, in several repetitious passages, he attributed to their frugal habits, especially their habit of eating garlic and onions. Belon pointed out that the Turks ate raw onions at every meal and cited this as the reason for their exceptional health.63 Nothing was too triv-ial for Belon to observe; he is the only traveler who devoted an entire section to how babies were diapered in a special way so as to not soil the carpets, and to give details of what infants were fed.64 This admiration for cleanliness and Ottoman might and discipline is also certainly true of Guillaume Postel, who wrote long and fl attering passages on the military. Postel’s work, however, is very different in spirit. Unlike Pierre Belon, Postel, despite many descriptions of the manners and customs of the Turks, did not really have the same interest in the daily habits of the peasantry or in observing the extraordinary love the Turks had for fl owers. While Postel focused on religion, Belon focused on the present. While Postel was interested in the history and the origins of the Turks, Belon was interested in their lifestyle. In the beginning of his De la Republique des Turcs, Postel promised to look into the laws and customs of Muslim people. He started his discourse on Muslims by writing that he failed to understand the insistence that previous writers had to describe the vices of their enemy. Why is it, he asked, that learned writers write only of faults and hide all the virtues. He stressed that universally, no matter how barbarous a people may be, they had virtues as well as vices. He aimed to give a balanced record of both vices and virtues. Guillaume Postel wrote that he used this “just” method so that “our” adver-saries could not have doubted his equity.65

The different nuances, complications, and paradoxes that are present in the writ-ings of the French embassy of 1547, and the contradictions that are often found within the same text, do not match the arguments that Lucette Valensi has made for Venetian writings of the same period. She argued for a positive view of the


Ottomans in the sixteenth century, with a clear transition to negativity and to the birth of a discourse on despotism in the next century. In French travel accounts and political writing there was certainly admiration for the military, cleanliness, medical hygiene, organization of the crafts, and religious tolerance, but as argued previously, many negative views coexisted with this praise. The discussion Valensi has taken up is about the birth of the idea of despotism at a later date in Venetian writings and does not have an exact parallel In France.66 Perhaps this is due to some constant ambiguity in the relations that the French forged with the Ottomans. Clearly, there was also a very fundamental difference: France was a monarchy while Venice was a republic, and this may explain why the sultan and his reign were to play a central role in French political thought as early as the sixteenth century.

For France, not only were the ideas of Postel on the sultan key, but the writings of Jean Bodin dominated the debate on monarchy, absolutism, and sovereignty quite early. The famous debate about oriental despotism went on well into the eighteenth century, when, as we will discuss in the last chapter of this book, the debate on orien-tal despotism was central to the philosophes and to French politics before the French Revolution. If anyone held a mirror up to look at the Persian king and the Ottoman sultan to judge monarchy in France, it was Jean Bodin.

Jean Bodin and Oriental Despotism

Jean Bodin (1529–1596) is remembered for several major contributions to the his-tory of philosophy, political science, and religion. He is also credited with laying the fundamental philosophy in the study of history, as well as being the founding father of universalism. In his Les six livres de la République, published in 1576, he expanded on many ideas he had set down in his Method for the Easy Comprehen-sion of History (Methodus ad facilem historiarum cognitionem), in 1566. Excellent work has been done on Jean Bodin’s seminal contributions to Renaissance science.67 In Les six livres de la République, Jean Bodin expanded on his historical writings to examine different forms of monarchy in the world, with his belief in the effect of climate on society and the forms of government it implied.68 Les six livres de la République is a study of sovereignty.69 One aspect of Jean Bodin’s work examined here is the interest he took in the Ottomans and the Persians through the reading of both classical texts and modern travel accounts.

One can argue that one of France’s most eminent philosophers looked at the Ottoman empire and at other ancient and modern monarchies as a mirror of France to analyze the ideal government. Although Montesquieu is best remembered for his work on comparative government, Jean Bodin’s writings on the subject preceded Montes-quieu’s by a century and a half. In his sixth and last book, Bodin argued that the best republic was a monarchy. He looked at all kinds of precedents to argue for the wisdom of a law, in fact, the French Salic law, which gave precedence to the oldest male heir.


If his book seemed to prudently justify the political status quo, it contained many criticisms of the French government, by means of comparison to other societies.

Bodin’s sources were mainly classical and brought views on the Persians, the powerful enemies of the Greeks and Romans. His quest for a secular history had given him a very close acquaintance with both Greek and Roman historians and philosophers, and his Les six livres de la République was riddled with references to Xenophon, Suetonius, and Plutarque, as well as to Aristotle and Herodotus. Bodin’s views, which were in large part inherited from his classical learning, were broadened by his own observation of modern governments such as the Ottomans, a group, as discussed previously, absent from the classical record. Jean Bodin wrote that the fi rst monarchies in the world, for which he gives the Persian monarchy as an example, were seigniorial (a term translated into English as despotic) and that it was a form of absolute monarchy that was legitimate:

Seigniorial [despotic]70 monarchy must not be confused with tyranny. There is nothing unfi tting in a prince who has defeated his enemies in a good and just war, assuming an absolute right to their possessions and their persons under the laws of war, and thereafter governing them as his slaves; just as the head of a household is the master of his slaves and their goods, and disposes of them as he thinks fi t, under the law of nations. But the prince who by an unjust war, or any other means, enslaves a free people and seizes their property is not a despot but a tyrant.71

Bodin noted that Xenophon wrote in the Cyropedie that it was considered a beau-tiful and laudable thing among the Medes that the king demanded to be the sole master of all things. He cites Artaban, who contended that as people keep their own customs, it was well that the Greeks worshiped liberty and equality but that for the Persians the best thing of all was to worship and revere their monarch as the image of God on earth. Bodin stressed that indeed, in the Bible and many ancient Greek texts, it is clear that the Greeks were free and the Barbarians were slaves. Yet even if Artaban was qualifi ed as a barbarian by Bodin, he was very careful to make the difference between seigniorial monarchy, which was laudable and legitimate, and tyranny, which Bodin condemned. He stated with some emphasis that there were no longer seigniorial monarchs in his time, while there were many tyrannies, whether in Europe or in Asia. Tyrants ruled without the people’s consent.

Jean Bodin stated this in order to launch into a very intriguing parallel between the Grand Segnieur, as he called the Ottoman Sultan, and the Roi très Catholique, as he called the French king. Quite indirectly, but fi rmly, the French king, like the sultan and the king of Moscovie, were subtly set in a passage discussing tyrants and tyranny. Never, however, does he directly qualify any of these monarchs as tyrants. According to Bodin there were no longer despotic monarchs, because through time, as princes and peoples were mollifi ed by good laws and by humanity, they only kept the shadow of the image of seigniorial monarchy. They no longer did what


the Persian king Artaxerxes did to his enemies, despoiling them until they were left naked, and slapping them into slavery be they princes or magistrates. Jean Bodin contended that there was one and only one despotic ruler left on earth: the negus of Ethiopia, the last Asiatic despot.

The negus was a despotic monarch of a kind that Europe did not know. Bodin be-lieved that Europe’s population was more warlike than Asia’s or Africa’s and could never suffer such a monarch. He also posited that Europe was never exposed to such monarchy before the invasion of the Hungarians. He wrote that the people would have to agree to a despotic monarchy for it not to be a tyranny, but that nowhere in Roman law or other authentic texts in Europe could you fi nd that dominum directum et dominum utile [direct rule is useful rule]. The invasion of the Hungarians was key to Bodin’s climate theory, because it was at that point, argued Bodin, that Europe was exposed to a foreign form of sovereignty, despotism, a form of monarchy that did not belong to Europe’s climate or character. Bodin explained that the Hungarians were a Tartare nation (he also called them an Asiatic nation) that had imported the concept of seigniorial monarchy to Europe with them. On their path inside Europe they had exposed the Germans, Lombards, Saxons, Francs, Goths, Ostrogoths, and English to their Asiatic Hungarian seigniorial concept of rule. He then concluded by saying that the greatest traces of despotic monarchy were to be found in Germany. He also gave an example: after William the Conqueror’s invasion of England the king took the property for himself and farming it was left to his subjects, a method of rule that was despotic.72 There is of course a political bias as the minute one reads the name of Charles V about the Germans inheriting Asiatic despotism, the rivalry for the title of the emperor of Europe between Francis I and Charles V springs to mind. Suddenly Bodin’s resentment of Charles V is immediately apparent.

In a chapter heading, Bodin highlights the fact that “Charles V s’est fait monarch seignieurial du Peru” [Charles V has made himself the despotic monarch of Peru]. After a sentence about Charles V having declared the inhabitants of Peru as con-quered into slavery, Jean Bodin invokes Islamic law. Rather than surprise the reader, Jean Bodin’s aims should be getting more transparent at this point. He launched into the comparison; he wrote that it was forbidden in the “loy de Mehemet” that anyone but the caliph should have the right to despotic monarchy, but the kings of Asia and Africa have slowly usurped the law and have seized power. Again, he did not name Charles V in this seemingly neutral parallel and comparison made with Asiatic des-potism. Of the conquest of Peru, Bodin wrote, as would be expected, that someone should argue that this was tyrannical and against the law of nature. Natural law was to preserve everyone’s goods and liberty, but he affi rmed that despotic monarchy was acceptable as long as the conquered people consented to it. Jean Bodin’s views of Asiatic despotism are rather positive, since he sees the slavery attached to despotism as a consensual one. In his view, the climate of Asia dictated that its people be obedi-ent and servile. If a people refused servility and did not consent, despotism meant


tyranny. Bodin concludes that despotic and tyrannical monarchy were only suited to Asia and Africa, as the peoples of Asia and Africa were “servile” enough to consent to it.73 The parallel made between Charles V and kingship in Africa and Asia was telling of Bodin’s political position about Charles’s title as emperor of Europe and Peru. Was he a tyrant? Bodin implied as much more than once.

Before making arguments, Bodin’s method was to examine many concrete sub-jects, such as fi nances or the use that could be made of colonies, or trade and its impact on the French economy. His grouping together of the Ottoman sultan and the king of France in a passage on absolute monarchy indirectly denotes a positive view of the Ottoman sultan, but much else in his work also indicates that he admired the power and administration of the Ottoman empire and the order within it. As the title of his work indicates, his writing was on republics. Bodin believed that good republics needed the military discipline, such as that of the Romans, as a political underpinning for success. He found such discipline among the Turks. The many descriptions brought back by the travelers described above, members of the second French embassy of 1547 to the Ottomans, had an impact on Bodin. Among a vast group of travelers, Guillaume Postel and Pierre Belon were two of the most precise observers of Ottoman society. Each devoted much attention to the Janissaries and to the discipline and organization of the Turkish army. Pierre Belon examined Ottoman fi nances and exploitation of the silver and gold mines, the minting of moneys, and the treasury. He wrote about the defensive system of the cities, not in a bellicose way but as an acute observer of differences.

Pierre Belon even studied how infants were reared in the Ottoman empire in order to understand how discipline was instilled early among the Turks. Belon went as far as to criticize the mollifying tastes of his own French society. He especially ad-mired the system of rewards used in the Ottoman army.74 Some of the details were echoed by Bodin. Turkish frugality, the system of punishment for pillage and of rewards that allowed advancement on merit among the Janissaries, as described by so many travelers, was duly noted by Jean Bodin as a model of effi ciency.75 Along with Belon, Postel, and other travelers to the Ottoman empire, Bodin read Paul Jove to use the information about another society to criticize the faults of his own soci-ety. Unlike Nicolas de Nicolay, who insisted on calling the Turks barbarians, many sixteenth-century writings on the Persians and Ottomans were positive. Several, such as Postel’s, Belon’s, and Bodin’s, are precursors to the methods used to criticize French society in eighteenth-century books such as L’espion Turc or the Lettres Per-sanes.76 This too was a time of political crisis for the monarchy, as Bodin wrote dur-ing a succession crisis.

Jean Bodin’s comparisons were concrete. In a section on fi nances in Book six of the Les six livres de la République, Bodin compared several rulers and their in-comes. There are many sections on the sultan. In one, Estat des fi nances de Turquie [The State of Finances in Turkey], he revealed his sources to be Paul Jove and the


Venetian Doge and banker, Andrea Gritty. Bodin read them in order to cite numbers for Sultan Suleyman’s income:

Now he [Süleyman] extracts more than twelve million ducats a year, which is hiking charges by more than two thirds in fi fty years, thanks to the abundance of money that has been carried from the Occident to the Levant. One reads in Plutarque that the dicta-tor Sulla [Sylla] charged Asia Minor, previously the domains of Lucullus and Pompey at twelve million crowns, even though they were not even one sixth the size of the land of the Turk. But, still, I do not want to excuse Princes who commit exactions, as it well known enough that Charles the V exacted more out of the duchy of Milan than Francis I.77

Here again, one can read under Bodin’s pen the devious parallels that cast a negative light on Charles V’s legitimacy. Charles V and Sylla, Süleyman and Francis I, are all compared quite rapidly in the same paragraph to point to Charles’s exactions in the Duchy of Milan. There was nothing vague about his disapproval of Charles V, despite the subtlety of his pen, nor in the admiration he expressed for the Ottoman sultan and his handling of fi nances and war.

Jean Bodin continued his praise of the Ottomans throughout Les six livres. He used forests in the Ottoman empire as an example of good fi nancial management by the Sultan. In a section entitled L’Espargne du grand Seigneur [The savings of the grand Seigneur], Bodin wrote that above and beyond the usual treasury kept in the seraglio there was a castle in Constantinople with a seventh tower reserved for lodg-ing some savings that were never touched, unless they were needed for the excep-tional expenditure created by war. In addition, he contended that in Turkey forests were used only in these crises and were not customarily cut as they were in France. He wrote that this Ottoman custom of cutting wood in extraordinary circumstances yielded at least fi fty times more wood than the way things were done in France, where, in his view, the over-exploitation of the forests had left only kindling fi re-wood. French forest management was such a failure, Bodin stressed, that wood had to be imported from Prussia, England, and Sweden, despite the vastness of French forests.78 France was rich but mismanaged.

Jean Bodin launched into a numeration of the treasures contained in the coffers of various kings. His list included relatively contemporaneous French rulers, Henri II, Francis I, with the Grand Seigneur, and famous rulers, long dead, revived from the classics. A mixture of citing classical texts and the modern methods of direct obser-vation culled from the travelers of his own generation allowed him to craft his com-parisons. Bodin closed the section with what he held to be the two largest treasures ever known to history: that of the last Persian king Darius from whom Alexander won eighty million gold pieces, and that of King David. Jean Bodin qualifi ed King David’s as the largest treasure ever amassed and cited the Old Testament to count it as “six vingt millions” (120 million).79 The Old Testament, classical texts, and the travelers of his generation are all put to good use in Les six livres de la Republique.


Without travel accounts, both classical and new, Jean Bodin’s political theories based on comparative methods would not have been possible. Montesquieu’s interest in travel accounts, in the Chinese emperor, the Persian king, and the Ottoman sultan have been widely noticed, but he had a famous precursor for his methods. It remains to be said that Bodin did not have the same admiration of the Persians, as his Greek sources dictate a rather negative attitude. Jean Bodin began a long tradition in French philosophy of equating the Persians with luxury and oriental despotism.

Like many classical writers before him, and the eighteenth-century philosophes after, the wealth of oriental monarchs was an object of fascination for Jean Bodin. Yet in his work, his view was modernized, if not amended, by the direct observation of facts brought back by the travelers of the 1547 embassy. Bodin himself claimed that he was a concrete observer, as he was looking into the details of Francis I’s accounts. After Fran-cis I’s death, Bodin claimed to have read the accounts of the chamber de comptes made that year (1547). He records that King Francis received tribute from many peoples, but at most the king gathered 130,000 livres a year. On the other hand, Francis handed out 427,692 livres as pensions to his dependants, knights, captains, counselors, and mag-istrates. Jean Bodin also discussed the huge debts incurred by the next king, Henri II, and pointed out the fact that the even Charles V, despite his successful wars, owed less, a sum barely over 50 million livres. To fi nish the chapter on fi nance in L’Ordre des receptes de Turquie [The Order of Receipts in Turkey], Bodin gave an astonishingly ac-curate description of how dues were collected in the Ottoman empire, then compared, and looked with great disfavor at the system used by the kings of France.80

Clearly in Jean Bodin’s views, order and prosperity belonged to the Ottomans, as did military discipline. The Ottomans did not sell charges, and their armies did not pillage. Bodin described a long list of virtues in the military. Bodin judged both the government’s organization and discipline as superior to France’s. Most startlingly, in this last section on raising money for war, he did not seem to react negatively to the enslavement of their Christian subjects by the Ottomans in order to raise war funds. Neutral and intent on the practical aspects of this administrative method, Jean Bodin, despite his Catholic upbringing, remained an admiring observer of the Ottoman cus-tom of enslaving Christians.

One subject alone seems to have aroused Jean Bodin’s ire: Charles V. The expedi-tions of the Ottoman forces along the Mediterranean coast posed a threat to Charles’s Hapsburg empire. The camps were clear in Bodin’s mind; as Charles was fi ghting the Ottoman Sultan Suleiman, his sympathies were with the Ottomans. The Ottoman advance was halted at Vienna in 1529. In 1535 Charles won at Tunis, but in 1536 Francis I allied himself with Suleiman against Charles and facilitated the Ottoman invasion of Nice and Toulon in 1543. When Jean Bodin was writing, the Ottomans had been allied to France for decades. The French were the only Catholic force in Southern Europe that did not participate with the Holy League in the most famous battle against the Ottomans; Les six livres was written shortly after the naval battle of Lepanto was fought in the Ionian Sea in 1571. Unlike Bodin, most of Europe was


writing to celebrate and glorify Christendom’s victory through a coalition of the pa-pacy, Hapsburg Spain, Venice, Genoa, the Duchy of Savoy, and the Knights of Malta. The Holy Leagues’ galleys defeated a force of well-trained Ottoman galleys in about fi ve hours. Unlike them, Jean Bodin wrote about the might of the Ottoman sultan, the discipline of his troops, and the soundness of Ottoman fi nances in the wake of this battle. Bodin’s enmity went to Charles V, even if Charles had died in 1558. Charles V was the despotic monarch of Peru, who ruled without consent of his subjects in the New World. Where was France’s empire? Had Postel not predicted that Francis was to be at the helm of a universal empire?

Postel and the New World

The concept of the New World equated with biblical paradise played a role in Pos-tel’s discourse. Postel’s views were very different from many accounts, for he did not give Christ centrality in his vision of empire, but the Virgin Mary. In doing so Postel was pointing to his own Norman origins, as they traditionally focused on the cult of the Virgin. In the sixteenth century, the centers of French exploration were Normandy and the city of Dieppe. Its sailors were the fi rst to go to the New World for France. Both Normandy, and especially Venice on the waters, which Postel saw as the New Jerusalem, were central to his understanding of the New World, yet much of his vision was confi rmed by travel to the Ottoman empire. Postel may have been very original in some ways, yet he had much in common with many thinkers of his time. Michel de Certeau has shown that in the sixteenth century men were obsessed by two biblical images: paradise lost, often projected onto the New World, and the eschatological image of the New Jerusalem.81

Before Postel spoke to Francis about empire, when Postel was a mere adolescent hoping to enroll at Sainte Barbe in 1524, Francis I was being bankrolled by the new bank of Lyon and a rich Dieppois ship owner and fi nancier, Jehan Ango (1480–1551). Among the many expeditions he armed, Jehan Ango fi nanced Giovanni da Verraz-zano to explore North America for France. The reality of France’s paucity in imperial lands did not interfere with Postel’s utopian views. Among the thousands and thou-sands of pages Guillaume Postel left, one contribution was The Marvelous Victories of Women in the New World, published on rue Saint Jacques in Paris in 1553, written in French. Much of his work had been in Latin, but his travel account and this work on the New World were both in the French. The Marvelous Victories of Women was so extraordinarily novel that its contents left the censors of the Parliament of Paris totally aghast.82 In this text, Postel postulated his own unshakable faith in a woman he called the Venetian Virgin, as well as his own vision for the world’s salvation.83 It is interest-ing to note that just as the Reformation was masculinizing Christianity by obliterating the Virgin Mary, Postel was positing the redemption of women, the cult of a woman named Joanna as the redemptor of all women, and the cult of Mary as central.


As Marion Kuntz has shown, in Venice Postel met a woman who took care of the sick in a hospital for the poor. She was known by the name of Jeanne, Zuana or Giovanna. She was well-versed in theology, and they discussed many subjects and texts, but chiefl y the subject of how Christ had given men redemption but not women. Soon, both Postel and Jeanne professed that she was to bring redemption to woman-kind. Postel had very clear opinions about European exploration and discovery. He believed that Columbus was divinely guided and believed him to be a descendant of Janus, but not surprisingly he strongly disapproved of the attitudes and wars of the Spanish and the Portuguese in the New World.84 He did not condone colonization and believed that it destroyed the divine plan of discovery: universal peace. The New World was a world of peace and unity to be conquered by the Virgin.

Postel saw Columbus’s voyage as a divine gift passed down from Janus. He held the esoteric belief that divine wisdom fi rst spread from East to West, but the Age of Discovery meant that divine providence was guiding the West to propagate the wisdom of the East and to unite the temporal kingdom of the West with the spiritual kingdom of the East.85 He also believed that he himself, Guillaume Postel, was the instrument of the power of Christ, living in the spirit of the Venetian Virgin. The In-quisition questioned him at length, and he was made to recant his heretical ideas, yet he was so extreme in his views that they did not judge him heretical, but insane. This verdict set him free. Once liberated from prison, Postel returned to Paris and took over his chair at the Collège de trois langues, albeit not for long. A miracle changed his life, and it is worth lingering on some of his most cherished beliefs before this radical transformation makes his ideas even more obscure to the modern reader.

It should be self-evident that Postel strongly objected to the Spanish and Portu-guese and their colonizing behavior, as he saw the rightful monarch of the whole world to be his own king, Francis I or, later, his grandson Charles IX (1550–1574). If one reads the political map of Postel’s environment, perhaps these ideas seems less mystical than have been portrayed by some of his biographers. Much of what Postel had to say was highly political and had to do with France’s place in the world, France’s aspirations to obtain a part of the New World. Postel’s vision of a world unifi ed and at peace under one monarch, and his fascination with Columbus’s voy-age, stemmed from the same ideas he expressed as he described the Ottomans to his prince: Postel believed that the French nation should hold the leadership of the world. Postel concluded that the French monarch was the rightful sovereign of the city of God and the New World.

An Absence of Empire?

The king of France was only too painfully aware that beyond Europe, Charles V of Spain and the Portuguese had divided the world among themselves with the bene-diction of the pope. France’s absence of empire was to play a great role in Postel’s


utopian writing about the New World. His reverence for Joanna is better understood if one is familiar with Postel’s religious environment in Normandy and its Atlantic seafaring culture. Michael Wintroub has made an extensive cultural study on a local Norman poetry society called the Puy de Palinod. He demonstrates the power of the rhetoric emanating from this society by showing its religious origins. The Puy de Palinod started as a religious society devoted to the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary. The cult can be traced to the eleventh century to a certain Helsinus, a prelate who was William the Conqueror’s ambassador to the Danish king. Caught in a storm, Helsinius had a vision. He was promised by a man clothed in light that he would survive through the intervention of the Virgin Mary, if he celebrated the Im-maculate Conception. As it was, the Virgin Mary already had an established cult in the region. She was considered the patroness of Norman sailors. Michael Wintroub points to the parallels between the sea, la mer, and la mere, holy mother of God. The Virgin was not simply compared to the sea but was the vessel, the ship itself. Win-troub cites the explorer Jean Parmentier comparing the Virgin Mary to a sturdy ship completely fi lled with grace. She was also the North Star that guided Norman sailors. Wintroub cites Pierre Crignon’s poem equating the Virgin with the astrolabe; it was through her that the journey was made possible.86 “In making possible the extension of the king’s reign to the recently discovered New World, it initiated the course of an event that would lead all humanity back to the paradise lost.”87

The redemptive role Postel attributed to Joanna was very similar to the focus on the Virgin in some poetry in his native Normandy. Postel’s text is better un-derstood through Norman traditions. Michael Wintroub discusses the poetry pro-duced by the members of the Puy de Palinod centered on the Virgin as the new Eve. She triumphed over Satan and redeemed the world to its prelapsian purity, like the woman of the Apocalypse described in Revelations. Although Yvonne Petry has rightly tied Postel’s mystical writing to the Kabbalah as an inspiration for The Mar-velous Victories of Women in the New World, Postel’s focus on his native Normandy might well be the link to some of the cultural underpinnings of his vision of Joanna. Moreover, in local Norman literature, Normandy itself appears as the second Zion. His biographer William Bouwsma makes it clear that Postel also located the New Jerusalem on the shores of Normandy, situated under the stars he called Magistrale Triplicité (Aries, Leo, and Sagistarius).88 It was the Norman sailors and explorers, along with the likes of Parmentier and Crignon, who offered their King Francis I access to the New World. Guillaume Postel’s mystical writing mirrored Fran cis I’s imperial ambitions carried out by the seafarers of Normandy through their faith in the Virgin Mary.

Francis I let his frustrated global ambitions be diplomatically manifest. He de-manded rights through his ambassador in the Vatican by negotiating changes to the established division of the world. The papacy, Francis complained, had left no room for Catholic France. As is well known, after Columbus returned from his voyage, the world was offi cially cut into two halves by a papal bull in 1493. It had been followed


in 1494 by a negotiation between the Spanish and Portuguese crowns at Tordesillas. With Spanish and the Portuguese sea power, and thanks to the new Atlantic maritime route via the Cape of Good Hope, the trade “from India to India” began as a strictly Iberian prerogative. The French had no right to take part this long-distance trade. The main commodity of this early maritime trade was Spanish silver from the West Indies or the Americas, slaves from Africa, and spices and textiles, among them silk, from Asia.89 France, like England, had no trade possibilities except piracy. Piracy was carried out by the intrepid Normans with the blessing of the king of France, but Francis wanted authority to own the New World. He calculated that his new ties with the Ottomans would help his global ambitions, as indeed they would. The Ottomans were the chief negotiators of all the trade of goods that came from the East. Goods from Persia and as far away as India and China came to the Ottoman markets to be exported to Europe. French trade in what was later called the Levant was going to be of immense importance to France in the future. Yet, Francis’s treaty with the Ottomans was secretly balanced with assiduous wooing of the pope, Clement VII. Through his French ambassador in Rome, the pope had a formal ban on trade with the “infi dels.”

To Francis’s satisfaction, the pope declared in 1533 that the bull of 1493 should be interpreted as referring to “known continents and not territories subsequently dis-covered by others.” This hypothetically allowed the French to eventually claim terri-tories in the New World with the pope’s blessing. Several scholars have analyzed the famous painting by Hans Holbein, The Ambassadors, which was commissioned by the French ambassador to London, Jean de Dinteville, as an expression of Francis’s hope for empire. The globe depicted in the painting is now kept at the Bieneke Li-brary at Yale, which is known as the Ambassador’s Globe because of the painting. In the painting, two men, the French ambassador to London and a French envoy on a secret mission, are depicted standing an arm’s width apart, separated by a table covered with a Turkish carpet, books, instruments such as a surveyor’s square and compass, and a broken lute. There are two terrestrial globes, one on the table and the other lying on the bottom shelf. The references to knowledge about the world, explo-ration, and mapping the heavens and the world could not be clearer.90

Lisa Jardine and Jerry Brotton have argued that the empty space between the two men symbolizes not French territorial ambition, but the absence of empire, that the French commission by Holbein depicted European discord, symbolized both by the broken string on the lute and by what could be read on the globe. They no-ticed that in the painting the globe has no traces of the line of 1494 beyond Brazil. In reality the globe, presently held at Yale, certainly did and does. The painted version of the globe also totally omits the line depicting Magellan’s circumnavigation of the world, which, in fact, the globe was made to commemorate.91 The absence was political. Magellan’s fi rst circumnavigation of the world in 1522 was backed primar-ily by Charles V, fi nanced by the Fuggers. As Jerry Brotton and Lisa Jardine have argued, Holbein’s omission of the line on the globe in the painting demonstrated


the painter’s political loyalty to his French commissioner. The French ambassador was loath to celebrate Charles V’s worldly feats.92 That France was not granted the right to participate in empire was a perceived injustice toward a Catholic power. Guillaume Postel had long made a mystical argument for Francis’s universal rule over the rest of the world. To Postel the spiritual world and the material world were interchangeable, but only the king of France could take worldly initiatives.

– 69 –

–3–

France in the World

Just as you sign the fl eur de lys contains the truth of the Holy Trinity, so too your body carries the shining armor of justice and the restoration of the immaculate authority. You are the idea and mirror of virtue … an insuperable ruler that other kings call dictator. You are the conserver of peace, the propagator and ardent champion of the catholic faith, to whom in a brief space of time barbarous people and men of all nations, will obediently submit.

Jean Thenaud, his tutor, to Francis I1

Who would imagine that Jacques de Gouvea, mentor to Postel, director of the Collège Sainte Barbe, had played a role in Francis I’s need for Ottoman alliance against Charles the V? The story is a fascinating one. In 1522 Portuguese agents picked up rumors that King Francis was supporting an exploration fi nanced by a wealthy ship owner from Dieppe, Jehan Ango. Greatly irritated, the king of Portugal, John III, protested, as Portugal considered Brazil and the New World its own. Francis calmed the rumors: Giovanni Verrazano was not planning to sail to Brazil. Francis declared an embargo on the Brazil trade, hoping for Portuguese support against Charles V. A Portuguese galleon captured by French privateers was even returned to prove good will. Nevertheless, agents in Normandy began to have doubts. Jacques de Gouvea, whose college later received funding from Portugal’s King John III, was a trusted informant and was sent to Normandy to spy into the affairs of the Normans. Soon de Gouvea discovered that the Verrazano trip was still on, and that furthermore Francis had exempted Verrazano from the embargo. De Gouvea informed the king of Portu-gal. Michael Wintroub describes this episode by saying “the economic interests of the merchants of Normandy were closely intertwined with a proto-nationalist escha-tology, in which the French king, as Last World Emperor, would do battle with infi -dels and heretics, unite all the people of the world, and prepare the way for Christ’s millennial kingdom on Earth.”2 For this to come true Francis needed the New World. What had been a maritime race between merchants turned into a quarrel among kings.

The king of Portugal immediately authorized his subjects to attack all French ships. The merchants of Normandy had been dealing in Brazilian wood since the 1520s, as le bois de braise yielded brilliant red dyes for their linen trade. Norman sailors enticed the native Tupinambah to do the hard labor of cutting down the trees


for them. The merchants of Dieppe and Rouen had been important in this trade since 1503. In return Francis I gave a letter of marque to the Norman pirate Jean Terrien. The Normans put together a fl eet of eight ships with the fi nancing of Jehan Ango, and they set sail in 1524 under the command of Jean de Fleury. Francis’s letter of marque was considered a declaration of war by the king of Portugal. John III was the self-styled “Lord of Guinea and of the Conquest, Navigation and Commerce of Ethiopia, Arabia, Persia and India.”3 Only the East is mentioned in this title; the pope had given the New World to Spain, but the line cutting the world in half made Brazil part of the East.

All other nations trading on the seas were considered pirates or corsairs by Spain and Portugal; at this point the term corsair was not confi ned to the pirates of the Mediterranean. The ship owner Jehan Ango, who had fi nanced the French expedi-tion, was the biggest corsair, responsible for taking 300 Portuguese ships. But it was Jean de Fleury who became the most famed of all French corsairs. He captured one of the three Spanish galleons carrying the gold of the Aztecs back to Spain. He gave King Francis a bounty of gold, emeralds, pearls, Aztec objects in gold, and exotic plants and wild life sent by Hernando Cortez to his king Charles V. The king of Spain was enraged at the loss.4 This French victory was short-lived. Soon Francis suffered defeats in Italy and, as discussed here earlier, ended up a prisoner in Spain together with his sons, hostages of Charles V, during which time his mother wrote her afore-mentioned letter to Sultan Süleyman, making him the arbiter of European affairs. The secret peace signed nearly two decades later between Francis and Charles V (just as Henri VIII was getting ready to invade France) not only sent off the d’Aramon em-bassy to patch things up with the Ottomans, but opened the door to Norman trade in Brazil, which exploded after 1540.

France’s imperial ambitions, born with Francis I, were shaped late, only in the second half of the seventeenth century. Despite some successful exploration in the New World, religious wars and civil unrest were so widespread domestically that they hindered France’s imperial hopes. New France—the American territories ex-plored and settled between 1524 and 1763—was the most important part of France’s imperial policy until the end of the seventeenth century. French presence in India was an eighteenth-century commercial presence that did not lead to empire. In North America, French territories were vast; the lands settled by the French were in Canada (1524–1763), Acadia (1604–1713), Terre Neuve (1627–1713), Louisiana (1682–1763) and Ile Royale (1717–1758). The French Antilles were acquired with constant competition from the English and the Dutch, fi rst a small part of Sainte-Christophe (St. Kitts) in 1624, Guadeloupe and Martinique in 1635, Sainte Lucie in 1637, Saint Martin and Saint Bathélemy in 1648, and Grenada in 1650. Early but failed attempts were made to settle Brazil and Florida. The height of French imperial success in the Americas was under Louis XIV, when Louisiana was named for the king and the Antilles were successfully exploited for sugar. The Louisiana territory was a vast central corridor at the interior of North America that included the river Colbert, now

France in the World • 71

called the Mississippi. The fi rst imperial phase was the mandate given by Francis I to Jacques Cartier to explore the land where one found gold. Just as Giovanni Verrazano had done before him, Cartier was looking for the legendary western route to the Indies.

Florida: Terre des Bretons

A French colony in the Americas was settled, albeit very briefl y, from 1564 to 1565, by Huguenots in Florida. The massacre of these French Huguenots by the Spanish led to formal complaints to Philip II by Catherine of Medici and her son, Charles IX. These complaints were couched in imperial terms; Florida was called the Terre des Bretons, countering Spanish claims that Florida was Spanish territory. The French claim rested on the affi rmation that sailors from Dieppe had discovered the New World before Columbus in 1488, and that Basque and Breton sailors knew the way to the New World before the Spanish did.5 The Huguenots in France protested against their own monarch, as they suspected that because of their religion the French court was taking no action against Spain for what happened in Florida. The complaint was of little avail against the powerful Spanish. This was the weakest point in France’s maritime history. The king had no navy in the Atlantic, which was the domain of the Normans and the Bretons. France had had no galleys in the Mediterranean, not even to escort its future queen, Catherine of Medici, from Florence to her wedding in Marseilles to Francis’s son Henri II in 1533. France had to count on the Knights of Malta and the Genoese galleys to bring Catherine to France.

What was this French claim of familiarity with the New World before Columbus based on? The French colony in the Americas was settled by Huguenots in Florida, near present-day Saint Augustine, from 1564 to 1565. It had been fi nanced by Gas-pard de Coligny to counter Spanish hegemony in America. Coligny said of them: “[T]here were no tillers of the soil, only adventurous gentlemen, reckless soldiers, discontented tradesmen, all keen for novelty and heated by dreams of wealth.”6 This was the last straw for the Spanish. For decades the Spanish had been attacked suc-cessfully by François le Clerk, a pirate known as Jambe de bois (Pegleg), at their launching pad for New World expeditions in the Canary Islands. The following year in 1553, French raids by Huguenot pirates on the coast of Hispaniola were followed by raids into Cuba. In 1555, the pirate Jacques de Sores, Pegleg’s deputy, captured Havana for the second time and held it hostage for ransom. The Huguenot pirates were raiding the Caribbean with impunity, which led the Spanish to reinforce their ports against French presence. It was in the wake of these confl icts that Fort Caroline was settled. To de Coligny’s delight the Huguenots had established their fi rst foothold in North America. The Huguenots saw this as an extension of a war against the spread of Catholicism in the New World. The Spanish crown sent Pedro de Menendez to destroy the French. They were all massacred.7


The fi rst offi cially recorded contact of the Normans with Brazil for which we still have documents took place in 1503–1504. That year Jehan Ango and Pierre Carpentier decided to send the ship L’Espoir to Brazil, with a cargo of hatchets, knives, cloth, beads, and mirrors, under captain Binot Paulmier de Gonneville from Honfl eur. De Gonneville’s account tells of the return voyage. In Brazil, a person he called the king of the Indians had asked him to take his son, Essomericq, back to Europe with him. The crew of L’Espoir took ill, including Essomericq, who, on the brink of death, was baptized by the ship’s chaplain. He recovered, and it was at this point that de Gonneville contends that in 1504 they went to recover in a village that had known of Norman and Breton traders for a long time, a place where merchants from Saint Malo, Dieppe, and other ports had come to fetch brazil wood, monkeys, parakeets, cotton, and other goods for several years. The return trip back to Dieppe was hard, and the exotic animals were devoured on the way back.8 Wintroub tells this episode by describing how Essomericq became Binot after his baptism, and once in France was given de Gonneville’s last name of de Paulmier. Well-adapted, Binot de Paulmier was a highly regarded citizen.9 The archives of the city of Dieppe, the center of French exploration, were burned during wars. There could have been, ac-cording to French claims, even earlier contact than can be deduced from the accounts of Captain de Gon neville.10 De Gonneville’s story, which was fi rst told orally to the admiralty of Dieppe, was the only possible corroboration left for the claim made by the French. The local historian of Dieppe, Desmarquet, claimed that it was not Co-lumbus but Jehan Cousin who had discovered the New World by landing in Brazil in 1488, where the Amazon emptied.11

This claim would have a long history in French perceptions of the world. As late as 1663, it was brought up in a petition to Louis XIV. In a 1660 book on sea naviga-tion by a lawyer in Bordeaux, Use et coutumes de la mer by Etienne Clairac, the dis-covery of the New World in 1488 by French fi shermen was emphasized. The petition to Louis XIV urged the king of France to form an East India Company to go to India, because: “A French fi sherman had discovered the new world and shown the way to Columbus.” Louis XIV was sending ships to India. The pamphleteer was confl ating the New World of Jehan Cousin with the old, as was most every body.12

The “Orient”: On How the New World Became the Old World

After the victory of Henri II (r. 1547–1559) over the English in 1550, the gover-nor of Normandy had notifi ed Rouen’s city council of the king’s wish to make a triumphal entry into the city. Henri II made twenty-eight royal entries into differ-ent cities to unify his patrie and glorify his reign. Rouen was important as it had the best textile industry in linens and the wealthiest merchants. In the middle of the sixteenth century Brazil was reconstructed in the city of Rouen for the king of France. In A Savage Mirror Michael Wintroub has reconstructed and interpreted this


hallucination of empire: royal entry into the city of Rouen was an entry into Brazil. Among the spectacles greeting him, such as a naval battle, the French king found an entire Brazilian village. It stood complete with its savage inhabitants in Rouen’s Fau-bourg Saint Sever, a neighborhood inhabited by wealthy merchants. In the elaborate celebrations planned for the king “the Brazilian village created for Henri II’s entry has a very specifi c purpose: to lobby the king to support the interests of Normandy’s merchant community in their ongoing and long standing war with Portugal over the right to trade in the New World.”13 Most of the imagery available for the Brazilian village came from the familiarity of the merchants of Normandy with Brazil, not from the work of André Thévet.

The traveler André Thévet (1502–1590), cosmographer to four kings, left the fi rst French description of Brazil. Under Henri II’s reign, he made several important jour-neys.14 He initially traveled to the Ottoman empire and returned to France in 1554, around the time Postel returned from his second trip to Istanbul. Thévet published an account of this voyage under the title of Cosmographie du Levant.15 His trip to Constantinople was not court-sponsored but was funded by the cardinal of Lorraine. The same year, in 1554, he was appointed to be the ship chaplain of the fl eet of the vice-admiral of Brittany, Nicolas Durand de Villegaignon (1510–1571). Villegaignon was put in charge, by the same Admiral de Coligny who later initiated the Florida settlement, of creating a settlement that was to be a new world of religious concord and peace. The Breton vice-admiral started the utopian French settlement in Rio de Janeiro in 1555. The settlement consisted mainly, but not solely, of male French Hu-guenots. Dreams of peace and paradise were short-lived. The infi ghting among the few settlers reproduced the religious tensions in France. The battles continued until the French settlers were defeated by the Portuguese in 1560.

The Huguenots and their central role in the exploration of the New World have been well studied by Frank Lestringant, according to whom André Thévet, the chap-lain of the trip, returned from Brazil as quickly as possible.16 He was sick upon ar-rival, spent ten weeks in bed in Rio, and took the ship that had brought them to Brazil back to France. Despite this, he has left a famous account of Brazil, whose images would mark the works of many of his contemporaries, from Rabelais to Montaigne to Lafi teau.17 Cannibalism would be its largest impact on the French imagination, but not the only one. The idea of the “savage” was born. Many of the plants of the New World, such as peanuts, pineapple, tobacco, manioc, and potato are described for the fi rst time in 1557 in Thévet’s Singularités de la France Antarctique. The writing is much in the spirit Ramus would advocate, and the emphasis in the account is on the rare, the extraordinary, and the exotic; novelties and rarities that Thévet, Belon, and other travelers called the Singularités. The object was to pinpoint what was unique, singular, and a distinguishing feature of the land observed.

Once home, Thévet, still quite ill, transmitted his abundant notes to a medical student, Mathurin Héret, the real author of the Singularités. Beyond Thévet’s notes, Héret received observations made during a 1551–1552 trip by Captain Le Testu, and


also Villegaignon’s own notes. Soon Thévet was accused by Huguenots of being a straw man, writing propaganda for Villegaignon to encourage the Huguenots to leave for the New World.18 The utopian settlement failed despite the dream of con-cord. Lestringant describes how strange it must have been: With real cannibalism around them, the French started quarreling about the meaning of the host and wine during communion. In the religious quarrels of the time, Catholics were accused of cannibalism, of eating the body of Christ. Many of the settlers left and took up with native women, and others disobeyed and refused to do the hard work of tilling and building. The settlement was falling apart when Villegaignon sent a message to his old classmate John Calvin in Geneva. Calvin hoped to save this new vision of paradise for Protestants. He sent fourteen men to Rio, and women were also sent to marry the men, to keep them from living with local women. It was to no avail. Among those sent by Calvin was Jean de Léry, whose work on Brazil responded to Thévet’s views of why the French settlement failed. De Léry’s work on Brazil be-came famous, and Thévet’s slowly but surely disappeared as he lost his reputation because of having too many ghost writers for his book, especially after Montaigne criticized him for it. His work also was seen as an old-fashioned bazaar, a cabinet of curiosities, a compendium of messy exotic singularities, that included everything observed from Africa to the New World.19

Mary Campbell looks at the Singularités as a compilation of picture books for a relatively wide audience, old-fashioned compared to what was being produced in the sixteenth century. Yet, best-sellers were always old-fashioned and were signifi cant for such popular sensations as wonder and pleasure even in their relation to the scientifi c revolution. Campbell asks: “What then were Thévet’s books doing in 1557, 1575 and 1588? A thousand things, but for the purposes of this discussion mainly one: taking possession.”20 She refers to Greenblatt’s book, Marvelous Possessions, on the en-counter of the European with the New World but means possession differently, more intimately and physically, a comestible posession.21 She argues that Thévet’s work is a preparation of “America” as edible or at least collectible. Campbell contrasts the need for the preparation of the novelty of this nugget, the strange New World, to the familiar comestibles in the Levant’s sugar and spices, well-assimilated by Europeans into their diet. Indeed the strange produce of the New World, save for exceptions like chocolate, would not be immediately judged as comestible, but would be often viewed as strange and poisonous.22

Was it for sugar, spices, and gold that Columbus set out to Asia, to land in Hispan-iola? As Felipe Fernández-Armesto tells it: yes and no. In 1470 Columbus worked as a sugar buyer for a Genoese family of merchants, and this acquainted Columbus with the waters of the eastern Mediterranean and the African Atlantic. He was the son of a Genoese weaver with a large, clamorous family. For upstart travelers like Colum-bus there were only three ways up: war, the church, and the sea. His plan was never as clear as it has been made to sound: he argued several plans as a good salesman would, according to his interlocutors. He offered a short route to China and the riches


of the Orient, or fi nding new islands, or a lost continent in the Atlantic.23 Once he was commissioned to fi nd the short route to the China, after his arrival in Hispaniola, he insisted he had found it: “Columbus had to insist that he had reached or approached Asia, his rewards from the monarchs depended on this.”24 From Columbus’s stub-born insistence dates the inclusion of the Americas in what Europe considered the Orient. This would persist in the Early Modern period, through other imaginary con-structions crafted by Europe’s most prominent intellectuals.

The encounter of the Europeans with the New World and its European reading as the Old has been examined by Anthony Grafton.25 The following quotation used by Grafton sums up the quarrel between the ancients and the moderns that was to ensue, the beginning of scientifi c observation as opposed to textual antiquarianism: “We told them [the Iroquois] that we know all things through written documents. These savages asked ‘Before you came to the lands where we live, did you rightly know that we were here? We were obliged to say no. Then you do not know all things through books, and they didn’t tell you everything.’ ” This is from Louis Hennepin (1626–1701), a French missionary, admitting to the limitations of his own learning, which was from the Bible.26 This temporarily humbled attitude notwithstanding, antiquari-anism would prevail. Despite European descriptions of the New World as paradise, there were doubts created by these encounters. Strangeness and shock were quickly assuaged by using old familiar tools to interpret the new. Reading of the New World through classical texts would lead the Americas to be seen as part of the Orient.

Grafton describes how Gomara, Cortez’s associate, described the Spanish con-quest by using Herodotus. In Gomara’s mind the analogy was clear between the Aztec pictorial codices and the Egyptian hieroglyphs. Bartholomé de Las Casas (1484–1566) used parts of Gomara’s work, as most Renaissance historians contented themselves with integrating some primary facts within a smoother literary text that followed the rules of rhetorical structure and artistic style, much of it borrowed from Greek and Roman texts.27 This technique too read the New World as the old and as-similated European views of the Americas with Greek views of Egypt. This made the elusive border of what the Orient meant in early modern times even fuzzier. Mathurin Héret wrote for Thévet using Pliny, Herodotus, and a host of Greco-Roman writers. When Héret unsuccessfully sued Thévet in court for authorship of the Sin-gularités, the host of medical writings he had pitted the account with became appar-ent.28 Modern observation was wedded to humanism.

Jean Bodin considered that the birth of modern history was discovery: “Only the brute facts of the discoveries inspired Bodin and his contemporaries with their confi dence in modern achievement and their condescension towards ancient igno-rance.”29 In this new historical thinking, the images of Virginia Indians were used by Bodin to depict images of ancient Picts and Bretons.30 In Bodin’s “modern” his-torical consciousness, with its chronology and its evolutionary idea of progress, the American Indians were read as the French past. The American native was civilized man’s past. In seeking the past and looking systematically at history, Bodin was


hoping for more than an intellectual exercise. Grafton clarifi es the urgency of the quest as a political one:

… nowhere did the intellectuals argue more heatedly or change their fashions of thought more rapidly than in France, where religious strife made the devising of new theories a matter of more than theoretical importance. From the early 1550’s Huguenots and Catholics confronted one and other throughout the kingdom, more and more belliger-ently. The death of Henri II in 1559 left the throne in the hands of his immature and not very competent sons.31

Bodin looked at comparative history and law to solve some legal issues in France at a time of crisis, a moment when chaos seemed to spell the dissolution of the French state. Grafton shows that the Jesuit Baudouin and Bodin were in agree-ment that all humankind was one and that any people might provide examples applicable to France at a time of acute crisis.32 Montesquieu would be one of many inheritors of this comparative and universal tradition that would mark the Enlight-enment, another century of political crisis. Jean Bodin was well in advance of his peers in the Renaissance, most of whom compared the New World to Rome. Their comparison came from an attitude of respect for Mesoamerican history and its pictorial scripts. Pictorial techniques of writing were considered inferior in the eighteenth century, but not before. As Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra has shown, only when evolutionary ideas were applied to history in the eighteenth century were the natives of the Americas seen as having no history. A step further, and they were seen as man’s illiterate primitive past. In seeing the American Indians as the French past, Jean Bodin was a precursor of the Enlightenment’s reading of the New World as the land of the noble savage.33

Cañizares-Esguerra argues that initially Spanish historians like Hernández and Durán believed that nonalphabetical scripts could hold historical records that were entirely trustworthy. In the Renaissance nonalphabetical scripts were not seen as primitive. The Franciscan missionaries formed as humanists, learned and used Meso-american languages to write local histories based on them.34 This Renaissance view changed in the eighteenth century, according to Cañizares-Esguerra. Rousseau was not alone in looking at the American natives as man’s primitive past before society. The noble savage was innocent of knowledge, or what Rousseau called curiosité. The Americans were used as a beginning, a way to study the historical evolution of the human mind. Since Rousseau viewed civilization and society as the corruptive factor in man’s history, for Rousseau illiterate savages were innocent. Man could not go back to innocence, but such was his beginning in Rousseau’s idea of his-tory. Many of his contemporaries also equated the Americans to savages, to study the evolution of history and of man, but they did not share his positive view of the “savage’s” nobility of mind. In their views innocence and illiteracy were no longer positive. It meant being low in the ladder of the evolution of civilization.


This evolutionary thinking with a quest for origins and beginnings was a marker of Orientalism, which itself grew out of biblical studies. The New World was par-adise, and the savage was Adam before the Fall. The Orient included the Ameri-cas, not only as the biblical site of paradise, but as the site of the origin of man’s historical evolution. In the eighteenth century, ideas about civilization and history were still imbued with Christian views of progress. Orientalists no longer directly looked for paradise, but for the origins of civilization. They established a new hier-archy of progress based on alphabets. The renowned orientalist Jean Jacques Barthé-lemy (1716–1795) deciphered Palmyran and Phoenician letters through comparative methods. He assumed that Phoenician derived from Egyptian hieroglyphs.35 Barthé-lemy argued that, had Spanish conquest not disturbed the natural historical evolution of Mesoamerican scripts, they would have evolved to become either Egyptian hiero-glyphs or Chinese ideograms. These last two scripts were very high on the evolution-ary scale in the hierarchy of civilization, a ranking based on alphabets.

Nevertheless, being pictorial, hieroglyphs and ideograms were still not ranked as high as the Hebrew, Latin, or Greek. These arguments put Mesoamerican forms of expression lowest in the hierarchy. Another French orientalist, Joseph de Guignes (1721–1800), argued for adding one more step in the hierarchy of scripts. He posited that China had begun as an Egyptian colony, and well before then, that Mesoameri-cans had their beginnings as colonial outposts of China. In this hierarchy, Egypt brought script, therefore civilization to China, and China to Mesoamerica. This en-raged those who viewed China as a superior civilization. Many, like Cornelius de Pauw (1739–1799), later devoted their research against de Guignes’s ideas of civili-zations to prove the supremacy of China. Cornelius de Pauw wrote about the history of Egypt and China in order to prove that they had entirely separate histories.36 Two centuries later, these orientalist exercises in classifying script echoed Postel and his Lord’s Prayer in twelve alphabets.37 Postel’s quest was for the original alphabet, the original language of man. Similarly, Joseph de Guignes’s quest was for the beginning of history and civilization. The change was that this was now scientifi c research to trace social progress, to trace the historic evolution of the civilization of man. This quest for origins in the eighteenth century placed the Americas in the fi eld of study of French orientalists. As absurd as it may seem, prominent French intellectuals, nearly three centuries after Columbus’s convenient error, were still speaking of China in order to read the Americas.

Indian Ocean Exploration under Francis I

The French will to gain a foothold in Asia was undertaken independently of the French court by merchants and sailors. These adventurers were rarely funded by the court; they belonged to the important merchant communities of the port cities of France—Marseilles, Dieppe, Rouen, and Saint Malo—which dominated French


international trade. This regional aspect of French imperialism has often hidden their stories from sight.38 Because their stories are not as well known as Champlain’s or Cartier’s they are worth dwelling on. Even the latter, although verbally sponsored by the king, were not really funded.

The problem of which nation the Moluccas belonged to was not completely set-tled until in 1529, except of course for the Portuguese, who were certain it belonged to them. The French had hopes of establishing a foothold in the Moluccas to buy spices. It was once again the sailors of Dieppe, fi nanced by the same ship owner Jehan Ango, who left for the Indian Ocean in 1529. It was not a fi rst journey; this was partly a search expedition. In 1526, a certain Pierre Caunay left the port of Honfl eur, passed the Cape of Good Hope, and landed in Sumatra, hoping to go to the Moluccas. In Sumatra the crew was killed, including the indispensable Portuguese pilot. Giving up on the idea of reaching the Moluccas, Pierre Caunay hoped to return safely to France. This too was not to be, as the ship got stuck in sands, right between Madagascar and mainland Africa. Desperate, the crew went out to sea in a small boat and landed in Mozambique, where the Portuguese threw the ragged and famished Frenchmen in jail. As they were never heard from again, a certain captain Jean de Breuilly went out to seek them.

Jean de Breuilly stopped at Zanzibar in March 1528, crossing the Indian Ocean to anchor his ship in Diu in Gujarat, where the Portuguese promptly seized his ship. Next, two brothers, Jean and Raoul Parmentier, set out to sea. They convinced Jehan Ango to fi nance their expedition to the Moluccas in 1529, in order to search for survivors and buy pepper spices to take to Normandy. After a diffi cult voyage, with many sailors sick, they reach Sumatra to be welcomed warmly by a port master, who refused to sell them the pepper. Dispirited, the brothers moved on. Jean died at sea on December 3, 1529 at age forty-nine. His brother Raoul died on the 22nd and both their bodies were thrown overboard for burial at sea. When the expedition re-turned, the 600-verse poem composed by Jean Parmentier describing the voyage was published by the professional writer, Pierre Crignon: Description nouvelle des mer-veilles de ce monde et de la dignité de l’homme. Parmentier’s 600 verses celebrated the beauty of the marvelous world to discover, and the courage of the heroes that went out to sea to fi nd it by abandoning the sweet comforts of home.39

It was not until several decades later that a merchant and adventurer of absolutely no renown made a fi rst journey to India. The intrepid Vincent Le Blanc and his story have largely been forgotten by historians. He boasted of his own fame, evidence of which is still to be recovered. Although he started his travels in 1567 from his home town of Marseilles, his account appeared fi rst only in 1648 under the title Les voyages fameux du Sieur Vincent Le Blanc, qu’il a faits depuis l’âge de douze ans jusqu’à soixante dans les quatres parties du monde. His story was composed based on notes, by a professional, as most accounts were. The professional scholar and geographer Pierre Bergeron was the sole author of his account and of many others about the Indes orientales. It was printed in 1648 and its title emphasized Vincent’s claim to fame:


the fact that he traveled from age twelve to age sixty. A later edition of 1658 sported a less boastful and more classical title.40 The 1648 work was translated into Dutch in 1554 and the 1658 edition into English in 1660 giving credence to the boast that his travels were well known at the time.41 He returned and enrolled in Henri III’s army. Restless and bored, Le Blanc soon left for a trip to Brazil in 1581. When he returned he married and settled as a merchant in Marseilles, but he wrote that he had chosen the most terrible of women as a wife and had to travel once again. He traveled across Europe as a gem merchant and later left from Seville for Senegal in 1597. Should the veracity of his story be established, he would be the precursor of several French travelers to India and Africa.

French Exploration under Henri IV

Save for sending Jesuits to Canada, France’s hold on the Americas in the last quar-ter of the sixteenth century was sporadic; France’s imperial hopes were stunted by domestic chaos. Bodin’s philosophical endeavors failed to resolve the crisis caused by Henri II’s succession in 1559. Thirty years of brutal religious wars ensued under Catherine de Medici’s (r. 1559–1589) informal but real regency over her three sons. Henri IV (r. 1589–1610) temporarily subdued the wars between French Huguenots and Catholics by promulgating the Edict of Nantes in 1598, which established freedom of religion for Calvinists. The Huguenots were no longer to be persecuted. Henri IV, king of France (1589–1610) and of Navarre (1572–1610), was the fi rst king of the Bourbon dynasty in France and was initially the chief of the Huguenots. It is believed that Catherine of Medici and her son Charles IX ordered the worst massacre of the Huguenots on Henri IV’s wedding night in Paris, on August 24, 1572, the infamous massacre of St. Bartholomew’s Day, which killed many Huguenot intellectuals, such as Ramus. Henri IV later abjured his Calvinist faith in order to ascend to the French throne in 1594. He gave vast privileges to the Protestants in twenty cities by the Edict of Nantes, but by abjuring his faith he strengthened Catholic monarchy in France.

During Henri IV’s reign in 1608, the explorer Samuel de Champlain founded the fi rst permanent French colony at Quebec. Despite this success, Champlain sorely lacked royal funding and the expedition fell short. Yet, the American expeditions, well known today, were great successes compared to the paltry attempts made in Asia.

Reaching for the Treasures of the Indes Orientales under Henri IV

Most voyages under Henri IV were not subsidized by the court. The fi rst Frenchman to reach China and Persia seems to be the only exception to the rule. In 1606 Henri de Feynes, who called himself the Comte de Monfart, quietly left France for China. He claimed that he was sent to China as an ambassador. No other records corroborate


this. Was his trip a secret mission from King Henri IV as Xavier Beguin de Billecocq implies? To avoid the ubiquitous Portuguese, Henri de Feynes walked for three years on the land routes of Asia, arriving in China in 1609. He was a trained man as he was part of Henri IV’s army. He avoided ships as much as possible but did take a ship from Venice to Alexandretta and then joined a caravan in Aleppo to go to Baghdad. He traveled walking with a caravan to the Safavid capital of Isfahan and down to Bandar Abbas, a route many Frenchmen would follow after him. He embarked on an Indian ship to Goa. From Goa, which he claims he was the fi rst Frenchman to describe, Henri de Feynes went on to Ceylan, then to the coast of Coromandel. His next stops were Malacca, the Moluccas, Macao, and Canton. Very proud to be in China, Henri de Feynes wrote in 1609 that no one but the Portuguese Jesuits had ever gone so far.

After Henri de Feynes’s returned to France, his travel account Voyage fait par terre depuis Paris jusqu’à la Chine was published.42 His account, which was also translated into English, presents itself as the fi rst French description of China, India, and Persia. There are editions in 1630 and 1636; an earlier French edition must not have not been traced yet, as there is a translation into English dated 1615. The title of the English translation boasts not only a description of China, rare for the time, but claims to take precedence over Thomas Roe in India: An exact and curious suruey of all the East Indies, euen to Canton, the chiefe cittie of China: all duly performed by land, by Monsieur de Monfart, the like whereof was neuer hetherto, brought to an end. VVherein also are described the huge dominions of the great Mogor, to whom that honorable knight, Sir Thomas Roe, was lately sent ambassador from the King.43 Little is known about him and his text still remains to be studied.44

French commercial aims were confi ned to competing in the Ottoman markets, mostly through the merchants of Marseilles, with little royal oversight. French mari-time endeavors were undertaken by Norman sailors, often quite independently of the court. Yet, Henri IV, hoping to facilitate maritime trade, made the fi rst fl eeting effort to centralize Eurasian trade. The creation of a fi rst French East India Company is hardly remembered. On June 1, 1604, through the creation of a formal company the king conceded a fi fteen-year privilege for the commerce of the Indes orientales to Antoine Godfroy, the treasurer of France, and to a merchant Gérard Deroy. No trips were undertaken in its name until the next reign.45 This was Henri IV’s effort to fol-low in the footsteps of the English and the Dutch at a time when Eurasian commerce was being geopolitically restructured. As Portugal merged with Spain under Philip II, Asia became more open to other Europeans, partly through the administrative confu-sion created in the Estado da India. The English and the Dutch created commercial companies to break Portugal’s monopoly in the Asian markets. The English East India Company was born out of Protestant Queen Elizabeth’s victory over the Spanish in the 1588 Spanish Armada. Established in 1600, the East India Company was soon imitated by the Dutch, who after a fi rst 1596 expedition, created the Dutch East India Company, the VOC, in 1602. Indeed, the splendid Dutch gift of Chinese porcelains


to the French king Henri IV gave the French a sense of great unease at this Dutch success. In the wake of the gifts, the fi rst 1604 French India Company was created. It remained an empty gesture.

The much envied Dutch success was based on an act of piracy justifi ed by war. Less than a year after its inception, in February 1603, the VOC had captured a Por-tuguese carrack full of treasures. The arrival of the Santa Catharina at the port of Amsterdam escorted by the Dutch fl eet gave rise to an unprecedented auction that had repercussions throughout Europe. Visions of her rich cargo of porcelain, silk, and gold tantalized European monarchs and merchants. As a consequence of this Dutch booty, Grotius put his pen to the service of Dutch commerce and wrote a legal treatise on the freedom of the seas. His work De jurae praedae commentaries affi rmed that navigation was open to everyone on the sea and legally absolved the captain, Jacob van Heemskerck, who had captured the Portuguese carrack. To justify this Dutch bounty of stolen silk and gold, Grotius argued that the Dutch consid-ered the Portuguese to be poison-wielding blasphemers, assassins, and traitors.46 The Portuguese defended their monopoly rights, granted to them by the papacy through another treatise. In 1625 Fei Serafi m dei Freistas had accumulated a long series of biblical citations in Latin that justifi ed the complete rule of the Portuguese in the Indies in his De Justo império Lusitnorum.47

The French could not hope to compete. Once again it was individual merchants, this time from Saint Malo, who would take to sea. The most important early travel writers were François Martin de Vitré, who wrote Description du premier voyage fait à Sumatra par les Français en 1603, fi rst published in 1604, and François Pyrard de Laval, who navigated in the Indian ocean, lived as a slave in the household of an Indian prince, and left an account called Voyage de François Pyrard de Laval aux Indes Orientales (1601–1611).48 In 1600 they formed the Compagnie de Saint Malo, and François Pyrard de Laval set sail on the ship Corbin. Martin de Vitré sailed on the Croissant, and their journeys, if they began simultaneously, came to know un-equal fortunes. They claimed that:

The fault of the French nation, which is more than any other purveyed of a naturally viva-cious spirit and strong values, is that it has for a long time languished in idle sleep, … dis-daining the treasures of the Indes orientales that have enriched the Portuguese and the Spanish … In the end a Company of Merchants from Saint Malo, Vitré and Laval, have woken up fi rst to erase this shame and enrich the public with the singularities of the Orient … to chance a thousand deaths that fi ll the sea, to put sails to the wind to make the journey. 49

They justify French idleness in trade by giving an explanation that will recur again and again in French economic and philosophical writing. This patriotic and nostal-gic sentiment would even be found in the writings of Richelieu, who bemoaned the weakness of French commerce. The argument went something like this: The French


were blessed, as they had the best produce, the best land, the best climate. What was French was too good to seek anything foreign. The abundance of French produce, the richness of the land, and the joys of the French climate did not push the French to leave like those unfortunate Dutch whose land was sterile.

In his writings Pyrard de Laval contrasts the loyalty of land to the treachery of the sea. As Dirk Van der Cruysse puts it, he was right to do so. The Corbin sank in the Maldives. The sole survivor of the shipwreck, Pyrard started his fi ve years of life as a slave in the household of a prince. He fell ill in captivity but escaped death. The can-non of his sunken ship was considered a great treasure, and it was coveted in Bengal. With the invasion of the Bengali army to retrieve the French cannon, in the chaos that ensued Pyrard de Laval escaped. After some dreadful adventures, mistreated by the Portuguese, he arrived in Goa, where he was hospitalized then jailed. He then worked as a poorly rewarded mercenary for the Portuguese. He was helped by other Frenchmen and Jesuits to escape from Goa and return to France.50 Van der Cruysse wrote that he was back “gueux comme un rat d’église,” worse than “poor as church mouse.”51 Le Blanc’s story was also written by the geographer Pierre Bergeron. It would be reserved to his companion, François Martin de Vitré, to open the route to Sumatra for his Norman compatriots, who went to Sumatra under Louis XIII. His instructions given in Description du premier voyage fait à Sumatra par les Français en 1603 were immediately published in 1604, the year Henri IV created the fi rst East India Company. De Vitré also left a dictionary to serve for trade in what he calls the Malique or Malaisin language, the fi rst Malay dictionary.52

Voyages under Louis XIII and Richelieu

On the traces of François Martin de Vitré, several successful Norman expeditions left for Sumatra. Augustin de Beaulieu came from the prosperous city of Rouen. He successfully traveled to Java in 1617–1618 and to Sumatra and Malaysia (Kedah) in 1619–1622. His fi rst trip was fi nanced by the Compagnie Orientale de Dieppe, which armed the ships Marguerite and Monmorency. His second expedition would be com-mercially profi table. His long-forgotten account was revived and published for the fi rst time by Melchisédec Thévenot in 1664, when he was encouraging the next king, Louis XIV, to centralize Eurasian commerce and form a royal company for the commerce of the Indes orientales. Indeed, under Louis XIII the Normans had established a fi rst prof-itable route to the Indes orientales. Another Norman merchant who risked his life for the spice traffi c was made famous by his son under Louis XIV. Abrahm Duquenes I, father of the great Duquesnes who organized Louis XIV’s navy, left Dieppe on a regu-lar basis for the Moluccas. Since 1581 the Duquenes paid taxes in imported pepper.53

Without a navy, France stood no chance of an overseas empire. In 1617, Louis XIII seized control of the state, exiled his powerful Italian mother to Blois, and re-called many of Henry IV’s advisers. Louis now took the initiative against the French


Huguenots. Between 1620 and 1622, he personally led several battles against them and confi scated their goods; by 1625 all Protestant strongholds, except La Rochelle, had collapsed. The fact that Richelieu had to beg for the hire of Dutch ships to sub-due the Protestant bastion of La Rochelle wounded his pride. This episode resulted in initiatives to create a stronger French navy. Richelieu encouraged overseas trade and supported the idea of forming merchant companies to compete with the Dutch East India Company; two merchants from Rouen, Muisson and Canis, asked for the privilege. Louis XIII associated them in a company called Compagnie des Moluques. Two ships left in 1616, one commanded by a captain de Nets, the other by Augustin de Beaulieu. When de Beaulieu arrived in Bantam in 1617 his ship was seized by the Dutch. The report from Bantam was not to the company created by Louis XIII, but to the local Compagnie Orientale de Dieppe. De Beaulieu left a 1632 manuscript, Des-sein touchant les Indes orientales. This manuscript, revived much later by Thévenot for Louis XIV in 1664, laid out plans for a real royal centralization of commerce and a monopoly of the trade with the Indes orientales for the king of France, the founda-tion of the creation of the royal company in 1664 by Louis XIV.

Despite its intrepid Norman sailors, France had nothing in Asia. A few minor suc-cesses by the Normans in the Antilles hardly compensated. The fashion for tobacco had come to France at the end of the reign of Henri IV. The Dutch and the English were profi ting from growing American tobacco and Richelieu wanted to participate. Richelieu put a Norman ship owner, M. Pierre Belain d’Esnabuc, in charge of win-ning some territory in the Antilles, where the English had settled in Barbados in 1624 and were just settling in Saint Kitts in 1627. Part of a group of successful pirates known as the fi libustiers, who were based in the American islands, and d’Esnabuc knew the Caribbean very well. On February 24, 1627, d’Esnabuc left the Norman port of Le Havre with 530 men to settle Saint-Christophe, as the French referred to Saint Kitts. A fi rst French settlement in the Antilles grabbed a corner from the En-glish, who still kept the larger part of Saint Kitts. Before Richelieu’s death in 1642, the French acquired Guadeloupe and Martinique in 1635, and Sainte Lucie in 1637. In this period settlement was slow and the exploitation and colonial period of the Antilles would only dawn at the end of the reign of Louis XIV.54

The idea of colonizing Madagascar, a dream since the Parmentiers had described it, quite erroneously, as paradise, took shape in this period. France needed a launch-ing place in Asia and Africa once the Dutch had brutally established their hold in the Moluccas.55 Richelieu managed to rebuild the dilapidated French navy only to some degree. Francis I had ascended the throne with six galleys and he ended his reign with twenty-fi ve, which his successor Henri II built up to forty-two galleys. Richelieu found twenty-four old dilapidated galleys in the port of Marseilles. In order to mark the inception of French overseas ambitions, he dictated and partly wrote a formal code of maritime law in 1625, Le réglement pour la mer, in which he planned forty war galleys for France. With this code he undertook a reform of the French navy and reaffi rmed Henri IV’s decree that criminals would be consigned to


the galleys, a custom that culminated under Louis XIV when Turkish prisoners and Protestants suffered side by side with French convicts in the galères du roi.56

Perhaps most importantly for French commerce, in 1626 Richelieu changed the rules that kept members of the nobility from working; if the nobles engaged in mari-time trade they received a special derogation from court and would not lose their rank and titles of nobility. He also promised to grant titles of nobility to the bour-geoisie if they worked to further France’s overseas interests. It was thanks to this derogation that many marginal and impoverished noblemen saw their opportunity to gain riches in overseas trades. One of the most famous among them was the diplomat and linguist Laurent d’Arvieux (1635–1702), who was an important fi gure for the study of French Orientalism. After many years spent as a merchant and diplomat in the Levant, the Chevalier d’Arvieux is a perfect example of a nobleman who was now free to engage in trade. Michèle Longino shows that he is best remembered because he worked with Molière on the most famous play ever written in France about the Ottoman empire, Le bourgeois gentilhomme (1670), a royal commission by Louis XIV.57 As for the bourgeoisie, a major example is Jean-Baptiste Tavernier (1605–1689), who was made a nobleman for his overseas trade. Tavernier was a member of the bourgeoisie who gained access to titles of nobility. The son of an Antwerp map merchant, he later became the baron D’Aubonne. Tavernier could have well been a model for the satire Le bourgeois gentilhomme, as it was about a bour-geois enriched by Eurasian trade.58

In 1642 Richelieu created a Royal French East India Company, as Beaulieu had advocated. It lasted only a few months, and one failed expedition was all the com-pany had accomplished at this point. Nevertheless, a few French travelers reached Asia with some success under Louis XIII. The most famous is Jean-Baptiste Taver-nier, who left for Persia and India in 1636 for the fi rst of his six trips—he will be ex-amined in the next chapter as he was important to Louis XIV. La Boullaye Le-Gouz also departed for the same destination in 1644 and never returned.

Louis XIII died a year after Richelieu, in 1643. A fi ve-year-old was now king of France. Louis XIV reigned under his mother, Anne of Austria. Under her regency, in lieu of a commercial foreign policy toward the Ottomans, the court was interested in discussing a crusade as advocated by the dévots, the extremist Catholics the queen protected. The war with Spain prevented any real endeavors and ended with a peace treaty between the Holy Roman Emperor and the king of France and their respec-tive allies in 1648, only to give way to civil war in France. The treaty of Westphalia of 1648 ended the Thirty Years’ War and opened the seas, taking away commercial monopolies from Portugal and Spain, but had no impact on French commerce.

Once the army, and its chief commander the Prince de Condé, were free from fi ghting the Spanish, they had turned against the enemy within. Cardinal Mazarin had succeeded Richelieu; he was a foreigner, a Roman cardinal. He was often per-ceived as “the other within.” In the Mazarinades, as the pamphlets against him were called, Mazarin was referred to as the Grand Turc.59 His power over the affairs of


France was acquired through Anne of Austria and led to a civil war in two phases: the two Frondes, as they were called, lasted seven years (1648–1653). The queen and the dévots supported Mazarin. Their ancestors of the dévots had joined the Catholic Ligue against the Huguenots when it was founded in 1576. The group was still in-fl uential in the seventeenth century, and les dévots came to real power after Henri’s death in 1610. Initially supported by Marie de Medici, and later even more so by the Spanish Infanta, Anne of Austria. The dévots voiced strong disapproval of Islam and of the French policy of friendship with the Ottomans. It was at this point that atten-tion turned toward Persia as a possible ally in a hypothetical crusade against the Ot-tomans spearheaded by Spain and France. The dévots turned their veneration to the founder of the Lazaristes, St. Vincent de Paul, who had suffered as a slave in Tunis.60 The missionaries were the dévots’ best allies in foreign policy. Their negative views of Islam were based on stories like Vincent de Paul’s.

Few stories are as interesting as that of Vincent de Paul’s own captivity on the coast of Barbary. In 1605 Vincent de Paul was a professor at the University of Toulouse; he was returning from selling some property inherited in Marseilles, when some Turkish corsairs wounded and captured him in the Mediterranean.61 Vincent de Paul wrote they “hewed our pilot in a thousand pieces to avenge the loss of one of theirs.” In Tu-nisia, where he was held, the captives “paraded through the streets … where we were brought for sale and having gone round the town fi ve or six times with chains on our necks, we were brought back to the ship that we might eat and in this way show the merchants that we had received no mortal injury. When this was over, they brought us back to the market place, where the merchants came to see us … making us open our mouths to see our teeth, feeling our sides, examining our wounds, making us walk, trot and run, making us carry weights and fi ght so as to gauge the strength of each of us, as well as a thousand other forms of brutality.”62 Bought by a fi sherman on the slave market, the former professor was sold again to an aged Muslim. This was a bet-ter match. His owner was an intellectual who gave long lectures on alchemy and “Mo-hammedanism” to an attentive pupil. When his master died he became the property of his master’s nephew, who sold him on the Tunis slave market to a new owner. This man was a renegade Christian, a native of Nice who had lived many years in Tunis. The Niçois repented his conversion and escaped back to France from Africa with his newly acquired slave and landed near Marseilles in June of 1607. There the apostate confessed and abjured Islam before the papal vice-legate, as was customary.63

St. Vincent de Paul’s story became a cause for the dévots and for several groups of monks. The Barbary corsairs were now at the height of their power and con-stantly interrupted French trade with the Ottomans in the Mediterranean. Henri IV had attempted to create a foothold on the shores of North Africa with diplomacy. France sent consuls and priests to attempt to free the captives through ransom, and by building a bastion in Algiers to keep a foothold. Henri’s reign was so marked by the corsairs that it ended with a political crisis between Algiers and France. After his death in 1661, the French helped Venice in the war with the Ottomans


over control of Crete. This destroyed the capitulations in 1669, threatening the commerce of Marseilles. The port of Marseilles received oriental goods. France’s overseas trade with Asia was only prosperous in the Mediterranean. The impact of the Barbary corsairs in the Mediterranean and on French trade should not be underestimated.

The Barbary Coast, Corsairs, and European Contact with Islam

The coastline of North Africa became known as the Barbary coast, a term initially derived from the word Berber, its original inhabitants. The Arabs had long controlled the coast and had a long-standing and prosperous slave trade in the region. The Span-ish had great interest in the coast’s strategic importance. Khair-ed-Din and Aruj were the founding fathers of the corsairs. The two brothers had conquered the coast with the towns of Oran, Algiers, and Tunis. When Aruj was killed by the Spanish in 1518, Khair-ed-Din appealed to Sultan Selim, who sent him troops to chase the Spanish from the coast. It took a decade for a fi rst victory. Khair-ed-Din fi nally chased the Spaniards from the rocky island in front of Algiers in 1529. Local administrators under Ottoman rule, the beylerbeys used this base to rule over areas of North Africa including modern-day Tripoli, Tunisia, and Algeria until 1587. From 1587 to 1659 they were ruled by Turkish pashas, who were sent from Constantinople to govern for three years. A military revolt in Algiers in 1659 reduced the pashas to puppets of the local rulers, who became all-important and made the corsairs into privateers who worked for them on commission.

The pirate ships of the corsairs were protected by the Ottomans, and they cap-tured both merchandise and people while sailing in the Mediterranean. The corsairs and their Christian captives should be included in any study on Orientalism, as they brought Islam in closer contact with France than any of the Ottoman armies invading Europe had ever done, even after reaching Vienna in 1683. The French captives of the corsairs were not literati; they only left a few accounts. The French missionaries in charge of their ransoms were the ones responsible for creating a discourse about the corsairs and tying them to Islam. Through their propaganda the corsairs made Islam a daily reality for the French. This was a new kind of religious pressure for conversion, one that France came fi rst to encounter in the sixteenth century, exactly at the same moment as it was facing the consequences of the Reformation.

Between 1500 and 1800, several thousand Europeans converted to Islam, some of them quite willingly. Despite piracy from Christian groups on Turks, the con-verse was never true. Few Muslims ever converted to Christianity. This constant fear of conversion to Islam was refl ected in some of the accounts printed under Louis XIII. The French were negotiating with the Ottomans on both the religious and the commercial front, mostly in the form of protests about the corsairs. The conviction that conversion was always under duress, or was due to greed, has to be


seriously questioned, as a defense of Catholicism was a sine qua non for anything to be published under the devout atmosphere prevailing in France. In the popular discourse about the Barbary corsairs, a generalized discourse arose about Muslims, and the terms Moors and Turks became interchangeable.64

This preoccupation to defend Catholicism against both Protestantism and Islam may explain why the travel accounts of the fi rst half of the seventeenth century are mostly of a religious kind. Many were pilgrimages—there were seventeen of these for the fi rst half of the seventeenth century, ten after 1610 of which were journeys to the Holy Land—but some, especially those written around 1670, concentrated on the liberation of Christian captives.65 Jerusalem was under Ottoman rule, and the captives were held in Algiers, Tunisia, or Tripoli, which were also under Ottoman control; thus this religious travel literature was mostly about the Ottoman empire and Islam. Only Morocco, where Christian captives were also held, had resisted Ottoman rule. The Catholics were a main target for the corsairs. The corsairs considered Spain their greatest enemy, because in 1492 the king of Spain drove the Moors into exile. They fought Spain for decades over supremacy of the Barbary coast. They avenged themselves with attacks on the Spanish coast and on Spanish ships.

The collaboration of individual corsairs, who were Protestant, Dutch, or English, with the Turks (as the Barbary corsairs were often called) corroborated French suspi-cions about Protestant sympathies for Islam and led to formal French protests. Given their history, the corsairs favored attacks on the Spanish, the Portuguese, and the French who, because of Catholicism, they saw as one nation. At the beginning of the seventeenth century France complained about a new phenomenon: Anglo-Turkish piracy. This trade in human beings in which the slaves were subject to exchange and especially to ransoming became a central part of one specifi c form of French discourse on Islam. Most importantly, it created ambiguous attitudes toward a group that was an important ally, not an enemy. The court, despite protest, rarely ever tried to rescue captives; they left this to missionaries and to the families of those kid-napped at sea. The protests were not about freeing captives; freedom was not part of the discourse in this period. Religion was part of missionary discourse, and diplo-macy was part of the court’s discourse.

The French court complained to the Ottoman Sultan in 1607 that the Dutch and English were using North African sea towns to capture French ships. It accused the Ottomans of aiding France’s enemies. So numerous were the English among the pirates that they were known as the new pirates of Barbary. Many became famous: Sir Henry Mainwaring in his Discourse on Pirates, addressed to king James I in 1617, described his cooperation with the governor of Tunis and the favor in which he was held by the Dey of Tunis. More notorious was Francis Walsingham (1530–1590), who worked in Algiers and negotiated between Elizabeth I and the Sultan. These men were not independent privateers but worked for the rulers of the Barbary coast, hence the French discourse on Turko-Calvinist collusion. The Flemish and the Dutch were omnipresent privateer captains. This collaboration gave the Catholic French a


vision of Turkish and Protestant conspiracy against French trade in the Mediterra-nean.66 Yet, France had its own converts, such as Simon Dansker, who hailed from the port of Marseilles, despite his Flemish origins.

Cannons As Casus Belli

Simon Danseker left his mark on French history as he single-handedly created a case of casus belli between France and Algiers in 1610, in the same year France lost Henri IV to an assassin. Like all captivity narratives, Dansker’s story is known only because he returned to Europe and abjured his Muslim faith. Many more captains like Ward and Dansker and Wallsingham existed, but unless they returned to Europe and wrote about their past and their forced conversion to Islam, obtained pardon, and abjured their Muslim faith, little is remembered about them. This gives the sources written by converts a homogeneity of purpose because many were written to ob-tain pardons. Unfortunately we do not have Danseker’s story in his own voice. The main source for Danseker’s story is a history written by the monk Father Pierre Dan (1580–1649). Dan’s history of the Barbary coast is the most famous and most fre-quently cited of any works written about the corsairs or the Barbary coast. It was a history written by a Trinitarian monk.67

According to Father Dan, Simon Danser, as he is called by Dan, left Marseilles for Algiers in 1606 to engage in the ship-building trade. He is credited for mak-ing the corsairs abandon the use of the traditional light galliot, a light small gal-ley armed with a mixture of various cannons seized from the Europeans.68 He is thought to have introduced the use of European round ships with sails to the cor-sairs. This tale of technical innovation must be treated with some skepticism. The switch to round vessels, Dan argued, saved Christian slaves from a life worse than death in the galleys. Best of all, the tale has a happy ending: Danser had returned to France, repented, had not remained a Muslim, and had not been tempted to con-tinue to accumulate the riches of a successful privateer. Father Dan could not have fabricated a better hero had he tried.

Pierre Dan must have relished telling this story to his audience in France, as it proved that the successful Danser secretly hoped in his heart of hearts to remain a Christian despite his riches and authority as a renegade reïs (captain).69 Within three years after arriving in Algiers, Simon Danser had converted to Islam. He became the taiffe’s (local community) leading reïs (captain), with nicknames such as Cap-tain Devil or Deli-Reïs. He is known for having captured forty prize ships in three years and for having led corsair expeditions from France as far north as the coast of Iceland. Strikingly, unlike many highly successful European renegades, he seemed to have regretted his conversion and wanted a return to France. According to Father Dan, Simon Danser captured a Spanish ship off the coast of Valencia with ten Jesuits aboard and used them as hostages and intermediaries to inform King Henri IV of France of his will to return to Marseilles.


He bought the freedom of the Jesuits and of several other captives for 27,000 livres and brought them back to Marseilles. In 1609, Danser was reunited with his family in Marseilles and given full citizenship by the city council. A year later, in 1610, Danser offered his services to Marseilles and to Henri IV for a full-fl edged French expedition against Algiers. With his inside knowledge the offer was tempt-ing but was not taken up. It is not clear whether Danser committed a gesture to create confl ict on purpose to obtain the expedition. He gave the Duc de Guise, who ruled the province, the gift of two brass cannons belonging to Algiers. The rulers of Algiers demanded the cannons back and expressed shock at Danser’s treason. The Duc de Guise refused. The canons were turning into a casus belli between Algiers and France. France was on the brink of war when the Catholic extremist Ravaillac assassinated Henri IV and put the Algerian crisis on hold.

Because of the unsolved issue of the cannons, French ships became prime targets in the Mediterranean. The number of French captives fl uctuated with the diplomatic climate. After many demands for redress, the French returned the cannons and con-sidered it a deeply humiliating episode. The affair of the cannons was only solved nearly two decades later by the peace treaty of September 29, 1628 between France and Algiers signed by Sanson de Napolleon, an emissary of Louis XIII.70 This fol-lowed a series of blows to France after the English attack on Algiers in 1621, and the devastating plague of 1623 that killed 60,000 people, including the French consul who was not replaced until 1630. Prior to Danser’s departure to Algiers, there had been a confl ict between Henri IV and Algiers that was resolved by a treaty in 1604 stipulating that no French captives were ever to be held in Algiers. That treaty had not been respected, and the same terms were reiterated, once again in vain, in 1628.

The number of European slaves taken by the corsairs between 1530 and 1780 has recently been estimated by historian Robert Davis to be one million.71 This is much lower than the estimate in the most important eye-witness account of European slavery. Pierre Dan wrote that just between 1530 and 1640, a much shorter period, it would “not be stretching the truth that they put a million [Christians] in chains.” Certainly the period mentioned by Pierre Dan was when the corsair fl eet manned by European galley slaves was at its largest.72 In these galleys, the slaves, who were chained to a bench, lived in the same horrendous conditions as their Turkish counter-parts working on French galleys. Those on the ships of the Barbary coast had a better fate than captives sent to the galleys of the sultan; they only went out to sea twice a year. The Ottoman fl eet was at sea nearly year-round, and rowing for battle was the hardest rowing of all.

Despite the collaboration of famous individuals of English origin, invoked above—such as Walsingham, who freed Turkish captives from European galleys and sold European Christians to Turks in North Africa—England made a tremendous ef-fort to recuperate its Christian captives from North Africa and launched an attack on Algiers in 1621. During this time France was unsuccessfully negotiating the cannon crisis with Algiers via emissaries. Just as Algiers took scores of French and English


captives, scores of Turks and other Muslims were captured around 1620 by the English and languished in jails or were sold as slaves to Spanish galleys. Correspon-dence during this period shows that after this aggression on Algiers in 1621, capturing Christians was seen as retaliation and that the Arabic word for European Christian, nasara, was often followed by: damarhum Allah (may God destroy them).73 The only way to free captives was to pay ransom. The British failed again in Tangiers, when in 1684 they had to hastily evacuate their foothold on the coast that they had built up at great cost. English humiliation at Tangiers made the payment of ransoms routine until well into the eighteenth century. Louis XIV’s wars began with a failure in 1664. The superiority of the Ottomans and of the Muslim corsair captors was never in question in this period. France shared the same fate during the same time span, and despite ef-forts to negotiate with money and diplomacy and war in the 1670s and 1680s, only in a few cases were captives freed other than through ransom.

Captivity Narratives

The impact of captivity narratives in England has been well-studied by Nabil Mattar and Linda Colley. Colley has studied about a hundred captivity narratives written in English.74 English captivity accounts have attracted most of the scholarly attention, yet the hardest hit nations were Spain, France, and Italy, not England. This was due both to geographical proximity, to Catholicism, and to the retaliation against the 1492 expulsion from Spain, the Morisco jihad on Spain and on Catholicism.75 As Colley has elegantly argued, English captivity tales are the underbelly of the British empire. The tale of Robinson Crusoe as trope of an empire built on an island is mitigated by Crusoe’s previous captivity and enslavement by the corsairs.76 France did not have its own tale of Robinson Crusoe, who through toil and craft built his own world.

There was a French version of a tale of imperial success to compensate for the hu-miliating French captivity. Revived in the seventeenth century by mendicant orders, Saint Louis, the crusading French king, and his captivity, were powerful symbols used to construct an imperial myth. The legends disseminated by the Franciscans all over Europe around 1500 told of Louis having a vision of the Christian defeat at Chorasmini, and as he saw the Christians thrown into the sea by Saracens a voice came to him: “King of France take revenge for this irreparable loss.” His defeat and his captivity, commemorated in France by a coin on which the king is depicted in chains, had powerful popular and religious impact.77 More importantly, his defeat at Damietta was completely reversed into a miraculous victory that told of Louis’s power to convert the Saracens and conquer the world:

Under the reign of Saint Louis the glory of the French reached Africa and the East … he conquered Palestine, Arabia and Carthage, whose empire stretched to the Ocean. He destroyed the city of Hannibal who had conquered Rome. He fought the Numidians and


the Moors, and the Gétules, exacting a tribute from them and imposing the freedom to preach Christianity. The African kings became the allies and tributaries of the Franks.78

Such was the tale that reversed Louis’s defeat and captivity at Damietta (Carthage), as told by Christophe de Longueil, 1488–1522, a Renaissance humanist. In the cult of Saint Louis, captivity discourse was mingled with hopes of conquest. As some of the legends built around Saint Louis attest, the conquest of North Africa fi gured in French discourse long before it happened. France conquered Algiers in 1830. North Africa was a confi rmed source of gold and slaves, while the New World where the English and Dutch had built empires, and especially Virginia, as James I realized, despite false expectations, was not.

The Ottoman markets were still at the heart of French trade in Asian goods, and sailing the Mediterranean remained crucial to France’s economy, so the Ottomans had to be wooed. Unlike in England, precisely because of French allegiance to the Ottomans, the impact of captivity accounts was not as important in France. They were part of a larger body of discourse. It has been argued that the Muslim world came to England’s attention through captivity narratives. In sixteenth-century England the captives were the fi rst to describe “the customs and usages” of the Moors.79 They shaped English views about Islam in a much more signifi cant way than captivity nar-ratives did in France, where they had serious competition from other genres. Travel accounts about the Muslim world, especially the Ottoman empire, were already pro-lifi c in sixteenth-century France. Translations of histories were also crucial in propa-gating French views on Islam and the Muslim world.

Father Pierre Dan’s Narrative

The account written by Pierre Dan, the source for Simon Danser’s adventures, is the best example of a history that is a travel account and a captivity narrative all in one. Stories of the Muslim corsairs began circulating in France in the form of pamphlets and travel accounts. Most were not written by captives but by missionaries in order to free certain captives. Although we have already quoted from it, it is worth examin-ing Dan’s account. It has been suggested that because England felt helpless toward the superior Ottomans, it demonized the Turks and Muslims in literature and plays, often transposing imagery of the savagery of American Indians from its successes in North America to Muslims.80 Although attitudes in the early seventeenth century are far from homogenous in France, there are many nuances to French views about Islam. Such an outright demonizing was much rarer in French travel accounts, yet Father Dan’s account is a striking example of this extreme form.

Father Pierre Dan (1580–1649) studied at the Faculty of Paris and entered the order of the Holy Trinity, the Trinitarians, an order founded exclusively for the liberation


of Christians captives. Father Dan was sent on a journey to North Africa in 1634 to buy back Christian slaves living in Algiers. Other accounts testify to some of the hor-rors perpetrated on these captives and corroborate some of his accounts, especially the martyrdom of the missionaries who refused to convert, although those accounts are usually missionary accounts. In 1637 his voluminous 600-page account appeared with the title: L’Histoire de la Barbarie et de ses corsairs, des Royaumes et des villes d’Alger, Tunis, Salé et Tripoli, aimed at collecting donations to free Christian captives.81 Long mournful processions replicating the suffering of the captives were organized to obtain the money. Father Dan portrayed Islam as an evil satanic cult and an immediate danger to the French. The tone and spirit of this travel account is very far from the earlier accounts of Islam by Postel. Any elements of admiration were gone. In L’Histoire de la Barbarie the prophet of Islam is portrayed as the antichrist, and the entire text is about Islam in action as a false satanic religion. There were both illustrations and textual descriptions of the tortures perpetrated by the Muslim cap-tors on their Christian slaves; the impaling, the crucifi xion, and the burning alive of Christian captives who refused to convert were some of the many torments depicted in order to raise money. The empathetic reader was made to identify with this graphic suffering dear to Catholicism and its ideals of martyrdom. Much more than in any previous text written in French, or after it, Islam was squarely presented as a de facto enemy of the Christians.82

In chapter two Father Dan gave a brief description of Islam that was skewed with all the legendary aspects that Peter the Venerable had managed to combat in his translation of the Qu’ran centuries earlier, during the height of the Crusades. Five hundred years later one fi nds a dark mixed-up description of the prophet’s Jewish origins, of his ruthless ambition, and of his brutality.83 This Trinitarian’s views are far from unique; they had roots in the medieval legends about the Nestorian Sergius and the demonic aspects of Islam. The exact same demonizing aspects of Islam are also found in English captive William Oakley’s account of his deliverance.84

Father Dan’s travel account was not an isolated text in France; rather, it was part of a long tradition that culminated in the 1680s and stretched into the eighteenth cen-tury. Jean-Baptiste de la Faye’s eighteenth-century travel account, Etat des royaumes de Barbarie, Tripoly, Tunis, et Alger 85 was followed by the publication of Voyage pour la rédemption des captifs aux royaumes d’alger et de tunis, fait en 1720,86 and attests to the continuation of these medieval demonizing presentations of Muslims in French captivity accounts well into the eighteenth century. These views were closely tied to the continued efforts of the Lazarists, Trinitarians, and Mercedarian monks to free French captives.

Even within France alone, there was a great diversity among these accounts. In the eighteenth century, the monk Philemon de la Motte wrote: “[A]s for the slaves of Algiers they are not so unhappy.”87 Some time later Laugiers de Tassy claimed that the Christian slaves did not suffer as much as the monks wanted people to believe.88 It has been said that this new attitude was equally skewed, and that it was due to


the Enlightenment’s enthusiasm for all things oriental.89 This may well be, but it is certain that there is no monolithic voice even within this type of literature. Never-theless, some accounts are harrowing. The Frenchman Jean Marteille de Bergerac described what it was like to oar a galley.

Think of six men chained to a bench, naked as when they were born, one foot on the stretcher, the other on the bench in front, holding an immensely heavy oar, bending forwards to the stern with arms at full reach to clear the backs of the rowers in front, who bend likewise; and then having got forward, shoving up the oar’s end to let the blade catch the water, then throwing their bodies back on the groaning bench. A galley oar sometimes pulls thus for ten, twelve, or even twenty hours without a moment’s rest. The boatswain … puts a piece of bread steeped in wine in the wretched rower’s mouth to stop fainting, and then the captain shouts the order to redouble the lash. If a slave falls exhausted upon his oar (which often chances) he is fl ogged till he is taken for dead, and then pitched unceremoniously into the sea.90

There are several French captivity narratives that deserve a study of their own; some are read as a history of the Barbary coast.91 Some accounts have received re-cent scholarly attention both in France and North Africa, such as the account by Jean-Baptiste Gramaye (1579–1635).92 There is nothing comparable to Colley’s work for France. A recent study on the captives, Les Chrétiens d’Allah, suggests that Father Dan, despite his propaganda, remains a good source and had the best esti-mates for the numbers of captives living in the city. Of the general population of Al-giers, which he estimated at 100,000, one quarter was captive Christian slaves.93 As the following Portuguese captivity account proves, not all descriptions of the Bar-bary coast propagated these extreme views. Even within the single genre of captivity narratives, the views of Islam and Muslims were quite different. Without a doubt, missionaries tended to have the most extreme views of the Muslim captors with whom they negotiated. As will become apparent, under Louis XIII and Louis XIV, missionaries, merchants, and scholars did not always share the same views about the Orient. Even within the same group there was a diversity of views. This is true of Catholic captives as well.

Mascarenhas, a Portuguese Captive

In a captivity account by a Portuguese captive who escaped after being held in Al-giers for fi ve years, between 1621 and 1626, Joao Mascarenhas tells us about the daily lives of Christian captives. They were locked up in prisons, banhos, every night, as they were eager to run away. Some, like himself, succeeded in escaping. There were four of these prisons and each had a church. He described both instances of forced and willing conversion and of successful resistance to conversion.94 He described the religious tolerance of the captors, which was surprising to a European


observer: the Catholic cult was freely celebrated. Paintings, silk garments, and decorations necessary for the Mass were lent by the Turks to the captives on impor-tant feast days. He also wrote about willing conversions to Islam by captives eager to advance in the ranks of the local government, or by the corsairs. He knew of happy captives, enriched by commerce or piracy, who were quite unwilling to return. Yet, he also wrote of the majority of captives who suffered and awaited the ransom that would buy their freedom.

Mascarenhas, a Portuguese observer, once a captive himself, wrote of the diverse population of the city where Moors and Moriscos (a term he reserved for Spaniards converted to Islam), Jews, Turks, Janissaries, and Christians were slave owners. In a more nuanced analysis, Mascarenhas tells us that the most fanatical “Turks,” mean-ing Muslims, were the converted Spaniards, the Moriscos, who hated the Christians. According to him, there were 8,000 Catholic captives in Algiers in the 1620s. He names slaves who belonged to other nations such as Flemish, English, Danish, Scot-tish, German, Polish, Muscovite, Bohemian, Hungarian, Norwegian, Burgondian, Venetian, Piedmontese, Slavs, Egyptian Syrians (Assyrians), Chinese, Japanese, and Brazilian.95 His grouping of all Catholics into one nation is striking, as it refl ects the Ottoman system. Mascarenhas only cited one group that had a fanatical hatred of the captives: the Moriscos. These Spanish refugees established a kind of republic of their own on the North African coast in the seventeenth century from 1626 to 1686. They came from Hornachos, Spain and emigrated to the port of Salé.

While force may explain why thousands converted to Islam, it cannot be denied that Islam held some attraction for many. Beyond the social mobility offered by the political system of the Barbary coast, multicultural and social diversity was accepted, and origins mattered little once you were a convert to Islam. Another attraction was a fair share in the spoils for one’s toil in piracy. It must be remembered that life for the sailors of a European ship offered no advancement, no real pay, and plenty of cor-poral punishment; men were often shanghaied to serve in the navy. As Robert Davis contends, these European commercial ships were proto-factories with terrible labor conditions and no reward for sailors. Life with the corsairs was far more egalitarian if one was lucky enough to participate. These positive aspects of conversion were silenced in captivity tales, yet who would not want to escape the galleys and be part of the offi cer’s corps?

The corsair reïs were not independent but protected by Pashas, Deys, top Jan-issaries, or by the sultan of Morocco. They were privateers. These rulers or offi cers sometimes had the right of fi rst refusal and certainly always a percentage in commission. Beyond the economic and political advantages and the social mobility offered by the form of government practiced on the Barbary coast, it is not diffi cult to imagine that during a period of severe religious persecution and narrowing ideas in France and England, the religious tolerance within a Muslim community where many Christian converts could even continue to drink as Muslims, made Islam it-self attractive. Coupled with a more pleasant climate than any on a European shore,


life in North Africa offered real advantages to those who became renegades. The north shore of Africa knew relative religious peace, save for the Jews, who were persecuted.

The Portuguese captive wrote that the Turks objected to the Jews bathing in the same premises and that they never looked at a Jewess as worthy of their attentions no matter how beautiful she was. He wrote that if a Turk consorted with a Jewish woman, he would be considered as vile and could no longer be called a Turk.96 These are strong prejudices, and the Jews were not only considered abject, but they were persecuted physically and fi nancially, and Mascarenhas saw their fate, as many were descendants of refugees from Spain who had already been exiled once, as far worse than that of the European captives.97

The Arab sources on the privateers living on the coast described the corsairs, quite unsurprisingly, as true defenders of the faith. The term used to describe the corsairs was al-ghuzat, the same term used for the warriors fi ghting with the prophet or for Ottoman warfare. They fought for faith and ghaneema, booty divided as Mohammad had done among his warriors. The warrior was spiritually rewarded for his ghazu (raid) and the barbary ghuzat, and therefore they were religious warriors in a certain sense. Seventeenth-century Arab writers called for the raids as a defense against the infi dels’ raids.98 While these profi table raids on European ships and even full-fl edged attacks akin to war existed, one fi nds no mention of this side of the story in European captivity accounts written by returning captives. Many of these writers were eager to prove they were forced to become Muslim in order to obtain grace. Yet Colley has shown through analyzing the 100 accounts she used to write Captives that there is no monolithic voice or view in these accounts.99

It should come as no surprise that piracy and Islam had special attractions for French Huguenots. Catholic France in particular had deprived them of many of their freedoms despite the Edict of Nantes, and many professions were closed to them well before the revocation of the Edict of Nantes by Louis XIV in 1685. Other groups were also attracted to other forms of unfamiliar tolerance found in Islamic societies. It has even been argued that the tolerant views Islam held on sexuality, especially on homosexuality, might have been attractive to many. Although stories of debauchery and homosexuality found in several captivity accounts were written to prove that Muslims were perverted sodomites, they also, according to this argument, presented a more liberal society. Christianity’s harsh strictures contrasted with the fl exibility and tolerance of Islamic customs.100 Nevertheless, one should not discount that the harshness of exile, of adapting to local customs, to different food and clothing and a different worldview all threatened to make profound changes to the identity of the prisoners, while slavery brought about a major change in social identity in a brutal fashion.

The mixed population of the coast gave rise to a common language referred to as lingua franca, sometimes called Franco or Sabir. This was a mixture of Portuguese, Italian, Spanish, Arabic, Persian, Turkish, and other languages that served as the


language of communication.101 Several tales of captivity were written in this common language and described everyday life and the daily occupation of the captives, many of whom were engaged in crafts.102 Many tell of the various aspects of daily living on the coast. Yet, Father Dan’s tale of the Barbary coast left no room for such subtleties; to the Trinitarian monk, Islam was a “monolith that fell from hell.”103 The graphic illustrations of circumcision and of burning captives were Dan’s best fund-raising tools. Today the contemporary tendency has been to represent the captives as vic-tims of a holy war, but Alain Blondy and many other French specialists have long argued against this view. Even those studying captivity on the Barbary coast have to concede to its marginality, and until Louis XIV bombarded the coast and demanded the freedom of his subjects the issue was not central. In both policy and discourse, Louis XIII hardly ever did anything to rescue captives. In 1629, taking a break from massacring Protestants, he agreed to attack Salé and freed 420 French captives.104 As a royal appointee by Louis XIII, Vincent de Paul was also instrumental in sending missionaries to many places overseas, with a focus on ransoming the captives of the corsairs on the Barbary coast. In 1645 he sent a fi rst priest with ransom money; that priest was followed by many others. Through his contacts at court, Vincent had one of the priests invested with the dignity of consul. French priests and consuls also em-ployed slaves. French consuls and missionaries acted as agents with the families of captives in France for the gathering of ransoms and were able to free some of them. Up to the time of St. Vincent’s death in 1660 these missionaries had ransomed 1,200 slaves held hostage, and they had expended 1,200,000 livres on behalf of the slaves of Barbary.

Michel Baudier, Historiographer of the King under Louis XIII

French admiration for the Ottomans and their military superiority did not disappear, and in fact manifested itself in Michel Baudier’s history writing. The same admira-tion cannot be found in his work on Islam, although he is far from being as extreme as Father Dan. In 1625 Michel Baudier published his Histoire Génerale de la Reli-gion des Turcs.105 This work knew many editions and become the major reference work on Islam in the seventeenth century. The target audience was not popular read-ership, and as such it differed greatly from Father Dan’s dark populist propaganda. It did present Islam negatively, much more so than anything written before it by a scholar. It was in French, and therefore despite its erudite ambition it could not be considered a scientifi c work in this early period, because it would have to have been published in Latin.106 It had a target audience: the dévots around Louis XIII, extreme Catholics who hoped that French missionaries would convert everyone in France and in the world to their views.

Michel Baudier (1589–1645) was born in the Languedoc. During the reign of Louis XIII, he was appointed as historiographer to the court of France, but it is


unclear whether he ever received any royal subsidies; he seems to have had his own vast fortune used for traveling and collecting manuscripts in the Ottoman empire. He initially wrote administrative and military history, as he had a military career himself. His fi rst work was Histoire de la guerre de Flandre 1559–1609.107 He took a special interest in the Turks, as he also wrote a military history of the Ottomans titled: Inventaire de l’histoire générale des Turcs ou sont descriptes les guerres des Turcs, leurs conquestes … depuis l’an 1300 jusques en l’année 1640. Avec la mort, et belles actions de plusieurs chevaliers de Malte & d ’autres gentilshommes & seigneurs françois.108 In this military history his admiration for the Ottomans seems sincere. In his work on religion, given the climate at court, he might have had no choice. This dichotomy, contrary opinions even under the pen of one author, was not rare. In ex-amining the life and works of his contemporary André du Ryer his biographers seem to conclude that he was in a similar situation of political constraint.

Baudier’s historical writing about Asia, the fi rst in France, went well beyond places he could have observed. After he heard the narrative of a Jesuit who had returned from China, Baudier wrote a fi rst history of China in French: Histoire de la cour du roi de Chine.109 The variety of his production clearly refl ects the interest that the court of Louis XIII and especially Richelieu took in the world beyond France. Yet, perhaps the most important orientalist living under Louis XIII was the man who translated the Qu’ran into French.

André du Ryer’s Translation of the Qu’ran into French

Apart from being the fi rst to translate the Qu’ran into a vernacular language, André du Ryer’s translation into French was then translated into many languages. André du Ryer can be credited with introducing Persian literature to Europe with his transla-tion of the Gulistan, the fi rst translation into a European language of a major piece of Persian literature. The life and work of André du Ryer has recently been well explored.110 He is the perfect example of how French Orientalism was closely tied to France’s trading preoccupation and the race for supremacy on the Ottoman mar-kets. In their introduction to du Ryer’s life and work, Alastair Hamilton and Francis Richard situate his diplomatic career within the web of French consulates that were created in the application of the fi rst capitulations in Tripoli, Beirut, Alexandria, and Chios. Later consulates were added in Aleppo, Sidon, Izmir, Nauplion, Zante, and even Jerusalem. Until the British had a consulate of their own in 1581, the French only had the Venetians and Genoese as rivals in the Ottoman markets.

We have examined the fi rst embassies in Istanbul and their importance to new knowledge in France; Louis XIII’s ambassador to Constantinople, Henri Gournay de Marcheville, was accompanied by André du Ryer. The infl uence of the dévots, protected by Marie de Medici, and missionaries eager to unite the Eastern churches under Ottoman protection with Rome was still present, and plans for a crusade


were discussed even by François Savary de Brèves (1560–1628), an accomplished orientalist and former ambassador to Istanbul under Henri IV from 1591 to 1606. According to Hamilton and Richard, François Savary de Brèves had no sympathy for extreme Catholicism but had to give in to the climate of the day, and they assert that this was equally the case for his pupil du Ryer, as his works, a Turkish grammar and his famous translation of the Qu’ran were, despite his own sympathies, presented as an undertaking for the use of the proselytizing and crusade-promoting missionaries in the Levant.

Savary de Brèves would extend his protection to André du Ryer, who according to his biographers did not have a university education but learned oriental languages for practical use, as would future dragomans in the next reign. Savary de Brèves had been rewarded for his services with the important consulate of Alexandria, which his sons could inherit, and in 1623, Savary de Brèves appointed his protégé André du Ryer as vice-consul of France in Alexandria. This was a very important commercial and diplomatic post, as French trade reigned supreme in Egypt, to the irritation of the Venetians. Trading with Marseilles consisted of many goods: linens, carpets, dyes, hides, leather, ostrich feathers, mother of pearl, wax, dates, and rice.111

Du Ryers ran into enormous diffi culty; he had trouble establishing authority over the cantankerous French merchants because of his youth. Their Venetian rivals were only too happy to help; additional pressure came from the arrival of the missionaries in the Ottoman empire at around the same time. The arrival of the Capuchins and their establishment of a convent in Istanbul in 1624 under an ambassador with dévot sympathies is a marking event, as this facilitated what the missionaries and their friends the dévots had always wanted: contact with Persia against the Ottomans. The Capuchins managed to sneak the fi rst French ambassador to Persia; despite Ottoman surveillance Père Pacifi que de Povins crossed the border.112 The Capuchin reform started within the Franciscans in 1522 to oppose any form of secularization, as they wished to go back to the primitive simplicity of Saint Francis’s life. The Capuchins were an order by 1525, but by 1529 Pope Clement VII had made them into a separate order, ceasing the supervision of the Franciscans over them.113 This order would be very important to French contacts with Persia, especially through the sojourn and reports of the Capuchin Raphaël du Mans, taken to Persia by Tavernier. Du Mans lived in the capital of Isfahan from 1647 until his death in 1696.114

André du Ryer was vice-consul when the arrival of the Capuchins in the Otto-man empire caused a great stir and rivalry among the missionaries. The Franciscans, already established in Istanbul, resented the Capuchins, and the Capuchins hated the Jesuits, who were also vying for establishing a mission. In the embassy, Harley de Césy, a dévot, was on the best of terms with the Capuchins: their new convent would be on the grounds of the French embassy itself.115 His biographers explain that du Ryer was too young to deal with all the problems he encountered, as he had no expe-rience in the Levant trade. According to the archives of the Chambre de Commerce


de Marseilles, the vice-consul found that the French owed the Ottoman authorities a rather large debt, which meant he had to collect dues from the merchants to cover it. Many other nations traded under the French fl ag, and the consulate was respon-sible for them. Complicating the fate of the young vice-consul, the Ottomans sud-denly struck foreigners trading in Egypt with an avania of 200,000 piastres. The new vice-consul raised 18,000 from the French merchants and their Venetian rivals to pay off the Janissaries so the levy would not be imposed, but this sum meant he had to raise the usual duty the consulate demanded. This was the beginning of the end for André du Ryer in Egypt. He aggravated his case by accusing the French factors in Egypt of idleness and threatening to beat them. Because of complaints about his behavior, Savary de Brèves informed the Compagnie du Levant that the vice-consul had been recalled.116 This was a major humiliation. The issue was grave enough to have Louis XIII issue an order:

Du Rier—the merchants of my city of Marseilles, having complained to me of your conduct and administration in the consulate of Egipte [sic], I have found it à propos to send the Sr Gabriel de Fernoulx to exercise again functions he had held in the past and judging that you might be more suitable to be of service to me in another occasion due to the testimony of Sr de Breves has given me that you have acquitted knowledge of the “langues Arabesque et Turquesques.”117

Becoming an interpreter was a demotion, below the function of vice-consul. Once he returned du Ryer did everything to prove his integrity and had several people sign letters to prove he had been of service. His case was not unique, and later a vice-consul who was a Marseillais, chosen by the merchants of Marseilles, could only keep the six-year post for two. As Hamilton has written, even Louis XIII’s am-bassadors after Savary de Brèves were very unsuccessful in Istanbul. Back in France by April 1630 du Ryer had written his Turkish grammar and Louis XIII appointed him gentleman of the royal chamber in a mellifl uous letter that contrasts with the tone of his orders in 1626.118 This form of royal sponsorship encouraged du Ryer in his orientalist scholarship. Two of his contributions, the Qu’ran in French and the translation of a major Persian literary work the Gulistan, certainly established him as the most important orientalist of his time. His biographers rightly point out that his translation of Saadi’s Gulistan makes him a precursor of the famous Antoine Galland, as it inaugurated the translation of literature, a genre made famous by the Thousand and One Nights.

Savary de Brèves’s hopes of acquainting Europe with oriental literature, a feat accomplished by his pupil, have been seen by his biographers as a precursor of the grander policies followed by William Jones in India in the eighteenth century. Yet Hamilton and Richard have concluded that he was not recognized as such, as they do not see his name mentioned by anyone. Their conclusion begins by a statement that


is only too true: “European Arabists, like most scholars, have seldom distinguished themselves by their charitable treatment of their colleagues and du Ryer was a victim of their malice.” They qualify this further by showing that his dabbling in literature and his use of the vernacular, on top of his ignorance of Hebrew and his lack of uni-versity training made him an easy target. He was the fi rst of many modern oriental-ists with a similar formation under Louis XIV.

If Louis XIII’s reign was marked with a multiplicity of voices with different views about the Orient, that of Louis XIV would be even richer in its production of transla-tions and histories and travel accounts. If the dévots tried to impose extreme Catholi-cism unsuccessfully, Louis XIV made their wishes come true by making Catholicism a state religion. If Louis XIII dabbled with the idea of crusade, Louis XIV actually was offered a plan for the invasion of Istanbul, yet, all the discord there was with the Ottomans was repaired in the late 1670s, proving that the dichotomy between dis-course and policy present in France since Francis I was a constant marker of France’s ties with the Ottomans.

– 101 –

–4–

Orientalism As ScienceThe Production of Knowledge under Louis XIV

I found myself in the company of a self-contented man. Within a quarter of an hour he decided three moral questions, four historical problems and fi ve points of physics. I have never seen such a universal decision maker; his mind was never suspended by the least doubt. We left sciences to speak of the news of the times: he decided the news of the times. I wanted to be strong and told myself “let me take the upper hand and take refuge in my country.” I spoke of Persia. I had hardly uttered four words that he corrected me twice on the authority of MM. Tavernier and Chardin. “My God, what man is this? I said to myself who will soon tell me he knows the streets of Isfahan better than I do?” I gave up and fell silent, I let him speak, and he is continuing to decide.

Rica Lettre LXXII, Montesquieu, Lettres persanes

Published shortly after Louis XIV’s death in his Lettres persanes, Montesquieu mocks the universal quest for knowledge that marked his Sun King’s reign. The birth of the Academy of Sciences in France was one of the greatest revolutions of Lou-is’s long reign, and Montesquieu was well aware that MM. Tavernier and Chardin, and their travel accounts, were the sources of this new certainty about knowing the world. Orientalism and travel accounts and their role in the production of knowledge in France are the object of this chapter.

Louis XIV marked his reign with extraordinary projects to make France the fi rst power in Europe. Extravagant engineering projects, such as the canal between the two seas linking the Mediterranean to the Atlantic, were not to be useful, but much of what Louis envisioned did materialize. He made Jean-Baptiste Colbert (1619–1683) contrôleur général des fi nances since Colbert had created twenty manufacturies in very short time.1 Colbert would be the king’s best ally in enriching France and con-tributing to its glory. This domestic policy of producing luxury goods through French manufacturies was part of Colbert’s bullionism: he aimed to keep gold and silver in France by imitating imports in the new manufacturies. France produced crystals and mirrors instead of buying them from Venice, and textiles and tapestries instead of buy-ing them from Flanders. The silk and cotton imported from the Levant was imitated. It was believed that France could be rich if it did not buy foreign luxuries abroad. Even exotic plants collected abroad were propagated in France to naturalize them. Under


Colbert the exotic was naturalized to keep gold in France (see Chapter 8). The most enduring of Colbert’s legacies would be the mirror manufacturies of Saint Gobain.2 Although he wanted to produce luxury goods within France, Colbert had nothing against foreign trade, as long as it was in French hands. This policy was implemented through the auspices of French merchants. Under Louis XIV French hopes extended farther east, beyond the Levant markets to Persia, India, Siam, and China. For the very fi rst time a new infrastructure supported these ambitions: a stronger navy, royal commercial companies, schools for oriental languages, court-subsidized chairs, and academies for the study of France and the world beyond France.

In the seventeenth century French imperial hopes were not backed by armed invasion, but by zealous missionaries, travelers, and collectors. Commercial capitu-lations, trade agreements, scientifi c observation, and collection were the tools of this early imperialism. There was a vast network of informants traveling, mapping, describing, and collecting to make sense of the world. In Louis’s mind, conver-sion was closely tied to this scientifi c endeavor, and many of the missionaries were scientists. No contradiction existed between Catholic, scientifi c, and commercial missions; missionaries were not indifferent to French commercial interests or French diplomacy. Indeed, they were its best tools. There was no line between the humani-ties and the nascent sciences, a fabricated break that is beginning to be rightly ques-tioned. Orientalism was at the inception of the Academy of Sciences.

France challenged the Portuguese and the Spanish as a Catholic power in Asia. Beginning in 1493, the pope had given the Portuguese exclusive rights to proselytize, and the obligation to acquire souls for the Catholic Church, along with rights to com-merce in Asia. The papacy had retaken control of propagating Catholicism in Asia by the creation of the Propaganda Fide in Rome in 1622, which included a polyglot press and a school for languages. The purpose of the new papal institution was to convert Europe’s Protestants as well as the heathen. This was previously the task of Iberian Jesuits and Franciscans, who had exported the Spanish Inquisition to Goa and the Americas. Now the papacy aimed at distancing conversion from Iberian national aims, as the Portuguese were distrusted in Asia because of the massacre of their Japa-nese Christian converts; Japan had closed trade to everyone but the Dutch. Through a slow process, the popes allowed the Jesuits to fall under the French fl ag in 1660s, an event further crowned by the new-found power of French missionaries through the formal creation of the Missions étrangères—which still have their beautiful gardens and compound on the Rue du Bac—in 1664, the same year as the creation of the East India Company.

A special relationship existed between the emperor of China and Louis XIV, at least in Louis’s mind. The Jesuits were to become his representatives and ambassa-dors in Peking. Missionaries were an important group diplomatically. Both Huguenot and Catholic missionaries played an important role in the expansion of French trade and industry. It must be remembered that even monks did not abstain from trade; some were caught smuggling diamonds from India in the soles of their shoes. Under

Orientalism As Science • 103

Louis XIV a major change would occur as science, coupled with a new Catholic fervor at court, served French imperial aims. The French court sent several important Jesuit mathematicians and astronomers as its representatives.

Louis’s court also opened its doors to the fi rst ambassadors from Siam, the Ottoman empire, Persia, and Morocco. Louis XIV sent ambassadors and missionar-ies to Persia, India, Siam, and China. Most of these relationships were commercial and new. Despite their failures, they had lasting cultural consequences on France. In the 1660s much of what had been informal in France became institutionalized under Louis XIV, whose ambitions for control meant subsidizing scholars and scientists to tie them to his court. He even included the best Norman corsairs in the royal navy to capture Dutch ships and their cargoes of exotic goods. Despite its failure to trade directly for goods, except in the Levant, Paris became a major center of consumption for luxury goods both imported and domestic. Much of this bounty was not always due to direct trade but to the prizes caught by French privateers of St. Malo and Dunkirk at the king’s service (see Chapter 5). In the midst of war French corsairs brought in captured cargoes of indigo and spices, North African Ostrich plumes, Per-sian silks, Chinese luxury goods, and American furs. To counter the success of their rivals in the Indes orientales, the French created several commercial companies; Richelieu’s Compagnie du Levant was reincarnated by Colbert in 1670. The French West and East India Companies, created in 1664 by Jean Baptiste Colbert, were royal companies with private investors. They entered the Asian market decades later than the English and Dutch, and had to compete not only against the longer-established companies, but with better-established French merchants and very successful French privateers who delivered exotic goods to consumers on the French markets, espe-cially during the Dutch wars of 1672–1678.

The Creation of the French Royal East India Company

Louis XIV ordered Colbert to inaugurate the Compagnie royale des Indes, the French Royal East India Company (FREIC) to go to Japan, India, and Persia. In 1664 Col-bert hired the services of a writer by the name of François Charpentier to extol the virtues of the new French company and its yet nonexistent trade in India. The suc-cessful merchants of Marseilles and Saint Malo, Dieppe or Le Havre, were reluctant to invest. The pamphlet of propaganda written for the inauguration of the company by Charpentier was a fundraiser.3

It was hoped that France could trade directly to counter the successful Dutch who fl ooded the French markets with goods. A royal company with funds of fi fteen million livres was formed, with three million livres in shares subscribed by the king. Investors were reluctant. Modeled on the Dutch company, France’s was nevertheless very different because it was a royal company. A Breton captain, Kergadiou de Saint Gilly, was hired by Colbert to give conferences, which were essentially propaganda


to stress the profi ts of the India trade. Jules Sottas, the historian of this fi rst phase of the company, wrote that its failure was due to “despotic meddling of the state in the affairs of the company.”4

For this fi rst expedition to India, Colbert engaged a member from each of the two most successful merchant groups in Asia. He engaged François Caron from the Dutch VOC, whose fi rst name came from his conversion to Catholicism, which conferred naturalization.5 The FREIC hoped to model the VOC and hired one of its best. Another director was hired among the Armenians. Marcara Avanchintz came from the thriving commercial center of New Julfa in the capital of Isfahan. To over-see both newly converted recruited directors, a French director general, de Faye, was also appointed. In December of 1666 a French ship, La Couronne, left St. Malo with all of them aboard. The ship was bound for the headquarters of the newly formed French Company in Port Louis, Madagascar. The hope was that Marcara, with his knowledge of the Indian trade, would facilitate their establishment in India. François Caron, designated as Marcara’s superior, was a specialist in Japanese trade. The ini-tiative failed in part because of their rivalry.6

Marcara relayed in a trial he later initiated and won against the FREIC that en route to Surat his superior François Caron approached him with the corrupt proposi-tion to work in the name of the French Company but make personal profi t on the side. While G. Rotroandro’s study of François Caron’s life has shown that this was customary practice for Caron and others in the service of the Dutch Company, in this instance we only have Marcara’s word for it. Marcara refused the offer, taking offense at the idea. Then and there began a long enmity. Caron attempted in every way to get rid of the troublesome Armenian. In May 1669, Marcara set out for the kingdom of Golconda, accompanied by his servants and a French merchant by the name of Rous-sell. Upon Marcara’s arrival on the east coast of India, he employed his contacts there to obtain a farmân for the French, the same permission to trade that the Dutch had been seeking for several years. Rivalry took over at the news of this success.

Posterity would attribute the opening of India and Indian trade to François Mar-tin.7 François Martin had been sent to physically arrest Marcara and chained him in a ship’s hold in which he would travel for months. In his memoirs, François Martin wrote: “It was a mistake to choose an Armenian, whose nation is well known in India, as Director for the Company of such a prestigious nation as ours. It had been sur-prising and had not served our reputation.”8 The main accusation was, according to Martin, that the Armenian was giving all the commerce to Armenians. In Marcara’s version, the Frenchmen did no work, but acted like debauched drunkards who had turned the company’s quarters into a whorehouse. While their versions differ widely, the story of the street riots in Golconda after Marcara’s arrest were described the same way by both men. Marcara was extremely well-connected and highly regarded in Golconda. Three grandees took up his cause; Anazarbec, described by Martin as a renegade Armenian jeweler at the Golconda court, the governor of Masulipatam, and the provost of the local merchants all demanded his liberation.


Martin would be the only one to gain from this situation, as the other Frenchmen died on the trip. The many deaths on this fi rst French expedition was to become a pattern; another pattern was lack of funds. They had no money to live on, let alone conduct commerce. They had no connections and lost their fârman; they no longer had permission to trade. When Marcara managed to get back to France, the dévots were his supporters during his trials against the FREIC in Paris, because he was an Armenian Catholic convert and made a case of his devotion. The conversion of Orthodox Christians was a French cause under Louis XIV. Marcara was but one of several newly converted Catholic Armenians in Paris. In this period some Armenians had come or written from Safavid Persia to Louis XIV to offer their help in crusades against the Ottomans, a cause close to the aims of the dévots.9 That he had substantial support at court and from many aristocrats against the company speaks of how little priority the aristocracy put on French commerce as compared to religion.

Under François Martin only a modicum of commerce with India began.10 Very quickly the bankrupted company had to be saved by the merchants of St. Malo. From 1706–1719 the company simply lent its name to their private trade. As the FREIC dissolved in 1719, the Malouin traders had established several factories on the Coromandel coast, Pondicherry, and Massulipatam. In Bengal they had factories in Hugli and Chandernagor. On the west coast Surat was abandoned for Calicut. In the year the 1664, the year the fi rst FREIC was formed, the future French hero of the Indian wars against the English, Dupleix, was born. He left for India at age twenty-fi ve, with the new East India Company, formed in 1722. The new company was more successful, but three decades later the French lost most of their Indian holdings to the English.11 Dupleix lived in India for thirty years, made brave but failed attempts at monopolies on the commerce of calicoes, called Indiennes, and fought the English at every turn for French commerce. He returned to France ruined. He died the year of the Treaty of Paris in 1763, which left India to the English. His life span, 1664–1763, was marked by the exact beginning and end of French commerce in India.12

Most Frenchmen in India had to fend for themselves, as the story of a ship sur-geon for the new FREIC called Nicolas l’Empereur will show. Many Frenchmen ended up as mercenaries in the armies of local Maharajas, or as servants and soldiers for the Mughals. Despite all the diffi culties, the cultural infl uence of this episode is signifi cant because of the works of French travelers; chiefl y remembered is the trav-eler François Bernier (1625–1688).

Bernier was from Anjou; orphaned early, he studied in Paris. While serving as a secretary to the famous philosopher Gassendi (1592–1655), he studied medicine in Montpellier.13 He adopted Pierre Gassendi’s views on observation and skepti-cism. Gassendi aimed to reconcile Christianity with science. His infl uence on many travelers of the time would be very important, as many of them allied Christian quests with scientifi c curiosity. As will be examined, Bernier became part of a net-work of travelers who shared common views. Many of the travelers under Louis XIV were doctors who had studied at Montpellier. Bernier served as a personal


physician to the Mughal emperor and had occasion to tour the country with the suite of Emperor Aurangzeb. A modern observer in line with the philosophy of his master Gassendi, Bernier noticed and recorded the peoples of India, and the manners, cus-toms, institutions, and economy of various parts of India, including the economy of Bengal, and recorded them with some detail.14 His descriptions of the different regions of India were unparalleled, and his description of Kashmir was the fi rst in Europe. He was in correspondence with the new Academy of Sciences in Paris. In India he met two other travelers who left descriptions of India, Tavernier and Char-din. Although they were not mentioned in histories of the East India Company, these independent merchants in the India trade were also involved in Colbert’s project, as will become clear later. Often studied alone, Bernier, Chardin, Tavernier, and Jean and his uncle Melchisédec Thévenot all had interests in India as part of a network concerned with the collection of goods and information.

Huguenot Merchants in Asia and Their Ties to the Company

Jean-Baptiste Tavernier (1605–1689), Jean Thévenot, and Jean Chardin (1641–1712), each traveling independently, met in the early months of the year 1667 at Bandar Abbas, in Persia. There they had to fi nancially bail out the distressed representatives of Colbert’s new East India Company in Persia. The representatives had failed to get any concessions in Persia. Much like their unfortunate colleagues in India, they had arrived at the Shah’s court without any money or gifts.15

Jean-Baptiste Tavernier was the most seasoned of the three. Tavernier was born in Paris in 1605.16 According to his biographer Charles Joret, his father Gabriel Taver-nier was born in Antwerp. He fl ed from Antwerp to Paris in 1575, in order to avoid the Spanish Inquisition’s persecution against Protestants. Tavernier was on his sixth trip to India as the FREIC was formed. Paradoxically, this Huguenot had fi rst been sent to India by the dévot faction, Richelieu and the Capuchin Père Joseph in 1632. He stayed in Persia with the Capuchin Pacifi que de Provins, the fi rst ambassador to represent the France in Isfahan. The Capuchin missions often served as a French postal service in Asia, and the networks of missions had letters waiting for travelers. The object of Tavernier’s fi rst trip was to send reports home to Richelieu. There was talk of a cru-sade against the Ottomans with the Persians. Only his second trip in 1638 inaugurated his long career as a gem merchant on the routes of India. On his return from his fi fth trip, Tavernier sold Louis XIV some of the greatest diamonds in the world.

By his sixth trip Jean-Baptiste Tavernier was also an offi cial merchant to the Shah of Persia, the Mughal emperor in India. On his sixth trip in 1664 he took with him a nephew, Pierre, the son of his brother Maurice, to establish local representation for his family’s gem trade in New Julfa, the Armenian suburb of Isfahan, which was a hub for both the international silk and gem trades. On the occasion of this voyage, he was entrusted by the English resident with an important packet of letters for Surat,


which contained information on the outbreak of war in Europe, and it was stolen by the Dutch, blanks substituted in its place. The English in Surat were furious when they received the blanks and threatened Tavernier with assassination. Tavernier sent a strong protest against this Dutch treachery to Batavia. It would involve him in a life-long lawsuit. He wrote a venomous tract against the methods used in Dutch trade: The History of the Conduct of the Dutch in Asia. His hatred of the Dutch endeared him to Louis XIV. Throughout his work, the two groups he followed were the Dutch and the Armenians. He documented their trade, their methods, and their routes. It was through Tavernier, Thévenot, and some Capuchins that the court and Colbert had information about Asia beyond the Levant.

Before the creation of Colbert’s FREIC, Jean Thévenot (1633–1667) was the fi rst to leave for the East that year, in October of 1663. He was on his second journey, and his account of the fi rst was being published through the auspices of his uncle, Melchi-sédec, as he started his second trip. A botanist and linguist, he had little in common with Tavernier and Chardin. He was there only to inquire and to study, not to acquire. He had a university education at the Collège de Navarre (now Ecole Polytechnique). When he met up with Tavernier, he had just returned from a year’s stay in India and had crossed the subcontinent on foot from Goconda to Surat. From there he sailed to Bander-Abbas where he met Tavernier and Chardin. He passed the summer of 1667 in Isfahan, where he was injured in the leg by an accidental pistol shot. He died from his wound on the way back to France, at the Armenian convent of Miyana on Novem-ber 28. His legacy was not insignifi cant, as his uncle Melchisédec Thévenot (1620–1692) had immense infl uence on the use made of travel accounts by the French court. Jean and his uncle, both orientalists, were from a wealthy family of the noblesse de robe, and their undertakings, although at the service of Louis XIV’s court, were self-fi nanced. Melchisédec’s lasting legacy was no less than the Academy of Sciences, an institution discussed at length below. Related to Colbert’s company, the academie was housed by Colbert, and texts like Augustin Beaulieu’s 1632 manuscript giving direc-tions for the formation of a commercial company in the Indes orientales (referred to in the last chapter) were among the travel accounts that Melchisédec published for the fi rst time at his own expense. Melchisédec, with his work on travel and geography, was a strong proponent of the creation of the East India Company. The meeting of three of the most famous travelers of the time, Thévenot, Tavernier, and Chardin, in Persia was part of the many coming and goings related to gathering information for Colbert and the company of 1664. A closer examination proves that even the Hugue-nots Tavernier and Chardin were involved in the interests of Colbert’s company. Mis-sionaries and Huguenots served the purposes of the company and their own.

The lives and careers of Chardin and Tavernier were intertwined. Jean Char-din had been sent on a fi rst trip to Persia in 1665 by his father, Daniel Chardin, a prosperous Huguenot Parisian jeweler, and an associate of the Taverniers. In 1663, Daniel Chardin gave jewels to sell to his partner Jean-Baptiste Tavernier at the Sa-favid court in Isfahan. Selling jewels for high profi t in Safavid Iran to get cash for


buying diamonds in Golconda was the object of this kind of gem trade. He was on his sixth trip to India via Persia at around the same time. At this point Tavernier’s and Daniel Chardin’s long business relationship had soured.17 It was a great loss, as Tavernier was now appointed an offi cial merchant to the Safavid Shah Abbas II (1642–1666). To replace Tavernier, who represented the Chardins, Daniel’s eldest son Jean entered the diamond trade in 1665 to represent his father’s interests. At age twenty Jean Chardin left for India accompanied by his father’s more seasoned partner, Antoine Raisin.

During the 1660s, this Huguenot network was already ostracized from some aspects of social life in France but was very much involved in the Asian gem trade abroad. When Louis XIV declared that Protestants were excluded from the profes-sions on April 3, 1666, two decades before the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, many Protestants might have desired to leave France.18 At this time Jean Chardin’s father was a shareholder in the new French Royal East India Company created in 1664.19 One cannot fail to notice that the moment his son Jean chose for a fi rst departure to India via Persia was only months after the inception of the French Compagnie royale des Indes. This is a fi rst clue to Jean Chardin’s ties to the French Company, and to French interests in trade in Asia. It begins to un-dermine the commonly held view that Chardin’s departure was a private venture. Chardin arrived a few months after the fi rst envoys of the company to Shah Ab-bas’s court. He actively helped the French company to obtain privileges in Persia, including the privilege of making wine in Isfahan.20 Chardin succeeded where the company had failed.

Jean Chardin wrote on the drugs of les Grandes Indes on his return from his sec-ond journey (1671–1680). The manuscript long left unpublished was called Réponses à Monsieur Cabart de Villarmont. It offers further clues that he was tied, albeit too indirectly for his own taste, to the interests of Colbert’s FREIC. It is Chardin’s only work on the Indes orientales, which in his day meant nearly all of Asia, with an emphasis on the Indian subcontinent, called les Grandes Indes; it included the Mo-luccas, China, and Japan. In contrast, all of his published work is devoted to Safavid Persia alone.21 The Réponses was a series of answers to a questionnaire given to Chardin in 1671. The questions had been given to him by a mysterious man in Paris. Throughout the document he refers to the man who questions him only as M**. He used M** for a certain Monsieur Cabart de Villarmont, whose name he kept a se-cret. This was a mission of intelligence for the FREIC, supervised by de Villarmont. Chardin was contacted directly by M** just before his departure for a second trip to Persia and India in 1671. During the boat ride home, Jean Chardin described for M** (de Villarmont), the properties, the prices, and the usage of tea and spices in Asia as drugs. He also investigated several manufacturing and naval techniques in China, India, Persia, and elsewhere in the Indes orientales. Some of these techniques, such as making porcelain, were still unknown in Europe. The request for information came from the commercial milieu around Colbert; yet, only during his fi ve-month


return journey on board a French company ship from Surat to France in 1680 did Chardin hastily respond to 107 questions he had kept for nine years.22

The only possible explanation is that upon his return from India he attempted to ingratiate himself to Louis XIV by providing information.23 His contact, Esprit Cabart de Villermont, was in charge of gathering commercial intelligence; he had previously been posted in Asia as lieutenant general to the king of Cayenne (Guy-ana).24 De Villermont gathered information about Asia and Eurasian trade and was in communication with the director of the FREIC, Boureau-Deslands. The Réponses are nothing short of a document of commercial intelligence about expensive trad-ing goods for the usage of the factors sent to Persia and India by the FREIC. The answers to the questionnaire were jotted down in the hopes of a possible career in the FREIC.25

The manuscript answers offer not only a wealth of information on drugs and man-ufacture in Asia, but also on the sexual and eating habits of the peoples of the Indes orientales and of the Europeans living in Asia in the seventeenth century. Chardin described the Europeans living in India, whom he referred to as Europeans Indian-izés [sic]. It was a rare source for this aspect alone.26 A glimpse of daily life in the In-dies provided important information to inexperienced Frenchmen. Chardin resorted to cultural comparisons that did not always favor his native France. Chardin wished for better hygiene in France, as he discussed the chewing of spice, areca catechu, the betel nut, in India to clean and keep the mouth fresh-smelling. He wrote that many European women living in India imitated the habit of chewing the drugs caat and betel to excess. On the ship back to France he himself indulged in this habit on a daily basis, and he shared this habit with another passenger, an English lady.

This anonymous lady was described in another passage devoted to the properties of what Chardin called buang, cannabis sativa, also called Hashish. M.** had asked, “The herb that is called Manga in the Indies … does it have such extraordinary effects that they are trying to make us believe here.”27 The lady’s experience with drinking its juice mixed with sugar and cinnamon was described by Chardin, as were views held locally in the Indies about cannabis. It was disdained by the Banians and common among the Muslims. Buang among the Banians, he wrote, was reserved for beggars and gens de néant (nobodies). Chardin did not offer to carry to Paris the usual sample he carried back to France of the other drugs. These samples demon-strate serious planning ahead despite the haste of his answers on the ship home.

An entire four pages described tea. This form of precise information on a com-modity is right next to an elaborate description of how the Dutch ladies of Batavia drank and prepared this beverage. It is followed by a startlingly long description of teapots. In his subsequent work on Persia, the Voyages, some of the passages of the Réponses included the sections on food in Persia and in the Ottoman empire, but this long passage on tea was entirely omitted. Between his description of 1680 in the Réponses and the printing of the 1711 Voyages, both tea and coffee were no longer rare. They had become relatively familiar products in Europe.28 Indeed,


Chardin left Paris in 1671, and coffee had been introduced to the French court by the pseudo-Ottoman ambassador in 1669. Tea was exclusively distributed in France by the Dutch VOC since 1636.29 Both became vastly more common by 1680. Some of Chardin’s information was outdated.

One of the main messages of the piece was that the climate of the Indies was un-suitable to Europeans. Chardin’s views on the all-importance of climate on the tem-perament and the body were shared by his contemporaries. Bodin, as discussed, held these views earlier. It was a systematic view that was considered scientifi c and was shared by many European doctors in the early modern period. The theories of the Greek doctor Galen (129–c. 261) on climates and of the four humors is ever-present in Chardin’s description, but the Indian usage of the new spices to balance the humors was not acceptable to the doctors of the Sorbonne. In Galenic medicine, balance was restored only through inducing sweating or vomiting, or purging or bleeding; no new drugs were acceptable.30

Yet interest in Indian drugs was not new to Europe. More elaborate scientifi c works than Chardin’s on local medical practices through plants had been written by the Por-tuguese. The best known was the 1563 Coloquios dos simples, e drogas he cousas medicinais da India, published in Goa, India by Johannes de Endem by the Portuguese doctor Garcia da Orta (c. 1490–1570). In Goa he became wealthy as a personal physi-cian at the service of Alfonso the Sousa. Chardin’s work was for merchants going to India. Yet the list of drugs he describes is the same one as in da Orta’s work. Coinci-dence? Was this simply because the most popular drugs in India were the list they both chose, or did Chardin possess a copy? The famous Antwerp printer Plantin Moretus (1520–1589), who read and wrote six languages, had translated da Orta into Latin and printed his work, making it accessible. What is also similar is that the Portuguese work was in the form of a dialogue of questions and answers, which might cast serious sus-picion on Chardin. Yet, questionnaires were an old Iberian technique, commonly used by missionaries. As we saw, the Frenchman Ramus advocated it for all travelers. There is little that is original about the questionnaire style. The Dutch used the method, as had the Portuguese before them, and made ample use of it commercially.31

Garcia da Orta had gathered names in Persian, Hindu, and Malay, and he looked at the impact of plants on the human body in medicine as practiced in Goa. He claimed that in Spain and Portugal he did not dare say anything against Galen, who used spe-cifi c herbs. Printing his book in Goa brought him intellectual freedom. Indeed, it was one of the fi rst books printed in India. The transmission of Indian medical ideas through da Orta is important, as these were novel ideas in Europe. Chardin too adopted the view that new, exotic drugs could cure or balance the humors, which was unaccept-able to the University of Paris.32 When Chardin was writing, the long quarrel about Ga-lenic doctors in Paris and their colleagues in Montpellier was ongoing. The views of the Persian doctor Rhazes, or Al-Razi (860–932?), had been part of the University of Montpellier’s curriculum for a very long time, and its infl uence made the use of many herbs and new drugs acceptable for curing disease. His Kitah al-hawi, translated as the


Comprehensive Book, was a compilation of Greek, Syrian, and early Arabic medicine and Al-Razi’s own notes. Some Indian medical knowledge was also part of the book that was the core of Montpellier’s Faculty of Medicine’s curriculum.

While Chardin fi rmly held the belief that living in India produced bodily changes for Europeans—transformations of sexual habits and of appetite caused by a climate that was not suitable for those born in Europe—he was quick to dissipate the prejudices and extreme conclusions of M**, who asked: “Is it true that the women of Europe lose their period after a year or two that they are in the Indies.” Without even as much as a transition the next question came: “Is it true that the dogs of Europe taken to the In-dies lose their bark once living there after two or three years.”33 The absurd questions, derived from texts about the climate of the New World, are next to questions seeking vital information on silk weaving and porcelain making in Asia. Although Chardin described porcelain making, his commercial espionage would bear no fruit. Porcelain would be described by the French Jesuits in China later in the eighteenth century, but their letters would come too late. As we will establish in this chapter, there was a pat-tern of not using any information coming from Asia, despite the efforts to gather it.

In 1680 his answers to M** on the Indes orientales were not deemed worthy of being published in France. Chardin gave them to the FREIC company’s writer Charpentier in the hope of publication. Although some scholars believe that the rest of Chardin’s work, which is on Persia, was also written by Charpentier, Van der Cruysse has established that this is not the case.34 If his commerce in precious stones and jewelry enriched him, it was his writing that insured his posterity. Nearly all of Chardin’s writing was published in London and Amsterdam, which could be at-tributed to his status as a Huguenot in exile, yet this is not entirely true.35 Chardin’s failure to publish the Réponses was perhaps not only due to his religion, but to com-petition from his father’s associate, Tavernier, now his enemy because of family litigation. Chardin was outdone by his rival Jean-Baptiste Tavernier’s publications four years before Chardin offered the Réponses to Louis XIV.

Tavernier’s accounts were concerned with serious commercial information. The fi rst, Les six voyages de Jean Baptiste Tavernier, was published in Paris in 1676. It was nearly 1,300 pages of information on prices, routes and products, merchants’ groups, accounting, and climate. The two most successful groups in Asia, the Dutch and the Armenians, were thoroughly studied. In great contrast to many trades, the mechanisms of the gem trade, common to the Armenians and Huguenots, Tavernier kept to himself. Only after Tavernier’s commercial information had already been published did Chardin offer the Réponses and the engravings Guillaume-Joseph Gre-lot made of Persia as gifts to Louis XIV. The engravings, books, and samples of ex-otic spices brought as royal presents looked slim. Chardin’s main gifts to Louis XIV, some precious manuscripts acquired in the Orient for the royal library, did not have the same effect as Tavernier’s diamonds.36

Tavernier’s diamonds made him famous. In 1669 Louis XIV purchased from Tavernier a rough blue diamond from Golconda for the sum of 22,000 French louis


(147 kilograms of gold) along with forty-four other large diamonds and 1,122 smaller diamonds. The Golconda diamond became known as le bleu de la couronne de France and was a larger diamond later cut down to 68 carats by the king’s jeweler. It was later reset by Louis XV’s court jeweler in a pendant known as the Toison d ’or.37 The rare blue diamond passed from Louis XIV to Louis XV, and to Louis XVI and his wife, Marie Antoinette. During the nuit de Varennes, in June 1791, when she escaped the revolutionary mob and left Versailles with the king, her diamonds, part of the crown jewels, were given by Marie Antoinette to her hairdresser, Léonard. A self important man, Léonard was partly the cause of the failure of the famous escape as he unwit-tingly gave away the route. He seems not to have had much sense as he also handed the jewels over to a soldier, who was found murdered and empty-handed the next day.38 The Hope diamond, now at the Smithsonian, is believed to be the diamond reshaped, which resurfaced in 1830. India was the sole source of diamonds until the discovery of mines in Brazil in 1725. Louis XIV now had the best collection of gems in Europe. Tavernier was better known for his Indian diamonds, but his information on commerce was nevertheless important. Pierre Bayle informs us that Tavernier had forced the re-luctant writer Samuel Chappuzeau into composing his travel accounts at great speed, as Tavernier promised his work delivered quickly to Louis XIV. The king became anx-ious to have the work, and it was impossible to refuse writing for the court.39

When Chardin docked in 1680, he was deeply irked by the great success of his rival’s Six Voyages.40 Chardin left France dispirited by the lack of opportunity, as the climate toward Huguenots had hardened considerably just that year. Chardin left for a lonely exile, while Tavernier had been showered with every honor. He received letters of nobility from Louis on February 16, 1669, and purchased the barony of Aubonne, in the fi efdom of the counts of Gruyère, near Geneva. He wrote that his mountainous land reminded him of Erivan in Armenia.41 Like Thévenot before him, the wealthy baron died on the road. The Mercure galant announced his death in Mos-cow, at 79, where he had arrived in the heart of winter 1689; he died in July.

In the 1697 edition of his Dictionnaire, Pierre Bayle not only wrote that Tavernier never really learned to speak French well and owed his books to someone else, he also called Tavernier a plagiarist. Bayle contended that Tavernier had included the work of Gabriel de Chinon in his own.42 Recently Francis Richard has further noticed the incorporation by Tavernier of the writings of the Capuchin of Raphaël du Mans, who lived in Persia from 1647–1696.43 The many sources used by Chardin also make it amply clear that once in England his methods were not those of scientifi c observation alone. Yet, Chardin became a respected Orientalist with modern scientifi c ambitions.

Travel Accounts and Informing Science

The incorporation of previous travel accounts was a common method, and it did not disappear with the advent of scientifi c methods; the quarrels of the ancients


and moderns continued. Observation was key to the information being valid and useful not only to Colbert but to scientists across Europe collecting facts. Char-din explained that he kept a road diary, now lost, which he called his mémoire. The mémoire was a common source for both the Voyages and the Réponses. In the instructions given by Caron to members of the French Royal East India Company in May 1665, he advocated the best technique for keeping track of events and transac-tions: “Keep a precise Journal of all that will occur on land and sea, even if it seems unremarkable.”44 Ramus’s early questionnaires for travelers, the Ars apodemicae, clearly had the merchant’s account book and road diary as a model. Writing daily in the journal also served as a cover. Jean Chardin explained that no one but his Armenian valet, Allahverdi, and his partner, Antoine Raisin, knew of Chardin’s pro-fession. He passed himself off simply as a curious traveler.45

Upon his arrival in London, Jean Chardin immediately became part of the most prestigious scientifi c society formed in Europe. He received a visit from John Ev-elyn, Christopher Wren, and John Hoskins, who asked him to become a member of the Royal Society formed in 1660. The fi rst written trace of Chardin’s presence in London is his name, which is fi rst recorded in the minutes of the July 8 (or 18), 1680 meetings, in the Council Minutes of the Royal Society of London for Improv-ing of natural Knowledge.46 It is within this learned society, devoted to science, that Chardin started his writing project on Persia in the seventeenth-century scientifi c tradition. There are, however, no traces in the minutes of his sharing his work as a presentation. As early as 1685 he was excluded from the society for nonpayment of dues, along with forty-seven fellow members, among them John Locke.

The greatest infl uence on his work came from his London contacts Robert Boyle47 and John Evelyn.48 He discussed his thoughts on Persia with other fellows such as Isaac Newton and Samuel Pepys, and it is documented that he participated in the new scientifi c tradition that was being elaborated on by the fellows of the recently founded Royal Society.49 Even if he did not frequent the Royal Society very assidu-ously, he was in close contact with its intellectual production. Chardin’s personal library in London contained many scientifi c works, among them no less than twenty-six works by his friend Robert Boyle.50 His knowledge of exotic drugs, of Asian markets, and of the fl ora and fauna of the East Indies was unsurpassed in England. He also entered the service of the English East India Company to inform the English on Asian trade.

Katie Whitaker has defi ned the culture of curiosity that tied the members of the Royal Society together. They collected and discussed wonders both natural and artifi cial. “Curiosi were aristocrats, gentlemen and aspiring gentlemen dispersed in their county homes in the summer, but converging on London in the winter where they attended the meetings of the Royal Society.”51 There was a religious aspect to wonder; the Christian curious who observed the works of the “ ‘Supreme Author.”52 French orientalists, many of them followers of Gassendi, had similar views. Collec-tions of rarities graced the houses and gardens and hothouses of the members of the


Royal Society, and next to exotic plants and rare objects, monsters like a cat with six feet and two tails and two bodies joined at the mid-back were displayed in cabinets of curiosities. Whitaker described a Norwell physician’s collection:

The collection contained fossil shells, beautiful agates, and mathematical instruments, which included a telescope, two globes, and an ivory multiplication table. There was an Indian tomahawk and a Turkish scimitar, a “Tooth brush from Mecca” and a pair of gloves that had belonged to King James I … “Matters relating to the Romish Supersti-tion,” including a “Surprizing Representation of the Trinity.”53

Clearly this was a group within which the exiled Frenchman Chardin belonged. In his writings he regretted the negative attitude toward commerce he witnessed in Catholic France. Commerce was not the only motive he gave for this second jour-ney of 1671–1680, which he portrayed as both a quest for religious and scientifi c truth in his preface of the 1711 edition. In his mind they were one, and he saw no dichotomy between them. He traded throughout the trip to support himself, and earned a good profi t in the gem trade.54 Huguenots had an agenda of their own: a religious quest for truth in the Orient. Persia, land of the biblical Queen Esther, was a particular favorite. Chardin aimed to prove that Catholicism had corrupted the truth. He was going back to the sources of religion. In writing Notes sur divers endroits de l’écriture Sainte, a work now lost, Chardin had clear orientalist preju-dices, as defi ned by Saïd: the Orient was unchanging. Therefore, if one traveled there, one could return to things as they were when Christianity began and reverse the corruption brought by Catholicism. This attitude was not born of imperialism, but of a quest for origins.

Chardin clearly expressed this “Christian curiosity” in the preface to his 1711 edition and described clothing styles, according to him unchanged for centuries, as a clear example of this stability of the Orient across time. Chardin believed, as did his positivist contemporaries, that through observation, one could reach the truth. This search was very much in the line of the Huguenot corpus of American writing on Florida and Brazil, as studied by Lestringant, an encounter that led to the birth of modern history in the sixteenth century. For Protestants, observation remained only the hope for truth. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, science was born out of the encounter with the exotic, in the form of an “increasingly scientized ethnog-raphy.”55 Yet, the quest for origins still dominated much of scientifi c research, and the Bible further complicated the quest, even for Protestants. The famous debate between Grotius and Johan de Laet, the director of the Dutch East India Company, concluded that the Americans were from the Old World, otherwise it would mean there had been two Adams and Eves. Grotius proposed China as an origin for the American Indians, and Johan de Laet argued for an origin on Herodotus’s Scythia. Father Lafi teau in his Moeurs des sauvages amériquains (1724) proposed Greece.56 The Old World was the reference for the new, but even the Old World was not well


known and was the subject of an intense curiosity. Europeans risked life and limb to describe the world beyond theirs.

In the preface to the 1711 edition, Chardin also wrote that he was writing to sat-isfy the curiosité of “nôtre Europe.” By 1694 the defi nition of curiosity had changed tremendously: “Curiosity. s. f. Passion, desire, empressement, de voir, d’apprendre, de posseder des choses rares, singulieres, nouvelles”57 (a passion to learn about and to posses things new and rare) as opposed to “Un homme curieux d’avoir, ou sçavoir choses antiques, Antiquarius” (a man curious of things from antiquity, antiquarian) in the Thresor de la langue française of 1606.58 The new defi nition demonstrates a desire for the novel, the exotic. The word curieux had the connotation of collecting rare novelties and studying them through scientifi c inquiry.59

As Paul Hazard put it long ago, Chardin was a pioneer, “the most obtuse of read-ers has to see that he saw over there, very far away in Asia, were people who were not inferior to him in any way, even if their lives were different from his own. To the notion of superiority familiar to him, he substituted that of diversity. What a psychological difference!”60 Despite the fact that Chardin’s services were rejected in France, knowledge of the world was considered a precious commodity, and France would imitate England in creating its own Academy of Sciences. Anthony Grafton has emphasized that it was no longer believable that reading the texts of antiquity would illuminate the truth. He gives the example of a highly educated Jesuit who crossed the equator and wrote: “What could I do but laugh at Aristotle’s Meteorology and his philosophy? For in that place and that season, where everything, by his rules, should have been scorched by the heat, I and my companions were cold.”61

Orientalism and the Birth of the Academy of Sciences

The creation of the Academy of Sciences in France in 1666 was closely tied to previ-ous contacts with Asia, as the study of travel and geography were at its inception. More than a century after the royal chairs were established by Francis I, all secular knowledge in France continued to be shaped and infl uenced by Orientalism. Royal sponsorship at the Collège du Roi, which started with oriental languages and the birth of science, were closely related in France. The French Academy, created to compete with the Florentine Academia del Cimento and England’s Royal Society of 1660, maintained a correspondence with scholars across Europe, especially with the Royal Society. It would not fi nd room in the closed minds of the professors of the Sorbonne, but would thrive under royal sponsorship fi rst in private houses and later at the Collège du Roi and the Jardin du Roi, where chemistry would fi rst be established as a chair.

Orientalism has not been considered an important element in the shaping of French science. Yet, the birth of the fi rst French royal scientifi c academy in 1666 and the fi rst academic journal a year later are closely intertwined with France’s intensifi ed


cross-cultural contacts and court-sponsored Orientalism. The scientifi c academy was fi rst founded in the Bibliothèque Royale, a library rich in oriental manuscripts and travel accounts. In the seventeenth century, many French botanists, merchants, jewel-ers, and missionaries wrote travel accounts. The information travelers brought from Asia was considered to be new knowledge. So many accounts were written and not published or studied, that Melchisédec Thévenot, Jean Thévenot’s uncle, attempted a compendium of travelers in the manner of Purchase and Hakluyt in England. He never wrote anything himself. Some erroneously believed that he authored a pioneer-ing book on the art of swimming, but it was a translation of Sir Edvard Digby’s 1587 De arte natandi (The Art of Swimming) from Latin into French as a pedagogical tool for Colbert’s maritime companies.

Melchisédec Thévenot’s contribution was the creation of the French Academy of Sciences in 1666.62 He was named guard of the Bibliothèque Royale, which left him ample time to indulge in his love of rare travel books and manuscripts. Thévenot admired England and the Royal Society created in 1660. It was the assemblies he held with a few friends that gave rise to the Royal Academy of Sciences, founded by Louis XIV. There were other groups meeting at that time, such as Bourdelot’s academy, built on weekly conversations, or Rohault Cartesian Wednesday meetings. Montmor’s academy of 1663, with Samuel Sorbière as its secretary, had huge ambi-tions, but most of the meetings were wasted on bickering. Thévenot tried to create a professional group and provided his own fi nances. His ambitions were fi rst embod-ied in a Compagnie des Sciences et des Arts, which he founded with the astronomers Azout and Petit in 1664.63 Prior to that Thévenot had held many meetings in his own house in Paris and in Issy. The French Royal Academy of Sciences, a company cre-ated in August with funding from Colbert, was in imitation of the Royal Society of London. On December 22, 1666, the new company met for the fi rst time at rue Vivi-enne in the king’s library. It decided to meet on Wednesdays to discuss mathematics and on Saturdays to discuss physics.64

In the inaugural meeting the Danish anatomist Niels Stensen presented in French his Discours sur l’anatomie du cerveau. It was considered a major break-through in understanding the brain. It compared the brain to a machine. This mechanical way of thinking about the body in the wake of Descartes’s philosophy would be central to many French physicians for their new research in the next century. Until 1699 the new académie had no formal regulations. As Roger Hahn puts it: “It was the general expectation that the shedding of words for deeds, the abandonment of authority in favor of experimentation, would yield immediate and tangible results.”65 The Royal Library became a formal center.

Unlike the informal gatherings in private houses that had preceded it, from its inception it was clear that the royal academy played a consulting role for the impe-rial aims of the court. The fi rst conquest was aimed at the many regions of France itself, and the academy was in charge of measuring and documenting French terri-tory, a task completed only after the large Napoleonic surveys were conducted with


the tools of questionnaires and statistics.66 The mapping of France’s own territory and the problem of longitude for sea voyages, hydraulic systems for fountains, and machines to do human tasks were among its fi rst projects.67 The fi rst scholarly jour-nal ever published in France, the Journal des Savants, was published by this new Academy of Sciences the year after it was created.68 The Academy of Sciences was to receive royal funding, only clearly traceable since 1690 by Alice Stroup in the archives.69 Protected and overseen by Colbert until his death in 1683, then by the Marquis de Louvois; the king’s scientists only received the visit of the king once, in 1681 on Colbert’s insistence.70

Louis XIV invited two celebrities, the Dutch mathematician Christiaan Huygens and the Italian Jesuit, later naturalized French, Jean Dominique Cassini. These two stars of the academy were highly paid to mark the prestige of the new academy; they had their own rooms, servants, and a coach and horse, and Huygens was known for his parties.71 Below them in the strict hierarchy of the academy were working members, natural philosophers, anatomists, botanists, chemists, geometers, astrono-mers, mechanicians, and permanent secretaries. All of them were modestly paid, but crucial to the functioning of the academy. Well below them were the students, who were badly paid or not paid at all and whose path of advancement was a matter of incertitude.72 Not all members were Catholic; religion was not an issue. The death bed conversion of its fi rst chemist, Samuel Cottereau Duclos (1598–1685), was a sign of the times as the Edict of Nantes had made it a necessity. Many members held a teaching appointment either at the Collège du roi or at the Jardin du roi. A third of its members also held political appointments.73

The academy was fi rst housed in several houses belonging to the Colbert family, but the king paid for the transformations involved in building laboratories and gar-dens. The scientists controlled and maintained the garden, which served for botany, meteorological experiments, and astronomical observations. Cassini complained that the polluted skies of Paris hampered his progress in astronomy. The new laboratory, used day and night, became the focus of the academy.74 Yet, dissections, and even more disturbingly, vivisections, were done in the library, the heart of the academy, fi tting a table with straps to confi ne live subjects. Exotic animals from the king’s me-nagerie, his new zoo at Versailles, were sent after their deaths to the king’s scientists for examination. Alice Stroup describes how the stench of the operations and the horror of clean-up were sanitized with enormous amounts of alcohol, eau de vie, in the library, until Cassini, greatly annoyed by the odor, as were readers, banned all the operations from the library.75

The academy collected travel accounts and had a vast correspondence with travel-ers. Melchisédec Thévenot received many letters from Bernier, for example, answer-ing the questions he sent to India. The academy supported travelers by providing the many drugs necessary for some travelers to maintain their health on their journeys. Jean Richer received the drugs recommended for his trip to Cayenne.76 In doing so it clearly followed the medical views of Montpellier. Many members traveled for their


research, the fi rst among them a botanist, Joseph Pitton de Tournefort (1656–1708), who traveled to collect for science.

The Jardin du Roi

Joseph Pitton de Tournefort became one of the fi rst directors of the Jardin du Roi after he took trips across Europe and in the Ottoman empire, Persia, Armenia, and Georgia to collect plants for science. He was born in the city of Aix and studied with the Jesuits. After two years collecting plants, he studied medicine at the Faculty of Medicine in Montpellier. Montpellier looms large in the history of French herbal gardens. The Jardin du roi was modeled on the garden in the University of Montpel-lier. Located close to the fi rst European herbal gardens in Padua, created in 1542, Montpellier benefi ted from the knowledge of many students and professors with international ties to Italy and to northern Europe. It had the fi rst institutional herbal garden in France, although many private gardens collecting simples predated it. The University of Montpellier had a medical school that was infl uenced by oriental medi-cine. Ibn Sina (Avicenna) (980–1037) and Al-Razi (Rhazes) (865–925) were on the curriculum. Al-Razi had amended Galen’s idea by introducing experimentation with the use of liquids and new drugs. For the new drugs a garden of simples was needed. Traditionally under the archbishop of Montpellier, the university remained much more open to foreign ideas than did its counterpart in Paris. It was also more tolerant and open to Protestants even during the religious wars.

Felix Platter’s diary and Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie’s work on the Platters has made the university’s religious tolerance famous. Felix left his family’s garden to travel on donkey back to Montpellier to study plants and medicine with Guillaume Rondelet. On his way he saw Protestants like himself crucifi ed and burned in Lyon and other French towns. His letters to his father tell of his fright that it might be his own fate in France. Montpellier was not free of atrocities committed in the name of religion, but it was a haven compared to most towns. Felix, who lived above an apothecary’s shop, witnessed turpentine being purchased to fuel fi res that were not burning fast enough to burn some Calvinists. Felix Platter, one of Montpellier’s best known students, did not become as famous as many of his classmates, who created the science of botany.77

The Platters were private collectors. A private curiosity cabinet sometimes be-came the basis of a university’s collection; such was the case of the University of Bologna. It received the collection of Ulisse Aldrovandi (1522–1607), the director of the university’s botanical garden. According to Paula Findlen, his herbarium is the fi rst collection deserving the name of museum. His work was of great signifi cance for the development of French natural science at a later date. In the sixteenth century, the papacy, Portugal, and Spain ruled the world and had easy access to its treasures, and along with the Italian cities they were the foremost centers of collecting. Philip II’s support of Francisco Hernandéz de Toledo, who spent six years in Mexico gathering


fl ora and fauna, and his botanical garden in the Escorial, were royal commissions that demonstrate collecting nature as clearly tied to imperial power. However, Paula Findlen’s work has shown that the story of Europe’s early herbal collections, and that of its early cabinets of curiosities, is a story of individual collections.78 In the seventeenth century physicians associated with the trading companies would travel and form worldwide networks with merchants, but earlier collectors were often sed-entary and bought plants sent to them by others. In France there were the collections of Père du Molinet in Paris, and most famously the collections and garden of Pereisc in Aix en Provence.79 Nicholas Claude Fabre de Pereisc is remembered by the name he gave to a species of American cactus plants: Perekia.

Networks of merchants, travelers, scientists, members of commercial companies, and at times government offi cials were involved in gathering exotic plants, in de-scribing them as a fi rst classifi cation system that gave rise to the science of botany.80 Paula Findlen quotes the fi rst holder of a chair of natural history, Giuseppe Gabrielli (1494–1553) at his inaugural speech in 1543 as “deploring the unhappy decadence of our times” that led the princes not to support naturalists and physicians and to shun the study of nature. The rulers of Ferrara were innovators and exceptional in their support of the study of plants.81 Late in the sixteenth century a succession of Haps-burg emperors in Prague and Vienna invited the best naturalists of Europe. In France Henri IV’s very early support of Olivier de Serres and the garden at Montpellier and its naturalists was therefore exceptional for a monarch and only had an equivalent in Spain.

A fi rst garden in Montpellier had disappeared, and it was rebuilt under Henri IV. In his Théâtre d’Agriculture, Olivier de Serres (1529–1619) wrote: “The medi-cal garden, that by the king’s orders was reconstructed in Montpellier, by Monsieur Richier de Belleval, physician to the king and professor of anatomy and botany in the university of the town … [he] has fi lled it with simples and medicinal herbs of all kinds both domestic and foreign.”82 Simples was the name for medicinal herbs, and save for private gardens, the 1593 the garden in Montpellier was the fi rst to grow them. De Serres went on to give the name of each plant, organizing them as simples d’Orient and simples d’Occident, showing the large presence of foreign plants.83 The arrival of exotic simples from abroad and collecting was often the inspiration of medical gardens and the collections of simples. Possession of the exotic had close ties to the birth of science, as Paula Findlen has shown in her study of sixteenth-century collecting.

Under Louis XIII, the king’s Catholic zeal caused the destruction of France’s best herbal garden at Montpellier. A modest royal medicinal garden was originally planted by Guy de La Brosse (c. 1586–1641), Louis XIII’s personal physician, in 1626. It functioned as Paris’s medicinal herb garden. The edict for the creation of an herb garden for the Collège du Roi, one century after the fi rst chairs were created, is dated 1635. The project was predictably opposed by the Sorbonne, which did not believe in botany. The garden was part of the Collège du Roi and courses were open


to all. Radical new ideas like the circulation of the blood by Harvey were freely discussed in the courses. A hundred years after its creation of the Collège du Roi for the teaching of oriental languages, the Jardin du Roi was to bring Paris radical scientifi c transformations, with the creation of chairs in the new sciences of botany and chemistry. Under patronage of Richelieu, Guy de la Brosse, the king’s physician, became the fi rst instructor of the Jardin du Roi. Harold Cook describes that “he was not only an excellent botanist but an excellent (Paracelsian) chemist, teaching both at the Jardin du Roi.”84 This would be the fi rst instruction in chemistry in France. Paracelsus’s ideas were banned by the Sorbonne.

In the very same year the garden was decreed, 1635, the fi rst book describing the fl owers of Canada appeared. It was signed by a man who never left France, Jacques Philippe Cornuty. It inaugurated American botany in France and predated John Joc-elyn’s famous 1672 book on the plants of British America by nearly forty years. The fi rst part of Cornuty’s work was devoted to the plants of Canada, although scholars disagree on whether they were all from French Quebec, or generally from the North American mainland. The second part was a description of the plants around Paris. The author evoked “those Moderns who without being intimidated by extraordinary perils have crossed oceans to discover new lands.” The book continued to be a teach-ing tool for botanical demonstrations in the Jardin du Roi and at the sites described by Cornuty for another century and a half.85 Cornuty’s book used the classifi cations of Matthaeus Lobelius (1538–1616), who studied medicine in Montpellier.

Fanatically patriotic and proud of being Flemish, Lobelius stressed in his writings that Flanders had given the best minds to Europe. Nevertheless, as a persecuted Prot-estant he left Flanders to become physician to King James I in London. The process of systematic classifi cation of the world’s fl ora and fauna that began in Europe in the 1500s has been called “possessing nature,” the “naming of names.” Marie Louis Pratt has placed nascent botany squarely within a history of Europe’s imperial dominance of the rest of the world.86 The French and Flemish had a central role. Lobelius’s classi-fi cation of plants was only superseded much later by the French botanist Joseph Pitton de Tournefort, whose ideas were adopted and elaborated on by Carl Linnaeus.

Montpellier’s Flemish students, Felix Platter’s classmates, were major contribu-tors to this classifi cation and the nascent science of herbalism, later called botany. Major botanists, Clusius, Rembert Dodens, and Lobelius were all the Flemish stu-dents of one man in Montpellier: Guillaume Rondelet (1507–1566). Clusius Charles de l’Ecluse (1526–1609) is remembered for his introduction of tulip bulbs, which led to a fi nancial frenzy on the stock market of Amsterdam, called tulipomania.87 The tulip was only one of many new bulbs coming to Europe from les Indes. Lobe-lius’s work showed how herbals were trying to keep up with the fl ow of exotic new plants coming to Europe. In his 1576 Plantarum seu stirpium historia, there are more than forty new bulbous plants, most of them from the markets of the Levant, such as narcissi, crocus, alliums, lilies, erythromium, and colchicums.88 Although it was the gardens of Louis XIV that showcased them, oriental simples and bulbs reached


France much earlier. The scholars working on Cornuty’s plants of Canada also con-cluded that most of the American plants reached France before 1627.

The Jardin du Roi (today the Jardin des Plantes), always under the directorship of a graduate from Montpellier, grew in importance under Louis XIV; Joseph Pitton de Tournefort’s description of this journey was published as Relation d’un voyage du Levant.89 He collected over one-thousand three-hundred plants for the Jardin du Roi from the Ottoman empire, Armenia, Georgia, and Persia. He was especially inter-ested in Mount Ararat, where Noah’s ark had landed, as he believed the origin of all things must have started there after the fl ood. Looking forward to a lush garden, dis-appointed by its aridity, he called the arid mountain crowned with snow “une mon-tagne horrible.” Pitton de Tournefort was protected by the queen. In 1683, Fagon, Louis XIV’s doctor, had appointed Tournefort as the queen’s doctor, and it is through her protection that he became the director of the Jardin du Roi. De Tournefort gave the reason for his mission in Asia, assigned by the Comte Ponchartrin, who now headed the Academy of Sciences, as observation. He had to observe (être attentif ) to anything that could further science. Ponchartrin had suggested to Louis XIV the departure abroad of the best observers in order to collect information on “natural history, ancient and modern geography, but also anything regarding the commerce, religion and mores of the people inhabiting these lands.”90

His travel account is a geographical and social description of Greece, Anatolia, Armenia, and Georgia with a description of its people and with a close eye on the quarrels among the Armenians and the French missionaries trying to covert them. Like most French travelers he was in charge of gathering information not only on fl ora and fauna but on the Christians in Asia. Ironically, after returning from his dan-gerous journey he was killed by a carriage in Paris while distractedly crossing the street, now Rue de Tournefort.

Joseph Pitton de Tournefort’s system of classifying plants, immortalized by Lin-naeus, was based on the form of the corolla. Of permanent importance, and still accepted today, were the clear distinctions de Tournefort made between genus and species, and the exhaustive analyses of genera, which he was the fi rst to draw up and illustrate. Tournefort expounded on this system in his Eléments de botanique (1694). After de Tournefort’s accidental death Antoine de Jussieu succeeded de Tournefort as director of the royal garden. While director of the Jardin du Roi, Jussieu received several exceptional exotic treasures. Two were extraordinary: one was a live coffee plant, the global consequences of which we will examine at length in the second part of this book. The other remained buried until it was recently unearthed by Kapil Raj.91 Raj found a forgotten fourteen-volume herbal made and sent from India to Antoine de Jussieu: Botanical Elements of the Plants in the Garden of Orixa, Their virtues and Qualities, Both Known and unknown with their Flowers, Fruits and Seeds, Translated from the Oriya into French.92 Held at the Musée d’Histoire naturelle in the Jardin des Plantes, twelve of the fourteen volumes contain 725 double-folio paintings and 722 plant descriptions. The remaining volumes contain the names of plants in French with


an index of each plant, their vernacular names transcribed, followed by their medical and economic uses. The following is a summary of what Raj has found.

The FREIC’s ship surgeon, by the grand name of Nicolas l’Empereur, hoped he could solve the issue of the high mortality faced by the French in India. Indeed, of the 120,000 Frenchmen who had sailed to the Indies, 35,000 died during the voyage alone. To solve the crisis, once in India, l’Empereur planned “to buy all the books that the people here have and fi nd out how they use them. I plan to translate them into French so that we know all the cures, great and small that are as yet unknown to Europeans.”93 In the same letter, he complained to his friend Gabriel Devigne, head of the Catholic Société Mission Etrangères in Paris, that the French in India were poor, while the English thrived. While he worked in Chandernagore in 1706, the largest French factory, l’Empereur started his correspondence with Antoine de Jus-sieu, reporting on the English and their successes and promising him that he would spare no effort to send “all that is curious.”

L’Empereur was not the fi rst to attempt this. We described Chardin’s feeble efforts; Raj discusses the trading networks that Garcia da Orta, a medical doctor at the ser vice of the Portuguese governor, had to penetrate to gather his materia medica for the book he would publish in Goa. The gem trade and the spice trade brought da Orta his Asian partners, who then gave him knowledge of local plants and medicine. L’Empereur relied on the same networks as da Orta.94 The tie between the French Royal East India Company, the Jardin du Roi, and the Société Mission Etrangères becomes crystal clear in l’Empereur’s contacts. The Dutch VOC had long used its physicians to collect information on the plants of Asia and had used it to their advantage. The story of the treasure he sent to Antoine de Jussieu to save the French from death in the Indes orien-tales, as told by Raj, is worth retelling as it is a clear instance of how, in great contrast to what was done by the Dutch, information gathered abroad was ignored in France.

Nicolas l’Empereur tells the story of the immense task he undertook to record and classify the plants of India. To pay for all this, he set himself in private trade and sold uncut emeralds from South America in India. He met two fakirs, who, against alms, would tell him of the properties of the plant. L’Empereur employed an army of gardeners and painters at his own expense. He established trade links with mer-chants as far way as Nepal, and since some of the plants he received were unknown to his fakir partners, he started experimenting with patients both European and South Asian. Chandernagore, where l’Empereur was posted, was a major trading post, and he had access to the hundreds of painters who worked for the calico market, whose expertise in drawing fl owers completed his description of the simples. Kapil Raj of-fers the hypothesis that some, but certainly not all, of the paintings were copied from the Dutchman Van Reed’s Hortus Malabaricus, which had appeared a few years be-fore l’Empereur started. All the material was not in the Oriya language, and there are many Tamil names. Despite the possible use of preceding sources, there seems to be little doubt in Raj’s mind that this was l’Empereur’s achievement, as he ruined both his health and his fortune fi nishing it. Started in Orissa in 1690, the fourteen-volume


work was completed in Bengal and shipped to Paris, to the Academy of Science, in 1725. L’Empereur also included a wonder remedy for epilepsy, which he sent as a gift. The volume and the drug arrived safely in the hands of Antoine de Jussieu.95

Nicolas l’Empereur heard nothing after the arrival of his magnum opus in Paris. He had spent a lifetime and every penny he had earned on compiling the volumes, and after losing his position in the company was reduced to begging. After a couple of unanswered letters to Antoine de Jussieu, l’Empereur sent complaints about him to whomever he knew in Paris. As the botanical expert to the French company, Jus-sieu was well aware that the Dutch had a monopoly on the spices of the Indies and had gained much through botanical knowledge. His disinterest was not a disinterest in the competition for knowledge or spices; rather it was, according to Raj, a disdain for the importance of the kind of work accomplished by Nicolas l’Empereur. Yet, Antoine de Jussieu’s writings show that he believed there was a place for correspon-dence with botanists and doctors in foreign lands, but it was to improve medical knowledge and an understanding of the fl ora within Europe.

Both men only saw the utility of knowledge about exotic things for Europe alone. Jussieu erroneously wrote that, only thanks to such work done in foreign lands, it became clear that the exotic remedy ipecacuahana was nothing but the common violet, found abundantly on French soil. This was not what Nicolas l’Empereur had hoped for; he wanted the French to conquer diseases in the Indies through local drugs so that they could conquer the markets for their exotic imports, as had the Dutch.96 It may be further argued that the writings of Jussieu and l’Empereur show that the two men at the service of science had totally different worldviews. Like Linnaeus in Sweden after him, Antoine de Jussieu was stubbornly obsessed with fi nding cheaper domestic substitutes for the expensive exotic imports in demand on French markets, in order to protect French markets against foreign imports. Jussieu, like many eco-nomic thinkers, thought that the foreign commodities in French markets were a dan-ger to France’s prosperity. Contrasting views were often found between European factors in India and the domestic policies of men at home. Jussieu was not as keen on commerce as l’Empereur was.97 Unlike the Dutch and English, in French views, save for the Huguenots, commerce was regarded as a very low occupation and not a very noble goal. In France, this dichotomy between desire for the exotic and forming trade and intellectual barriers against it had deep roots in French political economic thought, an issue that will be examined in the last chapters of this book. Scientifi c knowledge was gathered at great cost worldwide and served Louis’s new institutions such as the Academy of Sciences far more than it served overseas expansion. The cultural impact of the information gathered were long-standing within France.

A notable curieux, a member of Aix’s parliament, Nicolas Fabri de Peiresc (1580–1637), devoted his entire life to collecting books and curiosities from abroad. He organized two trips in order to acquire singularities for his cabinet of curiosi-ties, books, manuscripts, vases, mummies, chameleons, and crocodiles. His library had a vast collection of orientalist works and travel accounts. The city of Aix was


the administrative center for the French commercial in the Levant. Marseilles, the port for oriental products, was often Perseic’s center of attention. His face tuned toward the sea, the impatient administrator expected his treasures from the markets of Cairo. There was no commerce of antiquities to speak of; mummies, obelisks, vases, statues, and manuscripts arrived packed with little care by the spice traders from Alexandria. The Egyptian objects arriving in France were simply part of the bulk commerce of Marseilles. Many precious objects were destroyed in transit. For example, the Sarcophage of Mykerinus, proprietor of the third pyramid of Giza, fell to the bottom of the sea. Peiresc was the proud owner of two Egyptian mum-mies. Claude Saumaise (1588–1653), another curieux, had acquired the Epistles of Saint Paul in Arabic. Packed with pepper, mace, and clove, lost in lists of hundreds of drugs, spices, plants, medals, and antiquities of Egypt, the precious manuscripts longed for by Peiresc and Saumaise were not the object of any inventory, they were listed as good “for the public.”

A Coptic manuscript Peiresc offered to the Jesuit Athanasius Kircher (1602–1680) began the long process in France of the deciphering of hieroglyphs. Under Na-poleon, when Jean François Champollion (1790–1830) famously broke the code of hieroglyphs with the Rosetta stone, he did it with the help of a manuscript that Peiresc had given Kircher, the 1636 Coptic Forerunner (Prodromus Coptus).98 Hieroglyphs played a large role in this Jesuit’s search for a universal pictorial language to convert the world. A biography of Peiresc redresses the erroneous idea that the tie between Coptic and the Hieroglyphs was established by the famous Jesuit.99 Together with Saumaise, the Jesuit worked for Peiresc. The rumor that the famous Jesuit, who is better remembered than his patron, abused of Peiresc’s sponsorship may be mislead-ing. The Jesuit’s work was marred by fabrications, forgeries, and fantasy.100

Peiresc’s intellectual biography presents him as a scholar with exquisite taste and a good eye for Egyptian esthetics and style. Far from being the only collection in the region, he asked his network of purveyors about what everyone else, such as the treasurer of Lyon or other Provençal collectors, was collecting. The quest for things Egyptian was not merely a matter of style; much was dependent on what Europe perceived as its own role in the world and as its own past, what it accepted as its own, or saw as exotic.101 The constant view that the past was a foreign country in the European quest for origin changed over time, with Greece imposing itself with unprecedented ubiquity during and after the French Revolution.102

The quest for the key to hieroglyphs was just one aspect of early Egyptology. Peiresc’s disappointment in Athanasius Kircher’s scholarship on hieroglyphs should not eclipse the Jesuit’s substantial scholarly contributions to the study of Egypt and China. Of his forty books, the one that is best remembered is his early description of China. Passages from it would color European intellectual production on China into the late-nineteenth century. It was translated into French during his lifetime and had immense impact in France. The Jesuit’s work on China, China illustrata, was trans-lated into French in 1670. It would be quoted for centuries to come.103


The Jesuits in China “under the Starry Mantle of Astronomy”

In the nineteenth century, the poet Chateaubriand called the Jesuits sent to China by Louis XIV in 1685 “les mathématicians du roi.” The term has stuck. France’s relation-ship with China attracted the attention of a slew of intellectuals. Leibniz, Voltaire, and Quesnay are but a few of the writers who integrated the narratives of China left by the Jesuits into their own intellectual production. The Jesuits realized they dealt with a cul-ture older than Europe’s they could not simply dismiss. The fi rst work left by the 1685 the expedition was father Le Comte’s Nouveaux mémoires sur l’estat de la Chine, published in 1696, which was condemned by the Sorbonne in 1700. It would become part of the well-known collection of Jesuit letters, Lettres édifi antes et curieuses, pub-lished in 1702, which contained a number of the letters written by the fi ve mathemati-cians. Philosophers like Montesquieu turned to another compendium made by Father du Halde, which recycled some of the same Jesuit publications. The fi ve Jesuits sent by Louis XIV arrived in China in February 1688. They were not the fi rst French Jesuits to reach China; the way had been opened to them by a French Apostolic vicar in the 1660s. A century before that, the Portuguese had sent the fi rst Jesuits to China. Louis XIV had no right to send missionaries to Asia because of the religious monopoly of Padroado, and what he did has been called an expedient by historians of this episode.104 Louis sent the Jesuit mission as scientists part of the Royal Academy of Sciences. With the exception of Father le Compte, Fathers Fontenay, Bouvet, Gerbillion, and Visdelou all were inducted into the Academy of Sciences only a few days before their departure. In March 1685 the ship l’Oiseau boarded the fi ve Jesuits and Father Taschard. Aboard there also was the orientalist Abbé de Choisy, in the personal suite of the fi rst French ambassador to Siam, the Chevalier de Chaumont.105

This embassy to Siam was the consequence of relations opened since 1662 by French missionaries with Phra Naraï, the king of Siam. The detailed story of these missions and relations with Siam have been marvelously told by Dirk Van der Cruysse in a series of in-depth works.106 France’s access to Siam and China was through French Apostolic vicars put in charge of “all of Asia” by the pope. The Propaganda Fide created by the pope in 1622 to reconvert Protestants in Europe and heathen populations was adamant about distancing itself from any national goals in Asia, especially those of the Portuguese. Rome trained native priests, such as the wealthy Brahman of Diwar, known as Matteo Castro de Mahalo, who left Rome after his training at the Propaganda Fide to preach in Goa. The papacy, suspicious of the Iberians, turned to France, a country without any empire in Asia, to have French missionaries carry out the goals of the Propaganda.

This idea was conveyed to the Vatican by a French Jesuit, Alexandre de Rhodes (1591–1660), who created the fi rst church in Tonkin in 1652. He had come back to France to ask for royal support to create new French missions in Asia. He failed and turned to private funding. A group of missionaries called les bons amis met with Rhodes in Paris and volunteered. They left for Rome with Rhodes in 1657 and


proposed that French money fund missionaries to aid Apostolic vicars for the pope. This would promote Christian rule over Asia and the pope’s hold over missions. Alexander VII (r. 1655–1667) accepted after some hesitation. He divided Asia into three regions, each under an Apostolic vicar: China, Cochin China, and Tongking. All three vicars were to train secular priests in a center in Paris to serve under them in Asia. The funding obtained by Rhodes was responsible for the creation of the Société des Missions étrangères, in charge of providing training both for secular priests and missionaries destined to go to Asia after 1664.107 Two of the Apostolic vicars were French. With the center in Paris, Rhodes had managed to move the Jesuits under the French fl ag. Rhodes resented the fact “that our good French folk let foreigners grow rich in the India trade.”108 The model had already been set by the Portuguese.

Siam and China became accessible through Alexandre de Rhodes’s efforts and those of the French Apostolic vicars; François Pallu, otherwise know as Mgr. d’Heliopolis (Balbek), had gone as far as Funjian accompanied by two missionaries. After the declaration of the Gallican Church in 1682, Louis XIV demanded that the vicars who depended on the pope pay him direct homage. By the time Jesuit math-ematicians were leaving for Siam, Chateaubriand was right; in Louis’s views the Jesuits served the king.109 Louis XIV’s absurd notion that he was sending the French Jesuits to convert Phra Naraï, the elderly king of Siam, to Catholicism, needs to be reiterated. The Siamese relationship had brought Paris the fi rst real Asian embassy from anywhere, the contrived Ottoman visit of 1669 notwithstanding. A Siamese delegation came to Louis XIV’s court in 1684. The French Siamese relationship was built on different but mutual illusions.

By all accounts the relationship that cemented the diplomatic tie with Siam was the common interests between the Jesuit Father Taschard and Constantin Phaulkon, the Greek prime minister to Phra Naraï (King Mongkut).110 When the French arrived, the Greek prime minister was at the pinnacle of his power and was in control of Si-am’s foreign policy. Constantine Hierax came from the Greek island of Cephalonia, the son of an innkeeper, yet Father Taschard wrote that the Ionian Greek was the son of a governor of Cephalonia, and his mother’s forebears governed the island under the republic of Venice. Van der Cruysse has unmasked Father Taschard’s genealogi-cal fabrications of the Greek’s identity as an accommodation to suit French views on class. In reality Phaulkon was a self-made man. A linguist and a merchant turned into an entrepreneur who became a diplomat by sheer accident. The French were welcome, as they did not have an empire and were not suspected of ill will. Phaul-kon feared for his own fate, and once the old king passed away, he dreamed of an allegiance with a power other than the powerful Dutch. He spoke Latin to the Jesuits, and he knew no French but spoke Greek, Siamese, English, Malay, and Portuguese.

Father Taschard was convinced by Phaulkon that it was only a matter of time be-fore the king of Siam converted to Catholicism. In turn, Taschard, told Phaulkon that a French army would come if there was a revolution in Siam.111 Yet, when the French ambassador wanted to give his speech about joining the two crowns of Siam and


France under Catholicism, the Greek prime minister was adamant about skipping the passages stressing conversion.112 The discomforts of protocol, such as lying prostrated face down in front of the emperor, the elephants on their silk cushions, and the shock of the exotic have been retold in detail by Dirk Van der Cruysse. In the end the Franco-Siamese relations failed miserably, but they were, as had so many failures before them, to leave a cultural mark and produce the most profuse literature; thousands and thousands of pages were written about fl eeting contacts made by France.

In the 1688 embassy to Siam there was a highly fl amboyant and ambitious ori-entalist, who has left his memoirs, edited by Van der Cruysse.113 François-Timoléon de Choisy was a mandarin because of his learning and androgynous because of his mother’s upbringing. Born the last child of an ambitious courtier, his mother raised François under Mazarin’s watchful eye as Louis XIV’s younger brother Philippe’s playmate. Their father had nearly lost his throne to his own brother Gaston, so Maza-rin decided that Monsieur, as Louis’s brother Philippe was called, should grow up too refi ned and effeminate to create political problems for France. Since their tender infancies both François and Philippe were treated and dressed as precious little girls. François Timoleon’s entrée at court with his playmate Monsieur gave him a very high rank, so high that as an adult the Abbé de Choisy, as he was known, could afford to go to mass dressed as a bejeweled and elegant aristocratic woman. The only time he dressed as a male was on his trip to Siam. Timoléon de Choisy’s life embodied all the paradoxes of Louis XIV’s reign. The strict rules of the Catholic Church on adul-tery and homosexuality did not apply at court. He longed for the embassy of Siam but was judged unsuitable because of his eccentric lifestyle. Instead he became the fi rst orientalist to study Siam.

If the Siamese relationship failed, there were tangible scientifi c results that en-dured. When King James II, cousin to Louis XIV, lost his throne because of English suspicions of Catholic and Jesuit world conspiracies, he took refuge in France. He visited Cassini’s laboratory at the Academy of Sciences. In 1690 Cassini showed off his knowledge of longitude and how the information sent to him by the Jesuit mathematicians in China and Siam had helped him rectify the location of the sum-mer palace of the king of Siam by twenty-four degrees compared to the academy’s 1683 map.114 Many scientifi c instruments were sent to China from France, and in re-turn there was a vast collection of Chinese works entering the collections of the royal library at the academy, opening an era in which Orientalism went beyond the borders of the Persianate world; nevertheless, the Ottomans remained crucial.

Les Jeunes Langues and Les Arméniens du Roi: The Hope for French Dragomans

A few years after the creation of the Royal Academy of Sciences, several royal insti-tutions devoted to the study of the Orient were put into place. Even if French trading


ambitions were extended, albeit mostly unsuccessfully, to Japan, China, Siam, India, and Persia in the 1660s and 1680s, the Ottomans remained important trading part-ners. French consuls, always merchants themselves, sent ample correspondence back to inform the court, but they needed trusted translators as they remained dependent on the translating skills of the Greek and Armenian dragomans, subjects of the Sul-tan. Dragoman is from the Turkish word tarjuman, translator. Jean-Baptiste Colbert wanted an institution to train French dragomans with unquestionable loyalties to France. French consuls and merchants had complained that these appointed interme-diaries spoiled French enterprises in the Ottoman empire.

In 1669, an Ottoman ambassador came to Paris. Soleiman Agha was a self-styled ambassador according to Jean Chardin, as his trip had been fi nanced by the French, specifi cally by Monsieur de la Haye, the French ambassador. He was having diffi cul-ties in the application of the capitulations, because the French had aided Venice in a war against the Ottomans. The crisis prompted the creation of an institution that endures to this day, the Institute for Oriental Languages, INALCO, which had its very early inception in Louis’s policies.115 Louis XIV created the École des jeunes langues the same year as the Ottoman embassy came to Paris. After the Revolution it became the École des langues orientales and later the Institut national des langues et civilisations orientales (INALCO), which it is still called today. Six French boys between ages of eight and ten were sent every three years for language training in Constantinople. Called jeunes langues, their grants were paid by the merchants of Marseilles. In that same year of 1669 Marseilles, nicknamed la porte de l’Orient, was made a free port by Colbert.

The young boys sent on the road were sent to stay with the Capuchins in Con-stantinople, who exposed their young wards to a smattering of Latin, French, Italian, and Turkish. All of these languages, save Turkish, were of little use for commerce. Funding was irregular and problematic; the Capuchins complained of their paucity of means but always received negative answers to their requests. The boys arrived irregularly, and the dangers and the length of the journey was but one of the reasons. The Chamber of Commerce in Marseilles was not steady in its commitments, as the court had made the merchants totally responsible for the fi nancing of this royal insti-tution. The missionaries defeated the purposes of their Marseilles sponsors. Instead of training dragomans loyal to France, they turned the children toward ecclesiastic vocations instead, by valuing religion above commerce and worship above educa-tion. They reproduced the prejudices of France in a land that valued commerce and where the boys could have adapted to local customs.

The hurdles faced by the French ambassadors in Istanbul were certainly the reason for the inception of several such exchange programs. This was an impor-tant moment: the French commercial capitulations had been revoked, and they had to be renewed. The new French ambassador sent by Louis XIV, the Marquis de Noitlel, was responsible for the most important embassy since that of Gabriel


d’Aramon in 1547. In 1671 once again, France desperately wanted to prove loyalty and friendship.

Jean Chardin was en route to India via Persia in 1671 during this crisis and has left the best description of the diffi culties awaiting the new ambassador Noitel. Chardin had to pass himself off as an Englishman to cross the Ottoman border, as the French were now regarded as enemies and spies.116 Noitel was only received by the most important dragoman in the Levant, who barred him from an audience. Chardin calls him Panaioti, a Greek dragoman, who spoke many European languages; he was the dragoman appointed to the Ottoman court. Chardin remarked on the vast revenues of the dragoman, on the power he had to negotiate treaties, and on his absolute loy-alty to the Ottomans. He viewed this loyalty with some astonishment and chagrin. No doubt, the mediation of the Greek translator was felt bitterly by the French am-bassador, who viewed himself as superior, being an offi cial envoy of Louis XIV.117 Panaioti’s power was the inspiration for the training of translators for the French king. As relations became better it was thought useful to train Ottoman subjects in France to propagate the glory of France in the Levant.

Louis XIV created a school for these translators, Louis Legrand. Today the build-ing houses the most prestigious high school in Paris. He donated twelve royal fellow-ships for young boys to come from the Ottoman empire and study languages in Paris. These royal fellows were called les Arméniens du Roi, or the Armenians of the king, because French dragomans had generally been Armenians or Greeks—not because the boys were Armenian. Only four of the 392 boys trained in a period of a hundred years were Armenians.118

Court-Sponsored Orientalists and the Birth of Orientalist Literature

In addition to schools, there were other court-sponsored orientalists in the line of Postel. The most famous were Antoine Galland and the two Petis de la Croix, father and son, all three subsidized by the French king. Antoine Galland is the most famous of all French orientalists; he had various forms of sponsorship during his three trips to Constantinople in the suites of two different French ambassadors sent by Louis XIV. He was author of many works, but to his great disappointment he is remembered as the fi rst translator into a European language of the A Thousand and One Nights, translated from Arabic into French in 1704.119 Galland’s many unpublished manu-scripts were mined for the scientifi c information they contained by other travelers to the Levant. Pitton de Tournefort was among the many who lifted passages from Gal-land for his publication. This was a habit considered routine and inoffensive, but de-cried by Pierre Bayle, who cared about both authenticity and authorship, in order to establish the validity of observations made by travelers. Save for his tales, Galland’s many works remained unpublished and unrecognized in his lifetime.


At the age of seventeen Galland was sent on his fi rst mission to the Levant, according to Colbert “To acquire a perfect knowledge of the language, customs, his-tory, sciences and arts of the orientals.”120 He was given a special mission by the king, which was to record the customs of the Ottoman Christians, the Armenians, and especially the Greeks because of religious controversies within France. Just like the Huguenots, the Catholics were seeking an original Christianity to justify their own rites. The purpose of such a mission of observation was also to inform Louis in hopes of converting Ottoman Christians to Catholicism. Through the capitulations he con-sidered himself their rightful protector. Galland’s fi rst trip was in the wake of the diplomatic crisis of 1669, and as he was in contact with other travelers, he recom-mended Guillaume-Joseph Grelot to Jean Chardin as an illustrator for his travels in Persia, and he read Bernier and corresponded with him. Galland was responsible for collecting Colbert’s fi nest oriental manuscripts. This was in fact his main mission, and Colbert had asked him to “to ornament our France with the spoils of the Orient.”121

As early as 1667 Colbert, in the long tradition of Richelieu and Mazarin before him, gave an order to bring back “good ancient manuscripts in Greek, in Arabic, in Persian, and other oriental languages, except for Hebrew, because we have them here in large quantity.”122 There could be no surer sign that French Orientalism was break-ing away from biblical studies. Galland watched the 1670 crisis in Istanbul unfold further and witnessed Noitel’s disgrace in 1677. The crisis on the French side had been caused by the issue of the arrival of Süleyman Agha, the pseudo-ambassador, sponsored by the previous French ambassador to Istanbul, Monsieur de La Haye. The Chevalier Laurent d’Arvieux, who knew that Louis XIV had recalled de la Haye from Istanbul, witnessed the events in Istanbul and recounted the Sultan’s disdain for the French in its aftermath.123 D’Arvieux recorded that the idea to use the Ottoman ceremonial protocol used in Istanbul at Versailles to receive Süleyman Agha in 1669 was Monsieur de Lionne’s. When Louis realized that the reception was to receive a gardener, an impostor and a bostanci from the palace, he was furious. Louis decided in retaliation to send a nobody to Istanbul, just an agent. It was only after the mer-chants of Marseilles made a huge fuss that he dispatched the Marquis Charles de Noitel, with whom Galland was associated as a secretary.124

Noitel too would be humiliated and disgraced. He accepted to be received by the Ottomans on a lowly stool, not on the ceremonial sofa, which angered Louis XIV. The episode was nicknamed “l’affaire du sofa.” Noitel could not sustain the cost of his embassy and was poorly subsidized by the court. Many representing France had been left to defray their own costs. When he tried to get the French merchants to cover the cost of the embassy, Noitel made the same mistakes as André du Ryer before him and lost support. The merchants from Marseilles and their representa-tives Fabre and Roboli had the last say; he did not prevail in Istanbul. Unable to have the Sultan listen due to interference by Panaioti (Panaghiotis Nikoussios), he was recalled to France in great disgrace. France had two seasoned dragomans of its own in place in Istanbul, Fornetti and Fontaine. The former’s family was from Pera and


served the French since the sixteenth century. The French and those protected by the French, such as the Swiss clockmakers of Istanbul, were the largest group of Euro-peans in Istanbul.125 The hapless Noitel returned to France ruined and in debt.

Galland took three trips to Istanbul. Galland’s last trip in 1679–1688 was spon-sored by the Levant company and took a new ambassador, the Marquis de Guillear-gues, to the Sultan. The Levant company created by Colbert in 1670 collapsed and with it Galland’s funding. The ambassador found him useful despite the fact that he was not part of the embassy. This was to be France’s most successful embassy to Is-tanbul. On his return in 1688, Galland’s collecting mission for the king’s library was handed over to Paul Lucas (1664–1732); under the direction of the Abbé Bignon the library’s holdings went beyond acquisitions from the Levant and Persia, and book collecting became universal in its scope.

In his three trips Lucas had the exact missions given to Galland, collecting and observing the Christians under Ottoman and Persian rule.126 Paul Lucas has left a list of what he brought back for collections at court. The list at the end of his third voyage lists hundreds of Greek and Roman medals for the cabinet des medailles; this form of collection was dear to Louis XIV, and he had moved the cabinet to Ver-sailles, detaching it from the Academy of Sciences. Lucas bought only twenty-fi ve manuscripts, but specifi c ones—those missing from the king’s collections. There was also a pouch of seventy rare grains given to Monsieur Chirac, the king’s physi-cian, and a sapling or grain to grow the fi rst plane tree, the platane later so beloved in France, yet hitherto unknown according to Paul Lucas. The list of curiosities and singularities, as he calls them, was immense and contained engraved and semi-precious stones, mummies, sea shells, a giant’s tooth, sheep’s teeth made golden by grass, earthen jars, cardamom, and many other drugs and spices.127 Lucas was responsible for introducing the Syrian Hanna to Galland. The tales of Ali Baba and of Alladin have no written source, and their creation is attributed to oral transmis-sion by the “Syrian priest” Hanna. This crafting of oriental tales was not Galland’s ambition. In fact Galland wanted the chair occupied by Hanna, a nickname for Pierre Dippy, the French orientalist who held the chair in Arabic in the Collège du Roi.

There were now two chairs, as a second one was created by Louis XIV in 1671 for Petis de la Croix. In 1692 when Galland returned, it was Alexandre Louis Marie, Petis de la Croix, who succeeded his own father at the second Arabic chair of the Royal College; while held by Petis’s son, the second chair in Arabic became a chair of Arabic, Turkish, and Persian. Some changes were ordered by Louis XIV, who had also established a separate chair in Syriac. Louis XIV knew that his father Louis XIII had hoped to build the collège but had not gone beyond setting a fi rst stone. Louis XIV set out to build the royal college, but had no love lost for it as he resented its independent spirit, and despite starting the work, the building was abandoned. The buildings we know today as the Collège de France were built by Louis XVI between 1772 and 1778. The royal college and the scientifi c network around it was Galland’s world.


In 1701 Galland had been admitted into the Academy of Inscriptions and only in 1709 was he appointed to the chair of Arabic in the Collège du Roi. Pierre Dippy’s nephew aimed for his uncle’s chair, and there were three months of political wrangling before Galland was named. He occupied Postel’s old post until his death in 1715. At his death Galland, much like his colleagues, had never been paid the wages of his appointment as royal professor, nor the pension promised by the head of the royal library, the Abbé Bignon. From the cabinet des medailles in 1715 just be fore his died he received his pension for the year 1712. He was also part of the Academy of Sci-ences and did oriental translations for Melchisedec Thévenot, but there are no traces of any wages. Raymond Schwab has done a detective’s work to see where Galland was lodged, and how he was paid, and how and when he composed the Thousand and One Nights while he was a professor of Arabic. His journal said he was lodged “à l’université.” At the time this just meant in one of the three districts of Paris: Cité, Ville, and Université, the last being all of the left bank, once walled off to keep the rowdy students out of the rest of Paris. Schwab fi nds Galland lodged in an auberge, a modest boarding house, the Cerceau d’or, on top of the present rue des Carmes, across from the rue Laplace. Despite this poverty Galland had his connec-tions at court. Schwab has shown how ambassador De Guillargues’s daughter, whom he called la Marquise d’O and dedicated the Nights to, introduced Galland’s tales to the dauphine at Versailles. This made them an instant hit.

In one of the most interesting studies of how and when things were read, Schwab analyzes who Galland gave the tales to before they were published. The manuscripts traveled from hand to hand. Mostly intellectual friends like the Abbé Bignon, but many highly placed women also commented on the work. Schwab wrote that Ver-sailles was no bigger than a handkerchief and that people walked on each other’s heels and bumped into each other crossing doors, and that throwing the Nights into the group was like the Marquise d’O throwing a grain in a hen yard. Saint Simon commented that the Nights were all the rage because Versailles recognized itself in the oriental tales. Saint Simon’s comments, according to Schwab,

Shed instructive light on the milieu in which the French adventure of the these Arabic tales took place. In the forefront, without a doubt, was the charming and dangerous Mar-quise d’O, taking action, suited as she was through her own qualities and habits to un-derstand and make a success of these harem stories. Yet, beyond this turbulent basket of crabs, he [Saint Simon] suddenly explains that all of the court had to adopt and patronize a book, which excited its imagination as it recognized very familiar objects as if looking into a deforming mirror.128

Schwab judged the court and its extension to be no more than two-hundred tightly knit families; he also contends that the key reading public of the time in Paris was of about fi ve-hundred people.129 The names recorded in each tome of the Nights clearly mark the fi rst readers the books went to; seven of the volumes were written in Caen,


and the rest were written in Paris while Galland was a professor of Arabic. Galland’s own intellectual milieu was even smaller. He was part of the same network of trav-elers and orientalists described earlier, and they had the same political network of patrons as support. Despite the fact that Galland was named antiquaire du roi, his methods were not antiquarian. He adopted the observation methods of the modernes, and in the quarrels with the anciens, or antiquarians, there was no one as virulent as Galland. He was part of a network of erudites and curieux, and corresponded with many, such as the Lyon archaeologist and traveler Jacob Spon (1647–1685), a doctor educated in Montpellier, to whom he made his opinion against armchair travelers very clear. He viewed himself as a proponent of experimentation, and like François Bernier he followed the ideas of Gassendi, who advocated skepticism and observa-tion within the bounds of Christian faith. Rather than a spinner of orientalist tales, Galland should be regarded as part of the commercial and scientifi c network engaged in collecting and producing knowledge of the world beyond France.130

One of the great innovations of the time was archaeology, and it was Galland who gave his friend Jacob Spon the idea of digs in Greece. Schwab seemed entirely con-vinced that this idea was conveyed to Galland by a Janissary and in turn tied Spon’s fi rst archaeological expedition in Greece to Galland’s correspondence with him: “It was an original idea then to dig the earth for objects.” Noitel did a survey of Greek ruins with Galland in tow. Before his 1677 disgrace Noitel had the idea to employ painters who sent back to France paintings of the great tour he organized in Greece under the banner of France. His painter, Rombaud Fedhairbe, from the town of Ma-lines, also sent home pictures of the Ottoman court and its offi cials that were greatly appreciated at the time. This anticipates the books of drawings of Turkish costumes that Galland looked through when he was back in Paris, they were made under the new ambassador, the Marquis de Ferriol, who had arrived in Istanbul in 1699.131

French Orientalism had consisted of translations and compendiums, and no works in Arabic or oriental languages were ever printed in France. Savary de Brèves’s polyglot press planned under Louis XIII had never materialized, and similarly Barthélemy d’Herbelot de Molainville (1625–1695) had hope to print his famous Bibliothèque orientale in Arabic. It was only possible in translation and it occupied him until his death in 1697. D’Herbelot had occupied the chair of Syriac as a royal professor since 1692. At his colleague’s death Galland neglected his own work and fi nished D’Herbelot’s Bibliothèque orientale and published it for him. In 1715, Gal-land died of overwork, and his colleague at the royal college, Petis de la Croix (son), fi nished the tales of A Thousand and One Nights. This collaboration is a sure sign of a tight network engaged in the production of knowledge. It considered knowledge more important than personal glory or recompense. Petis de la Croix had great admi-ration for Galland, yet unlike him, he was not considered an erudite by a dragoman who, like his father, negotiated French diplomatic issues. As his father had done in Algiers in 1674, Petis also “translated” another work, A Thousand and One Days. Galland’s Nights and Petis’s Days have identical structures. In the nineteenth century


the Austrian orientalist Hammer searched for the original Persian manuscript, attrib-uted to a certain dervish Mokhles from Isfahan. He failed to fi nd it. A Thousand and One Days was not a Persian tale and was declared a fake. This was the precursor of a very long tradition of imitations and fakes in France. Of all the aspects of Oriental-ism, the literary aspects are the best studied.

What Saint Simon wrote about the Nights being a deformed mirror of Versailles is not remembered as a metaphor, but others have noticed the analogy between the court of Baghdad and Versailles. That analogy has been studied with some depth by modern scholarship. Numerous scholars after Edward Saïd: Ali Behdad, Mad-eleine Dobie, Alain Grosrichard, Reina Kabani, Reina Lewis, Michèle Longino, Billie Melman, and many others have studied French orientalist literature. These are works are well established in the pantheon of the growing fi eld of studies on Orientalist literature. The analogy made between the harem, the Sultan court, ori-ental despotism, luxury, gems and spices, carpets, and silk cushions was by all ac-counts, starting with Grosrichard’s work, seen as a construct to serve as an analogy to France’s own despotic monarchy. This literature is so vast that while it is the best studied aspect of Orientalism, the fetishized esthetics of the Orient in French litera-ture seemed to hold such fascination that there are still hundreds and hundreds of works to be studied, despite the many excellent theoretical works produced. There is little space here to continue elaborating on this fascinating literary aspect. The French literary production on the Orient is immense, and others are well engaged in doing such research. Michele Longino’s fascinating study of French theater is the only work to address the seventeenth century and the rise of merchants and the bourgeoisie in the Levant trade. Her work is solidly grounded in French com-mercial relations and social realities. One neglected aspect of Orientalist literature remains untouched: Orientalism had ties to economic writing. Together with the better known and explored discourse on despotism, this topic has been chosen to close this book in Chapter 10.

Was the Production of Knowledge about the World Used to Conquer the World?

French contacts with Asia in the seventeenth century, as demonstrated, were fail-ures. Their effects were mainly cultural changes within France. Their effect on the formation of institutions and on science in France is the one emphasized here. The best French efforts at transculturation, educating the French dragomans on foreign soil, failed. The enfants de langues were brain-washed by their missionary masters to think like Catholic Frenchmen and disdain the very purpose for which they were sponsored. These failures were not without enduring consequences. The creation of several institutions was signifi cant in forging French culture for centuries to come. Yet, as Antoine de Jussieu’s attitudes toward India’s botany proves, despite its util-


ity, much of what was gathered as information, be it scientifi c or commercial, was not utilized to conquer foreign markets. Antoine de Jussieu closed his mind to four-teen volumes of fl owers from India and concentrated on praising the lowly domestic violet because of his views that what was foreign had to be replaced by something domestic for France’s economic health.

The idea that foreign goods threatened France and its economy is the object of the last chapter of this book. Yet, there was a proclaimed desire for the exotic and a will to conquer markets in Asia. Exotic goods were much in demand and much con-sumed, as will be discussed, showing an ambiguity between discourse and reality. There are other equally visible and huge discrepancies between discourse and reality. It was not simply a matter of failure, despite a discourse of conquest present since Francis I. Paradoxically, all of the information gathered to familiarize the French with Asia was not used to conquer. The rest of the world was not as much a center of attention as France itself, as information about the world was not used for France. The best case in point is that Colbert himself, the energetic enabler of most imperial and commercial policies, did not listen to or read the accounts of his own envoy to India, and neither did his successors. The reports from India and Persia of the Abbé Bathélemy Carré (1640–1700), which were forgotten and as neglected as Nicolas l’Empereur’s prodigious botanical study, have just been saved from oblivion by Dirk Van der Cruysse.132

The tragedy of Carré’s life was not so much posthumous oblivion, but oblivion and neglect while he was at the service of the king. His reports were not read, and he faced an old age of disgrace and poverty, as did the ship surgeon l’Empereur, as did for that matter, French India’s hero Dupleix. Noitel and Galland had not fared much better earlier. Galland, a royal professor, could not obtain his salary; in 1714, nearly fi ve years into his chair of Arabic, he obtained only part of what he was due for 1713, 300 livres for six years.133 Even subsidized Orientalism was not subsidized. going to the Orient for the French, rather than the road to riches, more often than not meant ruin and an old age spent in poverty. Except for Tavernier and Chardin, few profi ted from their ventures. If knowledge of the Orient was important, it was so to a few hundred people in France who corresponded with each other. The impact was on science and culture within France.

The impact of this new knowledge of the world on the educated elite of France can be best assessed within France by looking at dictionaries, as Isabelle Turcan has just done,134 by analyzing the entries in the dictionaries of Furetière (1690), G. Ménage (1694), and Trévoux (1743–1752) during the ancien régime. Lexicogra-phy and the French language were infl uenced by travel, and she fi nds Tavernier to be the most cited of all travelers, with twenty-seven entries in Furetière (1690) and ninety-four in Trévoux. Shortly after him is Thévenot with twenty-three and forty-one respectively, then La Boullaye le Gouze with twenty-three and Chardin with sixteen, both only cited in the later dictionary of Trévoux. That the words caimacam and caravansarail became part of the French language and could be looked up is


perhaps one of the most interesting aspects of this production.135 There was a real transformation of the lexicon, of discursive modes and concepts that is traceable through the dictionaries.

None of the contacts between France and the Orient were direct. Most were indi-rect, negotiated by cosmopolitan intermediaries like the Armenians and the Greeks. Panaioti in Constantinople, Phaulkon in Siam, and Marcara in India are a few of the many local Christians that translated their culture to the visiting French. Of crucial importance to Louis XIV were the Christians of the Ottoman empire, whom Galland and Lucas were made to document as Tavernier had before them. Most of French presence in Asia was through its missionaries and the conversion of Eastern Chris-tians, Armenians, Coptes, Greeks, and Assyrians, a more realistic hope than convert-ing the king of Siam. Catholicism became an imperial tool both inside and outside of France. For Louis XIV, especially after 1685, being French meant being Catholic. The king turned a large part of his population into foreigners through religious per-secution and by making Catholicism a state religion. The doctors of Montpellier, often Protestants, were long called “medecins étrangers” by the Sorbonne. Once Catholicism became instituted as a state religion by the king, the Huguenots became the “other” on their own territory.

– 137 –

–5–

The Turks and the “Other” WithinThe Huguenots

The infl ux of Huguenots had a substantial effect on Dutch economic life … The Huguenot undoubtedly did much to strengthen the Dutch silk industry. They opened many fashion boutiques in Amsterdam, The Hague and elsewhere, and Huguenot dressmakers, hat makers, wigmakers, and watchmakers introduced new standards of elegance and taste. Nevertheless, there was a tendency at the time (especially in France) to exaggerate the Huguenot contribution. Beyond the silk industry, and the world of fashion, Huguenots in fact found relatively few openings for their capital and skills in the Republic.

Jonathan Israel (The Dutch Republic, 629).

The infl ux of Huguenots in England and the Dutch republic enriched Louis’s economic rival. Prior to their departure the Huguenots had played an outstanding role in France not only economically, but in French overseas trade and exploration. If their participation in orientalist study was disproportionately high, it was even more so in the Americas, particularly in settling the Antilles. They had more and more reason to leave France. The freedom of the religionnaires, as the king called the Huguenots, was taken away years before 1685, by the revocation of the Edicts of Nantes, an edict by which Henri IV had granted Calvinists in France the freedom of their cult in 1598.1 Indeed, since 1681 dragonnades, as the brutalities committed by the soldiers were called, were allowed by the king. France’s Protestants were sub-jected to all kinds of persecutions.2 All persons of the Religion Pretendue Reformée, or RPR as their enemies called them, were subjected to confi scations, torture, and even murder by soldiers who were in charge of converting them. The narrowing of their liberty of cult had a longer history.

Until 1661 Louis had good foreign relations with Protestant powers in Europe, and the French Huguenots were spared. Until then the policies of his father, Louis XIII, were followed: the application of the Edict of Nantes granted by Henri IV was con-tinued, but with narrower and narrower terms, reducing social privileges one by one. While until the 1650s there were about the same numbers of Calvinist temples as there were in 1589, after 1657 and even before the revocation in 1685, over half of the 587 temples were destroyed. Even before the revocation of the edict, leaving France was punishable by death for the religionnaires. In his clemency Louis XIV


changed the death sentence to life on the galleys on May 31, 1685, a few months be-fore he revoked all Protestant freedoms. Article IX permitted the confi scation of the goods and property of any person having left the borders of France. The economic consequences should not be underestimated, as a large proportion of Huguenot wealth changed hands in this period and this was a boon for Louis and the Catholic Church in France. The Protestant exodus out of France to the Dutch Republic was substantial; it has been estimated as low as 35,000 and as high as 50,000 heads of household. The Catholics rejoiced. Many celebrations took place in the wake of the edict of Fontainebleau, not only in Catholic churches, but in the homes of enthusias-tic supporters. Jacques Bénigne Bossuet saw in the king a new Constantine. Court-iers vied for the king’s attentions with their lists of new converts, and Madame de Sévigné wrote enthusiastically: “Never has a king done anything as memorable.”3

An element of foreign policy had played a role in the decision by Louis, le Roi trés Chrétien, to display unprecedented Catholic zeal. The high point of the fragile French Ottoman relations were before the siege of Vienna by the Turks in 1683. Protestants in Europe made a point of the fact that they had given fi nancial and technical help to the Turks. Not only did Louis not help the Polish king and his Catholic league in his victory in keeping the Turks out of Vienna, but he used the occasion, before and after the siege of Vienna, to annex territories to France such as Luxembourg, Alsace, and Lorraine. Headed by Jan III Sobiesky, the Catholic king of Poland, the league defending Vienna was blessed by Pope Innocent XI. The battle was also seen in Europe as the joining of Protestant and Turkish interests on the other side, as the leader of the Hungarian Cal-vinists, Imre Thököly, had appealed to the Turkish grand vizier, Kara Mustafa (1634–1683), to attack Vienna. After the siege of Vienna in 1683, Louis could no longer pose as the universal protector of all Catholics in the world, a role he cherished.

A pamphlet published in London, The Most Christian Turk, or View of the Life and Bloody Reign of Lewis XIV Present king of France containing an account of his Monstrous Birth, describes Louis’s sharp teeth at birth as a sign of his greed as they made milk fl ow with blood as he nursed. The siege of Vienna in September 1683 is a central part of this Protestant account of his reign.4 It is clear in the pamphlet that for Protestants the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685 was related to Louis’s shameless politics over Vienna; it was seen as a consequence of it. The title of Grand Turc became common in Huguenot pamphlets after 1683, as was the discourse that the Turks and the French had combined to share the empire between them. To be called the grand Turk may have been new to Louis, as it was a nickname used for the fi rst time for a man against whom enemies during the Fronde had written many pamphlets stressing his foreign origins. Louis had used the insult against Mazarin when he was a young child. “I was six year old in 1645, the cardinal was passing majestically in front of the Chateau de Compiègne, escorted by a brilliant following. I could not help but cry out ‘Voilà le grand Turc!’ After which I had to confront the Queen our mother.”5 The nickname pointed to political treachery and was used for Mazarin during the civil war by the faction fi ghting against him.

The Turks and the “Other” Within • 139

Ironically, just as he was being called a Turk in Europe, Louis was offered plans for grabbing the throne of Constantinople. If Bossuet had called Louis XIV a Con-stantine, there was a precedent in French discourse. French imperial discourse saw Louis not only as the restorer of the Roman empire in Europe, but as the legitimate heir to the throne of the last Byzantine emperor. The discourse so dear to Francis I had not died down after him. Imperial discourse incorporated the French role during the Crusades and took a new force under the pen of several French historians of the seventeenth century; most works included the idea of a European league against the Turks. The league was much like the league formed to defend Vienna in 1683, in which Louis had defi nitely not participated. In 1674 Leibniz’s proposition to Louis XIV for the invasion Egypt was to be a pan-European project headed by France. Leibniz called Egypt the Holland of the East to provoke the king of France, and he had hoped to prevent Louis from conquering German lands. The double discourse about the Ottomans would have been complete if Louis himself had planned a crusade to conquer Istanbul, but there is no trace of what he thought of the crusading plans pre-sented to him.6 Ironically, this was at a moment when Ottoman and French relations were much better. France had a series of ambassadors that were not received, yet France was given a new consulate in Salonica, and its trade in Egypt had its taxation reduced to three percent.

The project of conquering Istanbul was part of a centuries-old imperial discourse. Essentially, within Europe the rivalry was with the Hapsburgs for the title of Holy Roman Emperor, as it was under Francis I. Early in the seventeenth century the his-torian Antoine Aubéry (1616–1695) wrote De la preeminence de nos roys, et de leur preseance sur l’empereur et le roy d’Espagne (On the Preeminence of our Kings and on their preseance over the Emperor and king of Spain), it had several editions during the reigns of Louis XIII and XIV.7 Interest in the history of the Crusades of Byzantium added to the discourse about the preeminence of the French empire in the Orient. This discourse was built up by historians who argued that the French king was the rightful successor of the Byzantine emperor. Faruk Bilici has studied this episode under the sub-title “la couronne de Constantinople lot de consolation,” pointing to the fact that if the French king could not be the emperor of Europe, Byzantium might be a consolation.

Alexandre Haran has unearthed the documents justifying the messianic imperial hopes of the French kings.8 There was a major effort to juristically demonstrate the imperial rights of the crown of France. Jacques de Cassan, a jurist, was commissioned by Louis XIII to write a legal and historical treatise to justify French rule over several territories, some of which Louis XIV would conquer from the Hapsburgs while they were busy defending Vienna. Cassan’s work, La recherche des droicts du roy, & de la couronne de France, svr les royavmes, dvchez, comtez, villes & païs occupez par les princes estrangers, had several editions under Louis XIII and Louis XIV.9 It demanded restitution of any territory that ever had fallen under French rule. With the affi rmation that Charlemagne was French, this included many of the German territo-ries, hence Leibniz’s crusade to save them from Louis. Yet, Charlemagne’s empire,


included what the French called Gallia Orientalis, or l’Empire d’Orient, therefore Byzantium, was also part of French imperial discourse under Louis XIV.10

In France Byzantine studies had their inception shortly after the fall of Constan-tinople. The French king, Charles VIII (r. 1483–1498) had verbally obtained from the last emperor’s nephew, Andreas Paleologus (1453–1503), the rights to the title of Emperor of Byzantium.11 In the seventeenth century the idea of a crusade was revived by Mazarin and Louis XIII and their entourage of dévots. Byzantine studies acceler-ated in France and justifi ed France’s interest in restoring the Greek empire by ruling it. Because of these favorable political circumstances a historical school of Byzantine studies was formed in Paris in 1645, la “Byzantine du Louvre,” as the school was called, formally the Corpus Byzantinae historiae, which produced thirty-four works of original Byzantine texts and their translations into Latin between 1645–1702. The most important representative of that school, according to Jean Michel Spieser, was Charles du Fresnes du Cange (1610–1688), who started his career by editing the work of the crusader chronicle of Villehardouin, which came out in 1657 as one of the volumes pub-lished by the Byzantine du Louvre.12 Geofroy de Villehardouin’s work on the Crusades had the conquest of Constantinople as a central theme, making the entry of the French into the city during the Crusades fall under the legitimate limits of the French empire.

There were some other pretenders to the throne of Byzantium besides the French king. The Duke of Nevers was considered the last of the Paleologues, as he de-scended from the Byzantine emperors. The Greeks appealed to him for a crusade against the Turks in 1609.13 The dévots were the chief supporters of France in pro-posing this crusade and advocated creating ties with Persia against the Ottomans; one of their heroes was the Capuchin Père Joseph (1577–1683), who was in close contact with the Duke of Nevers, and was the man who sent the Huguenot Jean-Baptiste Tavernier to observe the Greeks and Armenians in Persia and the Ottoman empire and report to the king. Père Joseph was also the instigator of the fi rst ambassador to Persia, Père Pacifi que de Provins, and later Tavernier would take another Capuchin to Persia, Raphaël du Mans, who gained access to the Persian court.14 Through the capitulations Louis saw himself as the protector of all the Christians in the Ottoman empire and beyond. The conversion of the Greeks, Armenians, and Assyrians of the Ottoman empire to Catholicism thus fell within Louis’s imperial project and satisfi ed the crusading discourse of the Capuchins.

Père Joseph remained true to the medieval ideas of crusade and the French con-quest of the holy land through a European league. The Capuchin father even visited Rome in 1616 to present the imperial credentials of the Duke of Nevers to Pope Paul V. The duke wanted the throne and to obtain it was planning to unite against the Turks most of the Slav populations of the Balkans in a Catholic league. The Order of the Christian Militia was created in 1617 to unite Europe. Père Joseph wrote La Tur-ciade, a poem in honor of this crusade that was never to be; yet, appreciated for his political ideas, Père Joseph became Richelieu’s closest political counselor about the Ottomans. His views were that Catholicism as proselytized by the Capuchin missions


abroad was a royal religion, that accepting Catholicism brought with it the rule of the king of France. The Capuchins were royal missionaries as early as the reign of Louis XIII. The view that Catholicism was a royal religion was also the basis of the progressive narrowing of Protestant rights within France, as it was seen as a sign of lack of loyalty to the monarchy. Abroad, the missions played a major political role in trying to convert the Christians of the Ottoman empire and Persia.

With the foundations of two missions in Isfahan, thanks to the generosity of Shah Abbas (1587–1629), by Pacifi que de Provins and the installation of the Capuchin mission in the French embassy in Istanbul in 1624, Père Joseph obtained some suc-cess. In 1626 missions were also settled in Syria and in Beirut. Religion was the best tool of France’s hopes for empire.15 Shah Abbas was well aware of this and never let the Capuchins settle near the Armenians, “les Chrétiens d’Orient,” as they were called, were the prime targets of this French imperial policy. The Capuchins were far more engaged in advancing the king’s cause beyond the borders of France than were the French consuls in the Levant, as their real center of support was Marseilles. Much of their success depended on their relationship with the merchants of Mar-seilles, not the king or the court.

Some consuls went beyond the call of duty, which was usually a commercial one. A previous French consul from Damiette in Egypt, Jean Coppin, on his return to France wrote a concrete program of invasion of the Ottoman empire for Louis; it was to happen via Egypt at the head of a European league. In his Bouclier de l’ Eu-rope ou la guerre Sainte, published in 1686, he advocated a new crusade in the wake of Vienna, where the Ottomans had shown their weakness. He did not have kind words for the Christian Ottomans, Armenians, and Greeks, but he did see them as potential allies once Europe was established on the terrain. His text was not the only one in this vein; Bilici has studied a number of these texts. On his fourth trip to Is-tanbul the orientalist Petis de La Croix wrote something along the same lines, where he proposed nothing less than the burning of Istanbul. He was in the city to help the widow of the ambassador, Madame Anne Marie Pontac de Guilleragues, after the death of the French ambassador in 1685. Published in 1686, Petis de La Croix’s the-sis analyzed the current situation of Istanbul in his “Etat present au just de l’Empire Othoman,” based on a text by Hezarfen Huseiyn Efendi, and argued for the weak-ness of the Ottomans after Vienna. He gave a strategy of bombarding Istanbul from the sea so that its wooden houses would catch fi re. Much of this can be found in an introduction that Bilici has written to a plan for the invasion of Istanbul by an engi-neer called Gravier d’Ortière, written for Louis XIV, which Bilici published for the fi rst time. Bilici concedes that it is in fact unclear what fate would have been reserved to the text by Louis XIV.16 D’Ortière studied the plan of the city mathematically and demonstrated with clear graphics how to bombard Istanbul.17

Louis’s grandest fantasy, his rights to the Byzantine throne, as argued by French historians and jurists to legitimize the invasion of Istanbul, never took place. The only real French interference was the manipulation of the Ottoman Christians in


Istanbul by the French embassy. The patriarch of the Armenians in Constantinople, Avetik, was kidnapped by the French in Istanbul and sent as a prisoner to France and incarcerated in the Bastille in Paris, in the hope of replacing him with a Catholic patriarch.18 Nothing else had any reality, but Bilici shows that the Gravier D’Ortière text advocated dividing the Ottoman empire among a European league after Istan-bul was conquered. Venice would get Slovania, Croatia, Bosnia, and Dalmatia. The Polish king would get Moldavia and Valachia. Count Imre Thököli would get the principality of Temesvar to help him get the Hungarians to revolt against the Haps-burgs. France would get Morea, Thessaly, Macedonia, Serbia, Bulgaria, Romania, and the islands of the Archipelago. The French king would rule from the capital, which would be Istanbul.

D’Ortières believed that in the aftermath of Vienna, since the Ottomans were weak, if an important navy appeared in the Dardanelles, the capital city would be immediately abandoned by the Turks. He believed the Christian populations, the “Chrétiens d’Orient,” would help France to “tailler tous les Turcs en pièce” (cut the Turks to pieces). This was wishful thinking; in fact both the Armenians and the Greeks resisted the French missionaries and Avetik’s kidnapping was in order to destroy local Armenian resistance to the Catholicizing of local Christians by the Capuchins and Jesuits. Gravier d’Ortière’s plan spared the women and children but advocated that because the army would be dismantled, another unfounded hope, all survivors should be sent to serve the chiourme (rowers) on the French king’s gal-leys. Louis XIV remained an ally and never fought the Turks despite all this rheto-ric. The French ambassador struggled in Istanbul for precedence and audience, and French power nowhere matched this pompous discourse of conquest, which seemed to compensate for the many humiliations French envoys had been subjected to by the Ottomans. The contrast between discourse and reality was immense. The few Frenchmen in Istanbul were not seen as powerful, and they were often not well re-ceived and were disdained. Yet, on the domestic front French power over the Turks was expressed by the institution of slavery. In the royal galleys slavery was a reality for many Turks and became one for Protestants. Slavery by the corsairs at the service of the Ottomans remained a constant danger. Galland’s tale of the captivity of a mer-chant from Cassis is unique, as it tells of a French man as a Barbary slave and allows a glimpse of slavery on French soil.

Galland’s Histoire de l’esclavage d’un marchand de Cassis tells the story of Jean Bonnet, slave to a very well-known character by the name of Dom Philippe, a con-vert to Christianity. Well known to the French, he was mentioned in the Mémoires of the Chevalier d’Arvieux and in the travels of Jean Thévenot. Born to a Dey in Tunis on the Barbary coast, Dom Philippe converted to Christianity in Palermo and lived in Sicily and Spain for nearly fi ve years, where he became rich as a merchant. He lost his fortune and returned to his hometown of Tunis bankrupt. He escaped the death sentence reserved to those who had abandoned the Muslim faith because of his mother’s intervention. Dom Philippe was given the punishment of walking the


streets of the town of Tunis very slowly, dressed in the garb of the identity he had chosen, as a Spaniard. The Spanish were reviled. Should he survive, his life was his own. He did. Dom Philippe, the French believed, was still a Christian after his return to Tunis; as a secret agent he proposed to the king of France that Tunis be his protectorate, but meanwhile he was cultivating his ties with the Ottomans. He continued his ties to Europe and staged all kinds of plots to make Tunis fall under the French. The Sultan named him pasha of Algiers. Soon after he took the post Dom Philippe succumbed to the plague and died in 1686. Antoine Galland had met Dom Philippe’s former slave, Jean Bonnet.

Jean Bonnet, a relative of a man of the same name who was destined to be the French consul at Salonica and a friend of Galland’s, told him about his own captivity as a slave of the famous Dom Philippe.19 Since Galland himself had escaped capture by corsairs in 1679, he was very interested. Galland swears to the authenticity of this tale. Jean Bonnet was from Cassis, a town next to Marseilles, a town Galland quali-fi es as a village that the Levant trade had built into a city full of beautiful merchant houses.20 His captivity as a slave of Dom Philipe took place between 1669 and 1672. Bonnet took part in the war over Crete in 1669 and the siege of Candie, and was cap-tured as a prisoner of war. He was liberated by the edict passed by Louis XIV with the Ottomans in 1672, which liberated hundreds of French captives. The fi rst pub-lished edition of Bonnet’s tale as told by Galland was very late, prepared by Louis Langlés, it only appeared in 1809. It was missing the last pages of the story. The last pages told of Bonnet’s life as a successful Muslim corsair and slave owner, and of his very short return to Cassis before he took off to trade again in the Mediterranean. While in Cassis he learned the following:

After the fi rst compliments I learned that my parents had with great diffi culty bought a slave to exchange against me, as he was the chaise21 carrier for Madame Arnoul, wife to Monsieur Arnoul, superintendent to the galleys. Thinking his freedom was thrown off by my return the slave started crying when he learned the news of my arrival. But he was consoled when told that he would be exchanged against a relative that I had written about to the Captain of La Ciouta.22

This passage and many other pages are missing in the 1809 edition. Both Jean Bon-net and his parents were French slave owners, which was unpalatable to Langlés. The new editors of the text argue that there was reluctance to remember the issue of slavery within France, that this was a moral and ideological censorship exercised by Langlés in the wake of the French revolution and its, albeit very temporary, abolition of slavery.23 Nevertheless, slavery was a part of French life in the seventeenth cen-tury, especially in the south of France, where many wealthy Frenchmen were slave owners. As will become clear later, not only was it fashionable to have your chaise carried by slaves, but it was all the rage to have a Turkish galérien serve your guests at dinner parties. Perhaps, as the discussion below will make clear, the silence about slavery on French soil had much deeper roots and was systematic.


Building the Navy: Turkish Captives and Protestant Galley Slaves in France

Under the reign of Louis XIII the court did not think of freeing French captives on the Barbary coast, but this attitude changed under Louis XIV when a series of wars marked a new policy in the Mediterranean. The 1672 treaty liberating Jean Bonnet is a case in point. On top of several wars, a successful negotiation was held by the court specifi cally to free captives. Colbert decided that too many ships owned by Marseilles merchants had been lost to the corsairs and decided to build up the number of galleys to serve as an escort to the Marseilles’s merchant fl eet. The situ-ation changed after the fi rst French attack of the Barbary coast in 1664. After 1665, because of French presence in the Mediterranean, the number of ships captured was smaller. In more than one way the French considered the captives as belonging to the Ottomans. When Louis negotiated for their freedom in 1672 and 1674 it was part of general negotiations; through their wars the French wanted a foothold on the Barbary coast, and the rest was tangential. In France slavery was defi ned as Otto-man, not French.

French dictionaries since 1606 and as late as 1694 defi ne a slave in the follow-ing way: ESCLAVE Qui est en servitude & dans l’entiere disposition d’un maistre.Un jeune, une jeune esclave. esclave More. esclave Turc. esclave Chrestien. vendre, acheter, delivrer, racheter des esclaves. dés qu’un esclave touche la terre de France, il est libre. affranchir un esclave, le mettre en liberté. le maistre a droit, a puissance de vie & de mort sur ses esclaves.24 [SLAVE: Who is in servitude and at the disposi-tion of a master. A young slave, Moorish slave, Turkish slave, Christian slave, buying and selling, delivering of, buying back of slaves, as soon as a slave touches French soil, he is free. To manumit a slave, to free a slave, the master has rights and the right of life and death over his slaves.] The belief expressed in the 1694 dictionary that the minute one set on French soil one had one’s freedom is a strong denial of the institu-tion of slavery in France. Under esclavage the only example given is “he was a slave in Turkey who preferred death to his slavery.”25 Slavery was entirely associated with the Ottomans and the Turks and despite the publication of the Code noir under Louis XIV in 1685, not a word about African slavery was included in the dictionaries in 1694. The French were the third most important European slave traders in the Atlan-tic slave trade and already had their production of sugar cane and cacao produced by plantation slavery in the French Antilles. According to Lucette Valensi and Simone Delesalle, the fi rst information published anywhere on African slaves appeared in 1675, in Jacques Savary de Brûlons’s Le Parfait Négociant.26 Although under the word slave one fi nds the terms “Moorish slave” and “Turkish slave,” slavery was considered to be an Ottoman phenomenon.27 Another important element to note in the 1694 dictionary’s defi nition was the long-held pretense that being on French soil meant automatically being free. Louis XIII’s galleys, and Louis XIV’s even more so, were full of slaves that lived for a part of the year on French soil. Eluding the reality


of slavery on French soil was not a matter of nineteenth-century censorship; it had a long tradition.

The notions of slavery and Orientalism are closely intertwined in French views on slavery, as was clear from the discussion of Bodin’s theory of oriental despotism; Bodin asserted that the peoples of the Orient were happy to be slaves, and ready to accept the rule of despots. Elsewhere is where slavery existed, not Europe. Bodin argued that Islam was the traditional instrument for freeing slaves in a land where populations were systematically enslaved by monarchs and that Islam grew as a con-sequence through liberating them. In Bodin’s views, “In fact the power of the Arabs was acquired only by this means, once Homar a lieutenant of Mehmet promised liberty to the slaves who would follow him, he attracted such a great number that in a very few years they were Lords of all of the Orient.”28 Bodin’s view that slavery was oriental and was elsewhere prevailed in France. There were slaves on French soil but this reality was denied. Religious conversion to Catholicism was the card to manumission in France, and not being on French soil as the dictionary asserts, just as conversion to Islam was on the Barbary coast. Turks and Protestants could be manu-mitted if they accepted Catholicism on the galleys. Captivity had a religious aspect across the Mediterranean both in Marseilles and Toulon, as well as on the Barbary coast. While there were European captives on the Barbary shore there were Muslim captives on Europe’s galleys.

The impact of the presence of these Turkish captives on France and French views cannot be overlooked; the port towns of Toulon and Marseilles had an important Turkish population during the off-season when the galleys were stationed in the port. Many of the galley rowers had occupations in town to make some extra pay. Ottoman captives formed an important part of the seasonal labor force of Toulon and Mar-seilles.

The captives in France were a labor force. Condemnation to slavery had a re-ligious aspect, but slave capture and sale was commercial. The captures made in the Mediterranean by Barbary corsairs were more about trade than religion, as Alain Blondy has clearly argued.29 Much of what was captured from commercial ships ended up on markets in Italy or in France. Livorno was a free port and Mar-seilles became one after 1669, and they were both favorite destinations for corsair booty. Blondy quotes an Italian historian, “il dispaccio delle prede è il vero formite del corso,” and dispatching of the booty through sale was the reason for what the French called “la course.”30 Booty was the real reason behind Barbary piracy, and the enslavement of Europeans was part of the booty. The issue of slavery on Louis’s galleys was different. In France, building up the French navy and compet-ing in international commerce were the main goals. The previously dilapidated French navy was intended to defend ports like Toulon and Marseilles. French gal-leys were manned by Turkish and Protestant slaves, and the court served the needs of the navy with political prisoners. Building up the French navy through ships had been a major agenda since Richelieu in 1626, and galley slavery and slave labor in


shipyards was part of the process. To make sure the French navy would never lack men, French sailors were tied to the navy by servage. In 1672 Colbert instituted servage for all sailors, and this law of life-long indentured servitude held for all French sailors, although not their offi cers.

The galleys were a priority for war and commerce in the Mediterranean. To man the French galleys, Turkish prisoners of war were chained together with French convicts, and later with French Huguenots. From the end of the sixteenth century some criminals were sent to the galleys, and by the middle of the seventeenth cen-tury, as the navy grew, this became routine for all criminals. When illness compelled galley oarsmen to disembark on French soil, the condemned convicts were crowded and chained in damp dungeons, fed old black bread and water. They often died cov-ered with vermin and wounds. It was in these conditions that Vincent de Paul cared for the galley convicts of Paris and won their hearts, and while tending to their dis-eases and wounds he even converted many of them.31 A house was purchased in the capital where Vincent established the fi rst hospital for convicts and galley slaves. Because of his success with them he was offi cially appointed by Louis XIII to the royal almoner of the galleys. This sent de Paul to Marseilles, the center of galley slavery. The Lazarists, the order he created in 1635, became the royal almoners of the galleys under the reign of Louis XIV.32

When the French read captivity accounts of the European captives held on the Barbary, this form of suffering was not an exotic tale to them. Many were familiar with the chained convoys of French galley slaves. Convoys of prisoners walked from Paris to Marseilles through many towns before being chained to the oars of royal galleys at the port. Under Louis XIV galley slavery grew to unprecedented propor-tions in France when the Protestants joined the convicts and the Turkish captives as galériens du roi. In this period the most abundant tales of captivity were not those written by Barbary captives, Catholics oppressed by Islam, but by French Protestants oppressed by Catholicism at home and sent to the galleys by le Roi trés Catholique. Many of these stories are triumphant tales of Protestant resistance to Catholicism in the face of martyrdom. Although some Huguenots were sent south to Marseilles and Toulon or to Bordeaux and Dunkirk before 1685, it was the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685 that marked the real turning point. Should they be caught escaping France, the galleys was their fate.

The Protestants were described as different from the other men on the galleys. These well-connected and literate galley slaves were often members of the bourgeoi-sie, and at times of the aristocracy. Unfortunately for them, the congregation once founded by St. Vincent de Paul was in charge of converting them, at times with ter-rible brutality.33 These new galériens du roi could be viewed as prisoners of state and political dissidents. Dissidence was punishable by death. They suffered the same fate as the Turks and convicts, only worse; they were subjected to more religious pressure and torture. Protestant galley slaves developed a very strong bond with their Turkish companions, who because of Ottoman power had more privileges.34


The Turks were numerous on galleys in Toulon and Marseilles, and by all accounts they were given the toughest tasks. The current expression “fort comme un Turc” (strong as a Turk) originated on the French galleys, whose oarsmen were led by a Turk on the fi rst bench. Most of the diffi cult spots on the oars were occupied by Turks, allegedly because of their strength and skill. There were usually fi fty-two oars, 13 meters long. The front and the rear of the galley, important for setting the speed and any change of direction, were reserved for Turks. They controlled the movement of the galley, and their place in the hierarchy of the galleys was quite high. The French missionaries and the French court had to exercise unusual caution with their Turkish captives due to the existence of the many hostages held by the Barbary corsairs. Any unusual mistreatment would have political repercussions that would hurt the European captives.35

While the Barbary tales of Europeans converted to Islam familiarized the French with Islam, albeit in a specifi c way, the Turkish war captives brought the French face to face with Ottomans inside French territory. The Turkish oarsmen often acted as teachers and trainers, and their collaboration was important for the French navy. Training was necessary because being an oarsman rowing in galleys was dangerous and synchronization was key. If the oars were not synchronized, the men in the bench in front of the oar would break their skulls on it as it descended.36 There were also young children of about ten sent on the galleys by the court. Their formation as fu-ture French naval offi cers on galleys was also often the responsibility of Turkish gal-ley slaves. Irked by this Turkish hegemony over the youth, despite their own lack of skills, missionaries took over this task, but unfortunately they only taught catechism and none of the skills necessary. The pedagogical positions held by the Turks is yet another example of the deference given to them for fear of reprisal against French captives. Beyond that, it was a recognition that the Ottomans still had the best gal-leys and oarsmen. Such considerations were not extended to their companions the Protestants, who had a far worse fate, unless they could pay for some relief.37 No letters or money were allowed to reach them, except if ways were found to break surveillance.

At fi rst the Huguenots and Turks were closely associated together in French views, because of their collaboration on the Mediterranean as corsairs capturing Catholic ships. In the late seventeenth century a new factor tied the two groups to-gether, and an element of active collaboration emerges from the archives. As Louis started treating French Calvinists as criminals, a serious network was organized to help the French Huguenots survive the galleys to which they were condemned. The Huguenots had an extremely organized network to look after their congregation as the king’s political prisoners, and in 1699 it even had its regulations published: Les réglements faits sur les galères de France par les confesseurs qui souffrent pour la vérité de l’Evangile. These were the statutes of a secret organization aboard the gal-leys. The success of this secret network within the galleys depended entirely on the Turks and their participation in it.38


The Huguenots were not allowed any communication, because the court was well aware that a vast network of Swiss bankers and other merchants was sending the Huguenot prisoners money through letters of exchange. This money was key to im-proving their lot, and a better placing at the oars or more food was key to surviving. Barbary captives were allowed to write, so correspondence from the Barbary coast reached France, but this was not case of the Huguenots on Louis XIV’s galleys. A regular postal service was instituted by the Lazarists with the Barbary coast.39 Mail from the French held in North Africa was regularly disinfected with vinegar, which gives one an idea of how the region was conceived, as ridden with plague and dis-ease.40 No such thing was allowed to the French on the king’s galleys. The court was afraid that Huguenots were spies for their Protestant enemies and had banned any contacts between Protestants and the outside world. The corruption of the lower of-fi cers running the galleys was common knowledge, so money earned or received was the ticket to survival on a galley, and the Turks were the only ones that the Protestants could depend on to obtain outside funds. Most of what was sent to them through the secret Protestant network came from abroad and went through the Turks who were a “boîte au lettres” (mailbox) for their Protestant shipmates. This was a dangerous role that could have cost them their lives.41

Money was required on the galleys to avoid death through mistreatment and star-vation, as in many prison environments. All the oarsmen worked on the off-season in Marseilles or Toulon to earn money, save those not allowed to leave the ships, but few earned enough. The tavern was an important institution, ubiquitous on French galleys, and it took most of what anybody earned or owned away from them, includ-ing the yearly clothing allocations sent by the king of France on the fi rst of every January. Rations of food and wine were subject to the corruption of the lower guards on board. Placement on a bench was the job of a committee, higher offi cers than the guards but still corruptible, simply more expensive. Everything had its price. If you had money you could buy yourself the best spot on the bench, or best of all if you could pay enough, never leave the town of Marseilles. In 1703 it was estimated that about one-third of the galley slaves did not leave the port because they bribed the offi cers. The solidarity between these two groups became stronger as the harassment of the Protestants took a terrible turn.42

The famous “affaire du bonnet,” classifi ed as a high priority as an “affaire d’Etat” in 1700, was just one of many episodes of brutality against Protestants in the galleys committed by the order founded by Vincent de Paul and the Carmelites, royal almo-ners on galleys. The red bonnets of the galley oarsmen, issued every January fi rst by the king with their shorts, shirt, and hooded cloak, was an essential part of their costume. When mass was said by the missionaries they insisted that the chained gang remove their bonnets, save for the Turks. The refusal of several Protestants to take their bonnets off to honor the king’s orders resulted in brutality and whippings that left several men dead. Europe grew indignant at the brutality of the Catholic brothers, and after this episode all of the galériens, both Turks and convicts, sided with their


companions of the reformed religion. Louis XIV issued orders in 1701 reining in the brutalities, as they were harming what he considered his capital; the king owned the men that the priests were killing. In contrast to the Protestants, the Turks were never harassed during mass.

This is clear in the account of a royal almoner, Jean Bion (1668–1735), who was so horrifi ed by the violence against Protestants on the royal galley La Superbe that he fl ed to Geneva and converted to Calvinism. In 1708, shortly after his fl ight to Geneva, the newly converted Jean François Bion wrote Relations des tourments qu’on fait souffrir aux Protestants sur les galéres de France (Relation of the Tor-ments That Protestants Are Made to Suffer on the Galleys). It remains the best source for the situation of the Turks and the collaboration of the Turks and Protestants. The Catholic attitude was very different toward the Muslim Turks, who were, according to Bion, never bothered during mass: “on ne les violente en aucune manière pour leur religion, car lorseque l’on dit la messe, ils sortent et vont dans la caïque òu ils fument et se divertissent.”43 [There is no violence against them in any way because of their religion, as when mass is said, they leave on small boats and smoke and amuse themselves.] The Turks had privileges few experienced on the galleys. The constant diplomatic exchanges between the French and the Barbary corsairs explains the great precautions taken with the Muslims on the French galleys, because the lot of the Christians on Muslim galleys was tied to the lot of the Turks on French galleys. Diplomatic correspondence confi rms this. In 1707 the Turkish galériens complained that some Turkish tombs in the compound reserved to galley slaves had been soiled by dirty straw that had been thrown into them. The court immediately ordered a full inquiry because “si on a parle au Dey d’Alger, on puisse faire entendre qu’on ya remédié.”44 [If one speaks to the Dey of Algiers, one can convey that we have rem-edied the situation.] Fear of reprisal from the dey of Algiers on European captives gave the Turks minor advantages over their companions; nevertheless, tolerance did not extend to letting them follow their own religion openly. They were not allowed to pray fi ve times a day or have a space for their cult.

During the winter season Marseilles was partially a Turkish town, and its inhabit-ants were familiar with the galley slaves as they sought work in the shops. When the galleys were at their apogee around 2,000 slaves came into town to work. By law, two men had to be chained together at all times in order to leave, and after an order in 1675 it was required that each man leaving for town be chained to a Turk. These rules were not always implemented. Conspicuous for their shaved heads and their galley costumes, the chains made them even harder to miss. In 1702, more than seventy-seven master craftsmen and merchants representing the entire body of corporations in Marseilles used the galériens for labor.45 The labor of both Turkish and Huguenot slaves was also crucial to the building of ships in the shipyards of Toulon. The wages of a worker who was part of a corporation was about twenty sols per day, while the galley oarsmen asked for fi ve or six. There was no discrimination against Turks, and in some cases they were in even higher demand. Some private homes also employed


them. Marc Vigié writes: “il était du dernier chic pour les Marseillais un peu snob de convier à des repas servis par des Turcs.”46 [In Marseilles’ households it was considered chic for the snobbish to invite guests to a meal served by Turks.] If it was the trend for fancy meals to be served by Turkish captives in wealthy households, one wonders if the laws on chaining a criminal to a Turk were implemented. Few bourgeois would have welcomed a French convict in their household. Many eyewit-nesses attest to some galériens roaming around the city without wearing any chains at all. This lack of precaution against fl ight was because the law made employers responsible for using the king’s private property. They paid several times the market price of a slave should any of their employees escape, a sure source of revenue for many corrupt offi cials.47

Many royal edicts made slave employers pay huge fi nes, such as 1,000 livres if the galériens escaped or were maimed and could not serve on the royal galleys. It was a steep fi ne as it could buy two top quality slaves on most slave markets of the day. Despite the risk of escape, the offi cers on the galleys wanted the oarsmen to work in town. They had their cut, and they later collected all of the money earned as bribes for better food or placing. The rest went to the tavern for drink. A percent-age of the money earned went in advance directly from the potential employer to the guards and to the offi cers of the galley, who therefore doubly encouraged this commerce. Only dangerous men or criminals and Protestants in times of war were confi ned to the galley during the off-season, and they also needed wages to survive. For these men, the main off-season work in confi nement was knitting. Some oars-men were entrepreneurs and had enough capital to buy silk and cotton thread to make other men knit socks that were sold in town. Another occupation was the construc-tion and operation of small shops in barracks at the port, where galériens worked for themselves as artisans producing objects for sale. This cheap labor created fric-tion with French established artisans and workers trained within the corporations. In 1702 rules were negotiated by the guilds and corporations with the offi cers of the galleys to regulate the hire, salary, and rights of this captive slave labor during the off-season. There were several ports in France where Muslim Turks were common as day laborers among the population in the winter. The labor laws applied to the Turks and the Frenchman alike.

Abraham Duquesne, French Corsairs, and Colbert’s Eurasian Trade

While most Protestants suffered torture and imprisonment, one was raised as a marquis as late as 1681, when the dragonnades were tearing French cities apart. Abraham Duquesne (c. 1610–1688) was given title of nobility for his contributions to the French navy. In 1787 under the reign of Louis XVI a ship was christened after Abraham Duquesne.48 Naming a ship after a famous dead hero was a revolution, as over a century before Louis XIV had banned the common practice, and he had all


the ships named with attributes to his own glory, names like the Couronne, and the Royal Louis. The practice of the navy celebrating the king alone was broken with naming that ship. Duquesne, a Protestant by birth and conviction, had been given the title of marquis by Louis XIV in 1681, despite Colbert’s dislike of him. What could have permitted such an exception? Together with Jean-Baptiste Colbert, Dusquesne is considered the founder of the French navy, and there is no doubt that he deserved it. Abraham Duquesne’s brilliant career spans the entire history of the French navy; it began with its creation under Richelieu and ended in its glory days in the 1680s, when the French navy, thanks in part to Duquesne’s expertise and leadership, was at its zenith for a short time. Abraham Duquesne gave up all opportunities to receive the honor he deserved: to become admiral of the French navy. He refused to convert, saying: “If I could betray my God, then I could be led to betray my king.”49

Duquesne, who led the navy into several major battles, was not a nobleman, and to boot he was a heretic, but he had earned an enviable post in the royal navy, where posts were coveted by the sons of the highest noblesse de robe. Colbert, who was just instituting his commercial policies, was humiliated by the French defeat at Gigery in 1664 and was looking for a scapegoat. While the gazettes were happy to blame the French failure in Gigery on the man-eating habits of the inhabitants and the barbar-ity of the Berber armies, the superintendent of Toulon and Marseilles, who was also head of the royal galleys, accused Duquesne of pillaging a Dutch ship for his own profi t. As a Huguenot and a son of the city of Dieppe, the city most notorious for the best of the French corsairs in the Atlantic, Duquesne was apt to be framed. Colbert investigated and cleared him of the charge. Colbert had no love for Duquesne, as their tense relationship would prove, but he recognized in him not only the qualities of a warrior but of someone who could build up the French navy. Duquesne would be allowed to rise socially because he helped the king centralize the navy, which was previously largely in the hands of merchants, Normans or Marseillais. Duquesne helped put the navy in the hands of the state.

The son of a Dieppe merchant, he grew up watching ships being readied for com-merce with Brazil, the Mediterranean, and Sumatra. He was, like many Norman sailors, given the right during wars to raid enemy ships. Booty during wars was not piracy as it was allowed by letters of marque. As soon as the aforementioned in-vestigation was over, Colbert invited Duquesne to Versailles, where he stayed from January 1, 1665 to May 3 of the same year, a great honor for a mere merchant. At his departure he was given 3,000 livres as his due, plus another more substantial 12,000 livres as thanks for having taken the cargo of a Turkish ship the Pearl, two years prior. He was then put in charge of fi nding the best commercial port in Normandy for Colbert’s new commercial navy and its ambitions to go to India. He went home to his eighty-year-old mother in the suburb of Saint Sever, in Rouen.50 There he got into quarrels among local families over whether Le Havre or Dunkirk should be the king’s new port, which led to the idea of a port in Charentes on the property of a Huguenot family, which could easily be confi scated. While going up and down that


coast of seasoned seamen, he advertised to whomever would listen that no one paid better than the king.51 This was not minor advertisement. Abraham Duquesne was a high-ranking member of the navy, but also a local whose word was taken seriously.

Norman and Breton corsairs and their ship crews worked for the best pay; it had been that way for two centuries. The fact that Louis XIV now could afford to hire the best corsairs was a major asset in his wars. The relationship between Louis XIV and the corsairs became a close one. Two of them would be accepted as part of the royal navy. Louis would even lend his own ships for “la course,” a pirating war run by corsairs at the service of the French court against the Dutch or against Spain, in an unprecedented complicity established between the king and the Norman corsairs. Duquesne’s services to Colbert were so important that his fake credentials of nobil-ity, presented by his eighty-year-old mother, were knowingly but readily accepted in 1665 when titles of nobility were being investigated for fraud.

Well before the creation of the East India Company and well after it, Asian goods also entered France through an illicit channel that was very important and often remains unexplored in works about trade. Corsairs working for France would at-tack Dutch and English ships in the Atlantic as they were nearing their destinations and bring their cargoes to be sold on the market in France. The merchants who later saved Colbert’s failing East India company, the merchants of Saint Malo, were long established in Eurasian trade, albeit without going to any Asian markets. They never left the Atlantic shores but managed to bring many exotic goods to markets. Their prizes were legal and documented in the second half of the seventeenth century. The type of war they ran for the French king was called la course.52 Piracy was illegal; la course was not. The French corsairs had successful fi gures that were the equivalent of Drake or Hawkins for Elizabeth I. The monarch issued the corsair ships Lettres de Marque, giving them formal permission to attack ships of an enemy power during war. Under Louis XIV the line between the royal navy and the corsair was blurred, as after 1681 these offi cial permissions allowing the capture of an enemy’s commercial vessels were routinely given to the French corsairs by the minister of the navy. The best of the corsairs temporarily became part of the French navy and were received at Versailles. Their crews were exempted from servage.

It is almost impossible to give an all-encompassing defi nition of the French cor-sairs; most attempts have led to oversimplifi cations, as the course was run out of the posts of Dunkirk, Calais, Boulogne, Le Havre, Cherbourg, St. Malo, Morlaix, Brest, and Nantes.53 It was also very important in La Rochelle, where many of the corsairs were Protestants. The corsairs had a long history and had been active in the English Channel and the Atlantic since the end of the thirteenth century as important players in the Hundred Years War. Captured corsair prizes, the booty of sea battles, made up a large percentage of the exotic goods in the market. The Dutch war was a com-mercial war. During Louis’s reign the guerre (war) de course was an opportunity for France to reap the benefi ts of Eurasian trade without going to Asia.


Louis XIV wanted the cooperation of successful corsairs against his enemies. Dunkirk, when it was in French hands, was the center of la guerre de course. Jean Bart (1650–1702) and Jean Doublet (1655–1728) are among the most famous of these French corsairs from the port of Dunkirk.54 During war, the most well-equipped corsairs were lent ships from the French royal navy. They not only attacked com-mercial ships, but some of them were intrepid enough to bring in war ships. Until the beginning of the century, warships and commercial vessels remained similar until the Stuarts created large warships with enormous artillery power that proved effi cient against Spain in 1588. Among the 122 corsairs running the war, the most important were René Duguay-Trouin from Saint Malo and Jean Bart from Dunkirk. The king decided that they were to enter the royal navy. Like Abraham Duquesne, these cor-sairs were from merchant families, prosperous and long established in maritime trade. Unlike the army, Louis XIV had total control over giving rank in the navy. The navy would bear the marks of Colbert’s policies. Based on merit, men such as Duquesne, Duguet-Trouin, and Bart were given titles of nobility and reached the highest ranks of the navy, but never the admiralty—there was a glass ceiling. The post of admiral was reserved for top aristocrats, as Daniel Dessert has analyzed, as were the highest ranks of the navy. Jean Bart was given the titles of “chef d’escadre et commandant de Dunkerque,” and Duguet-Trouin “lieutenant-général des armées navales.” For-eigners were rare in La Royale as the navy was called; Bart, a Fleming, was one of three foreigners in the ranks of the entire French navy.55

Acceptable legal prizes were, fi rst, enemy ships, second, ships that did not hoist their pavilions or had no papers, or any ship, even from a friendly nation, carrying goods from an enemy nation. The prizes had standardized ways of being distributed. In a corsair expedition there were three main parties: a ship owner, usually a mer-chant who provided the ship; the corsair captain who provided the crew; and a third party who armed the ship, providing arms, ammunition, food and drink, rope, and every item that might be needed. The prizes caught were recorded and sold at market price, including the ships. A tenth belonged to the king, or after 1681 to the admiralty of the French royal navy. A fee went to the judges and administration recording the prize. Then the remainder was equally divided by the ship owner, the party arming the ship, and the captain, who paid himself and his crew. The captain got twelve parts, his lieutenant eight, the ship surgeon six, the ship script six, the carpenter and cannon master three each, then one or two for soldiers and below them the crew, ei-ther 1/2 or a 1/4. One made the best money as a captain if he owned the ship, as then two thirds of the profi ts stayed for the captain and the crew.

Jean Bart was over two meters (nearly 7 feet) tall and a fl amboyant fi gure, born in Dunkirk to Flemish parents. Bart started sailing at twelve and was among the crew of the Dutch Admiral de Ruyter, a man adulated by his crew. He sailed alone as one of the Dunkirk privateers for the French court and devised methods of capture that became famous. In four years alone, 1674–1678, he captured over fi fty Dutch


ships. Many sources point to the astonishing fact that the tall and awkward Bart was received at Versailles while he barely knew a word of French but spoke fl uent Flemish, English, and Swedish. During the six years of the Dutch war, which was a commercial war, Bart alone had brought in 81 ships as prizes. Colbert was well aware that while the port of Dunkirk had lost 32 captains and 3,000 sailors in the war, the privateers of Dunkirk had captured 384 ships for the French navy and a booty of 3,787,695 livres.56 The French suffered many irreparable naval losses at the hands of the Dutch.

Patrick Villier has been studying the intriguing memoirs of the Norman Jean Doublet (1655–1728).57 Very few direct accounts remain, and therefore Jean Dou-blet’s is very important even if it has some chronological errors. Doublet extended the guerre de course to the islands, as the Dutch war was also fought near Curaçao, where the Dutch had settled. The French Antilles were part of the confl ict, and most of the battles were run by corsairs.

The Normans in the French Antilles and French Colonization

In 1664 a great effort was made to evict Dutch traders from French territory in Saint Christophe while the Dutch were not even at war with France. Yet, this fi ght was unpopular, as the French were isolated without the Dutch. The history of French colonization in the Antilles was fi nally a success, and France would have colonies at last. Canada had in many ways escaped Richelieu’s grip; despite his hope to monopo-lize its fur trade, it was in the hands of coureur de bois and private individuals, and many of the fur traders in Canada were Normans. The Normans, many among them Huguenots, were to the Atlantic and Caribbean trade what the Marseillais were to the Levant trade. The Huguenots were crucial in establishing French presence in the islands and in North America.58 As discussed previously, the Normans were trading in the Atlantic since the early 1500s if not earlier. Paul Butel notes that from Honfl eur and Dieppe in Normandy and from La Rochelle, a Protestant city, and Bayonne in Aquitaine, enough ships left for the Caribbean to make it possible to speak of a con-tinuous French trade during the last quarter of the sixteenth century. French corsairs and fi libusters, many of them Huguenots, knew the islands well before colonization.

When the famous corsair Jean de Fleury approached Martinique in 1620, the indig-enous inhabitants of the islands greeted the ship with bows and arrows ready to shoot; the French started screaming from the ship “France bon, France bon” and showed the wares they had come to trade, mostly axes, knives, and metal tools. They were so well received and so well fed that they could barely walk back to the ship. They were not the fi rst, and the inhabitants seeing the wares knew what to expect.59 The im-mediate retreat shows clearly that this was not a fi rst encounter. Richelieu had hopes for colonization and the commerce of tobacco, the main crop of the islands, when he created a fi rst company, the Compagnie de Saint Christophe, in 1626. This would


not have been possible without two Norman subscribers, Pierre Belain d’Estambuc and Pierre Gourney. D’ Estambuc, a fi libuster, while running his ships to the islands had noted the Englishman Thomas Warner’s success with tobacco and had sought the cardinal’s protection to establish himself. He was given the commission to es-tablish the French on Saint Christophe and grow tobacco. Unlike the English who were established in Virginia, the French were isolated and could not get provisions without Dutch or English carriers. In 1629 the Spanish attacked both the French and English on the islands. Tobacco prices had collapsed in Europe in 1630, but the French had managed to produce 200,000 pounds of tobacco, about half that of the better-established English.60 From then on planters began to think of sugar cane.

On February 12, 1635, Richelieu created the Compagnie des Isles d’Amérique and was its chief investor. Five months later Charles Liénard de l’Olive planted the French fl ag with its fl eur de lys and the cross on the west coast of Martinique while having his men chant Vexilla Regis. This was not directly Richelieu’s com-pany; badly funded, the company had left it to a group of merchants from Dieppe to fi nd funds, men, and ships. Judging the island too mountainous, Liénard de l’Olive, decided alone to lead the 350 Normans to another island, Guadeloupe. Martinique would be colonized nevertheless, not directly from France, but by the Norman entre-preneur Belain d’Estambuc, now familiar with the many problems of settling Euro-peans, as he had already settled a few hundred men and women on Saint Christophe. Despite the dismantlement of Richelieu’s company and defying any orders, Belain d’Estambuc took it upon himself to send two ships with a hundred French inhabitants of Saint Christophe to settle Martinique, where they arrived with provisions to plant sweet potatoes and other plants to survive. Guadeloupe’s new inhabitants were not led by an experienced leader, and when bragging about the new French colony of Guadeloupe, Theophraste Renaudot in his Gazette failed to mention the horrendous famine that decimated the colony.61

The Gazette of February 1638 presented a rosy image of French colonization; it read: “The Sieur d’Olive did everything to gain the affection of the savages in this island … he gave them crystals, mirrors, knives, combs, whistles, needles and pins and other ‘bagatelles.’ ” The word bagatelle means small things, implied that the savages were won over easily by de l’Olive, the representative of the French court. In fact the Huguenots engaged in the Atlantic trade and the fi libusters had traded with the indige-nous peoples for a long time. Even when he worked with Richelieu, Belain d’Estambuc had always followed the old ways of friendship and trading, leaving religion alone. The mission given to the Sieur de l’Olive was to convert the inhabitants to Catholicism by the Cardinal de Richelieu. It was going to create severe problems. The locals had mainly dealt with Huguenots and fi libusters who did not care about conversion, so this pressure had never been encountered previously. The famine also pushed de l’Olive to let the French occupy Indian gardens and steal food. Duplessis, a Huguenot cofounder of the colony in Guadeloupe, was opposed to these political moves and pursued the old ways of friendship with the indigenous Caraïbes, and he took refuge among them.


A decade later, when settling Grenada mid-century the war between the Indians and the French took place for the same reasons; it was exacerbated by the fact that African slaves were often recruited by the Indians to revolt against their French masters.62

Under Louis XIV’s reign France started to settle Saint Martin and Saint Bathélemy in 1648 and Grenada in 1650. In the system of the engagé tobacco growers worked for three years and got a parcel at the end, although many masters abused of the sys-tem and made it seven years of servitude, as it was for the English. After 1650 sugar had replaced tobacco as the main crop of the French Antilles. Columbus had taken sugar cane to Hispaniola very early, but not all of the islands knew its cultivation, as it was labor intensive. The Dutch were chased out of Brazil in 1654 and brought sugar cane to the Dutch and French islands. The French islands profi ted from the arrival of Marano Jews from Brazil, who were important for their expertise in refi ning sugar. In 1651 La Compagnie des Isles d’Amérique had sold its rights to individuals, who were running the islands as personal fi efdoms, to Colbert’s annoyance. Despite the existence since 1638 of a lieutenant general to represent the king of France, the local governors were all-powerful. In 1663 Colbert decided that to monopolize the com-merce of the islands would put an end to this.

As he had done for India, in same year, 1664, another company, the Compagnie des Indes Occidentales was created with a capital of seven million subscribed by the king. Its second article forbade French commerce with the Dutch. The arrival of the ships of Colbert’s company and their representatives created a revolt in Mar-tinique, where company men said the inhabitants had a “coeur hollandais” (Dutch heart). While the French had four ships, the Dutch had 200, and they carried French tobacco out for sale and brought in all the European goods the French craved and were dependant on. Their “Dutch heart” was a necessity that court policy did not understand. Colbert’s company was detrimental to their commerce. Just as the Mar-seillais did not like the Compagnie des Indes Orientales, the French in the islands resented the Compagnie des Indes Occidentales.

As early as 1666 the Compagnie des Indes Occidentales had to make concessions and allow the French in Martinique to trade with foreigners if they were allies or at peace, which was the case of the Dutch, for a fee of fi ve percent. There were no such incidents of revolt in Guadeloupe. In Saint Domingue there were some problems, chiefl y because the all-important French fi libusters now had to have the authorities adjudicate their catches and booty, and they resented this. After many issues the Compagnie des Indes Occidentales, which had lost many ships and had no real fi -nancing, had to forfeit its monopoly in 1668 and open the islands to foreign trade, to the exclusion of the Dutch. The exclusion was a gesture, as they could in any case not prevent the Dutch from trading. A real turning point took place for Louis XIV in 1674, when Colbert’s very unpopular Compagnie des Indes Occidentales was dis-solved as it went bankrupt. A council of ten members chosen by the king in 1675 was instituted for the islands in 1679.63 If part of the islands were colonized the state had little to do with it. Colbert’s company was a failure as were the companies before it.


The French fi libusters, based on the island of Tortuga, ran raids against Spanish holdings and were deeply involved in the settlement of the islands. In the French part of Saint Domingue, Bertrand d’Ogeron, its governor, who was a buccaneer in origin, left piracy to work on the agricultural development of the island. He tried to reign in the fi libusters, associated with Morgan, from pillaging, but failed. A good part of the fi libusters, however, did get involved in the sugar plantations of Saint Domingue through the incentives he gave. The famous fi libuster Ducasse became the next governor of the island, and he and his companions were key in taking the island from tobacco growing to a sugar and indigo economy. In 1715, at end of Louis XIV’s reign, Saint Domingue counted 7,000 French colonists and 30,000 slaves working on 1,200 plantations devoted to indigo, and 138 sugar plantations. Ducasse encouraged a number of fi libusters to engage in producing colonial products.64

The islands had escaped Louis’s control. One edict would attempt to change this. The Code noir was promulgated by Louis XIV in 1685, which established a royal administration to look after its application on the island of Saint Domingue in the 1690s in order to keep the islands under royal control and take away power from local governors.65 It was the result of a commission ordered by Colbert in 1682, who did not live to see its results. There was nothing humanitarian about the Code noir. It aimed to exclude Jews and Huguenots from the profi ts of trade. Colbert’s aims were to look after the profi tability of islands for France and to legislate the relation-ship between master and slave more closely, and even more importantly, to keep order and avoid a revolt of the growing servile population. The code also directed the master to assume the cost of feeding older or sick slaves, and established fi nes if they were left to charity of the hospitals. It spelled out punishments for every crime and established royal legislation over a master and slave relationship that had been a private one. A revised Code noir was again issued by Louis XV in 1724, and it had long legal consequences on the Antilles.

Most historians affi rm that it had little effect on the harsh daily life of the planta-tion slaves. Its cold administrative tone sheds light on the cruel realities of life on the islands. Article one evicting the Jews gives religion as motive, but Colbert had built refi neries in France and now sugar was being refi ned in France and not only on the islands. The Marranos (Spanish and Portuguese Jews who had converted to Christianity, often accused of still professing Judaism in secret) were in great part in the refi nery business in Martinique, and their departure would leave the refi ning business for France. Yet, it would be a mistake to read the code for commercial motivations, because the timing of the code, the same year as the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, points to the religious motivation of the code. The islands were closed to Protestants and Jews. Article two demands that all slaves be baptized and educated to become Catholics, Article three forbids any religion except Catholicism, and Article four forbids work masters (commandeurs) of any other religion to be employed by plantation owners. The next article forbids making slaves work on Sun-days and religious holidays, not out of humanity but for religious reasons. Because


of the sacrament of marriage, Article nine forbids separating families in order to sell them. The Code noir was also essential to Louis XIV as he entered the business of the slave trade. On January 20, 1685 Louis XIV wrote: “We establish the Compagnie de Guninée for the commerce of negroes, gold powder and all merchandise on the coast of Sierra Leon and the Cape of Good Hope.”66

During Louis’s reign at the turn of the eighteenth century the entire French Antil-les owned 30,000 slaves as opposed to the English who owned 110,000; of those, 50,000 worked in sugar cane plantations in Barbados and 40,000 in Jamaica. In 1713 there were 274 sugar cane plantations in Martinique and the French held 26,000 slaves. The rise of the price of sugar after 1690 had contributed to this success, al-though prices would stagnate in 1713, reducing these numbers.67 At the end of the reign of Louis XIV the French Antilles were far from playing the global economic role they later played just before the French Revolution.

In France and all territories controlled by France including the Antilles, 7,000 square kilometers altogether, rigid punishments were being infl icted on any Protestant who would not convert. Abraham Duquesne, still a convinced Calvinist, left France by buying the land of another famous Huguenot. He bought the Baronie d’Aubonne in Switzerland, lands that Jean-Baptiste Tavernier had settled after his return from India in 1659. Tavernier too had received titles of nobility from Louis XIV. Both men had received these royal favors before 1685. After 1685 it did not matter how many services one had rendered to France, how many prize ships one had brought in, or how many islands one had conquered in the Caribbean, one converted or, like Duquesne, if lucky enough to be free to go, one left France for good. The revocation of the Edict of Nantes and the Code noir were part of Louis’s ultra-Catholic univer-sal stance. It was to compensate for the fact that after the Turkish siege of Vienna in 1683 he could no longer comfortably pose as the protector of universal Catholicism and its imperium. It was in the wake of this episode that he would be called the Grand Turc, just as those around him were writing a plan for a new crusade.68

Charles Frostin’s work has demonstrated Huguenot leadership among the French buccaneers, many of whom were also of the reformed religion. The Huguenots, now banned from the islands by the Code noir, had been and were crucial to the French for the commerce and settlement of the islands.69 The European Atlantic trade in the Ca-ribbean was still generally small in size in this period, even for the better-established Dutch and English.70 For Martinique, which with Saint Domingue became important for French colonial goods in the eighteenth century, the fi gure cited by a contempo-rary source is thirty ships.71 Huguenots and Jews were important in this commerce; a third of the settlers of the islands before 1685 were Jewish, and their departure would become a setback.72 A majority of the settlers were the seafaring Normans and Bretons and some peasants from the Poitou. The much abused system of indentured temporary white slavery, the engagé, was all-important under Louis XIV.73

Sugar and to some extent indigo were the main crops under Louis XIV’s reign, and late in his reign the king was hoping for another crop: coffee. It was not to be.


While Louis XIV was alive coffee remained a rare and expensive Asian import. The Dutch had grown it successfully in their colony of Java. It was well after his reign that France became the world’s fi rst exporter of coffee grown in the French Antilles, initially in Martinique. Nothing demonstrates better that the exotic is a matter of re-ception and perception as the naturalization of African coffee as a French good. The road to coffee becoming a colonial good and national habit was long and took well over a century. It was orientalists traveling to the Ottoman empire that fi rst brought coffee to France.

Part IIConsuming the Exotic

– 163 –

–6–

Coffee and Orientalism in France

I have heard Mr. De La Croix, the interpreter in the Turkish language say … that the nephew of M. Thévenot, traveler to the Levant, was the fi rst to bring coffee to Paris for his own use, and to treat his friends to it, among whom was [Petis] De La Croix. Some Armenians brought it [to France] later, and more or less built its reputation up to what it has reached today.1

Antoine Galland, 1696

Antoine Galland refers to the authority of another orientalist, Petis De La Croix, to trace the origins of coffee drinking in France. The history of coffee in France and French Orientalism were closely linked, as descriptions of coffee came from travelers with an intellectual interest in the Ottoman empire or Persia. Many seventeenth-century sources about coffee are Dutch, French, and English travel ac-counts. The most notable are the fi rst to mention or describe coffee, such as the Ger-man Leonard Rauwolfe (d. 1569), the Englishman Sir George Sandys (1577–1644), Jean de Thévenot for France (1633–1667) and Italian Pietro Della Valle (1586–1652); the latter’s efforts are remembered for linking the new beverage he observed in Persia to antiquity. Even though there were no records or any mention of coffee in Greek or Roman texts, in his quest for coffee’s origins Della Valle insisted that it was nothing other than nephente, which Homer described as a drink Helen brought with her out of Egypt.2 Galland claimed that one of the fi rst to serve coffee in France was the traveler Jean de Thévenot.3 Thévenot, who encountered coffee drinking in Constantinople, introduced his friends to this exotic drug. Antoine Galland pointed out that it was the Armenians who spread its usage throughout Paris, but Galland did not give any more details about the spread of coffee in France. Since he was an orientalist, his discourse was focused on the oriental origins of coffee and its uses in the Ottoman empire. There were already several cafés in Paris in 1699, when he was translating from the Arabic the ideas of a man named Jaziri.

Coffee was clearly considered an oriental product, despite its African origins, and continued to be viewed as exotic even when the French succeeded in planting it as a colonial product in Martinique after 1723. The following two chapters examine both the uses made of coffee to observe the impact it had on French material life, and the discourse about coffee drinking. Coffee illuminates some views the French held about exotic products and also the discourse these goods solicited about the


Orient. In the early seventeenth century coffee was considered a rare and exotic curiosity, and save in medical treatises, where it is often qualifi ed as an Arabic taste, it was mostly seen as an Ottoman habit. Rightly so, as the fi rst coffee house opened in Cairo in the fi rst decade of the sixteenth century. The central market for coffee was Cairo, and the source for the coffee was Yemen. Coffee represented one-third of Egypt’s foreign trade by the eighteenth century. In a sample of eighty coffee mer-chants who were studied by André Raymond, thirty were North Africans, fi fteen Turks, and twenty-eight Syrians. These merchants confi ned their trade to the Red Sea and to the export of coffee within the Near East and Eastward to India and the South Sea.4 In France coffee, save some exceptions examined below pointing to Persia or to Armenians, remained imagined as an Ottoman drink in most writings and illustrations.

Coffee’s African origins were silenced in every part of this discourse in France; Africa only emerged in eighteenth-century paintings, which only represented Africa by black slaves handing coffee to the aristocracy, notably in a famous picture painted by Vanloo (1705–1765) of Madame de Pompadour receiving coffee, La sultane pre-nant le café.5 This was one of many illustrations of women in the French elite as Sul-tanas.6 Depicting a black slave serving coffee was more a tie to the European slave trade than to Africa itself. This silence on the African origins of coffee replicates the silence on the slave trade that lasted until a century later in the 1770s.

There was an element of orientalist imitation in coffee drinking, and as we will discuss further, imitation of things oriental and Ottoman extended beyond fashion-able coffee drinking to fashions in gardens, furniture, dress, and jewelry. These consumer tastes led to transformations as profound as building French factories nec-essary to domestically produce imitations of the imported utensils for coffee, such as porcelain cups, or the fabrication of domestic textiles for oriental dress, such as French-made brocades and calicoes. Furniture, textiles, dyes, and even coffee went through many transformations to become domestic products. These material imita-tions and their consumption speak of open admiration for oriental luxury among the French elite, but admiration was not the only view solicited by the foreign. There was resistance. Coffee and its usage highlight some of the complex reception and perception of the exotic in France.

There were several stages of “commodity indigenization” that coffee underwent as an exotic good in France.7 The French colonial enterprise eventually used its knowledge of coffee and coffee growing gained under Louis XIV to grow coffee in its colonies. Less than a decade after the death of Louis XIV, the French suc-ceeded in creating a thriving crop of beans in Martinique. Until then, coffee was an expensive oriental good imported to France. The image of Africans serving coffee only appeared after the colonial success of coffee in the French Caribbean. Partly be-cause of colonial plantations, patterns of coffee consumption changed dramatically over time, yet coffee was adopted before it became a colonial good, as an expensive and rare exotic luxury, making a purely economic explanation for its indigenization

Coffee and Orientalism in France • 165

insuffi cient. It was prized because it was an oriental luxury, and that elusive element of taste and fashion played a role in its spread, which is explored in the next chapter.8 Coffee would continue to be marketed as an oriental luxury long after it was grown in the Caribbean, pointing to the fact that its oriental provenance was important to its image.

Coffee was seen as an oriental habit because French travelers had visited the cof-fee houses, which had been well-established for over a century in Cairo, Istanbul, and Isfahan. The diffusion of coffee in the Ottoman Empire was chiefl y a conse-quence of the Ottoman conquest of the Mamluk state of Egypt in 1516, where the fi rst coffee house was opened. Ethiopia could not fulfi ll the new demand for coffee in the Ottoman empire so Yemen, later the largest exporter of coffee, began to supply this market in the 1540s.9 Coffee drinking was common in the Islamic world well before the 1670s when the new cafés were opened in Paris, that also opened a new sphere of sociability beyond the tavern, which was exclusively male but not upper class.10 Among all of the exotic plants imported to Europe, coffee, tea, and chocolate played a transformative role in French society, but most transformative of all was coffee, because of the creation of the café. Of the three new beverages that became part of the European diet in the seventeenth century, coffee was the most discussed. Tea and chocolate had their importance, but their social impact was not as dramatic in France, although chocolate played a major role in court banquets. Because of its social impact, coffee was the object of various forms of discourse in dissertations, plays, poems, songs, and travel accounts. As a new drug, the French found coffee controversial because its properties were unknown. This gave way to medical de-bates, some of which repeated much older debates that had occurred earlier in the Ottoman empire and were transmitted through travelers and translations from the Arabic.

In seventeenth-century France, natural history, medicine, commerce, and the eco-nomic state of the nation were closely linked in the writings on exotic plants. Royal commissions for the study of the subject of coffee were rare. Only one of Louis’s personal physicians, Monsieur Nicolas de Blégny (1652–1722), wrote a treatise on coffee at the king’s request. Most works on coffee were written by independent merchants and scholars.11 Treatises on the exotic new beverages of tea, coffee, and chocolate were commissioned by private individuals both for their commercial and scientifi c value. Sometimes an individual served the court, and Chardin’s seemingly innocent commissioner gathered information for the French company and the French court.

Like many historical transformations, the birth of that major institution, the French café, and the French habit of coffee drinking, happened without much con-scious planning. Discourse from the court, the guilds, café owners, and consumers offers a complex view of its early history. It helps to reconstruct how the taste for coffee was acquired and sheds light on the social agency of what was considered to be an Ottoman beverage. Coffee drinking affected elements as diverse as receiving


habits in the domestic sphere, the transformation of the public sphere by the café, and medical knowledge and drugs. As Braudel wrote so pertinently, certain minute events that are barely marked in time and space become part of the structures of everyday life.12

It is worth noting the exceptional profusion and the diverse nature of the material, but only the most salient works on coffee will be discussed here. Several different forms of discourse examined here range from royal edicts to songs and pamphlets, from medical treatises to bad verses written by café owners. Seventeenth-century physicians wrote entire dissertations about the properties of the new drug at the Sor-bonne and at the University of Montpellier.13 Paradoxically, these learned tomes were the most popular, as they were summarized and became public reading. Because medical controversies about drinking coffee were so hotly debated at universities in Montpellier and Paris, they made news in the pamphlets and the gazettes.14 Such was the case of Philippe Sylvestre Dufour (1655–?), who published a compendium on coffee as early as 1671 and was considered a scientifi c authority on coffee by his contemporaries, despite the fact that he presented himself as a humble merchant.15 Views about coffee and health changed dramatically and gave way to some interest-ing debates that hid their initial political underpinnings.

Yet, if coffee was directly associated with the Ottomans, it was also associated with their subjects, especially with the Arabs and the Armenians. The Persians, because of travel accounts describing coffee in Persia, were also clearly part of the discourse. More surprisingly, even “chinoiserie” has been associated with coffee. One cannot help but think of Saïd as he pointed to this undifferentiated view of the Orient. It has been argued in his wake that discourse about Arabs is not a strong element in French literary works until the nineteenth century and Napoleon’s (1769–1821) expeditions to Egypt. However, there is a strong exception in the case of coffee.16 The origins and medical properties of coffee were culled from manuscripts in Arabic. What is certainly true is that the same discourse on Arabs did not appear in literature, fashion, or paintings, the most studied aspects of Orientalism. In the realm of the arts coffee was clearly associated with the Ottomans alone. The most blatant of all identifi cations of coffee with the Ottomans is a much reproduced engraving (see p. 167) in Philippe Sylvestre Dufour’s Traitez nouveaux & curieux du café, du thé et du chocolate. Ou-vrage également necessaire aux medecins, & à tous ceux qui aiment leur santé.17

The engraving depicts three seated men: in the center is tea, represented as a Chi-nese man, coffee to his left is a man dressed in Turkish garb, and chocolate is repre-sented as an American Indian. The three fi gures represent the origins of these three beverages as they were perceived in France at the end of the seventeenth century. Only chocolate is accurately represented, as the other two represent the regions that exported tea and coffee. Tea was imported from China but had its origins in the Himalayas, and coffee, represented by a Turk, was an African plant cultivated by the Arabs. Coffee was originally produced beyond Ethiopia in Mocha, a town in Yemen, but coffee is represented in Turkish dress. On the engraving there are the


utensils necessary to the new drinks. The bowl for coffee is not the small fi njian (cup) brought in from the Ottoman empire.

Intellectually, coffee was the scientifi c domain of orientalists and travelers. Some works examined coffee’s roots in Muslim society and their views held about coffee. One of the most consequential works on coffee was a commissioned translation from the Arabic. The commission was given to none other than Antoine Galland (1647–1715). His translation of an Arabic manuscript purchased in the Ottoman empire and brought to France remains the most widely quoted work in studies about the history of coffee to the present day. The translation was inspired by Galland’s trip to Constanti-nople, where he read about the origins of coffee in the work of a Turkish historian.18

Travelers and Orientalists: The Origins of Coffee According to Galland’s Translation of an Arabic Manuscript

Nowhere is the link between coffee and Orientalism clearer than in the work of An-toine Galland. The most famous of all French orientalists’s translation was published in 1699 and was studied again by many orientalists, including Sylvestre de Sacy (1758–1838). To Galland’s dismay, it was a light work of fi ction he had contributed to the royal library that made him famous for generations to come: Les mille et une

Courtesy of the Library Company of Philadelphia.

IMAGE AVAILABLE ON HARD COPY


nuits. Galland considered his translation about coffee a much more serious work. He had it printed for his intellectual friends as De l’origine et du progrés du café. This opinion was shared, as his translation was immediately noticed and picked up by the Journal des Sçavans, the journal of the French Academy of Sciences. The properties of coffee were considered new knowledge even after several works had been pub-lished on coffee by physicians.19

Galland’s translation was commissioned. A letter dated December 15, 1696 by Mon-sieur Chassebras de Camaille asked Galland to provide him and his literate friends with information about coffee. The commission was inspired when he and Monsieur de Chassebras drank a cup of coffee together, and Galland recounted reading a Turkish historian’s work on coffee during his stay in Constantinople.20 If Galland was attempt-ing a history of coffee for his sponsor, his translation was not the fi rst important work on coffee; there were several books published much earlier, notably Philippe Sylves-tre Dufour’s in 1671 and 1684, and Nicolas de Blégny’s in 1687. However, Galland claimed higher authority on the subject because of his travels to the source of coffee drinking, which he believed to be the Ottoman empire. As he expressed in the text, his authority lay in his knowledge of the Arabic language. Antoine Galland’s translation was responsible for spreading knowledge of the origins of coffee among the elites of France. Europe’s knowledge of coffee was largely based on this French translation of a work by a man named Abd al-Qadir al-Jaziri (circa 1558) who traced the history, usage, and controversies of qahwa (coffee) in the Islamic world where it was fi rst used. The translated manuscript was dated 1587 and entitled: ‘Umdat al safwa fi hill al-qahwa. Thanks to Galland’s translation it became widely quoted.

Jaziri credited one Sheikh Jamal-al-Din al-Dhabhani (d. 1470 or 1471), mufti of Aden, as the pioneer who fi rst made and drank a cup of coffee (circa 1454). Its use-fulness in driving away sleep made it a religious drink in Sufi circles with their all night ritual of worship. Galland’s translation became the authoritative work on coffee in Europe, save for one, an earlier description of coffee made by a Maronite oriental-ist living in Rome, Faustus Nairon Maronite (d. 1711). Faustus was a Syrian scholar and orientalist working in Rome who gave a different story about coffee’s origin. An-toine Galland did not treat his predecessor’s 1671 essay on coffee kindly. According to Jaziri, the fi rst wide usage of coffee was in the Near East in the sixteenth century, which is also confi rmed by other sources.21 Yet Galland digressed from translating Jaziri. Instead of translating faithfully he added that the most popular origin of cof-fee was that the goat-herder Kladi saw his goats dance and hop around energetically after chewing on a coffee bush. Galland accused Faustus Nairon Maronite of invent-ing this ridiculous myth of coffee’s discovery in his De Saluberrima potione Cahue. Galland seized the occasion to adamantly tear down his predecessor.

Galland made this personal tangent away from the text he was translating in order to chastise Faustus Nairon Maronite for transmitting incredible myths about goat and camel keepers discovering coffee. Worse, totally straying from Jaziri, Galland maintained instead that coffee came from Arabia Felix and had been used in Ethiopia


since time immemorial. After disparaging even Narion’s knowledge of Arabic—a strange point of honor for Galland as the Roman orientalist Faustus Nairon Maronite was Syrian and a native speaker of Arabic, Galland falsely claimed that Jaziri gave the real origins of coffee drinking to monks and to the Christians of Arabia Felix. Galland then accused Nairon of not wanting to admit that there were still Christian Arabs left in Arabia Felix after the prophet Mohammed and the region’s conversion to Islam. This was a strange accusation, since Nairon himself was a Christian Arab, as the word Maronite appended to his name clearly attests.22 Jaziri never mentioned any Christian monks, and he attributed the origins of coffee drinking to the Sufi s during their rituals.

Competition among scholars explains but does not entirely justify Galland’s disingenuous scholarship. Indeed, this feud with Nairon was only partially about scholarship and authority about the Orient. He also forcefully disempowered the discourse of a native informant about his own culture. Galland was a mere translator, while Faustus Nairon Maronite described from experience. Galland won the contest of scholarly credibility in subsequent French works on coffee. Therefore in French dissertations on coffee, Galland’s word as a Frenchman capable of reading Arabic was taken over a native speaker posted in Rome. Yet, the dispute about knowledge of coffee’s origins was an even larger issue, and Galland’s claim that Christian monks initiated the usage of coffee was very suspect indeed.

His source, Jaziri, despite what Galland claimed in translation, attributed the ori-gins of coffee drinking to Sufi Sheikhs.23 Ralph Hattox in his recent work on coffee, after examining the manuscript by Jaziri 300 years later, along with other Arabic sources, wrote: “Throughout the various stories and legends that have come down to us concerning the origins of coffee drinking in the central Islamic lands, there is general agreement on two points: First the use of coffee is invariably tied to Yemen. Second most stories connect it to a man, or men of one of the mystical Sufi orders.”24 Unless Galland genuinely believed that the Sufi s were not Muslims but Christians, his motivations were clearly of a political nature. He appeared intent on giving the Christian monks the edge. Much of what Abdelcader (as the French called Jaziri) wrote about coffee in the Ottoman empire that Galland translated has often been repeated in books on coffee. The favorite fact mentioned is that the fi rst prohibition against coffee dated to 1511 in the town of Mecca.

All of these stories of opposition to coffee, and many other details, are found to be exactly the same in a recent work of Ralph Hattox, a book on coffee in the Middle East, as they were in the French account by Galland 300 years earlier. Except for the origin of coffee, Galland did not stray much from the Arabic text. Both used the same Arabic manuscript, once in the Bibliothèque du Roi, now read by Hattox at the Bibliothèque Nationale.25 In Jaziri the fi rst chapter is devoted to the 1511 Mecca ban, one he could not have witnessed as it was before his time, so Jaziri used several sources to describe the event. The Mamluk pasha Khair Beg was depicted as the prin-cipal opponent to coffee. He was the inspector of markets in Mecca, and the arbiter


of morals, which Hattox qualifi es as a combination of being head of consumer affairs and of the vice squad. Troubled by the riots in coffee houses, the authorities hoped to ban coffee. Coffee houses were banned at the meeting Khair Beg called, but to assert that coffee itself was contrary to Islam, it had to be actually proven harmful.

One Friday Khair Beg brought a large vessel of coffee to a reunion and set it in the middle of the room despite the fact that no one drank it. Coffee itself was now on trial. The Muslim clerics from several sects gathered and discussed the issue; using the usual principle of basic permissibility they classifi ed coffee as a vegetable, and as all vegetables were God’s creation, they saw no reason to condemn it. According to Jaziri, the disappointed authorities thought it was necessary to get the medical ad-vice of two doctors of their own to counter this, and two Persian brothers, kept in the wings by the Mamluk pasha, were produced. They both concluded that because cof-fee was both dry and cold it harmed the balance of the temperaments in the body.26 They were contradicted by a group who used Razhes’s previous medical writings on coffee to argue that it was deemed useful in medical treaties for drying phlegm and therefore not harmful. They were summarily dismissed on the grounds that the medical works were discussing another plant, not coffee. The faction wanting to ban coffee drinking won and the pilgrims and the Meccans were forbidden to drink cof-fee, albeit only for a short time.27

In the Islamic world, where its drinking originated, the last prohibition against coffee itself, rather than against gatherings around coffee, was issued during the Hajj of 1544 by the Ottoman sultan. Ralph Hattox calls Jaziri’s a minority account, adversarial to the Meccans. Although Jaziri had access to and used the minutes of the offi cial version of the events in Mecca in 1511, he also used another source by a certain Abd-al Ghaffar, an eye-witness. Abd-al Ghaffar’s version adopted by Jaziri was considerably different from the offi cial version. Hattox has analyzed Jaziri and his source biases and has deemed both hostile to the jurists in Mecca. According to Jaziri the jurists of Mecca acted out of sheer fanaticism (ta’ssub) when they banned coffee.28 Jaziri’s hostile account, adamant on proving the fanaticism of the Meccans, was the one work translated into French and helped produce European concepts of Islam’s views and mores.

While Galland’s translation was more vague elsewhere, he dutifully and correctly translated all bans and noted that they were rarely enforced. Coffee was important during the Ramadan and despite some arrests, its usage could not be prohibited. Hattox fi nds that there is a pattern to the bans on coffee, and none of them were suc-cessful for very long.29 The case of Cairo remains memorable because the closing of the coffeehouses caused violent riots.

Thanks to Galland’s translation, it was clear to his French readers that by the end of the sixteenth century coffeehouses became fi rmly implanted in the Middle East and North Africa. There were coffeehouses for the rich and other coffeehouses for the poor in all the main cities such as Baghdad, Istanbul, Isfahan, Mecca, and Cairo.30 Yet, Ralph Hattox implies, quite rightly, that the Islamic debates about coffee have


been misrepresented in European writings on coffee as a sign of Muslim fanaticism or reluctance to innovate, and as “haughtily and righteously preaching against even the most innocent of earthly pleasure.”31 What Hattox calls a portrayal of the pro-tagonists as “Muslim blue-noses” is not a charge one can squarely apply to Galland. Jaziri was the one who portrayed the Mamluk pasha of Mecca and the jurists of the town as banning coffee because of fanaticism (ta’ssub). Yet to falsely promote a Christian Arab monk as the forbearer of coffee, with no basis at all, indicates a reluc-tance to assign this new and important habit to a Muslim group of Sufi s.

Orientalism and the Transmission of Medical Ideas about Coffee

A century later the same phenomenon was to arrive in London and Paris and bring all the controversies about coffee with it. Ideas held by Arab physicians entered via trans-lations. In 1659 there was a translation made into English from a short Arabic manu-script. Together with Jaziri, as translated into French by Antoine Galland, they formed many of the ideas in Europe’s own medical debates on the properties of coffee.

In England Doctor Edward Pocoke’s (1604–1691) translation, The Nature of the Drink Kahue, or Coffee… Described by an Arab Phisitian, was a short extract from a sixteenth-century Arabic work by an author whom specialists have identifi ed as Da’ud ibn Umar al-Antaki.32 This English translation was only a fragment of a manuscript that held the distinction of being among the fi rst texts to be printed in Arabic. The extract in Arabic was fi rst printed in Oxford in 1659 by Henri Hall using Oxford’s fi rst Arabic types, an honor it shared with another text, the polyglot Bible, which Pocoke helped publish. The work aroused the interest of the scientifi -cally curious some years after a coffeehouse had been opened in Oxford by a Jew named Jacob.33 Clearly the discourse about coffee preceded even the fi rst public coffeehouse. After describing the plant as belonging to Yemen and giving a physical description, the manuscript reads:

He that would drink it for liveliness sake, and to discuss slothfulness, and the other properties that we have mentioned let him use much sweatmeates with it, and oyle of pistaccioes, and butter. Some drink it with milk, but it is an error, and such as may bring in danger of the leprosy.34

Orientalists, merchants, and scholars had spread such scientifi c knowledge of coffee in Europe culled from the Arabic sources before use of the beverage became famil-iar. Coffee was just one exotic plant considered for medicinal usage; it will become clear further on that this was part of a large reexamination of the medical applica-tion of exotic plants, many of which came from Asia and the Americas. The Arabic belief that the consumption of coffee caused leprosy did not fi nd its way in the medi-cal discourse that arose in France, but impotence, lust, headaches, and its diuretic


effect were among the many properties debated in many dissertations written about coffee’s infl uence on the body.

The Link to Yemen, Jean de La Roque

In one such scientifi c dissertation, Jean de La Roque (1661–1745), a merchant and traveler, wrote the history of coffee. It was appended to his travel account: Voy-age de l’Arabie Heureuse. Just as Galland’s work was, his writings on coffee were promptly reported by the Journal des Sçavans. La Roque was part of the fi rst French expedition to Yemen, which departed in January of 1708 with the goal of securing the very fi rst direct shipment of coffee from Yemen to France. It was an attempt to cut out the usual intermediaries such as the Arab, Armenian, and Turkish merchants. His account of this fi rst trip is laden with information on early eighteenth-century trade and political geography as he wrote of the cities of Aden, Mocha, and Bayt-al Faqih and gave great detail on daily life and commerce in Yemen. His second trip to Yemen was even more successful than the fi rst, and the ships the Peace and the Diligent returned from Mocha to their destination port of St. Malo on June 11, 1713, with both a cargo that yielded a 133.75 percent profi t for the merchants and extensive information. La Roque’s account was published two years later in 1716. He clearly had scientifi c ambitions, both for mapping the area he traveled to and for composing what was considered to be the fi rst description of coffee in Yemen and in France. His Traité Historique de l’origine & du progrés du café was published in Amsterdam in 1716 and was quickly translated into many languages.

La Roque started his work on coffee by examining the European scholarship available to him on the subject and named the fi rst description of coffee in Europe, the one by Prosper Alpini (1553–1617), “a famous doctor from Padua, & great Bota-nist, who in 1580 followed to Egypt a consul of the Republick of Venice.”35 La Roque then chose the sources he liked best, and argued for the high credibility held by Antoine Galland’s translation from Jaziri: while dismissing other works on cof-fee, save for Sylvestre Dufour’s, he wrote that it was a great pity that Galland’s letter on coffee was published in a very small print run and that it was chiefl y distributed to his friends.36 Prosper Alpini was not on his list of favorites, but that was nothing compared to his negative attitude to Faustus Nairon Maronite.

All things Italian were being resisted in France, as France was hoping to sur-pass Italy. The aim was to form a French national tradition and eliminate the Italian infl uence that had long dominated the French arts and sciences.37 In La Roque’s dissertation one fi nds a patriotic attempt to give pride of place to France by arguing that the French brought new knowledge about coffee to Europe. La Roque cited everyone before him for their description of coffee to join Galland in tearing down the work of Nairon, the Syrian orientalist based in Rome. Faustus Nairon Maronite had published his work in 1671, but at the same date so had a Frenchman, Sylvestre


du Four. In a show of Gallic pride, La Roque proclaimed it was France’s role to provide something more precise on the subject of coffee. He was proud that France had brought exact knowledge of coffee to the world through the work of a Lyon merchant. He wrote that no one could say anything better, more methodological, or more in depth than the treatise on coffee by a certain Sylvester Dufour. Yet, La Roque argued that this author lived as a simple merchant who hailed from Provence and worked in Lyon.38

Syvestre Dufour Presented as a Merchant from Lyon

That Dufour was presented as a simple merchant deserves scrutiny. La Roque was protesting a little too much that a humble merchant could be a savant. There are things, he wrote, that a merchant knew better. As proof of Dufour’s credentials, he cited the fact that Dufour’s work on coffee was reviewed by the Journal des Sçavans in January 1685 and by Monsieur Bayle in his République des Lettres, as indeed it was.39 To be cited and picked up by both was certainly a sign of scientifi c im-portance. Yet, La Roque should have honestly disclosed that Sylvestre Dufour had been educated as a doctor. Sylvestre Dufour was a savant, an antiquarian, and an archaeologist who had studied at the Faculty of Medicine of Montpellier. La Roque wanted to present Dufour as a neutral arbiter in a bitter controversy that opposed the medical schools of Montpellier and the Sorbonne. Montpellier advocated the use of new drugs such as coffee, while the Paris Faculty of Medicine condemned it. In the preface of his fi rst edition Dufour acknowledged that he had collaborators such as Charles Spon (1609–1684) and a certain Chassaigne, both of whom were physicians based in Lyon who had studied in Montpellier.

In addition, Charles Spon was an orientalist who had traveled to the Levant in 1675–1676 in the company of the English connoisseur and botanist Sir George Wheeler (1650–1723). Wheeler’s extensive collection of antiquities was afterwards bequeathed to Oxford University. The son of a Calvinist doctor from a wealthy bank-ing family, Charles Spon traveled widely in intellectual circles, and he corresponded with the Parisian Guy Patin, Dean of the Faculty of Medicine in Paris (1601–1672). Patin famously disparaged coffee and tea, and the use of any drugs such as antimony. Spon’s correspondance with Patin consisted of sixty-six letters about new discover-ies in drugs and especially antimony. Among their discussions were Harvey’s ideas about circulation of the blood, a discovery ridiculed by Patin. The letters from Patin to Spon are the best source for some of Patin’s views.40 The Spon–Patin disagree-ments about anatomy and drugs was reminiscent of the sixteenth-century orientalist feud of the new lisans du roi of the College du Roi, and the old scholastic Sorbonne. Once again involving orientalists, this time their advocacy of the use of chemistry and of new drugs was opposed by the Sorbonne, which insisted on Galen’s drugs and remedies.


Sylvestre Dufour’s collaboration with Spon praised the properties of coffee as a drug conducive to good health. It was a manual for its usage. The treatise is the only one that reveals that chocolate was used in solid form in many confections even in that early period.41 He criticized that the French made a black syrup of their cof-fee because they added so much sugar to it. He wrote two entire chapters devoted to the French usage of coffee, treating the issue with some humor and irony.42 The three doctors educated in Montpellier were behind the results discussed in Traitez nouveaux & curieux du café, du thé et du chocolate. Ouvrage également necessaire aux medecins, & à tous ceux qui aiment leur santé, in which they praised coffee but warned against abuse. La Roque mentioned another doctor in his history of coffee, who was once Louis XIV’s brother’s physician, Nicolas de Blégny (1643?–1722). The interest the court held in exotic drugs was both scientifi c and commercial. One of Monsieur’s several physicians, de Blégny, was sponsored by the court to write about these new beverages as a curative drug. Despite the fact that he was French, La Roque had nothing good to say about him.43

The Outsider, Nicolas de Blégny

Nicolas de Blégny clearly stated that he was ordered by Louis XIV to do research and verify information about the properties of the different forms of essences, oils, and ointments obtained from the drugs tea, coffee, and chocolate.44 Although the title of his work published in 1687 indicates that he served the king and his brother as their physician, his appointment was very brief. Nicolas de Blégny had an adventurous life and was condemned for fraud in 1693.45 His work on coffee did not receive a better reputation than its author. Despite the fact that it was very original and he enumer-ated all of the possible diseases cured by coffee, Jean de La Roque dismissed the work as an exercise in vanity. He accused de Blégny of having written for the love of writing; “an emulation indiscrete” was the quaint expression used for plagiarism. De Blégny had openly acknowledged Dufour’s work, but La Roque was once again very biased. Sylvestre Dufour and Galland were the two writers he held as sole authori-ties. In doing so he was showing his leanings towards Montpellier and its orientalist sympathies. As a coffee merchant, of course he favored a school that supported the use of drinking coffee for health. La Roque dismissed Nicolas de Blégny’s claims of having invented several new drugs to cure diseases. Those new concoctions only profi ted the doctor, not the coffee trade. Although he did achieve the rank of royal physician, Nicolas de Blégny’s work was accused by his opponents of being a cheap publicity stunt for his own curative drugs and especially for his newly invented por-table coffee pot.46 De Blégny wrote: “I could not say with some authors that coffee is of a hot nature and only suitable to phlegmatics, on the other hand I could not argue as others have that it is of a cold nature and only suitable for the bilious and the sanguine.” He held that coffee was generally good for everyone if transformed into a


drug to take away harmful properties to all. The four humors and their balance were best restored not by the coffee grain in its natural form but de Blégny’s drugs.47

La Roque did not like de Blégny’s experiments and their results. To drink coffee in substantial amounts, de Blégny had found, would bring great fatigue to the stom-ach. It would diminish the fl uidity of blood, and cause obstructions in the liver and the gallbladder. This was due, de Blégny contended, to the “terrestrial particules” in coffee. On the other hand, he argued that if coffee was made into a volatile tincture, it would amaze naturalists by its marvelous properties. Indeed, de Blégny had made such a tincture, as well as other drugs from the coffee grain.48 Jean de La Roque was an importer of coffee beans into France, and he had little use for de Blégny’s medical concoctions; they were bad for business.

However, de Blégny’s experiments were pioneering in a debate about digestion that would dominate the beginning of the eighteenth century. He was not in any camp but his own, and this would cost him. The doctors of the Sorbonne subjected patients to the Galenic remedies of bloodletting and purgation prescribed by the Greeks, whose ancient school of medicine they espoused.49 Purging and vomiting were the body’s attempts to expel poisons. Parisian concepts were in contrast to Montpellier’s, where manuscripts translated from the Arabic had brought in competing ideas via Salerno, Padua, and Bologna, the usage of chemical drugs among them. These ideas were still reaching some Paris doctors through Théophraste Renaudot’s two sons, Isaac and Eusèbe, both detested by Guy Patin in memory of their famous father. Théophraste Renaudot (1586–1653) was the man who had started it all. Initially a Protestant, after the surrender of La Rochelle in 1628, he became a Catholic. Thanks to the help of the dévots, who loved converts, especially the Père Joseph and Richelieu, his charitable activity was noticed and supported. On May 30, 1631, he established a weekly, the Gazette de France, in which he defended the politics of the Cardinal de Richelieu. About 1632, he created his intelligence offi ce, a bureau des addresses, where he held weekly meetings that constituted a kind of free and controversial school of medicine. Finally, dating from 1640, he inaugurated free consultations for the sick, in which he was assisted by fi fteen free visiting physicians. He published La présence des absents (1642), the fi rst treatise in France on diagnosis, which aimed at permitting sick persons to describe their symptoms to the physician from far away. In 1640, the Sorbonne moved to ban his practice dedicated to the poor. Guy Patin, the dean of medical school, rallied Parliament. In 1640 this Montpellier-educated doctor was asked to become Louis XIII’s physician. This was a fi rst. Renaudot’s views had in-cited Richelieu to attack the very privileges of the faculty of medicine of Paris.50 In fact Renaudot had successfully broken the Sorbonne’s monopoly over medicine at court. Richelieu’s protection of Renaudot was not alien to the creation of a Jardin du Roi by Louis XIII for simples in the tradition of Montpellier. His two sons continued the father’s cause.

In this battle over the use of both new and chemical drugs, Nicolas de Blégny was an unaffi liated adventurer who became renowned for using his drugs to cure


disease. Yet, he did not belong to the Montpellier faction either. He had made his reputation on his own. Many of the drugs were exotic imports, including a famous new cure de Blégny wrote about, “la poudre des Jesuites.” Jesuits imported an ex-otic wood from Brazil to Spain and France, the cinchona bark, that contains a natu-rally occurring substance effective against malaria, quinine. Despite the fact that the English resisted the “Jesuit powder,” suspected to be a poison for Protestants, an English doctor, Sir Robert Talbor, gained international fame using it to cure several members of royal family in England. He also saved some of their French relatives. At the French court Nicolas de Blégny was in favor of swallowing quinine and in 1682, after Sir Robert Talbor’s death, Louis XIV ordered the secret of the fever remedy revealed in writing, just as he would later order de Blégny to write about the effects of coffee. Steven Lehrer argues that cinchona had been included in the London pharmacopoeia since 1677, but the new French book increased the drug’s popularity.51 Exotic drugs were Nicolas de Blégny’s claim to fame. William David-son, a foreigner, demonstrated chemistry to students in the Jardin du Roi as early as 1653, as no such branch of learning was yet available in France. The ascendancy of the medecins étrangers of Montpellier was at least partially due to Louis’s support of physicians like Renaudot or Nicolas de Blégny and the Jardin du Roi, sponsored by the king and independent from the Sorbonne.

Louis XIV’s views on the matter were shaped by his near-death experience in the hands of his Paris doctors in 1660, which was a spectacular and public episode, as befi tted Louis. He swallowed antimony. Guy Patin’s rejection of the drug antimony as a poison, even though it was the drug that saved the king, remained notorious and was detrimental to the reputation of the conservative Paris faculty.52 The controversy over drugs was one that continued for many decades. It did not help de Blégny that La Roque insisted that the benefi ts of the salts, oils, and essences that Monsieur Nicolas de Blégny claimed to have invented to cure diseases had yet to be tested. De Blégny used coffee beans to extract an oil he called huile fi xe. La Roque believed it quite inconceivable that six to eight drops of huile fi xe could help cure all the diseases related to “hysteria.”53 In short, La Roque, even though a partisan of the Montpellier school, still regarded the king’s brother’s doctor as a quack.

The medical school of Montpellier had inherited the use of coffee through the works of Rhazes (865–925).54 This famous Persian physician was read in Provence through his immense nine-volume encyclopedia, the al-Hawi or Continens Liber. For our purposes it is only important to remember that Rhazes’s own experiments and live observation of diseased patients led him to amend the Galenic theory of the humors through the administration of liquids. Rhazes had observed changes in body temperature and disease after introducing hot liquids to patients. Rhazes was also the fi rst to have ever mentioned coffee in his work. He called the grain bun and the drink buncham.55 Coffee was a hot liquid when brewed and was seen as a potent drug. The debates around coffee in France were at the center of some of the discussion about the digestive system. Bacon’s interest in coffee is better known, as


was the contention that it had helped Harvey discover blood circulation.56 In France some early modern medical treatises, both English and French, could not praise the new beverage enough, while others sternly warned against its use. The debate was as tense as it had been a couple of centuries earlier in the Ottoman empire.

Most sixteenth- and seventeenth-century medical treatises in Europe, just like those by Arab doctors, described coffee as cold and dry in nature. The doctors of Mont-pellier claimed that its qualities were benefi cial to the gastric system and helped respiratory diseases. The fi erceness of the debate in France generated a vast medical literature that still remains to be noticed let alone studied. Medical debates continued well into the middle of the eighteenth century. Most of this literature has not been noticed save for one, a dissertation written by Claude Colomb.57

Claude Colomb and the Merchants of Marseilles

Claude Colomb defended an entire medical dissertation about coffee and its effects on the population of Marseilles in front of a university committee and the general public, who had been invited. La Roque saw this medical work as a consequence of the mere possibility of a new habit, in the wake of the opening of a fi rst café in Marseilles in 1671. The café, he contended, was only frequented by a few sailors and Levantines. This Marseilles café was the very fi rst in France. According to La Roque, coffee was also served on the Marseilles galleys, where it was prepared by the Turks.58 Claude Colomb was sure that coffee was not of a cold nature but a hot one, and that it would burn; his views were not unique, as some Arab doctors had argued this in Mecca. Coffee burned people because it was dry. His opinions were not confi ned to academic debates; after his public defense on February 27, 1679 in City Hall, coffee was banned.59 It was publicly burned by the city of Marseilles, as according to Jaziri had been done in Mecca in 1511. The notion that coffee disturbed the balance of the humors was attributed to consuming it in excess by Colomb. It is diffi cult to think that he had read Jaziri as it had not been translated. Pocoke’s 1659 translation of Anataki was available. He borrowed the properties given to coffee in the Middle East, where the side-effects were thought to be headaches, hemorrhoids, reduced sexual desire, and even male impotence. Colomb took this even further and argued that coffee consumption was uncontrollable and inevitable despite medical warnings. What he meant to prove was moral corruption, that coffee led to gluttony and was addictive (although the concept of addiction did not exist and he did not use the term). He used the term tyrannical. For Colomb only tyranny explained how the French had acquired a new foreign taste, while their habit had been wine drinking.

Colomb was asked rhetorically whether coffee was harmful to the inhabitants of Marseilles. He answered that anywhere that coffee had penetrated it had become a tyrannical drink, that it created a violent passion for its consumption, and he added another danger: “Among us it would need very little [coffee], that because of the


great qualities attributed to it, it would abolish the usage of wine.” He brought up serious health issues such as the drying of the kidneys due to the burning of the blood and lymph through the violent energy of coffee. His dissertation clearly centered the debate on the issue around the threat of a foreign beverage displacing France’s favorite national product, wine. He went on to explain that there was no good reason for this: the color, odor, and substance of coffee were all far inferior to that of wine. Therefore why should we drink it in France, he asked? Should we drink it because the Arabs have called it bon? Here he was playing on coffee’s name in Arabic, bun, which is very close the French word bon. Bon in French means good, and Colomb implied that only the Arabs found it good. Colomb was pointing to coffee as exotic, as an Arab taste, to argue that it should not become a French taste. There were ele-ments of Marseillais xenophobia in Colomb through the identifi cation of wine as the domestic drink of France, while coffee was foreign.

It became evident that the merchants of Marseilles may have had a hand in public outcry against a new product, the importation of which they did not control. That Colomb’s dissertation was defended in City Hall, the domain of the provost of the merchants of the city of Marseilles, is extremely telling of Colomb’s sponsorship. It turned out that some physicians from Provence also sponsored Colomb; two doctors on the faculty of Aix, Castillion and Fouqué, had thrown a freshman like Colomb into the fl ames of the budding controversy over coffee. Colomb was required to do this to graduate, and the title of his thesis was Question de médecine proposée par Messieurs Castillons et Fouque, docteurs de la faculté d’Aix, à Monsieur Colomb. His work was most certainly supported by the Marseillais merchants, whose liveli-hood was the imports and exports in the Mediterranean harbor. Wine was a major French export to the rest of Europe and beyond and was part of Marseilles’s brisk business. The merchants of Marseilles had even sent Colbert petitions to ban the commerce of the Armenians and Jews from the Levant from the port of Marseilles. Among other goods that irked the Marseillais, like silk and cotton cloth, the Arme-nians were the chief importers of coffee at this date.60

The merchants of Marseilles demanded that a tax of twenty percent be levied on all merchandise brought into the port on foreign ships, or on all cargo belonging to a foreign merchant on a French ship. When Colbert issued an edict in 1669 that revoked the ban on foreign traders, it potentially encouraged Armenians to trade in Marseilles, and the twenty-percent tax due from foreigners remained the last protec-tionist measure to aid the Marseillais. It was shortly after the arrival of a large group of Armenian traders in Marseilles that Colomb fi red off his dissertation instead of yet another petition to Colbert. It is possible that larger shipments of coffee arrived from the Levant in the wake of this new freedom, although because they were not part of French trade they are very elusive to trace. Nevertheless an acceleration of imports by foreign merchants, thanks to Colbert’s encouragement, would justify the vehemence of Colomb’s rhetoric better than, as La Roque contended, a tiny café and the consumption of some Turkish coffee by galley slaves.


Colbert’s intentions were clear concerning the Armenians and the Jews. He en-couraged their trade in France, and did just what he had done with the East India Company: opened it to foreigners with experience, in the hope that it would benefi t France. He wrote to the baron of Oppède, who was in charge of the application of the 1669 treaty concerning the franchise of Marseilles: “I pray you should give the Armenians all the protection that the authority of your offi ce will permit you, to preserve them from all the annoyances of the local inhabitants who do not see what constitutes the advantage of their commerce.”61 In 1686, he continued his policy of protecting Armenian commerce. In 1687 the court began to be irked by the advan-tage that the English were gaining by conducting commerce through the Armenian houses established in Marseilles, so an edict of October 21, 1687 forbade the Arme-nians to engage in trade in the city of Marseilles. There was another issue behind this that it will be explored further, and that was the trade and production of calicoes or indiennes.

As will be demonstrated further, Louis XIV decided to make coffee a French habit by creating a French monopoly of it in 1692. There was some exploration and plan-ning before the monopoly. The year of Colbert’s prohibition against Armenian trade, 1687, is also the year de Blégny was ordered to write his essay on the new exotic bev-erages. The disgrace of the royal physician in 1693, not long after the coffee monop-oly imposed by Louis, might have been further precipitated by the doctor’s habit of self-promotion. The king was interested in the sale and consumption of coffee. Nico-las de Blégny’s ideas about how to eliminate the harmful “terrestrial particules” of coffee to sell his own remedies were not welcome at court. The voices of the doctors who decried coffee became eerily absent during this episode of royal sponsorship, reminding one that this was an era of royal censorship and sponsorship.

Well after Louis XIV’s death, when cafés were opened in Paris and drinking coffee was no longer new, the medical debates continued, as some still viewed cof-fee as dangerous. In 1718 a dissertation candidate demonstrated that the use of coffee did not cause apoplexy.62 More importantly, a dissertation by a doctor from Grenoble recommended making it milder and drinking it as café au lait, which soon became a staple beverage in France.63 The addition of local milk to coffee tied the exotic grain both physically and psychologically to the French terroir. The territory of France, its green pastures and its grass-fed cows, entered the cup, diluting the black beverage to sweeten its bitterness and foreignness with white milk. The addition of white sugar was a welcome habit too, as that also would economically serve French commerce through the many new French sugar refi neries sponsored by Colbert to refi ne the sugar from the Caribbean colonies within France.64

Yet there still was some very serious medical opposition to coffee even when sweetened with sugar from the French Antilles refi ned in France and weakened by the addition of French milk. The defense of coffee’s moderate usage was fa-mously raised by a certain Daniel Duncan, who had a very prestigious opponent: the very Catholic Philippe Hecquet (1661–1737). Hecquet, like Patin before him,


became dean of the Faculty of Medicine of Paris and a staunch defender of the Paris school of medicine against its rival Montpellier. Philippe Hequet was a mechanist, like many in the wake of Descartes’s ideas. He presented his views on coffee in a Traité des dispenses du carême (1709). He was a theologian as much as a doctor, and was very concerned with maintaining sexual continence in the Catholic priesthood through diet; he was convinced that “coffee was the perfect remedy against sexual incontinence.”65 This does not mean that he advocated coffee drinking for the general public, just for the masculine cohorts that entered the priesthood, and only for its instrumentality in supporting chastity. If coffee helped the clergy keep their vows of chastity, it had adapted to its new Christian society and served the moral good of society; for all others, Hecquet thought, coffee was a bad habit. His focus was on di-gestion, and he wrote De Digestion et des Maladies de l’Estomac; Suivant le systeme de la Trituration & du Broyement, sans l’aide des Levains ou de Fermentation, dont on fait voir l’impossibilité en santé & en maladie (1712) in order to argue against the use of coffee in the general public.

Jean de La Roque wrote about his views: “Hecquet, a Doctor of Paris, who, in his Treatise des Dispenses de Carême printed at Paris by Leonard, 1709, reproaches the French ‘with Drinking like the Arabs,’ and that they indulge a barbarous Taste,” which is, says he, much to be dreaded.66 His theories on digestion were opposed to the views of Raymond Vieussens (1641–1715), one of the most celebrated physi-cians of the Montpellier school. Famous for his anatomical studies of veins and the valves of the heart, Vieussens studied in Montpellier in 1670, where he became the top physician at the main hospital. He left for Paris to become Mlle de Monpensier’s doctor. In Paris, Vieussens met Philippe Hecquet, a doctor with conservative Galenic views. Hecquet used the taste the Arabs had for drinking coffee as a negative attri-bute, to discourage the French from adopting such an oriental habit. Coffee drinking was “barbarous,” largely because using these new drugs was anathema to Galenic ideas: Coffee was never mentioned by the Greeks.

Greek medical knowledge came under fi re during the reign of Louis XIV. As con-troversy was raging over coffee, the usage of coffee fell within a climate of fracture and rivalry caused by what has been coined the “antimony war” between Galenists and antimony chemists, the latter based in Montpellier.67 It was believed in France that antimony’s effects on the digestive tract had been discovered by a Benedictine monk, Basil Valentine. He had fed it to the monastery pigs, who had immediately prospered. Antimony burns and had killed the pigs’ intestinal parasites, helping them fatten in a speedy fashion.68 Delighted, Basil gave some antimony to his fel-low monks, who did not prosper, and some even died, as it is a poisonous substance. Named (anti-moine) in France subsequent to this experiment, it took more than a century for it to come into fashion again. Vallot, a Montpellier doctor, made a vessel from antimony, fi lled it with wine and diluted antimony, and gave it to Louis XIV. It is an emetic and it might have saved Louis: twenty excretions and several bouts of vomiting were recorded after Vallot made him swallow the wine.69 Although in


France, the king’s cure by antimony had ended the antimony war in 1660, contro-versy over digestives had shifted to other drugs, among them coffee.

By 1711 coffee was considered a digestive and was being served in France as a digestive at the end of the meal, as it still is today, which this poem makes clear:

Malgré la bonne chère (despite a good meal),Le convive est chagrin (the guest is chagrined)Si votre caffetière (if the coffee pot)Ne fi nit le festin (does not end the feast).70

Aside from the addition of milk to create café au lait, coffee had not undergone any of its future European incarnations; it was still served Turkish style, and it was not considered a common French beverage. The medical controversies over coffee, however, also left a glimpse of the diluted coffee that was to become customary in Europe much later. The café à la sultane was the fi rst and rather extreme French incarnation of the Turkish brew. This form of à la sultane coffee, which would have probably induced some hilarity in Istanbul, was an infusion of coffee husks, thrown out in the Ottoman empire, rather than the thick brew that was normally served. It was the brain child of a certain doctor, Nicolas de Bois-Regard Andry (1658–1742), a professor at the Collège du Roi, who advised just using the husk of the coffee bean and letting it infuse after boiling it. Or one could do the same to whole beans, as a weak infusion meant no harm to the stomach.71 Yet in France coffee itself had lost its black color, according to some observers. Nicolas de Blégny wrote that if coffee was sold preground it had already been considerably weakened by at least a third from the addition of ground favas or peas.72 Nevertheless, even coffee full of pea powder was viewed as a luxury and a potent drug, which justifi ed the high prices it commanded. The color of brewed coffee was close to that of tea.

Andry was also the author of a compendium on tea.73 Several Europeans had written about tea, notably the Dutch. It was brought to France as early as 1636 by the Dutch, who imported it from China. Decades later the famous cooking manual Le Nouveau Cuisinier Royal et Bourgeois stated that tea was less common than cof-fee because it was not as cheap.74 Tea later came to know the same fate as coffee; it went through the same medical discussions of its properties. As a result of these new exotic drinks and debates that awoke the public’s curiosity, several very important books were written about tea, coffee, and chocolate in France in the late seventeenth century. Chocolate was much beloved at court and was adopted from the Spanish. It was popular before coffee and could have in some ways helped coffee’s dissemina-tion, because both were beverages made from luxurious imported goods. In a recent article on chocolate, the author argues for direct evidence that coffee was recognized as a cognate of chocolate. Such identifi cation is found in Spanish and French sources, such as Carta qve escrivió vn Médico cristiano, que estava curando en Antiberi, a vn Cardenal de Roma, sobre la bebida del Cahuè o café.75


Marcy Norton notices that in the early seventeenth century a Spanish doctor visiting the Ottoman Empire observed “this new drink coffee … so common among the Turks, Persians, and Moors” through his knowledge of chocolate because he called the special coffee cups used by the Turks by the hispanized pre-Columbian term used for chocolate vessels: jícaras. He also referred to the vessel used to boil the water as “a glass pot or a tin-covered chocolatera with a spout … they add a spoonful of ground sugar as with Chocolate, and stir it with a silver spoon and drink it by sipping it like Chocolate, as hot as they can take it.”76 All of the early European treatises grouped together chocolate, coffee, and tea in order to describe their usage; a clear indication that they were viewed as having much in common. Additionally, as will be discussed in the next chapter, in France the sale of chocolate and coffee fell to the same guild.77 Nevertheless, despite medical resistance and intellectual opposi-tion to the new drug, there are other elements that came into play in coffee’s success at becoming France’s favorite exotic beverage and later, cheek to cheek with wine, France’s national drink.

– 183 –

–7–

A “Barbarous Taste”The Transmission of Coffee Drinking

After the departure of the [Ottoman] Embassadour that Fashion was continued by several Persons, who found means to get Coffee, by having it brought from Marseille or else-where. At last came to that City an Armenian, whose name was Pascal, who in the Year 1672, took up to sell Coffee publickly at the Fair of Saint Germain; after which he set up a little Shop upon the Quai de l’Ecole, where he gave Coffee for two Sols six deniers.1

Jean de La Roque, 1716

In Audigier’s 1692 treatise La maison bien reglée there is information about the very early arrival of coffee to Paris.2 Audigier was a master of ceremonies, to the countess of Soissons and later to Colbert. He went to Italy in the 1660s to learn about mak-ing the new beverages of tea, coffee, and chocolate. He hoped to open the fi rst Paris shop serving exotic beverages. He applied to get permission to open an Italian-style establishment to serve coffee and many other beverages. His application was fraught with bureaucratic diffi culties. According to Audigier, his failure was due to a politi-cal contretemps: his request had been supported a lady who had fallen out of favor. Meanwhile, Armenians had been importing bales of coffee beans into France for decades but not fi nding much of a market for it; according to Audgier’s own work La maison reglé, a “levantine” attempted to sell coffee beans as early as 1643 in a covered passage that existed between the Rues Saint Jacques and the Petit Pont. Cardinal Mazarin (1602–1661) brought his own coffee maker from Italy, a certain More. Audigier used the word More as if it were a fi rst name. It is most probably the French term for Moor. The Ottoman ambassador’s visit to Paris brought the fashion of coffee drinking to the elites in 1669. Yet coffee was already brewed in France; not only was it served in court to Mazarin, it was more widely known beyond the court at least three years before the Ottoman ambassador arrived, as a 1666 poem attests. In this trite poem, the poet complained of a headache and fears the usual bloodletting, saignée, and instead the poet preferred coffee, kave:

Ce mot Kave vous surprend! (The word Kave surprises you!)C’est une liqueur arabesque. (It’s an Arab liquor.)Ou bien si vous voulez turquesque (Or better, Turkish if you like)


Quand dans le Levant chacun en prend. (When in the Levant everyone takes it.)On s’en sert en Afrique, on s’en sert en Asie, (They serve it in Africa and Asia,)Elle a passé dans l’Italie, (It passed into Italy,)En Hollande et chez les Anglois (Into Holland and England)Où on la trouve fort utile, (Where one fi nds it more useful,)Et des Arméniens qui sont en cette ville (And some of the Armenians in this city)L’apportent encore au François.3 (Still bring it to the French.)

It is clear from this poem that, just as Galland asserted decades later, the Armenians were seen as the transmitters of coffee drinking to France as early as 1666. To the best of anyone’s knowledge no cafés were open, but they had began selling coffee earlier according to Audigier. Arguments for fi rsts are always ex nihilo, and one can only rely on what was fi rst documented. Coffee was viewed as “Arabic or rather Turkish” as the poem states, three years before the arrival of the Turkish ambassador in 1669. One also sees in the poem that the medical ideas of the Montpellier school, swallowing coffee for a headache, prevailed over the dreaded saignée of the Paris doctors. The poem, like most of the literature about coffee, was produced by the elite for the elite, as coffee consumption was a luxury for a privileged group.

The cultural-functionalist tradition among historians of consumerism assumes that taste follows discourse or a dominant ideology, a mentalité. This sometimes leaves out how a mentalité was forged in the fi rst place; orientalists and travelers partici-pated in forging this mentalité as authorities on the Orient, sometimes well before coffee became a generally known beverage. The study of coffee in Paris suggests a complex relationship between taste, fashion, politics, commerce, and discourse. Discourse sometimes predated the general use of coffee. Medical discourse was often derived from earlier disputes in the Ottoman empires and came to Europe, such as it did through Edward Pocoke’s translation, before the consumption of coffee in cafés. Coffee became so successful in the Parisian literary circles in the eighteenth century that there was a profusion of poems, songs, and plays written about coffee after its consumption. Here it is argued that a taste for coffee was constructed simultaneously on several levels, refuting the vertical “trickle down” model popularized by Norbert Elias. Nevertheless, because of the written record it is still hard to escape studying the elite, even if this elite can be broken down into several groups.

Elias’s helpful model of social analysis argues that habits were adopted in imita-tion of the court by the powerful and then by the bourgeoisie. This is a standard expla-nation for the spread of fashion and manners. Elias argues that the court was imitated in order for the imitator to participate in the social circles of power. Everyone had to master their passions and watch their manners in order to have a calculated behavior signaling one belonged. In acquiring this etiquette, which was key to rising in the hierarchy, imitation and restraint was crucial. He wrote specifi cally with the French court in mind, as under Louis XIV it was the most powerful court in Europe and it became an arbiter of taste and fashion.4 The king was at the center of this system, like

A “Barbarous Taste” • 185

the sun was the center of the planetary system.5 What Elias argues for the process of civilization and adopting habits holds true on one level for the purposes of diffusion of coffee, as once at court, coffee got a social blessing. Yet what is suggested below is that a taste for coffee appeared in several groups of society simultaneously; the taste for the beverage was spread by an Ottoman ambassador at court as well as by Armenians who served coffee to the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie in the fi rst cafés, almost simultaneously. At the same time La Roque tells us a Greek street vendor, Candiot, served coffee from a pot on his back.6

The diverse aspects of the discourse in France about coffee examined through royal edicts, the writing of courtesans, merchants, botanists, orientalists, the guilds, and the master steward to Colbert’s household help dissipate the concept of a mono-lithic and state-centered teleological orientalist discourse that falls ubiquitously under the umbrella of imperialism. While Louis XIV was offered absurd hopes for the conquest of Istanbul, many different views emerged about the Orient; at court when coffee drinking became a focus of discourse the Ottomans were imitated.7 The French elite, and at times the court, mimicked the Ottomans, dressed as a sultan or sultana drinking coffee. Adopting the trappings of another court was a sign of admi-ration for the refi nement and luxury of that court.

The late seventeenth-century scientifi c interest in exotic products and drugs such as coffee was part of the court’s agenda, yet the success of coffee in Paris cannot directly be tied to Louis XIV’s (1638–1715) court. The descriptions that follow, of the disastrous monopolies granted by Louis XIV, make clear that one cannot look at coffee as a well-crafted royal project. Nevertheless, as will be clear, once coffee was successful in Paris, Louis XIV directly attempted to use the new fashion of coffee drinking for his own political advantage to raise funds for his European wars, and this impeded the spread of coffee drinking. The hope to promote coffee backfi red. Yet, as will be apparent from Madame de Sévigné’s correspondence, Elias’s model still holds for courtesans, as the infl uence of the court on fashion and taste cannot be dismissed in favoring or hampering coffee drinking.

Trade played a role that was well beyond the control of the court, despite Louis’s mercantilist policies. Long familiar with coffee drinking in the Ottoman empire, the Armenians who traveled to Europe helped to establish coffee in several European cities. Marseilles was the principal port for coffee in France. The fi rst French café opened in that port. The Armenians opened several of the fi rst cafés especially in Paris, but also in Vienna and London. The use of coffee drinking spread slowly to most of Europe after 1645 and very rapidly after 1670.8 The VOC and EEIC brought small shipments of coffee to northern Europe, and La Roque notes that the fi rst ship-ment of coffee to France was imported from Turkey by an Armenian and reached the port of Marseilles in 1644. He did not mention coffee being sold in Paris in 1643 near the Pont Neuf, as did Audigier. Contrary to Audigier, La Roque claimed that Venice received coffee about two decades earlier, making it the fi rst European port to import coffee.9 The race between France and Italy for supremacy continued under


the pens of La Roque and Audigier, and it is hard to know which piece of information to privilege as to the fi rst port to receive coffee.

Neither Audigier nor La Roque had a stake in writing of the Armenian coffee-house owners or of the Ottoman origins of coffee, even if things oriental were fashion-able. It was not coffee itself but its consumption that was important to transforming European habits. It was the opening of public cafés that was crucial. Few footnotes in the voluminous history of trade have had such revolutionary and global socioeco-nomic consequences as the introduction of cafés to Europe, especially in France.

The role of the Armenian diaspora in the spread of new products in Europe is not well known. The role of the Jews in the chocolate trade is a little better known than that of the Armenians in the coffee trade, but both deserve to be highlighted. Both were ideal agents of cross-cultural exchange. While the Armenians were specialists in Eurasian cross-cultural trade and played a considerable role in popularizing cof-fee, their role was not unique. The Sephardic Jews played a role in importing and spreading the usage of American chocolate in Europe via their Atlantic trade, espe-cially in the Dutch Republic, where they took refuge after being expelled from Spain and Portugal in 1492.10 The Sephardic Jews were introduced to chocolate in Portu-gal and Spain in the sixteenth century and they carried it further north with them. Just as coffee was becoming better known, by the end of the seventeenth century American chocolate became widely consumed as a drink in European courts. These two major trade diaspora, the Armenians and the Jews, are only recently being well studied to expose their important role in world trade.11 These new products were not regulated. Their role as outsiders establishing themselves in a craft in France or the Dutch Republic was not impeded by the guilds until later, when the guilds caught up with the new products and took over the profi t and the distribution of these exotic goods. Coffee was responsible for some tumultuous changes in the guilds as well. Its case highlights and illustrates like no other Louis XIV’s new custom of selling the permissions for the crafts and the court’s invasion of the legal domain of the guilds, usually under the legislation of the city of Paris. There had been a precedent for the royal invasion of what the guilds considered their own territory under Henri IV, but the methods used by Louis to raise money for his European wars were less scrupu-lous. Despite the resistance expressed in medical literature, coffee’s usage spread far and wide.

A New “Barbarous” Fashion: The Spread of Coffee Drinking

The issue of taste and fashion is at the heart of many current debates among histori-ans of consumption. We saw that physicians like Colomb, opposed to coffee, argued that coffee imposed itself as a tyrannical taste, a foreign Arab taste. Some went as far as qualifying it a barbarous taste.12 Although the concept of addiction was not contemporary to Colomb’s dissertation in the 1670s and emerged over a century


later, this was what Colomb was arguing by using the word tyranny. As for the term tyranny, since Jean Bodin tyranny was oriental despotic rule without consent. The new taste for coffee had imposed itself on the French against their will. Doctors argued that coffee could not be good because it was foreign, it was dark, ugly, and bitter, as opposed to wine, which was French, beautiful in color, and tasted good. Nevertheless, despite all its faults, Colomb believed coffee would win, imposing itself through tyranny alone.13 French self-identifi cation with Greeks made calling an oriental good barbarous, as Hecquet had done, a natural insult. A foreign beverage was conquering the French without the consumer’s consent.

Coffee was much more common by 1716, the date La Roque’s work was pub-lished. La Roque clearly names fi ve Armenians as the pioneering force in spreading coffee drinking in Paris. Thanks to La Roque’s careful survey of the fi rst maison de café opened in Marseilles and Paris, the name of each café owner is recorded. It is fascinating that in orientalist fashion, La Roque’s treatise on coffee had an Ottoman model. La Roque proudly stated that his survey of the maisons de café was in imita-tion of a Turkish historian who had surveyed the fi rst maison de café in Constanti-nople. He recorded the names of the fi rst men who opened these public places in Paris for the sake of history.14

If coffee was known in France since the 1640s, the new fashion for its consump-tion was certainly augmented by the visit of the Ottoman ambassador to Versailles in 1669, and also by the visit of the Persian ambassador to Louis XIV in 1715.15 The court of Louis XIV set the fi rst trend for coffee drinking for a few courtesans in Versailles. Sultan Mehemet IV (1642–1693) had allegedly sent an ambassador the French sources called Soliman Aga Mustapha Raca, a man described to be in his fi fties. The diary of Olivier Lefèvre d’Ormesson (1610?–1686) is the best source for this visit, as he documented it in great detail.16 Louis XIV had designed a special outfi t for this visit, which was embroidered with so many diamonds that d’Ormesson estimated their value at 14 million livres. The royal throne was set at the end of a long gallery that was decorated with silk and brocade drapery, precious tapestries, pre-cious vases, and tables made of silver.17 The courtesans around the king were dressed in their best in an attempt to imitate him, and they were described as “tous brillans de pierreries,” shining with gems.18

The Ottoman ambassador seemed unimpressed by this display, as he arrived dressed very simply. According to d’Ormesson he walked slowly, with dignity, and handed the king a letter from the sultan, demanding it to be read, and allegedly re-marking that his master’s horse had more diamonds than the king of France. Louis said he would look at it and respond. The Turkish ambassador complained that the king had not stood up from his throne to receive him, and said he had been disre-spected. Louis responded that he was receiving as was his custom, and the Turkish envoy left quite malcontented.19 The envoy left for the lodgings he had occupied in Paris, where he very eagerly receive the ladies of the elite with a cup of coffee. Some sources make clear that he was a bostanci, a head gardener—as discussed,


Franco-Ottoman relations suffered from the slight. Yet during the long months it took the ambassador to be received at court he successfully represented the Ottomans to the Parisians by spreading one of their social habits, receiving guests with coffee. The consequences of his presence on coffee drinking in Paris were important.

He offered the Parisian elite a beverage new to the capital: a small cup of bitter Turkish coffee. He was the object of great curiosity. The interior of his dwellings was reminiscent of the most opulent lodgings in Constantinople; the French gazettes described that visitors sat on soft cushions among exquisite fabrics and exotic orna-ments and were served coffee by young beautiful slaves in gorgeous Turkish cos-tume. Along with the coffee served in small porcelain cups, the slaves handed out precious napkins made of damask and fringed with gold thread. The ambassador added sugar to the coffee when this was requested, and the beverage was the object of many comments in the Parisian press.20

Soon after the Turkish visit of 1669, Parisian street merchants began serving cof-fee. The beans had been purchased at the one and only Parisian coffee store, located in Faubourg St. Honoré, and owned by an Armenian.21 The creation of a new institu-tion, the one that took the name of café and remains associated with France in most minds, was the venue where the Parisians could get a prise.

Three Armenians and the First Parisian Maisons de Café

A cup of coffee was often referred to as une prise de café in formal documents setting prices.22 La Roque recorded that in the year 1672 an Armenian named Pascal who had arrived via Marseilles opened a café fi rst in the rue du Louvres then at the quai de l’Ecole.23 Previously he had served coffee at a major fair held annually in Paris. His maison de coava was by some accounts a replica of the ones in Constantinople, deco-rated with Turkish trappings, where black slave boys carried silver trays of coffee among the public sitting in the 140 booths set up annually at the fair of St. Germain.24 La Roque described Pascal’s cafés on rue du Louvre and the quai de l’Ecole as being small and mainly frequented by the Knights of Malta and foreigners and travelers familiar with the Orient. This was such a small clientele that he gave up on Paris and left to open shop in London, where coffee was better known, as the English had been drinking coffee since the 1650s.25

The fi rst Parisian café is often erroneously said to be the Procope, which still exists today—albeit as a restaurant—in the area of St. Germain-des-Prés. It was established around 1675. Scholars studying the history of consumption know that the Procope was not the fi rst café, despite what many tourist guides purport.26 The owner, a certain Procopio dei Cortelli, a Sicilian, had worked as a waiter in the fi rst Parisian café, operated by Pascal the Armenian. Pascal soon had another Arme-nian as a successor, who went by the gallicized name Maliban. Near the Abbaye of St. Germain, Maliban opened a café on rue de Bussy, which he later moved to rue


Férou, near St. Sulpice. Proximity to churches meant clients. La Roque wrote that the fi rst establishment was not closed; Maliban kept it and returned to rue de Bussy but did not stay long to work there.27 Unlike the Procope, these two cafés no longer exist. Maliban also sold tobacco, another new product, which was associated with coffee drinking in Cairo, Isfahan, Istanbul, and elsewhere in the Near East. After a while in the coffee shop business, Maliban too suddenly left France for Holland. A “Christianized Persian” named Gregor, who had been Maliban’s assistant, took over his café.28 What the sources called a Christianized Persian was almost certainly an Armenian from Isfahan, Persia. Gregor decided to add literature, a new attraction, to his café. Would it not be a smart move to make cafés more similar to what they were in Persia, forums for poetry, literature, and theater? In 1685 Gregor thought it pru-dent to move to rue Mazarin, next to the Comédie Française, to attract its intellectual clientele. Jean de La Roque’s descriptions of Gregor’s cafés were picked up by many writers, and centuries later H. E. Jacobs saw this move as the birth of a new public sphere, the fi rst café-theâtre in Paris, despite the fact that the Armenian’s refreshment house was in no way linked to the Comédie Française, although it certainly profi ted by its proximity.

Gregor became successful and later left his café to an acquaintance named Markar, described by La Roque as a Persian. Markar is clearly an Armenian name. La Roque himself said that Maliban and Gregor were Armenians who came from Isfahan, so they were most likely Julfan Armenians, as most probably was Markar.29 They prob-ably came to France from the well-known suburb of New Julfa, where the Armenians lived in close contact with many French visitors to Iran, among the more famous of whom were Chardin and Tavernier, who entered into business agreements with prominent Armenian families. Given the constant commercial contacts, it would not be surprising to fi nd Julfan Armenians in the middle of Paris. They most probably remained foreign, although some Armenians became French nationals by converting to Catholicism.30 Gregor’s maison de coava on rue Fétou was left to a man called le Gantois upon Gregor’s departure.31 Although not documented by La Roque, Arme-nian ownership of cafés did not disappear, as we will see. Audigier was angered by the success of the Armenians as late as 1692.

These two cafés opened by Armenians were not far from where Procopio initially opened his coffeehouse, the third café to open in Paris. Over the two centuries that it operated, the Procope became a literary café and a center for political discussions that allegedly attracted the likes of Voltaire and Rousseau in the eighteenth cen-tury.32 Most importantly, Procopio dei Cortelli’s establishment was where the sale of coffee as a beverage fi rst fell under guild rule. It is perhaps because of the guild records making it the fi rst legal café that it is considered to be the fi rst café. However, coffee escaped guild rules for some time. In his luxurious café, unlike in the fi rst two based on Ottoman coffee houses, ladies were quite welcome and the clientele was a chosen one. The highly successful Procope was refi ned, fashionable, and integrated the new luxuries. Decorated with the new large mirrors from Saint Gobain, paintings,


and chandeliers, it occupied the entire lower level of three houses. The refi nement of the decor and the new luxuries attracted a much vaster clientele, who according to La Roque also appreciated the orientalism of the costumes worn by the waiters. Within this very aristocratic French décor, Procopio dressed the waiters in what French records refer to erroneously as Armenian dress (see Chapter 9), since coffee remained strongly associated with the Armenians and the Orient in the imagination of the sophisticated seventeenth-century Parisians.

A rare work published in 1700 gives a description of what was consumed in Pa-risian coffee houses and when. It states that the usual time Parisians went to the café was when returning from different kinds of venues, most commonly after church in the morning. Two friends gave in to some excess when they decided to go to the café after hearing a sermon in church: “they entered at ‘the Armenians’ where they ordered liqueurs and biscuits, as few limit themselves to just drinking a cup of cof-fee, which is often the excuse for excess.” Clearly the author was pointing out that the Armenian cafés served more than coffee and that he was believed that coffee was an excuse for all “even greater excess.”33 So much for coffee displacing liquors. There were many cafés by 1716, and the 300 that Jean de La Roque cited were no longer Armenian establishments. There was, however, an oriental, not to say orien-talist, style to these establishments. Jean de La Roque wrote that the frequenting of cafés was initiated by the upper class (gens de qualité), and that within these cafés one found the most magnifi cent objects the Orient could offer; the gold and silver spent there was nothing compared to the rare Chinese porcelains and furniture that decorated them.34 In true orientalist fashion, the leap from Turkish decors to Chinese ones was not a problem; the vogue for chinoiserie was just beginning, and the Turk-ish decors made fashionable by the Ottoman ambassador in 1669 were now nearly half a century old.

The King and the Guilds and the End of Armenian Coffee Houses

In the 1660s the European East India Companies brought coffee directly from Mocha, in relatively small quantities at a value of a thousand pounds sterling, brought in with other cargo both by the Dutch in 1661 and the English in 1664. Italy and France, better established in the Levant trade, were still supplied by Armenian and Turkish merchants. In 1692 Louis XIV, in good mercantilist spirit, decided to give the monopoly of the sale of coffee to a Frenchman François Damame. This juncture changed French attitudes toward coffee after the court sought to control the sale of coffee as a beverage and to profi t from it.

In an edict promulgated on March 12, 1693, soon after the monopoly was granted to Damame, the king declared that any of the crafts that had previously remained free were to be made into corporations or guilds; that producers were to immedi-ately pay 300 livres to the king’s treasury for their royal privilege. The guild of the


Limonadiers et marchands d’eau de vie (Lemonade and spirit merchants), who had been selling coffee for nearly a decade, did not pay up. A manual published in 1705 called Le Parfait Limonadier ou la manière de preparer le thé, le café, et le chocolat & autre liqueurs chaudes & froides (The Perfect Lemonade Seller or the Manner in Which to Prepare Tea, Coffee and Chocolate) was written by one such guild member, Pierre Masson. His work gives an idea of the wealth of spirits, beverages, and fresh juices sold by a limonadier in the seventeenth century. It is remarkably similar to the last part of Audigier’s La Maison bien reglée, which gives la veritable manière de faire toutes sortes d’eaux et de liqueurs à la mode d’Italie (the true manner of making all kinds of waters and liquors in the Italian fashion), as Masson gave identi-cal recipes for tea, coffee, and chocolate. Most beverages described by Masson and Audigier were distillations based on spices, fl owers, and fruits, and if time has made some of them exotic to today’s reader, many were exotic even then.

The guild’s name, which was coined at its inception in 1634, came from lemons and oranges, both prized for their perfume and taste. After over a century of presence in royal gardens, oranges were still grown in Versailles for their exoticism. The guild also had the confection and sale of any compotes of fruits, crème glace (ice cream), as well as sweets in the form of pastille, a candy made from ground spices, under its exclusive rights.35 The guild was divided into the distillers and the confectioners; the sweets were the domain of the confectioners, the beverages that of the distillers. For the sale of coffee as a beverage, Louis XIV eventually sold the maîtrise (mastery) of the newly reorganized guild of limonadiers for fi fty livres to anyone applying. In doing so he was ignoring the existing guild, which was not complying with his demands for money. In the guild he imposed there was no need for apprenticeship or skill, coffee houses fell under the jurisdiction of the limonadier, and one needed only to pay for membership.

This greatly irked the famous Audigier, who much earlier in 1660 had hoped to be unique, but never received the last seal he needed to open shop; as a consequence, he had to return to private service in the Colbert household. Now, in 1693, after over thirty years of waiting, Audigier, who had mastered coffee and sherbets in Italy at his own expense, fi nally received his lettre de maîtrise without paying. The much disgruntled Audigier wrote of the king’s new initiative: “So one has made masters of two hundred ignorants gathered from the dregs of the people for fi fty écu.” He went on to say that had he been consulted he would have organized things better and made it so that only those qualifi ed would pay the king more for the privilege of selling the new beverage. His plan, he boasted, would have generated 100,000 francs for the king from Paris alone. An irate Audigier wrote that instead “the four hundred now established have not given the King more than ten to twelve thousand francs all together, because they are ignorant and heartless and without will, as they let the Armenians eat their bread right in front of their own faces.”36

The nineteenth-century historian Alfred Franklin analyzed the situation and be-lieved that the Armenians that Audigier mentioned were simply included as other


new masters were in this new corporation. Each master could only have one appren-tice; there were four jurors for the craft and they visited all shops twice a year. Once these fi rst masters were established without formal apprenticeship, it was required that apprentices do three years and a chef d’oeuvre before becoming masters. Sons were the only ones exempt, and sons-in-law were not required to do the hardest last step, the chef-d’oeuvre. This new laxity was against guild rules. It successfully at-tracted outsiders, who had not initially been part of the limonadiers and would have created real competition for them, had Louis’s initiative been successful.

The newly formed corporation membership was initially so successful that the king regretted having given certifi cates away for so little, so in 1704 he dissolved the corporation and had all the masters reimbursed, only to immediately form another one reserved for only a maximum of 150 limonadiers based in Paris. Was he infl u-enced by Audigier? The masters would own their craft, but at the price of 100,000 francs each, because of the advantage in concentrating trade in fewer hands. The limonadiers both old and new were upset and negotiated. They offered to pay double if their existing corporation was left alone, so the king immediately dissolved the 1704 corporation and complied with this demand, predicting great profi ts ahead. In these statutes new exotic products were added that did not exist in the statutes of the 1670s held by the limonadiers, notably tea, chocolate, and vanilla. These new products alone should have brought in a fortune for the king. Chocolate was a luxury that was all the rage at court; it was laced with spices, a Spanish fashion: “Chocolate is a composition of cocoa from Spain, vanilla, clove, cinnamon, mace and sugar that is turned into a paste.”37

These sales of the novelty products and of coffee should have insured great pros-perity and success for the corporation, but the legislative aspects and the fi nancial demands made by the court destroyed the corporation and its commerce. Louis XIV farmed out the reimbursement promise for 1704 to the limonadiers to a man named Lescuyer, who was to then collect the debts owed to the king for the higher fees by a larger group of 500 masters. In 1713 these fees were still not collected, and only 138 masters had complied. These demands for high fees and court control “absolutely destroyed the community because of all the changes made to it and the pursuits made by creditors, who would seize even the private property of old and new masters.”38

Nevertheless, Louis had pursued a clear political agenda, encouraging the sale of these exotic beverages in order to make money for his wars. In 1692 the king had is-sued an edict that lamented the destiny of wine and viticulture in France. At the same time it slyly stated that because so few Frenchmen currently drank wine, and because wine was out of fashion, the king did not want to deprive his subjects of the new beverages that they were so fond of and that many judged so good for their health: “We have proposed to get some help from [their consumption] in the occurrence of the present war.” Louis XIV’s lament about wine was a feigned patriotic gesture; to declare wine out of fashion destroyed its reputation, and indeed, this was sly propa-ganda. Strict legislation was planned to enforce and control and also to encourage


sales of exotic beverages; their debit control was granted by an annual patent, for which one had to apply annually at the cost of 30 livres. More signifi cantly, as we mentioned before, on the larger scale of imports in the same year of 1692, Louis XIV gave the monopoly on coffee imports into France to the Frenchman François Dam-ame. On Louis’s orders Damame was granted the sole and exclusive rights to import and distribute coffee, and an edict was issued promising punishment for breaking a law that stated that any “vagabonds and gens sans aveu” who attempted to bring cof-fee beans, tea, chocolate, or vanilla into the kingdom would be punished by the whip and dispatched to the galleys.39

This was Louis’s attempt to concentrate the trade of exotic beverages in French hands. The edict had another fascinating aspect: wine, the drink of choice, previously a “national” drink, was portrayed as passé by Louis in this edict, and exotic bever-ages were touted as good for one’s health.40 Was this a reality or mere propaganda to support the sale of the newly monopolized product? The nineteenth-century French historian Franklin totally dismissed as ridiculous Louis’s view that the new drinks had replaced wine. In his view it was simply a device to bring money into the king’s treasury.41 One can add that the king was instrumental in setting trends at court and beyond. He infl uenced at least one courtier’s opinions; Madame de Sévigné’s view changed with fashion and fashion changed with policy.

Louis’s edict of 1692 setting a privilege for Damame had also imposed fi xed coffee prices. Coffee could only be sold at the high price of 4 francs per pound. The edict also set prices for tea at 100 francs per pound for the best, 50 for the mediocre, 30 for the common. The prices for chocolate and sherbet were fi xed at 6 francs and cocoa at 4 francs. As for vanilla, it was not sold in pounds but in pods and was priced at 18 francs for 50 pods. The prices of brewed beverages were also fi xed: to drink a cup of coffee, une prise de caffé, cost 3 sols and 6 deniers, and chocolate or sherbet cost 8 sols.42 Even before these prices were set by the state, in addition to his import monopoly, François Damame was given the exclusive right to debit these products for six years, making him oversee the corporation of limonadiers.43 Despite this royal effort to farm out and centralize both the imports and debits of exotic beverages, there was little success in enforcing the edict. Another document issued by the Con-seil du Roy urged the execution of the edict and spelled out punishments. These were no less severe than imprisonment in the Châtelet. Reading the edict points out that there was a good amount of smuggling and that the smuggling was done by a well-heeled elite. Those who managed to bring tea and coffee into France took ref-uge in castles, royal residences, and princely households in order to establish stores and sell completely unfettered.44

The enormous rise in prices created by state control under the royal edict of 1692 encouraged this smuggling. The consumption of exotic beverages severely declined under the debits controlled by the state. The hapless François Damame, alarmed at his small revenues and at the large debts he had incurred, asked as a favor that his royal privilege for the sale of coffee, tea, and chocolate be revoked. He maintained that his


profi ts would increase when these goods were sold freely. Instead, the import taxes were raised on coffee, tea, chocolate, and vanilla. This new profi t, of course, went to the treasury and not to Damame. Yet, the French court continued this lucrative habit of farming out the trade in coffee. In 1723 the Compagnie royale des Indes went bankrupt and it was decided to assign the privilege of the commerce of coffee to the company to save it and to make it at least solvent. The Compagnie already held the privilege of the monopoly on tobacco imports and sale. In several cafés smoking tobacco and drinking coffee were associated, so it seemed a logical step to pair both popular products as Compagnie products.

A long set of rules were promulgated making it imperative to sell coffee only in the offi ces of the Compagnie des Indes, in sacs that bore the company seal. Prices were set at 100 sous a pound.45 The entry of coffee imports was only authorized through the port of Marseilles.46 A set of severe punishments was clearly spelled out for infractions, including fustigation, banishment, and the galleys, unless one could pay the exorbitant fi nes that ranged between 1,000 and 3,000 livres. Save for the taxation on imports, however, there were no profi ts. The Compagnie did not profi t enough to want to enforce its privilege. The company also soon realized that the revenue it received from the sales did not cover the costs of all the administration attached to the control of sales. It also had its hands tied by high import taxes, which meant higher prices for retail sales, and this led to a decline in consumption. Like Damame’s three decades earlier, the privilege granted by the king cost the company money. Once again the taxes on imports went directly to the king’s treasury. This fi -nancial loss was not because coffee was not being consumed. It was a matter of who actually controlled the market and the cafés, as well as intensive smuggling.

A Recipe for Coffee

In the seventeenth century, preparation techniques were not those used in France or Italy today. Pascal the Armenian’s recipe came from the Near East, and as we have examined, stayed unchanged for a long time. Madame Sévigné’s (1626–1696) recipe for making coffee was from scratch: at the time coffee beans were sold in their shells and needed to be roasted. Over two pounds of beans were to be carefully shelled, then thrown into a frying pan and roasted until they turned nearly black, all the while tossing the beans carefully so that they remained equal in color. Then she advised using a mortar and pestle, or a mill if you owned one, to grind the beans. To a pint of boiling water one added two small spoons of coffee. She used the term coffee spoon, cuillère à café, attesting to how quickly this word was adopted in the French language. She advised that one should mix the coffee well and put the pot back on the stove until the coffee attempted to rise and foam. One was directed to always avoid the boiling point by lifting the pot from the stove and setting it down again as the foam descended. Her advice was to do this twelve times and add a whole


glass of water to the pot of coffee to make the coffee grains precipitate to the bottom. Then you were advised to let the coffee rest in the pot before serving it in cups, with powdered sugar offered on the side. Textually nothing was different from the source of this recipe, the jottings of the traveler Jean Thévenot.

Small cups were used to serve the beverage, but it seems coffee was not served as in the Middle East: very thick, sweet, and hot. One look at Madame de Sévigné’s ver-sion and one realizes coffee was served very diluted and lukewarm. An exceptional feature of the Parisian consumption of a cup of coffee was the habit of chewing the residue at the bottom of the cup as described by Madame de Sévigné. Coffee was expensive, which might well explain both the grain chewing and the dilution. Opin-ions on coffee, however, were as fi ckle as court fashion; after Marseilles’s public coffee burning, the court replaced coffee with a new fashion: clear broth and rice. Rice, another Eastern import, was taken as medicine, not as food. Coffee, it was now purported, was a slow poison that dangerously burned the organism. Madame de Sévigné was as much a slave to fashion as anyone else and gave her culinary opin-ions. She suddenly stopped using coffee in the 1680s. In the early 1690s coffee was all the rage again at the Versailles court and she was once again raving about the ex-cellence of coffee for one’s health. The use of milk and sugar in coffee was common. Madame de Sévigné objected to her daughter’s hatred for coffee. She wrote: “Why, my dearest one, do you say bad things of my coffee with milk? It is because you abhor milk, without it you will fi nd coffee to be the most beautiful thing.”47 Louis’s 1692 edict might explain this renewal of affection in the heart of the marquise, who a decade earlier had deplored its usage.

If we take the edict at face value, coffee was indeed a common French habit by 1692, but it was not yet seen as a French drink, even if it was a French habit. The Armenians were able to get into the coffee business because it was a new beverage, and, as was just discussed, it took decades to fall under the supervision of guilds in France. When Pascal opened his fi rst Parisian café, Louis had not yet made the fi rst very loose corporation of limonadiers under his reign, which dated to 1673. A paral-lel with the guilds in Austria highlights the importance of the shift that took place as coffee fell under guild legislation. To demonstrate how this gap in legislation helped bring in exotic products despite resistance, it is important to examine a second case. The fi rst coffee store in Vienna was also Armenian-owned.48

The original Viennese recipe for coffee was also initially identical to its prepara-tion in the Orient. Legend has it that coffee was brought to Vienna in bags abandoned when the Ottoman army fl ed after the siege of the city in 1683. The hero of this tale is a certain Georg Franz Kolschitzky (1640–1694). Despite the prevalence of this leg-end, it is now clear from documents studied in the Vienna archives that at least two coffee houses had opened in Vienna before this date. Permission had been granted to two Armenians, Johannes Diodato and Isaak de Luca, one by Emperor Leopold I, and the other by the city of Vienna. They are believed to have been the fi rst to sell coffee from permanent premises.49 Diodato, whose father was a convert to Roman


Catholicism, lived among the Viennese Armenian community and obtained the rights to sell Turkish goods in the city. In 1685, Diodato obtained the fi rst permit in Vienna to serve coffee in a public coffee house, although he had already operated as a coffee vendor earlier without a permit. He soon secured a royal monopoly from Leopold I on the sale of coffee in the city for two decades. Diodato’s commercial contacts with the Turks eventually brought him under political suspicion and he had to fl ee Vienna, abandoning his successful coffee house business to his wife. His exit from the coffee trade paved the way for another Armenian to attempt to break the monopoly.50

In 1697, Isaak de Luca fought for the right to do business in Vienna. To facilitate his way, he married into a powerful Viennese family. Later that year, together with two other Armenians, Andres Pain and Philippe Rudolph, he acquired a city license, which gave him derogation over Diodato’s royal license. He now had the exclusive right to trade in coffee, tea, and sherbet within the entire city of Vienna. He im-mediately opened a coffee house to exercise his monopoly. Diodato’s wife was in no position to oppose this, even though her rights were inalienable. When Diodato returned in 1701, he was astonished to see the success of his rival. The new Ottoman embassy staff consumed several tons of coffee a year. Coffee had become a universal habit and there were many coffee houses by the 1720s. In 1714 eleven coffee makers founded a trade association. As the drink became very popular, a bitter controversy broke out between the coffee boilers and the distiller’s guild. In the 1750s Queen Maria Theresa settled the quarrel by joining the two guilds into one. Next, a heavy tax on alcohol increased coffee consumption.51 What is of interest here is that coffee was almost entirely in Armenian hands in Vienna until 1714 when the guild system took over its sale. After that date there is no known trace of any Armenians in the Vienna coffee shops. However, their Europeanized names make it hard to guarantee that this is entirely exact.

The pattern in Paris and Vienna was similar. One difference is that there were monopolies accorded by the Hapsburg monarch and the city to two Armenians in Vienna, while no such privilege is found for the Parisian coffee house owners. The role of foreigners, such as the Armenians, as cross-cultural agents was instrumental in bringing an exotic spice to at least two of Europe’s coffee-drinking capitals. In Marseilles, its port of arrival, coffee had met with the discourse of Colomb, and the doctors allied with the merchants of Marseilles, determined to keep this “tyrannical” foreign good out. Even when the café had become an integral part of the European city, it was not forgotten that coffee was oriental and exotic.

Coffee: A Grain from Persia

From Madame de Sévigné’s letters it appears that the French, when they thought it benefi cial, believed coffee refreshed the blood, dissipated and lowered the vapors and fumes caused by the drinking of wine, aided digestion, and kept the mind alert.


Madame de Sévigné erroneously believed that coffee originated from Persia. In Le Parfait Limonadier the recipe for coffee is the same as Madame de Sévigné’s, nearly word for word including the distorted origins of coffee in Persia. In Audigier the recipe is identical. The explanation for this uniformity is that all of these recipes came from one source alone, the fi rst source to offer the recipe, the travel account of Jean Thévenot written several decades earlier. As Masson decades later wrote:

Coffee is a grain that comes from Persia and other countries in the Levant, where they make the most delicious and most ordinary drink. Being prepared, as we have come to say, its properties refresh the blood, break up and reduce the vapors and fumes from drinking wine, aid digestion and ward off sleep for those who have many things to do.52

The mistaken geographical origins attributed to the coffee grain were due to the fact that the coffee used in France in this period came from Persian–Armenian traders, and the Levant and its importers were mostly Armenians, specifi cally the traders of New Julfa and Isfahan. Erroneously considered an Ottoman beverage, it is notewor-thy to see the bean equally erroneously portrayed as Persian. The view that coffee was an important Persian habit continued well into the next century. Even later, in a rather negative passage, the Abbé Raynal wrote in the 1770s in which the Persian origin remains:

In these countries where the customs are not as free as here, where man’s jealousy and the austere retreat of women renders society less lively, one imagines the establishment of public houses where they sell coffee. These coffee houses of the Persians soon became the hot spots, where some young Georgians dressed as courtesans represented obscene farces and sold themselves for money. When Abbas II stopped his dissolutions so revolt-ing, these houses became an honest sanctuary.53

Expressed here was the view that the harem, the confi nement of women, led to the prostitution of young Georgian boys dressed as women. The Abbé Raynal’s work is identifi ed today as a compendium of several authors, including Diderot, who con-tributed anonymously, and had many travel accounts for sources. Yet, his piece of information was not entirely imagined and comes from the works of Jean Chardin, who went to Persia a century earlier, under the reign of Louis XIV. Jean Chardin wrote very positively of the coffee house of Isfahan in Iran, but he wrote that before the prime minister of Abbas II reformed them, they were quite different: “These houses were heretofore very infamous Places; they were serv’d and entrtain’d by beautiful Georgian boys from ten to sixteen Years of Age, dressed in a Lewd Manner, having their hair tied in wafts like the Women.”54 In this case the orientalist tradition of relying on previous texts, so well noted by Saïd, is quite evident, but there is even more to glean from the selective choice made by Diderot in Raynal to emphasize the negative. Diderot used Chardin; Chardin used earlier travelers.


Chardin spent much more time describing the fact that the coffee houses were large and located in the best parts of town. They were places for news, places to criticize the government with impunity, where innocent games were played and where Dervishes and Mollahs made moral sermons. He also wrote that: “They drink nothing for the Generality in Persia but Coffee and Water.”55 None of this is re-membered. In Chardin coffee houses were described as places of diversion, not as places of perversion as Raynal chose to portray a century later. Moreover, there is nothing in Chardin implying that it was the confi nement of women and the jealousy of men that had led to the prostitution of Georgian boys. The dancing boys Abbas II forbade erased Chardin’s vivid descriptions of dervishes delivering sermons against the riches and vanities of the world. Nevertheless Raynal was trying to use Ab bas II to make a point about prohibitions against coffee, and he also spoke of prohibitions against coffee in Constantinople. Abbé Raynal’s aim was to give some advice to monarchs. Monarchs, he wrote, should not issue prohibitions that go against the nature of people. Priests could keep their morals; he wanted to be happy. This is a reference to the Meccan prohibition, as no priests had ever condemned coffee. Raynal wrote that the pursuit of happiness was the fi rst code of law that preceded all legislation. The phrase “the pursuit of happiness” was going to have a bright politi-cal future. Raynal was contrasting the freedom he advocated with the prohibitions in the Orient. Galland’s translations of Jaziri lived on. It had a long life in portraying the Islamic world as land of fanaticism and prohibition, but now Raynal was speak-ing in general terms, which pointed to his own society. The pursuit of happiness was a recipe for revolution. In a strange logic the argument was that to forbid coffee was to impede the pursuit of happiness. Raynal tied coffee to revolution well before Michelet’s famous contention that without coffee there would have been no French Revolution.

Cafés in the Eighteenth Century

In her letters, Madame de Sévigné also wrote of meeting her friends for coffee after attending daily mass. A breakfast habit was inaugurated that persists today in France. Aristocratic ladies became very prominent in cafés during the day. Women were new to public institutions; the café was the fi rst to allow this sociability outside the home. This in itself was a small social revolution.56 Before the café, the tavern or cabaret was the only public place serving beverages, all of which were alcoholic. The tavern was a strictly a male institution. Women received at home or visited each other in homes. The maison de café changed habits across Europe, and not only in the fash-ionable capital of Paris. In Amsterdam or in Vienna one would have seen families in coffee shops. Thus coffee drinking altered social habits in western Europe by creat-ing a public sphere for women of the elite.


There are several good sources describing Parisian cafés in the 1720s. Jacques Savary des Brûlons’s (1657–1716) Dictionnaire universel de commerce describes cafés as magnifi cent and luxurious, decorated with marble tables and mirrors.57 Under the word caffé, he describes people gathering to listen to news in the evening under the light of crystal chandeliers. The coffee served is never as good as at home, he wrote, but it was sold inside and outside the café. At the most famous of cafés, ladies of high rank stopped their carriages to request a cup of coffee. One wonders whether there was still some hesitation for women to frequent the cafés per se. In this fi rst incarna-tion of the drive-in, coffee was brought to them on a silver saucer at their carriage door.58 The best descriptions of cafés can be found in a travel account that discusses many of them in detail: for the 1720s there were so many that one could fi nd ten to twelve on a single street, each devoted to a different kind of clientele. Some catered to philosophers, others to ladies, others to chess or card players.59 Cafés were the ob-ject of strict laws by this time, mostly legislation prohibiting gambling or concerning their closing hours at night, as many of them stayed open with a lantern glowing over the door to show that they were still in business.60

Long after the Armenians had stopped selling coffee in Paris, coffee was still viewed as oriental, and Armenian costume was worn by servers in Parisian cafés. Even while Armenians still worked in Paris, only a handful of coffee sellers were of Armenian origin. The days of Colbert’s legislation was their heyday; after 1687 most Armenians left Marseilles and Paris. In the 1696 comedy called La foire de Saint-Germain, one of the characters is “Lorange, marchand de café vêtu en Armé-nien,” and in scene fi ve his lines say that he is an Armenian naturalized three weeks previously.61 A relatively forgotten play by Jean-Baptiste Rousseau (1670–1740)62 also tied a coffee house to news about the war with the Ottomans. Of all the literary cafés that existed at the turn of the eighteenth century, Laurent’s is the most famous because it was cited several times by Voltaire (1694–1778), who met there with Fon-tenelle, Houdard de la Motte, Danchet, and many other intellectuals. Laurent’s was at the corner of the rue Dauphine and the rue Christine, and this is where Jean Bap-tiste Rousseau set his Le Caffé, a comedy published in 1694. It opens with a political question: were the Ottomans going to attack Belgrade? Voltaire judged the play to be a total fl op, and Rousseau’s play was badly received.

It is well known that after their meeting in 1722, Voltaire and the playwright Jean-Baptiste Rousseau became enemies. Voltaire published anonymously against Rousseau (not Jean-Jacques, but Jean-Baptiste). Voltaire, known for his contes ori-entales (oriental stories), such as Zadig and Candide, like many of his contempo-raries also wrote an obscure and forgotten play about coffee.63 There was a vast amount of literature published about coffee and coffee houses in the eighteenth century and they contributed to the debate on coffee’s merits. This literature is so vast that it would merit a whole book. Well-known papers like the Mercure galant published long songs about coffee and gave familiar melodies to sing the verses.64


Nicolas Bernier (1664–1734) wrote a coffee cantata, one far less remembered than the one written later by Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750).65 Bernier’s music was composed for the verses of playwright Louis Fuzelier (1672–1752), who wrote lines on the benefi cial properties of coffee.66 Less laudatory, Bach’s cantata illustrates both sides of the controversies over coffee through a father forbidding coffee to his daugh-ter, who absolutely refused to give up her drinking habit. Some resistance to coffee came not from the drink but from the public establishments serving coffee, as they created a new venue for public nightlife in Paris.

Although it is well known that under Louis XIV, the police offi cer La Reynie initi-ated street lights for security reasons, the cafés signifi cantly contributed to nightlife and street lighting. This phenomenon had happened much earlier in the capital of Istanbul.67 A mid-century writer described the diversity of the public in the cafés: “The cafés of today are a tableau of the universe. In them one sees people of all nations. Their character, religion, customs and tastes are at absolute opposites. This creates heated disputes, all of which dissipate in words, never reaching dangerous debates.”68 Savary de Brûlons, whose work was published posthumously, gave the number of cafés as being 380 before 1723.69 In Sebastien Mercier’s (1740–1814) well-known Tableau de Paris, he wrote that one found over 1,800 cafés in Paris in the late 1770s.70 A later work by Louis Marie Prudhomme (1752–1830) gives only 700 to 800 cafés for the center of Paris at the turn of the nineteenth century after the French Revolution. This discrepancy in numbers is hard to qualify without thinking that Mercier might have also counted taverns. Suffi ce it to say here that the popularity of cafés in pre-Revolutionary France was unquestionable and universal for most classes except the poor or apprentices, who could not afford the price of a prise de café.

In Paris there was a great effort to imitate the cavéhane or cafés turcs as they were called in an eighteenth-century dictionary. In the 1779 Dictionnaire historique de la ville de Paris, it was described that in imitation of the Turkish coffee house, cavéhane, the master limonadier paid for musicians and other entertainers such as buffoons, comedians, and acrobats to attract their clients. There was no mention of Persian cafés or Cahue kahne as Chardin had called them.71 The dictionary also described that there were specifi c cafés for each group, for “foreigners, some for Jews, some others for doctors, merchants, or artisans.”72 It seems that the Turkish cavéhane, as the dictionary called them, brought Paris its institution of café-concert. As late as 1779 the dictionary and its authors were aware of the Ottoman roots of this now century-old French café. This form of attraction was no longer a novelty; as discussed previously, the Persian Armenian Gregor made the pioneering effort to bring entertainment to his café in the 1690s.

In another source, Prudhomme relates that a man was paid six francs to imperson-ate un sauvage in the Café du Caveau in the Palais Royal, where most of the fi rst new and fashionable cafés were located. This café was a combination of a café and a restaurant. It served as a restaurant until two in the afternoon, serving food at a fi xed price without wine, then a master limonadier took it over at two to serve coffee,


liqueurs and juices. The sauvage played on drums very loudly and made terrifying grimaces and was paid to scare customers and passers-by by pretending to attempt to kill them. He attracted a large crowd of about two hundred people. The café was nick-named after this popular incarnation, and rather negative version, of the eighteenth century’s exotic “noble savage,” Café du sauvage. Its clientele was comprised of mercers and their families. The mercers were rather wealthy, but the café was also patronized by domestic servants, tobacco merchants, and their wives. The café was loud from the discordant noises made by the actor and the beer-induced conversa-tions, but it was not lacking in luxuries. It was large and decorated with tall mirrors, which refl ected the bust of famous composers like Glück and Philidor.73 On one of the tables there were gold-embossed inscriptions saying that two subscriptions had been made at that table; one of these patrons had raised funds for a new invention, the hot air balloon experiments of the Mongolfi er brothers.74 There were other cafés at the Palais Royal, next to the Café du sauvage, including the Café des Arts, the Café des Aveugles, and the Café Mecanique. The fi rst was frequented by artists, the second had an orchestra of blind men, and the third had table legs with holes where the order arrived on a platter as if by enchantment.75 This was the Parisian version of cafés with entertainment, but there were many that did not offer any form of entertainment aside from the games the customers played, such as chess, cards, or backgammon.

In the rue Saint André des Arts, an Armenian called Etienne d’Alep had opened a café at the end of the seventeenth century, which was renamed Café Cuisinier in 1761 after changing hands many times and falling under a master limonadier called Onfroy. As the name of the café indicates, the owner was a distiller of some renown. Onfroy’s fame has been preserved through newspaper advertisements in 1761 for the many products he invented and sold to the public the fi rst of each month. Onfroy was the fi rst to come up with a form of instant coffee, not in granule form but as a distilled essence. He called it essence de café: a spoon of it was dissolved in a cup of boiling water or milk, and he promised an instant cup of coffee. He also made a special choco-late that dissolved easily and left no residue. He sold a bottle of his essence de café for 50 sols. It made twenty cups. He also made toothpaste and other essences to cure toothaches and gum disease.76

The Café Procope had also changed hands several times, and at the eve of the Rev-olution it belonged to a certain Zoppi. Most of the Paris literary elite went to the Procope, and even Voltaire has erroneously been said to have been a guest. Voltaire wrote: “Je n’ai jamais fréquenté aucun café ” (I have never frequented any café).77 In fact there was an incident that proves Voltaire’s statement, despite many claims made to the contrary by coffee shop owners. There was a famous mistress limonadière, Charlotte Renyer, who had some serious literary pretensions and wrote verses under the title Muse limonadière for her famous clients. Some of her verses were dedicated to Voltaire.78 Irritated, Voltaire wrote: “I have no stomach for the Muse limonadière, I would rather give her a carafe worth 60 livres than write to her.” The persistent widow limonadière had extracted many expensive gifts from famous men, including


the king of Prussia.79 Voltaire warned that claims that these celebrities frequented her café were false as she was a clever advertiser.

The philosophes were not always simply clients; in a well-documented incident the philosophe became the entertainment, and crowds swarmed to see a celebrity, much as they would today. In 1770, Jean-Jacques Rousseau had walked back from his political exile in Switzerland disguised as an Armenian merchant. Having just shed his disguise, he showed up at his favorite spot, the Café de la Régence. The café was favored by intellectuals and philosophers. Known for its tranquility and its intellectual chess players, it was frequented by the likes of Benjamin Franklin, Sainte Foix, and the brothers Grimm. Rousseau’s appearance attracted such a prodigious crowd that he reveled in repeating such appearances several times to wallow in his fame. Afraid for Rousseau’s safety, the police forbade him to continue exhibiting himself in the Café de la Régence.80

The role of cafés in breaking down social barriers between groups, even if many were specialized, has been well studied.81 The French historian Jules Michelet at-tributed immense political consequences to such new sociability: nothing less than the French Revolution. The French Revolution is still coupled with coffee in many minds. A popular article recently published by the journal The Economist con-cludes: “It was at the Café de Foy, eyed by police spies while standing on a table brandishing two pistols, that Camille Desmoulins roused his countrymen with his historic appeal—“Aux armes, citoyens!”—on July 12th 1789.”82 The Bastille fell two days later, and the French Revolution had begun. Jules Michelet, the famous nineteenth-century French historian, noted that those “who assembled day after day in the Café de Procope saw, with a penetrating glance, in the depths of their black drink, the illumination of the year of the revolution.”83 Cafés created new networks of information, broke down social barriers, and at least in the mind of one great historian, fueled social revolt. Before all that could happen, coffee had to be acces-sible to most French people and cease to be rare and exotic oriental luxury good meant for the privileged few that the Revolution would target and displace. Most of all, Jules Michelet praised coffee for bringing the French lucidity and sobriety, for dethroning the tavern, for overcoming wine that threw them drunk in the gutter, and for bringing them to view their social reality in a fl ash of truth.84

How did this general acceptance of coffee happen? Coffee was still not perceived as French decades after the fi rst cafés opened. Wine was still the beverage of choice. In the early eighteenth century it was still perceived as so extremely rare that when the fi rst coffee plant reached Paris in 1714, it was put under the supervision of Louis XIV’s personal physician. Yet, as is examined in the next chapter, the arrival of this lone plant would fi nally show the way to enriching the treasury from the profi ts of coffee, by making coffee into the most important of all French colonial goods. This transformation and the discourse about it deserves some attention. For the French to afford coffee in the many cafés of the capital, coffee had to become cheaper; infusing and diluting it helped but was certainly not enough. Before the


French Revolution, France had become the greatest producer and exporter of coffee through the colonizing of Martinique. Paradoxically, the transformation process of coffee from a foreign import to a national good would be similar to that of many other exotic goods. It became a colonial good by traveling to the Americas, being grown in the Caribbean. The fact that other Europeans began to think of coffee as a French drink was because the French were bringing it to Europe via their plantations in the Caribbean. An African plant growing in Martinique, cultivated by African and Caribbean slave labor, was given to the French by the Dutch from their plantations in Java and made coffee a French product. In the next chapter, this transformation is examined.

What Michelet did not say is that coffee became a symbol of French oppression and colonialism and that the French Revolution was also brought on by the burning of coffee trees in Saint Domingue by Toussaint L’Ouverture (1746–1803) and his followers, who fought to put an end to slavery. As the French “naturalized” coffee by making it a colonial French good, the silence about slavery continued well into the eighteenth century, as the next chapter makes clear.

– 205 –

–8–

Domesticating the ExoticImports and Imitation

Before we end, we shall add for the sake of the Curious and Strangers, that M. Jussieu not only takes Pleasure in courteously receiving such [Shrub of Coffee with the Flow-ers], that he also informs them of Matters after a manner equally solid and agreeable. His Knowledge and Enquiries are not confi n’d to Botany; One sees at his House a large Closet of natural Curiosities, which may be called a complete Abridgement of Nature; and, to return to our Subject, nothing can be more rational than what we heard him speak with regard to Coffee.1

—Jean de La Roque

The Domestication of the Coffee Plant and French Colonization

In 1714 the Dutch sent the French a plant that was fi ve feet tall. It was formally pre-sented to Louis XIV at the Chateau de Marly on July 28. It arrived caged under glass and kept under the Guard of the “Hollander, who has the Tree under his Care, and was come from Marly to the Garden-Royal, with the Servants of Monsieur, the chief Physician.”2 Transferred immediately to one of the glass hothouses of the Jardin du Roi, the plant was received by several scientists invited by Antoine de Jussieu, the new director of the royal gardens.3

In every way the arrival of the coffee tree was a public event. La Roque wrote about that exciting Sunday in 1714 when, like many prominent Parisians, he rushed to the Jardin du Roi to see the plant. He wrote:

Sunday 29th of July, 1714, M. de Jussieu, Doctor of Physick, of the Academy of Sci-ences, and royal Botany-Professour, was pleased to bring there M. Galland Professour of Arabick, in the Royal College; and M. Parent of Academy of Sciences, Professour of the Mathematicks, M. Ouange, a learned and very curious Chinese and myself. We only went to see that fi rst coffee plant.4

It has not been possible to trace the identity of the Chinese scholar.5 He was invited most probably as an orientalist, and like Galland, considered an authority on cof-fee for his knowledge of things oriental.6 The tree was an object of curiosity for good reason, as it was hoped that its study would allow the French to do what the


Dutch had done before them in Java: turn exotic coffee into their own colonial prod-uct. Growing coffee was an important commercial secret. The Dutch had smuggled enough plants to start plantations. Some coffee plants had grown successfully in a hothouse in Amsterdam. All the possible care had been taken to observe its needs in Paris. Antoine de Jussieu recorded the coffee plant’s progress daily and kept a diary. This diary was read out publicly at the Academy of Sciences on May 4, 1715.7

The coffee bush that Jean de La Roque saw that special Sunday, in the gardens that are today called the Jardin des Plantes, was believed to be the mother tree of most of the coffee planted in the colonies by the French in the New World. Antoine de Jussieu planted some young plants from the coffee grains of that fi rst tree.8 Ac-cording to a tale it was that tree’s direct progeny that sailed the perilous seas on a ship to Martinique in the French Caribbean. The person who carried that fi rst coffee to the Caribbean in 1723 was sung as a hero in France when he died at the ripe age of 84. His story could be considered apocryphal, as he was the sole source of it, but the fact that he was decorated at court gives it credence. It can be read as a discourse about French colonization. Louis XIV’s dream of direct access to coffee, and two expeditions led by La Roque to Yemen, were now vastly surpassed by the creation of coffee plantations in the Caribbean. The tale is told as a heroic tale of conquest. It is a eulogy of a member of the French army.

The pamphlet written about coffee in Martinique titled Le capitaine Clieu ou le premier pied de café aux Antilles contains not a single word about slaves growing it. The captain in Louis XV’s army was the single hero of the tale. This silence about Africans echoes the previous silence about the African origins of coffee. Ac-cording to his own tale, Gabriel de Clieu (1688–1774) alone had the idea to take a coffee plant to the French island of Martinique, yet he could not obtain permission to get a plant to take to the Antilles. Once he eventually acquired a small coffee plant through the political intervention of a well-connected lady, he embarked with it for the Antilles. He left France from the port of Nantes in 1723. He took the coffee plant protected by a small glass case up to the deck of the ship for sun and shared his water rations with the plant. The long Atlantic journey was complicated by the attacks of a Tunisian corsair who nearly stole the coffee tree.9 His own de-privations, the terrible storm the ship survived, the attack by the “evil” corsairs, saving the coffee tree from the villains, make this into a colorful and heroic tale with all the common tropes. It was a tale structured much like the many fairy tales popularized by Charles Perrault.

When Capitaine de Clieu died in 1774, the plant sent by the Dutch sixty years ear-lier in 1714 was still alive in Paris and thriving in the Jardin du Roi.10 By then French Martinique was covered by coffee plants. De Clieu wrote back to France that the suc-cess of the coffee plant was prodigious and was due in part to the cocoa trees dying. Either because of a volcanic eruption or too much rain, the planters lost all their crop of cocoa and replaced it with coffee plants. De Clieu wrote that: “Within three years there were many millions of coffee shrubs on our island,” and that all of the fi ve to

Domesticating the Exotic • 207

six thousand petits habitans, as the colonists were called, were destitute and that the coffee shrub saved them. They soon cultivated coffee exclusively. On his return to France he was presented to Louis XV, who appointed him governor of Guadeloupe.11 While de Clieu’s heroic tale may be questionable, coffee was certainly planted in the early 1720s and became the basis of Martinique’s economy, as a monoculture that was a feature of early modern colonization. While recounting his funeral, both the Mercure galant and the Année litéraire remembered Capitaine de Clieu’s service to France and the romantic tale he told about the fi rst coffee bush to cross the Atlantic, while the real unsung heroes of the coffee miracle in Martinique were the thousands of slaves working on the plantations. This silence about slavery only changed when the political climate in France was transformed in the 1770s.

The main text where coffee and other colonial goods and slavery were mentioned together is the remarkable medley attributed to Guillaume-Thomas-François Raynal (1713–1796), known as l’Abbé Raynal.12 It addressed the issue of slavery head-on, and as such it was an innovative text. The monumental work of over two thousand pages, dated 1770, deserves a whole discussion of its own, but it is worth highlight-ing the section on coffee. Despite its intention of describing coffee as a colonial good, the 1770 section about coffee in Raynal’s A philosophical and political history of the settlements and trade of the Europeans in the East and West Indies was largely based on old information, translated from the Arabic by Galland in 1699, and some pas-sages from Thévenot. Raynal’s compendium, which has many other authors, chief among them Denis Diderot, was intended to be the follow-up to the great Diderot and d’Alembert Encyclopédie, but for the “rest of the world:” “les deux Indes.”13 As such, like most encyclopedias, it contains a summary of preexisting texts. However, it goes far beyond that by decrying several accepted commercial practices, chiefl y slavery and colonization. It is a strange pastiche of a near fetishist description of colonial goods, next to a condemnation of their mode of production.

A decade after its publication, in 1781, this six-volume history of the European colonies in the East Indies and the Americas was condemned by the Parliament of Paris for impiety and its dangerous ideas concerning the people’s right to revolt and to give or withhold consent to taxation, and its novel stance on slavery and colonization. Yet, Raynal discussed coffee as a grain from Persia, an exotic luxury good from Asia, with no heed to the slaves growing it in the French colonies. Even after coffee became a colonial substance it was still described as oriental. This was a general opinion in France. Goods, even when they were colonial, were still pre-sented as oriental, as a matter of commercial marketing.14 The exotic sold well and at higher prices; coffee’s identity had been Ottoman and Persian and so it stayed for the eighteenth century. Coffee is viewed as a New World product today, but even as it became a colonial product, that view was resisted in Raynal and other writings that treated it as an oriental good.

While coffee was being produced in Martinique as a French colonial product, within France it underwent another form of domestication, as did many new exotic


plants and animals. Like many novelties, it became an object of public spectacle at Versailles. The exotic and the rare was a mark of rank. Lenormand, the head gar-dener at Versailles, grew several coffee trees that were twelve to fi fteen feet tall and produced fi ve to six pounds of ripe coffee each year. Louis XV was the recipient of this harvest, which he roasted and prepared with his own hands in front of guests. Beyond preparing the grain, he liked to make coffee himself and offer it as a special treat to favorite courtesans.15 The appointed jeweler to the king, Lazare Davaux, recorded Louis XV’s multiple orders for expensive coffee pots in precious metals in 1754 and 1755. They became a necessity for the elite, but few could afford what the king ordered: four gold ones in the span of a year. In January 1754 the king ordered a gold coffee pot with a capacity of four cups and a gold lamp for wine spirits on a silver tripod at the cost of 2,054 livres. Only three months later, the same order was placed with some modifi cation, as the lamp was to be engraved with branches and a heater to be made of gilded steel, at the cost of 1,950 livres. Less than a month later, on April 16, 1755, that same order was repeated almost verbatim, except with the ad-dition of six gold coffee spoons, described as “in the new style,” at the cost of 4,476 livres. This reveals the astronomical cost of the gold coffee spoons.

Soon afterwards, the king ordered a very luxurious carrying case for the bever-age. The case points to the fact that coffee was being taken outdoors or on trips. On December 9 of the same year the king ordered a lacquered case in “lacque aventu-rine” and gold and compartments covered in velvet, which contained one coffee pot with a four cup capacity, one lamp, two golden spoons, two cups and plates, a sugar pot, and a teapot in celestial blue Vincennes porcelain, and a steel tripod, for the cost of 4,200 livres.16 The porcelain teapot was one of the many teapots produced by a thriving French porcelain industry that was imitating Chinese porcelain. It was not exceptional that Lenormand’s Versailles coffee harvest was served in the most luxurious of vessels by the king himself as late as the middle of the century. He was also known to have made chocolate in the same coffee pot in the kitchen of his petits appartements, the most intimate of quarters on the third fl oor of the palace of Versailles.17 Louis’s fondness for making the two beverages denotes that they were a luxury for the elite. France was now an exporter of coffee and on its way to becoming the most important European producer and exporter of coffee.

Substituting the Domestic for the Exotic: The Case of Tea

Despite some experiments in Angers and Saumur, French gardeners and scientists could never grow the tea plant. In 1766 the Academy of Sciences reported, “the bush whose leaves provide tea is so particular to China that it cannot be grown anywhere else.”18 The most famous experiments at taming the exotic were made by Carl Lin-naeus (1707–1778), when he hoped to grow tea in Lapland. Linnaeus had asked a member of the East India Company to bring him a tea plant, but several shipments


had brought him dead plants. In 1763 Linnaeus fi nally received the fi rst live tea plant in Sweden. The French Academy was in correspondence with him and took his failed experiments into account for their negative report of 1766. Raynal wrote of a few plants being transferred to England by Linnaeus and surviving there.19 Tea was an even more expensive import than coffee, in France, England, and Sweden, and serious experiments were undertaken by scientists to grow it:

Tea is not as common in France as coffee because of its high price … the ordinary man-ner of preparing it is to boil a pint of water in a clean vessel. You have a silver tea pot or one of Chinese earthenware or in faïence, you put two pinches of tea in the pot and on it you pour boiling water.20

This recipe in the Cuisinier royal et bourgeois dates to 1715; by 1766 when the French Academy gave up hope of growing tea, it was a common drink in Paris. Valmont de Bomare wrote in his dictionary of natural history that even the common people were boiling tea. The consumption of tea in France for 1766 was estimated at 2,100,000 pounds.21 Well before the 1766 verdict of the Academy that tea could not be tamed to European climes, the will to substitute the domestic for the exotic was clear among physicians and scientists in France. As Antoine de Jussieu’s at-titude to Nicolas l’Empereur’s work on India’s plants, and discourse on coffee, made clear, there was resistance in France to accepting that things grown beyond France were useful or healthful. There was an effort to fi nd substitutes on French soil. Under Louis XIV, Pierre Hunault, a doctor from Angers, expressed the views underlying this practice:

The Renown of the greatness of the King published in all the world has so agreeably surprised the peoples of the world that even those who were the furthest away wished to pay him homage as the greatest Prince that ever was, and the most entitled to command all of them. Voyages and our commerce with them have brought us learning of their cus-toms, of which we became quickly very jealous (as there is no nation more susceptible to others as our own) that we abandoned our ways to practice them. To speak naïvely I do not think we have gained much in this exchange. I am even less assured that for a few concoctions that are more capable of irritating our appetite than of satisfying our delicacy and maintaining our health, we have abandoned the use of things far less equivocal. One must, nevertheless, make an exception for tea and coffee, these liquors are as agreeable as they are useful, one should only beware of too frequent usage.22

So wrote the doctor in his discourse on the marvelous properties of local sage, which he advocates as the best substitute for buying Chinese tea. The dean of the faculty of Paris, Docteur Andry, wrote a eulogy to another plant, which he called “Europe’s tea,” veronica. This was a mere translation based on a German work by Johannes Franc.23 It was equally unsuccessful. In 1778, a “thé nouveau des dames” was mar-keted as a pectoral and was sold as a Swiss remedy to be taken with milk.24 Whether


in France, Germany, or Sweden, there was a form of patriotic resistance to the exotic, as foreign goods were seen as harmful to the economy. The main idea was to use the exotic but not pay the price for it, whether in silver or in Europeans succumbing to the harsh climate of les Indes.

Linnaeus and Chinese Plants in Lapland

Carolus Linnaeus is universally remembered for his classifi cation system, based on Joseph Pitton de Tournefort’s classifi cation, but his Swedish titles of nobility were received for his economic ideas in service to the commercial goals of Sweden. Eco-nomically Linnaeus was cameralist; in an insightful article, Lisbet Koerner has ana-lyzed how Linnaeus “considered nothing more important than to close that gate [the China trade], through which all silver of Europe disappears.”25 She writes that he was well aware that East India companies made sure that Europe’s consumers had all sorts of Asian goods, even if it was on the black market.26 Even in the eighteenth century these mercantilist views prevailed, after they had been philosophically at-tacked both in England and France. His agenda was argued in terms of Europe, not simply Sweden. Cameralists, like mercantilists, had a zero sum view of international economics and viewed trade and fi nance as largely parasitic on agriculture, and like mercantilists they argued that precious metals ought to be conserved within national borders. Yet, free trade was not among cameralist doctrines; instead they hoped to replace expensive foreign imports with domestic substitutes.

This form of economic thinking, agricultural innovation to protect domestic pro-duction against imports from the Indies, had a long tradition among French botanists. Linnaeus is the one best remembered for “taming the exotic,” for acclimatation. The term hides the enormous scale of his ambitions, as he incrementally and slowly adapted plants to new and colder environments, which would allow him, or so he hoped, to plant exotic Chinese tea as far as Lapland. Tea was only the most famous of his many experiments. He is quoted as stating that “Nature has arranged itself in such a way that each country produces something especially useful; the task of economics is to collect from other places and cultivate such things that don’t want to grow at home and can grow [there].”27

Linnaeus had a patriotic naturalism. Koerner’s article is aptly called “National Cultures before Nationalism.” The article shows Linnaeus’s political affi liation to the “Hat Party,” which was pro-French and anti-Russian, and that his client networks were French or pro-French. There was frequent correspondence between Linnaeus and Antoine de Jussieu. He visited the Jardin du Roi and de Jussieu in 1738.28 Jussieu worked on quassia bark (Cortex Simarubæ), the fi rst of which had been sent in 1713 to the Jesuit Father Soleil at Paris from Cayenne. Linnaeus named it after himself as Simaruba Jussiæi. De Jussieu wrote many papers, among them “Descriptio et icon Coffeæ (coffee)” of 1713, which might have been read by Linnaeus. Nevertheless, the


Swede’s francophile sentiments failed him when it came to coffee. Linnaeus consid-ered coffee a French national good that was harmful to Sweden’s economy.

By the middle of the eighteenth century France was the major European producer of coffee, thanks to its colonial production. Linnaeus wanted Sweden to fi nd a sub-stitute for “French coffee”; in his mind coffee imports were both a moral and a medi-cal hazard to Sweden’s well-being: “There are still living the most trustworthy old people, who assure us that [coffee] was brought into [Sweden] by travelers returning from France, and infecting our people with this, as with other foreign customs.”29 The idea that exotic customs and foreign goods were “infectuous” is a strong idea shared by Antoine de Jussieu. In France Antoine de Jussieu’s attitude toward Nicolas l’Empereur’s aims in India made this clear earlier.30 Linnaeus bemoaned a capital out-lay of a thousand Swedish thalers for the drink; he listed the conspicuous consump-tion brought about by coffee by listing the necessities it engendered: the silver pot, the Chinese porcelain cups, a round table painted and lacquered, a hand-held coffee bean grinder made of steel, silver trays, and linen cloth. This was exactly in the year that Louis XV placed his multiple orders for coffee pots in gold at Versailles.

While Linnaeus argued that Europeans, and not simply Swedes, should abandon such immorally wasteful forms of sociability as drinking coffee, Linnaeus and his wife not only owned all of the aforementioned objects for their afternoon coffee par-ties, but had their own custom-made porcelain service painted with Linnaea borea-lis.31 The Swedish elite, like many European elites in this period, imitated the French court. Linnaeus saw these habits as French, yet, they were already his own habits. This did not stop him from advocating, presumably for other Swedes, those not in the elite he belonged to, the substitution of cheaper “over-burned” goods like peas and beechnuts for imported coffee.32

Linnaeus had much in common with his French correspondents. Londa Schiebin-ger’s work on bioprospecting in the Atlantic world argues that James McClellan and François Regourd have labeled the French system in the seventeenth century the “scientifi co-colonial machine,” a system that worked to centralize the botanical specimens in the world in France and draw natural resources from the periphery to the center. Richard Dayton has argued that such a coupling of the crown’s patronage and natural historical prospecting did not take place in England until the end of the eighteenth century. Louis XIII’s 1626 Jardin du Roi is given as a date of inception of the bureaucratization in France.33 Yet, as was argued in chapter 4, the model was older than that. Olivier de Serres listed all the simples of the “orient et occident” for Henri IV at the inception of the second garden of Montpellier in 1593. The fi rst keep-ers of the Jardin du Roi were all formed in Montpellier, and they became part of the scientifi co-colonial machine early, but the attention was on Asia. Bioprospecting had a long history in the Orient.

Before Linnaeus’s tea plants in Lapland, another Chinese product of considerable economic importance had been the object of French experimentation. Silk had been the main culprit of Europe’s expenditure in gold and silver. The ideas of Olivier de


Serres (1539–1619) on the domestication of the mulberry tree on French territory were pioneering.34 Thierry Mariage has argued that these agricultural successes and commercial views were tied to the political ascendancy of the Protestants in France.35 Olivier de Serres, a Protestant, wrote a book on estate management, Le thêatre d’agriculture (1600). De Serres argued that land had to be managed and used for the profi t of its owners, a sentiment that was not germane to Catholic views of nature. His most ambitious commercial project was growing mulberries in colder climates. Most probably, Linnaeus had known of the French experiments directly in France, but also through a German thinker considered the father of cameralism, Heinrich Gottleib von Justi (1720–1770), who, like many of his French predeces-sors, participated in the rêve chinois.36

This sinophilia, the view that China was the source all things, far from being a French phenomenon, was a wider European phenomenon, and von Justi wrote a treatise titled Explicit instruction in the cultivation of silkworms and the winning of silk for the Imperial-Royal hereditary lands, encouraging the Austrian emperor to plant mulberry trees for silkworms. It is very likely that von Justi was aware of an earlier French project by Olivier de Serres. De Serres’s Le theatre d’agriculture et le Mesnage des champs (1610) had 45 editions and was translated into many European languages. Within that famous work he had written a much smaller section on grow-ing mulberry trees to produce silk, which was the most translated. Here is what he wrote in the 1607 English translation, The Perfect Use of Silke-Wormes, and Their Benefi t:

For the affection I bear to the public. I have in the beginning of the year a thousand fi ve hundred eighty nine caused to be printed a particular treatise of this food and nurture entitled The gathering of silke, and addressed it to those in the Common Counsel of the city of Paris, to the end that thereby their people might be suffi ciently stirred up to draw from the entrails and bowels of their lands, the rich treasure of silke (sic) therein hidden. By this means bringing to light the million of gold enclosed and locked up.37

He began his work on The gathering of silke by describing the origins of silk in a land called Seres and repeats the writings of Pocopius about how two monks brought silkworms from China to Constantinople under Justinian, and how it spread to Eu-rope. In France silk weaving had begun in one factory located in Tours as early as 1480, and around 1520 Francis I brought silkworm eggs from his campaigns in the Milanese region. De Serres named the regions that have mulberry trees—Provence, Languedoc, Dauphiné, and the city of Avignon—and wrote: “I sum up the mulberry is held for the most assured penny falling into the purse.”38 Olivier de Serres pro-posed to cultivate mulberry trees and raise silkworms in the city of Paris to preclude importing raw silk by producing it locally.

King Henri IV had a Protestant advisor by the name of Barthélemy de Laffemas (1545–1612) who had articulated an economic mercantilism that advocated French


self-suffi ciency.39 He promoted Olivier de Serres’s entrepreneurial proposal to produce silk in France. The king ordered 60,000 mulberry trees imported from the Languedoc to be planted by Parisians in their private estates, in imitation of the royal gardens. Wealthy Parisian gentlemen were urged by the court to improve the Pari-sian economy by growing mulberry trees on their own estates at their own expense; Olivier de Serres wrote of profi t for the city of Paris and the charity it then could bestow on the poor: “by dressing of the silk, nourish infi nite numbers of people of her proper inhabitants and of poor and miserable folks.”40 Despite his forward-looking capitalist agenda for French agriculture, his view of profi t remained a deeply Christian view.

For his ideas on silk production he had the court’s support. The section on mul-berry trees and silk within the Le theatre d’agriculture was printed separately, and on the king’s orders the 16,000 copies were distributed to every parish in his kingdom.41 Olivier de Serres stressed that he did not want to expand on the known example of the orange, citron, and lemon trees already fashionable by the end of the sixteenth century, because he noted that the mulberry was a totally different case, as grow-ing citrus in the north was only for the “particular delectation” and curiosity of a few.42 De Serres described the garden tours that the king of France, Henri IV, took of the gardens of Provence and then went on to describe his own success at planting between 15,000 and 20,000 mulberries at the king’s request in the gardens of the Tuileries, where they have “happily sprung up.” Olivier de Serres’s success immedi-ately prompted the king to ask the commissioners of the city to pass contracts with merchants on October 14 and December 3 to procure and plant white and black mul-berry trees for the cities of Paris, Orleans, Tours, and Lyon. Additionally Henri IV caused the building of a great house to work the silk worms at the Tuileries.43 De Serres hoped:

We must no more doubt, but within a short space, by the continuation of these thrice excellent beginnings, France shall see itself redeemed, from the value of more than four millions of gold that every year goeth out for furniture of stuffs compounded of the sub-stance or of the matter itself, to the end to work it in the kingdom. Behold the beginning of the introduction of silk in the heart of France.44

Despite self-praise, Olivier de Serres knew that silk was not new to France, that as early as 1480 there was a factory in Tours, and that Francis I had brought back silk-worm eggs and launched projects for sericulture in the Rhône valley. Yet, Henri IV’s initiatives were on a vaster scale.

Thierry Mariage has argued in his book on Louis XIV’s famous garden designer, André Le Nôtre, that because Henri IV was initially a Protestant, as were Olivier de Serres and Jacques Boyceau, one of the seminal early thinkers about estate gar-dening, they were erased from French historiography. Le Nôtre and Versailles have taken center stage for innovation.45 French historiography dated all the innovations


in gardening and estate management to Louis XIV.46 Yet, as early as the end of the sixteenth century, the elite grew the orange trees and other exotics that Versailles would be famous for. The ideas implemented by the gardeners of the seventeenth century had eminent pioneers who were relegated to oblivion by historians. In the same way Colbertism and its championing of silk manufacturing and the growing of madder have eclipsed earlier efforts made under the direction of the Protestant Laffemas.

To get the right tools for cultivating the new exotic trees, Parisians had to resort to new techniques in estate management. Jack Goody, Thierry Mariage, and others have argued that during this period there was a proliferation of garden books, with an emphasis on estate management, and that gardening manuals came from an urban culture that turned to the countryside. As noblemen grew poorer and sold their es-tates, the newly rich merchants bought them for their pleasure and built fancy hotels, which now had to be landscaped to stand out in order to assert the social standing of their new owners. Despite the importance of private gardens to new plants and new techniques, in the second half of the seventeenth century, the royal gardens of Versailles were the site of what drove consumption best: expensive novelties.

Trianon de Porcelaine, 1670–1687

Louis’s reign was marked by the culture of exotic fl owers. The system devised dur-ing his reign to supply his gardens with rare fl owers was an elaborate exercise in domesti cating the exotic to supply several royal gardens. The most elaborate plant-ings were the perfumed fl ower beds of the Trianaon de Porcelaine. “The Trianon was conceived as the physical embodiment of earthly pleasures, an oriental seraglio where Louis XIV could, for an afternoon, escape Versailles,” like the Ménagerie its counterpart across the Grand Canal, the Trianon de Porcelaine was meant to house the exotic.47 After its construction the Ménagerie housed pigeons, pelicans, ostriches, fl amingoes, hummingbirds, parrots, cockatoos, birds of paradise, peacocks, rare breeds of chickens, turkeys, swans, herons, ducks, and also large mammals, deer, camels, bears, wolves, gazelles, cows and horses, and even a crocodile and an ele-phant.48 The exotic animal trade that reached its zenith in eighteenth-century Paris had its inception under Francis I and was well under way under Louis.49

Andrew Zega and Bernd H. Dams go as far as to argue that Louis styled himself as Emperor of the East through the construction of the Trianon as his seraglio. Yet, the seraglio they speak of was not a collection of women, but of exotic fl owers and shrubs planted by the thousands and changed daily to create an eternal spring. Across the Grand Canal the Ménagerie housed Louis’s collection of rare animals, while the Trianon de Porcelaine stood amidst the most splendid garden in all of Europe. Exotic fl owers and rare species of hyacinth, tuberose, jasmine, and orange blossom miracu-lously perfumed the air, even in winter, and without a wilted fl ower ever in sight.


Few buildings have left as many legends behind them as the fl eeting Trianon de Porcelaine, the orientalist structure that was meant to be a building in the Chinese style, although it did not look anything like a Chinese structure. It preceded any building in the chinoiserie style by half a century. The Trianon was meant as a gar-den, and it was to replace a garden lost in front of the newly built apartments of the queen. Dedicated to Madame de Montespan, as early as 1670 Louis Le Vau started the building. At his death, he was replaced by François d’Obray, who erected a main pavilion and four secondary pavilions. The walls were covered in blue and white “Chinese-style” ceramic tiles, leading the building to be called the Porcelain Tri-anon. The gardens of the Trianon, rich with the scent of oriental bulbs and tuberose, appeared by enchantment one spring, or so claims the verses of the poet Felibien:

Ce palais fut regardé d’abord de tout le monde comme un enchantement, car, n’ayant été commencé qu’à la fi n de l’hiver, il se trouva fait au printemps, comme s’il fut sorti de terre avec les fl eurs des jardins.50 [This palace was regarded by all as an enchantment; started at the beginning of winter, it was fi nished in spring, as if it grew out of the earth with the fl owers of the garden.]

This enchantment that appeared overnight was meant to be paradise on earth. The of-fi cial site of the palace of Versailles asserts that in its fi rst spring, in 1670, there were over 26,000 plants bought for the Trianon alone. Orange trees were planted in the ground, and jasmine covered the bowers. The structure was not meant for overnight visits; the fantasy was dedicated to pleasures of the garden and of the table, and each room in the central pavilion was dedicated to Louis XIV’s meals and had a name tied to gastronomy.51 There was a room for appetizers, a room for desserts, a room for soups, another room for the roast, a room for the buffet, another room to prepare fruit, a room to prepare sweets, and two rooms for the tables to seat the guests.

The tie between gastronomy and sexuality in intimate settings such as the Trianon in Early Modern French culture is one that is lost on many contemporary readers. The tradition of intimate soupers with his mistress was meant for fl irtation and seri-ous amorous play as much as for enjoying food. The Trianon was a private quarter, as opposed the public quarters of Versailles, and after Louis started living at Versailles in 1682, he often took refuge at the Trianon. The culture of fl owers under Louis XIV has been studied by Elizabeth Hyde; without her work it would be diffi cult to imag-ine the central importance fl owers had at Louis’s court.52

Louis XIV was not only an avid collector and connoisseur of fl owers, but took personal interest in the gardens. Flowers were also part of the many festivities that he oversaw. There was no winter in the Trianon; it was meant to be an eternal spring to celebrate Louis’s reign as the golden age. Jean Baptiste Colbert made a note to him-self to visit the garden often to see to it that Michel de Bouteux, the gardener in charge of the Trianon, had enough fl owers to cover all of winter and enough young boys to change the thousands of clay pots. The accounts for the Trianon studied by Hyde


include thousands of fl owers: jasmines, tuberose, tulips and other bulbs, hellebore, and orange trees. Hyde cites 10,000 tuberoses in March of 1672 alone.

Le Bouteux found techniques to protect tender plants against the cold and also encouraged bedding out (fl owers grown to maturity in clay pots then planted in the gardens).53 Purchases for the Trianon in 1686 were: 18,850 renonculi, 10,000 tulips, 915 double peonies, 1,200 jonquils, 850 double narcissi, 8,200 hyacinths, 2,000 or-ange lilies, 1,765 pots of tuberose, 4,000 cyclamen, and 20,050 double jonquils in addition to 99,850 assorted fl owering bulbs imported from Toulon.54 The aroma of fl owers overwhelmed the visitors to the Trianon, yet no garden was as perfumed as Louis’s walled private garden of rare fl owers, off the quarters he shared with his new mistress Madame de Maintenon. André Le Nôtre explained that Louis’s small parterre of fl owers alone had nearly a million clay pots that needed changing daily so that no spent blossom or leaf was ever to be seen.55

Needless to say, furnishing the royal gardens with enough blooms (the Trianon was one of several royal gardens), was a gigantic undertaking. To avoid buying from the Dutch, who had developed nurseries of renown and dominated the European trade of oriental bulbs, Colbert’s mercantilism extended to exotic fl owers. One of the most fascinating aspects of Hyde’s study is how several gardens were developed to furnish the royal demand, most importantly in Toulon, where bulbs were exported at low cost directly from the Levant markets and North Africa and propagated.

The demand for fl owers from all over the world called for cultivation and propa-gation on a grand scale, and many private collectors participated in providing rare specimens, but this would have never been enough if Colbert had not set out to cre-ate an infrastructure that had the capacity to propagate enough to provide systematic supplies. Bulbs and fl owers bought in the Americas and in Asia were purchased di-rectly by travelers and collectors and propagated in the garden of Toulon, or at the pépinière created by Colbert. To get rare specimens the king employed fl euristes and curieux, who were dispatched far away in charge of fi nding him fl owers. Hyde cites the case of Sieur Subleau, head treasurer for the king’s galleys, who was reimbursed by the king for bringing back books, fl owers, and other curiosities from the Levant.56 In 1669, in a fi rst step, Louis XIV considerably enlarged a series of existing nurseries in the Faubourg Saint Honoré, where Claude Mollet and his son André, gardeners to Henri IV and Louis XII, had fi rst established them. A British traveler to Paris cited by Hyde described the immensity of the operation at the pépinière du Roule. Seeds, bulbs, and trees were raised to maturity and dispatched to the royal gardens.

The Trianon captured the imagination of the fashionable elite, and in 1673 the Mercure galant reported that “nearly all of the great seigneurs who have country homes are having [Trianons] built in their park.”57 By the eighteenth century the system of cultivating fl owers domestically was working so well that it could supply demands made by the nobility for their own imitations of the court’s devotion to fragrant and exotic shrubs and bulbs.58 The most novel part of this operation imag-ined by Louis XIV and Colbert was the purchase of a sizable piece of land in the


naval base of Toulon, site of the king’s navy and galleys, the center of a network of communications within the Mediterranean area. By 1683 the Intendant de la Ma-rine estimated how many bulbs could be provided by Toulon’s garden alone to the royal gardens for that year as 65,000.59 After 1682 Toulon would buy directly from markets in North Africa and the Levant and propagate and grow bulbs to maturity in France. Hyde wrote that “The Toulon garden bulbs were of a more ephemeral nature than the woven works of Gobelin, or medals struck in honor of the king … That Colbert turned his mercantilist principles of managing the national economy to the king’s fl ower beds only emphasizes how important fl owers were to the glorifi cation of his patron.”60 The Trianon was also meant to point to the French king’s dominion over the natural world: To furnish the Trianon’s gardens, “narcissus came from Con-stantinople, chestnut trees from India, jasmine from Spain, limes from the West In-dies, tuberose from Mexico, and pomegranates from the Middle-East.”61

Chandra Mukerji, in Territorial Ambitions and the Gardens of Versailles, has pointed to the importance of Mediterranean plants in Louis’s collections; the gardens had to be as good as Italy’s.62 The study ties the gardens directly to Louis’s territorial and imperial ambitions. The Parterre du Midi in the larger gardens of Versailles is given special emphasis in her analysis for its rare species of palms and tender plants whose exoticism in the climate of Paris signifi ed the far reaches of Louis’s territorial ambitions.63

Dominion over the natural world is nowhere clearer than under the pen of the am-bitious Donneau de Visé, who soon became the king’s royal historian. Hyde showed how the king’s penchant for fl owers was manipulated by Donneau de Visé, known as the author of Les Amour du Soleil and the editor of the famous news and gossips gazette Le Mercure galant.64 A play, Les Amour du Soleil, written in the wake of the construction of the Trianon in 1671, was set in the gardens of the king of Persia. It was performed at the Theâtre du Marais, the set overfl owing with fl owers. Persia was the mythical site of the garden of paradise itself. The play clearly pointed to how art, science, and nature served Louis XIV’s ability to display the greatest fl oral col-lection in the world on stage.65

Jean Donneau de Visé obtained the coveted post of royal historian by manipulating the king’s love of fl owers through writing and staging the play: he made an allegory between Louis and the king of Persia and between Louis’s garden and the garden of paradise. In 1688, Donneau de Visé pushed the allegories so prized in that period even farther: he presented the king with a history of his reign told by the imaginary voices of rare and exotic fl owers: Histoire de Louis le Grand Contenües dans les rapports qui se trouvent entre les actions & les qualitiés & les vertus des Fleurs & des Plan-tes.66 Studied by Hyde, the manuscript contained thirty-fi ve different fl owers, shrubs, and herbs, beautifully depicted and described. All of the fl owers and plants spoke of their own practical uses and compared themselves to the accomplishments of the Sun King. Donneau de Visé fl owers praised the king’s ability to conquer and compared it to their own ability to overcome the seasons in order to honor him. Just as it was


told in the Bible that Jonathan told of trees gathering to elect a king, the fl owers were paying tribute to the French king: “We assemble today not to elect a king, but to work on the history of a Monarch, who should be praised by all that the earth produces, since all the Earth is indebted to him. Although we are from different countries, we are all French by inclination, or rather we are all devoted to you, we are all in accord in praising you.”67

The fl owers had to be naturalized as French to be worth notice. Elizabeth Hyde in her discussion of the play chose a fashionable fl ower to demonstrate the nature of the discourse held by the fl owers, the anemone. The anemone boasted, “Heaven gave you to France in the time when I was imported [to France] from the Indies,” refer-ring to Louis’s birth.68 For our purposes it is worth noting that the view expressed was that the fl ower was also born on the soil of France. The anemone compared the time it took for a Frenchman, Monsieur Bachelier, to perfect her and get her used to the cold, to the period where Mazarin ruled and Louis had not come to his own. The fl ower continued to tell how Bachelier had sought to keep the rare fl ower for himself alone, and it was not until curious fl orists had wrenched the fl ower away from him that the anemone had its day, in the same way Louis had been revealed after the death of Mazarin. Then the clever author tied the spread of the anemone to the spread of Louis’s realm and knowledge of his greatness.69 The following excerpt is telling “those [fl owers] that foreign countries furnished to us, shine today with more bril-liance than they ever did in their place of origin from where they are drawn.”70 This concept that the anemones as foreign fl owers were unformed, imperfect before they grew on French soil refl ects some of the patriotic naturalism expressed in France’s encounter with the exotic.

Donneau de Visé was but one of the many engaged in what Peter Burke has aptly coined “the fabrication of Louis XIV.” This image-building took place in the battle-fi eld, in court, in the world of fashion, and in the gardens.71 As editor of the Mercure galant, Donneau de Visé was key as he reached a vast public though his gazette. Hyde notices the absence of the tulip in the manuscript the royal historian offered the king, despite the presence of the tulip in the royal gardens, and ascribes it to the Dutch wars.72 The absence of the tulip from the manuscript is very telling indeed. There was under Colbert a major effort to avoid foreign and especially Dutch im-ports and encourage domestic production; northern France had perfected tulips, but much of the tulip trade was now in Dutch hands. Colbert’s mercantilism extended to exotic fl owers, and every effort was made to make them a domestic product, to make them French.

First brought to Europe from the Ottoman empire in the sixteenth century, in an auction held in Holland in February 1637, 99 lots of tulip bulbs fetched a staggering 90,000 guilders, more than $3.5 million in today’s money. Tulips had, in the wake of brief tulipomania on Amsterdam markets, become a major Dutch export to the rest of Europe, and even though in northern France there were some good nurser-ies, they could not compete and slowly disappeared.73 This omission of the tulip in


the manuscript was important as consuming foreign luxuries could be construed as unpatriotic, given Colbert’s policies of protecting the domestic economy through royal privileges and subsidies. The debate on luxury will be examined in the last chapter, but it is worth pointing out that in addition to textiles and porcelain, fl owers were part of the goods that needed domestication to become products of the French terroir (soil).

The chief evil under Colbert was to buy from France’s enemy, the Dutch. An-drew Zega and Bernd H. Dams have their own reading of the imperial meaning of the Trianon and closely tie the building itself to France’s commercial ambitions: They wrote that the pavilion’s “naïve Orientalism” was a metaphorical claim to the riches of the East. “Judging by the minor role the Trianon’s creators accorded to Chinese precedents, attempts to identify them appear misguided, for the compound was foremost an architectural manifesto, signaling France’s intent to overthrow the Netherlands’ near monopoly over Eastern trade. A list of exotic luxury goods brought to Europe by the Dutch is interchangeable of with the salient features of the Trianon, foremost among them silks, porcelain, and fl owers.”74 Even Colbert’s systematic or-ganization of the nursery gardens and pépinières to avoid buying fl owers from the Dutch was ephemeral; by Louis XV’s reign the king was buying rare hyacinths, all the rage in the eighteenth century, from Dutch nurseries in Haarlem.75 Dutch trade to France, although strictly forbidden, prevailed and was more than ever dominated by porcelain, despite Colbert’s attempts. Dutch tiles and porcelain, in imitation of their Chinese antecedents, were invading French markets. Louis’s wars against the Dutch provinces had disastrous economic results in France and brought impoverishment rather than the fabled riches of the East that the Dutch continued to enjoy during their golden age.

The roof of the Trianon and its decoration with Chinese porcelain vases exposed to the elements has been given as the chief reason for the building’s high maintenance cost and therefore its destruction in 1687, to be replaced by the Marble Trianon, which can still be visited in Versailles. Inside the demolished building, porcelain objects, tiles, and trompe l’oeil porcelain effects such as were on the roof could be seen in profusion. Ten large mirrors fi nished in oriental-style lacquer work, called Lachine, or Lachininage, refl ected the extreme luxury of the interiors. An abundance of Chinese silk brocade completed the orientalist theme. Andrew Zega and Bernd H. Dams argue that the building’s chinoiserie, a baroque riot of blue and white, owed a great debt to the Dutch, who had diffused oriental objects in Europe, chief among them china.76

Porcelain in France: The Rise of the Mercers

Since Roman times, Chinese silks and spices, ebony and jade, and tea and porcelain had been eagerly sought. The story of how Chinese porcelain was fi nally imitated by Europe in Meissen, Germany in 1710, after years of trying is well known.77 Even if


the French Jesuit, Father d’Entrecolles, was instrumental in transmitting the secret of porcelain to France through his letters of 1712 and 1722, his transmission of tech-nology was after the success at Meissen and independent of it.78 His letters give us a glimpse of how he gathered his information, some of which he observed himself, but much of what he gathered was through asking questions from the converted Chris-tians working in the porcelain factories. The secret of porcelain had been closely guarded, as it was a major export to the West since antiquity. In France, Chinese porcelain had been collected at court since the reign of Francis I. By Louis’s reign the king and especially his brother had gathered priceless collections of Chinese por-celain, as Persian monarchs and Turkish sultans had done before them. The largest gift of porcelain to Louis XIV was made by the Siamese trade delegation during their embassy of 1686–1687. The Siamese gave the French king gifts of gold, tortoise shell, silk fabrics, carpets, and 1,500 pieces of porcelain.79

Colbert forbade all Dutch imports on the French markets; his policy targeted por-celains from China, but he failed, as these were highly sought after. Worse, Delft, the famous new Dutch manufacturer, was making Dutch copies of Chinese porcelain that were fl ooding the French market and enriching the Dutch. As early as 1664 Colbert decided to create the royal factory of Saint Cloud, in the same year as the French East India Company; two years later the Academy of Science would also be involved in a triangle that was instrumental in making porcelain in France.80 The fi rst soft-paste porcelains were made around 1677, but systematic production was not started until the 1690s. During the 1690s, the English scientist Martin Lister visited Saint Cloud in the company of François Morin from the Academy of Science and wrote: “I confess I could not distinguish betwixt the Pots made there and the fi nest China Ware I ever saw.”81 Colbert’s edict creating Saint Cloud gives us an idea of how important it was for things manufactured in France to actually look Chinese. In the edict the order is for St. Cloud to imitate porcelains in the “Indian style” and get a monopoly on the imports of Delft into France.82 The word used by Colbert for imi-tation is a very strong one in French: contre-façon, which implies that Saint Cloud ware should be passed off as Chinese porcelain.83 Similar to the trajectory of coffee, which remained viewed and sold as oriental long after it was Caribbean, even when porcelain was no longer from China it posed as Chinese to maintain its market value. Saint Cloud was called a manufacture de faience, and in 1673, a patent was also is-sued for faience to Edme Poterat’s family in Rouen as “he had found the secret of making Chinese porcelain.”84

Later on the factories of hard-paste porcelain, Vincennes, Sèvres, and Meissen, also produced pseudo-Chinese wares, often sold as Chinese or Japanese on the French markets. French merchants were sometimes directly responsible for com-missioning porcelain made in Europe but stamped with oriental-looking marks to be sold on French markets as Japanese Kakiemon ware. In the 1720s a French merchant named Lemaire sent white porcelain wares commissioned from Meissen to Holland “to be enameled in the gout de l’ensien Japon.”85 From fakes and imitations, there


was also a transitional style in which French porcelain was made in the chinoiserie style, without posing as Chinese. One of the most fascinating processes to follow is the gradual transformation in the representation of the same goods a century later. Someone like Madame de Pompadour dictated taste through her many commissions directly to manufacturers and to importers. In the 1760s Sèvres ware was looking very French and no longer Chinese despite all its chinoiserie. The chinoiserie was now pure décor in the fi ve pieces made for the bedroom of the Marquise de Pom-padour, a great patron of the factory of Sèvres. After 1789 Sèvres lost much of is chinoiserie style altogether. The demand for exotic imports and their imitations re-mained high in the aristocracy and the wealthy bourgeoisie of Paris, until the French Revolution disrupted the order of things. They could be found in the most elaborate stores in the city: some of the shops held by the guild of the mercers had orientalist names and decorations themselves.

The mercers’ guild sold oriental goods, and the other channels for exotic goods were the fairs, such as the fair of Saint Germain, where coffee had fi rst been served in Paris. Carolyn Sargentson has studied the guild of the mercers closely. Some mercers could have acted as whole sellers of porcelain, and some were wealthy enough to buy porcelain in bulk from the East India companies.86 Mercers could alter imported goods for the French market; they mounted porcelain in gold and silver, and they also lacquered furniture in Lachine style. The guild of mercers in Paris was responsible for the sale of oriental goods to the wealthy bourgeoisie and the aristocracy through their shops. Many women kept the stores, especially those selling silk hose and rib-bons, and there are many widows as owners of inventories. These were family-owned businesses. The store fronts often carried orientalist names such as La Pagode d’Or, La Perle d’Orient, and Au Grand Turc. The mercers of Paris also changed imports to adapt them to the taste of their customers; they had the right to modify furniture and goods, and the most important are some examples of Japanese porcelains adapted through commissions to French taste through metal decoration. The mercers sold luxury goods, paintings, furniture, porcelain, textiles, and mirrors.

Women played central roles as consumers, patrons, and shopkeepers in this increased consumption of exotic goods, but their pivotal role is often masked, except in moments when criticism makes them scapegoats for the aristocracy’s excesses. Their customers were mainly women in the elite. Very highly placed women did not use the guild of the mercers as intermediaries; someone like the Marquise de Pompadour put in her orders directly with artisans, manufacturers, and importers. After the reign of Louis XIV, when the king had so closely con-trolled fashion himself, mercers were in fact dependant on the women at court, often the king’s mistresses, for setting fashion trends.87 It was the taste of a few highly placed women and their commissions that helped make fashion. The speed at which fashion changed in this period is startling to the modern reader and marks a clear promotion of consumption and stamps the century as a modern and global one, albeit for the elite alone.88


One of the six luxury guilds the mercers and their shops had, as Steven Kaplan demonstrates, climbed to the top of the hierarchy of the guilds through hubris, sheer snobbery, and their pride in selling most everything and manufacturing nothing, which, unlike other guilds, put them above artisans and gave them the status of mer-chants.89 It could also be rightly argued that their right to sell imported goods gave them the unique power to sell foreign objects against those made by French artisans in other guilds, without the stamp of the guild. In a sense their imports broke the monopoly the guilds each had on their own craft in France, which was true for many things like furniture, fans, porcelain, and jewels. It could be further argued that their rise in power was closely tied to their customers’ passion for the foreign and exotic and domestic imitations. In the quarrels among guilds, the rise of the mercers was an important phenomenon that changed the social order. Merchants rose through the ranks of society through newly acquired wealth. In turn, as Daniel Roche has long demonstrated, the ancien régime was a culture of appearance, and that one was what one wore, and rising to the ranks meant increased consumption.90

The Siamoise and the Indiennes, from the Exotic to French Regional Goods

In 1686, ambassadors from the king of Siam made their debut appearance at Versailles, bringing a magnifi cent array of exotic luxury goods to Louis XIV. A fashion of parasols, large silk cushions, and elephants was started. Amidst the gifts brought from Siam were silk and cotton ikat textiles. French manufacturers imme-diately adapted and imitated the ikat technique, in which the yarns are dyed before weaving, to produce what they called toiles fl ammées, for the fl ame-like color tran-sitions in the textiles. The use of a local dye, pastel, produced mostly blue cloths. Striped and checked toiles fl ammées woven primarily in blue and white dyed linens and cottons were known throughout the eighteenth century as siamoises de Rouen, marking their exotic origin but making them a domestic product. Siam and Rouen were both remembered. Savary des Brûlons’s Dictionnaire universel de commerce, Paris, 1723, tells us that guild rules for production of siamoises were set by an or-dinance in 1701 and cites widespread use of siamoises de Rouen for curtains, bed hangings, upholstery fabric, and some articles of clothing, such as skirts and lining for elegant chamber robes.91 Duc de Luynes mentions in his Mémoires that in 1737 Louis XV paid a visit to his offi cers’ new quarters, all embellished with siamoi-ses.92 The use of this textile for the high ranks of the army did much to popularize its spread among the elite. In the Marly Palace, the new bedchamber of Madame de Pompadour, consort to Louis XV, was decorated in this pattern. The textile in blue and white with added fl oral bouquets festooned her two beds, her arm chairs, and her chaises as described by the Inventaire des meubles de la Couronne, 1751.


The siamoise were strongly associated with the aristocrats and the monarchy, so this had to cease if Rouen wanted to sell its goods after the French Revolution. Thanks to a shift in political discourse, from the cosmopolitanism of the eighteenth century and its love for the exotic to the post-revolutionary nationalism of the nine-teenth century, the fabric fi rmly represented a region of France, and became known as toiles de Charente. The Siamese origin of the textile was erased, exactly like the exotic provenance of the fl owers of Donneau de Visé, a textile for citizens had to be the pride of a region. Their production in Rouen was continued after a short gap in production during the Revolution and throughout the nineteenth century. Today, more famous than the toile de charentes are the printed cottons of Provence, ubiqui-tous today in the tourist trade and an emblem of France and Provence worldwide.

The Provençal cotton textile industry has its origins in the imitation of oriental products imported under Louis XIV. European merchants going to India brought back knowledge of Indian chintzes (the word is derived from the Sanskrit chitra, meaning variegated or speckled). Another word for imported printed cottons was calico, derived from the Persian word kalamkari, or qalam-kar, meaning pen-work.93 Calicoes, printed cottons, became fashionable throughout Europe in the late seven-teenth century, so much so that Daniel Defoe exclaimed that even the queen of En-gland was wearing the cotton prints that had ordinarily been reserved for bed covers and for children and maids:

These people’s obsessions with products from India has now reached the painted calicos, which were formerly used for quilted blankets and the clothing of lower class children. Today they are even used by our fi ner women. The power of fashion is so great that we see persons of rank wearing Indian cloths even though only the maids were allowed to use them before. The queen herself has been seen in Chinese silk and calico.94

The English East India Company as well as the Dutch VOC imported these through their maritime trade. These calicoes were called indiennes in French, as they were made in India and the Ottoman Empire and were bought by French merchants in the Levant markets of Diarbekir and Aleppo. They were a major French import, which arrived like most oriental goods at the port of Marseilles. Ever since the capitula-tions were actually applied in 1569, these cloths, which were also called chafarcanis, printed calicoes, or indiennes, were a major trade with Marseilles. The Marseillais merchants were very important on the Levant markets, where they brought silver coined in Provence to purchase cotton cloth and silk. French policy was to create domestic products that imitated the imports. The most diffi cult part of imitating the indiennes was reproducing the use of the dye madder. Olivier Raveux has studied indienne printing in its most important European center, Marseilles.95

Marseilles was the oldest European center of printed calico manufacture, preced-ing important centers in London by nearly thirty years. In Paris and Amsterdam indiennes became all the rage. Raveux fi nds that initially calico printing in Marseilles


grew from a process of imitation to provide substitutions for imports from the Levant. According to Raveux’s analysis, the success of these imitation cloths was such that it pushed local entrepreneurs to launch themselves into producing them; they began in 1648, but their efforts failed, as they could not match the quality of the imports in their calicos. Since 1660 indiennes from Persia, Diarbekir, and Aleppo were making their way into France via Marseilles on a regular basis. The French imitations made “à la façon du Levant et de Perse” (in the style of Levant and Persia) in Marseilles would not hold their dyes. Their problems were technical; Olivier Raveux has found a fascinating case of oriental transfer of technology to France via the Armenians, encouraged by Colbert:

In order to activate the silk trade and allow the creation of manufactories of fi gured silks with silver and gold, Colbert favoured the installation of Armenians in Marseilles … Mer-chants and printed calico manufacturers benefi ted from these networks, inviting to Mar-seilles several Armenian technicians to improve the quality of their products. The fi rst seem to have been Boudac and Martin who promised, in 1672, to teach Antoine Desuargues and Claude Picard to “paint calicoes of the type from the Levant and Persia” … With the instal-lation of the Armenians, the Marseillais then mastered printing with madder. It was perhaps at the same time that the technique of working with indigo was acquired thanks to the tightening of links with Aleppo, the reference point for the making of blue ajami [Persian] cottons, destined in the main for the dress of ordinary people.96

This foreign group was invited to help the silk industry, and their impact on printing cotton was crucial to creating a local industry. These indienneurs arméniens are so well known that they are mentioned in a host of books and museum Web sites, but often without much detail. Olivier Raveux’s recent analysis fi nds that the Arme-nians not only transmitted techniques but became associated with local owners and invested in workshops; their arrival marked a turning point in which a high enough quality was achieved for French imitations to compete with real oriental goods. Much like the case of the café, the Armenians were crucial links as transmitters of techniques and ways of life known to them in Asia.

Raveux notes that high-quality products resulted from this collaboration between Armenian master dyers and the Marseillais. Products from Marseilles began to be recognized to the extent that it gave its name to certain products, notably Marseilles quilting (toiles piquées de Marseilles, boutis) which had some success in Europeans markets from the middle of the 1680s. This transfer of technology from oriental workshops to those of Marseilles made Marseilles a technical center recognized for this craft within Europe, so much so that in 1678, two merchants from Amsterdam recruited the Armenian Lowijs de Celibi from Marseilles in order to introduce mad-der dyeing methods into their workshop in Amersfoort. Marseilles also became a point of reference that gave rise to imitations of Marseilles, both in Europe and in the southeast of France.97 There is evidence of the manufacture of printed calicoes


in Avignon from 1677, Nîmes in 1678, and Arles from the beginning of 1680. Mar-seilles was essential to these other locations, as was the founding of workshops for the diffusion of Levantine printing techniques.98 This occurred in the same way as siamoises gave way to siamoisesde Rouen and then came to be called toile de Charente, a regional mark in national products. The printed cottons became part of France’s industry, as Marseillais goods. European artisans were imitating the tech-nique as seen as Marseillais, and no longer Persia or the Levant.

The transmission of using madder dye deserves some attention, as the French had factories by the middle of the eighteenth century for reproducing what was known as Turkey red, or Andrinople red, other names for madder. Madder was grown in Eu-rope since antiquity and was grown in France as early as the reign of King Dagobert. By Colbert’s time it was no longer a French product, as France had to buy it from the Dutch, because it grew either in Flanders or near the Caspian Sea and in the Caucasus and was imported by the Dutch, so Colbert encouraged the development of madder plantations in Languedoc’s dried marshes. This was around the same year he encouraged the Armenians to come to Marseilles. There is little trace of what happened in madder cultivation until Jean Althen introduced techniques to grow it systematically.99 Olivier de Serres had described its culture as early as the sixteenth century, but by the middle of the eighteenth century madder was a crop in the Vau-cluse and the Languedoc. The plant could easily be grown in Europe, but its proper-ties varied with its provenance.

Even dyeing with madder was not an oriental secret and was known since antiquity and still well-known to the dyers of Flanders, Florence, and Venice in the sixteenth century, as several famous medieval books on dyeing attest.100 It must have been a well-kept secret. It seems that neither the French nor the English had the knowledge of this technique of true dyes, as in 1569, Morgan Hubblethorn was sent on a mis-sion of industrial espionage: “In Persia you shall fi nd carpets of coarse thrummed wool, the best in the world, and excellent coloured: those cities and towns you must repair to, and you must use means to learn all the order of dying those thrums, which are so dyed that neither raine, wine nor vinegar can stain”; a little later in the text he is also asked to look into dyeing silk: “For that in Persia they have great colouring of silks it behoves to learn that also.” These orders were given by Richard Hakluyt, famous for his compendium of travelers, and many travel accounts were a source of industrial information. English wool cloth was prized on the Levant markets and the term Londra, used by the Italian dyers to describe the cloth since late medieval times, was still used in the eighteenth century. The red wool cloth was initially cochineal dyed, an expensive process, but by the seventeenth century it was cheaper and mad-der dyeing was known to English artisans. Yorkshire madder dyed cloth was much in demand on the Levant markets; it was used by fez makers in Aleppo and else-where in Turkey, and the Venetians also made similar caps from the same cloth for the export markets of Marseilles and Genoa in “imitation of those made in Tunis.”


Venice’s demise as the center of dyeing black cloth in the mid-eighteenth century, in which madder was necessary, was due to local rulings.101

The indiennne fashion had peaked in France in 1685, now a center of Euro-pean fashions and hit most of Europe.102 Nevertheless, in the wake of Colbert’s death in 1683, through several misguided fi scal policies a lot of the industries he had protected or started were destroyed. Such was the case of printed cotton, and, counseled to do so, the king banned the indienne industry in 1686. Olivier Raveux fi nds that many Marseillais artisans took refuge in Avignon on the papal estate. The aim of these prohibitions was to protect the French industries of wool, silk, and linen from oriental imports and also to avoid the escape of bullion exchanged for cotton cloth and silk.103 The revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685 also had a disastrous effect on the industries encouraged by Colbert, as many artisans, includ-ing the Armenians, left France for Holland, England, and Switzerland in its wake, or even earlier.

The fashion for indiennes did not disappear despite other European prohibi-tions, in London and in the Dutch Republic, in the early eighteenth century. Robert Chenicer writes that many enterprising men in France and elsewhere tried to pen-etrate the secret of madder dyeing, and it would have been easier had they read that in their own territorial possessions of Canada there was another way of obtaining red: as early as 1603 Samuel Champlain had praised a brilliant American red dye he called Micmac red. In 1670 Sister Marie de l’Incarnation wrote down the simple technique it required. It was equally ignored. In contrast to her less involved method, the techniques used for dyeing with madder could take up to a month or more for one piece of cloth, hence the value and price of these printed cottons. Oriental products were highly prized, and the nun’s description of how the Indians painted porcupine quills was once again a case of gathering information on plants, spices, and tech-niques in “les Indes” for their utility to France, but to no avail. It was, as was much else that was gathered as information abroad, completely ignored.

The problems for the advancement of this proto-industry encouraged by Col-bert were not simply technical; by this date the technical problems had been solved through a transfer of technology. A policy of fear destroyed much of the progress. The fear of foreign products, of exotic goods hurting the economy of France, took over after the end of Colbert’s mitigating infl uence to assuage French hostility to for-eigner and the foreign. The court began by taxing imported cotton cloth, a measure the Marseillais protested, as they said it restricted French industry’s progress. Undyed cotton fabric imported from the Levant was the basis for the fabrication of the indi-ennes, in its untreated state, and it also went to French markets for clothing made for the artisans and the working class. The prohibitions against the fabrication and im-ports of indiennes of 1687 were reiterated by Louis XIV in 1688, although the city’s government tried to elude it and encourage those continuing local production by pro-claiming that Marseilles did not fall under French law because it was a free port. In retaliation, another royal edict was promulgated in 1689, and military forces were


sent to destroy all of the workshops, and even the wooden printing molds used for impressions were shattered to pieces, ruining all of the technological progress made since 1648. As a result of this misguided policy the remaining Marseillais artisans left for Tuscany and elsewhere in Italy. Ironically this created producers abroad that later would be competing with Marseilles’s production.104

As a consequence of breaks in transmission and the diffi culty of dyeing with madder, there was not just one moment when there was a transfer of technology, but several. After the departure of the skilled Armenians and Marseillais artisans from Marseilles in 1687, there was a long gap to recuperate lost knowledge, and there were other examples of transference of similar technologies at the height of the fashion for indiennes. A simplifi ed recipe for this oriental technique was reached by J. C. Flacshat after years of study. Just like the young dyer sent to Persia by Hakluyt to bring home techniques in the sixteenth century, Flaschat was sponsored to travel and live in Edirne (Andrianople), a center producing Turkey red in the eighteenth century. Aleppo had long imitated the Indian cottons, and the dyeing was done in Ed-irne. Flaschat stayed several years to study techniques, commerce, and the arts, and he even took up Ottoman poetry to perfect his language skills. He returned to France and, according to Schaefer, set up a dyeing factory devoted to dyeing with madder in Saint Chamond near Lyons in 1748, exactly a century after the Marseillais had fi rst tried but failed to copy indiennes. To run the dye factory he brought his entire team with him from the Ottoman empire. He brought two dyers from Andrianople; two tinsmiths (étameurs) from Constantinople, one of whom made high-end coffee pots; a Persian spinner; and from Smyrna a thummer or arçonneur who fl uffed up cotton. An Indian brodeur au tamis was left behind as he refused to come to France, but he taught Flaschat his art of making sieves, and the team was completed with two Arme-nian vitriol makers from Cyprus.105 Flaschat’s trip was subsidized by Henri Betrin, minister of fi nance, as is clear from the preface to his treatise on dyeing, published in 1766 in Lyons.106

Before the French industrial success of the mid-eighteenth century, Marseilles’s production had picked up, but very slowly after that moment of brutal interruption in 1686–1689. Before the edicts forbidding the manufacturing of indiennes, Marseilles was known for its local production and had markets for its Marseillais piqué, printed cottons, in Spain, Portugal, and Italy at the value of 150,000 livres tournois.107 These printed cottons were seen as a French good. An edict of 1692, then one of 1703, reversed Louis XIV’s orders, but too late, as enormous damage had been done to Colbert’s policies of growing madder in France, encouraging domestic production to compete with imports, much of which was often in Dutch or English hands, and conserving bullion even when the French bought indiennes directly on the Levant markets. A royal edict of 1704 now allowed the Dutch to bring in their goods, among them several dyes including madder, a measure that would have had Colbert turning in his grave. It read: “Arrest du Conseil d’Estat du roy qui permet de faire entrer dans le royaume de l’azur, de la colle de toutes sortes, des bois de teinture, de la


garance, & du poil de sanglier sur les vaisseaux hollandois: en faveur desquels il sera expedié des passeports pour venir charger dans les ports de France des vins, des eaux de vie, & autres denrées & marchandises du royaume dont la sortie est permise: du 11 octobre 1704.”108 [Legislation from the king’s state counsel permitting Dutch vessels to bring into the kingdom of France woad, glue of all kinds, wood for dyeing, madder, and boar bristles, against which passports will be issued to charge wines and spirits and other goods that are permitted to exit from France: on October 11 1704.] This was not to France’s advantage, nor would it benefi t the local Marseillais merchants.

Though the process of dyeing with madder had been developed entirely empiri-cally, it was considered a secret process, and great efforts were made in Europe to analyze it scientifi cally to get the recipe right once and for all. This was achieved by Claude Bethollet (1748–1822).109 The many details of this transfer and the dif-fi culties and changes of techniques are the domain of textile historians, many of whom concurred that Europe had turned to Asia to integrate superior manufacturing techniques to set its own technological progress in motion.110 Oriental techniques carried through a series of merchant networks marked the beginning of European industrialization.111

There are many examples to unearth and study closely that resemble the evo-lution of the siamoises and of the indiennes, oriental goods imitated and later transformed into important domestic products, as silk was very early on. Chardin’s little questionnaire pales in comparison to what lies unexplored and ready to be studied. There is a 300-page manuscript of a French factor describing piece-good production in 1678–1680 in Surat, India, in the Bibliothèque Nationale.112 These products then come to represent regional specialty goods within France, and French goods abroad. This was not a sudden change, as one can fi nd traces of this hope and planning in the writings of Laffemas and Olivier de Serres in the sixteenth century. The idea of replacing imported luxury goods with domestic goods was very old in France, and it was part of a protectionist, then later a mercantilist, policy that we examine in chapter 10.

It can be argued that fashion for things oriental was the impetus behind these economic transformations in French manufacturing, and that consumer demand for ori-ental luxury goods drove this transformation. Oriental fashions that in turn brought about their French imitations lay at the heart of this economic change. Scholars have argued that these transfers of technology from Asia to Europe were accelerated at the end of the seventeenth century, to the great profi t of Europe’s economy.113 Domesti-cating the exotic was good business, and created a proto-industrial revolution in the domains of textiles. How was this craze for things oriental imposed at the end of the seventeenth century? Although many debates about the rise of modern consumption still exist and amend the work of Norbert Elias, one can, despite newer work rightly mitigating the court’s sole infl uence, still be unhesitant, and as DeJean has argued,


turn to the court of Louis XIV as a center of diffusion for certain high fashions.114 Yet, the role of merchants and mercers was key.

The cargoes of ships arriving with oriental wares from the Levant, Persia, India, China, and Japan were mainly England’s and the Dutch Republic’s in the seven-teenth century. To shrink the growing defi cit of the French company, Louis XIV did what he had done with coffee: farm out the debt of state monopoly to a private person. The Compagnie Royale des Indes Orientales, whose fi rst defi cit had been alleviated by the merchants of Saint Malo, leased its monopoly in 1698 to a privateer, Sieur Jourdan de Groue. De Groue founded the Société de la Chine or Société Jourdan de Groue. It is worth reiterating that China had been an old dream and that the fi rst French traveler to China, Henry de Feynes, left for Canton through the land route in 1606, arriving there three years later in 1609, before Henri IV died in 1610.115 Ninety years later, de Groue bought the fi rst royal ship, Amphitrite, from Louis XIV and sent it to China from La Rochelle in June 1698. It fi nally reached France directly from China in the 1680s. The Amphitrite returned to Port-Louis, France, in August 1700 with 167 crates of porcelain, which were sold at auction in Nantes after being publi-cized in Le Mercure Galant. Yet, the mission of the Amphitrite was not simply com-mercial; its purpose, however profi table, was not to bring back porcelains. In 1698 it also took fi ve more Jesuit mathematicians and scientifi c instruments to China. Proselytism was not its sole mission either, as science and mapmaking was also one of its aims. Several maps were commissioned by the court.116 Thus as was common in the ancien régime travel, religion, science, and commerce were all one.

The auction in Nantes, where the cargo of the Amphitrite was sold, was very suc-cessful. In France, Marseilles, Lorient, Bordeaux, Nantes, and Lyon were thriving centers for oriental goods, but nothing could compare with Paris and Parisian stores. Oriental wares became a stimulus for the development of chinoiserie styles in Eu-rope, and several types of oriental porcelain and lacquer became part of the French canon of good design and craftsmanship. The demands of the luxury market played a large role in expanding foreign trade: Jacques Savary de Brûlons wrote that the guild of the mercers was responsible for expanding the French trade to the Indies. It was the mercers who were retailing oriental goods on the domestic markets.117 Demand drove the need for overseas trade. Jacques Savary de Brûlons’s argument that the mercers were in no small part responsible for the rise of the consumption of luxury goods successfully counters Elias’s argument that the court drove fashions and de-mand. The bourgeois-versus-aristocratic origins of modern consumption was also a classic debate between Werner Sombart and Max Weber.118

The bourgeois-versus-aristocratic origins of modern consumption also remains a debate, but it may be a false one in France, as the lines between a wealthy bour-geois, such as Colbert and his descendants, and the aristocracy in France, had been slowly blurred since Richelieu. Here it is argued that Louis XIV expanded on some of the habits of collecting and domesticating the exotic that were prevalent in France


since Henri IV and in some cases Francis I, giving credence to an earlier rise of the consumption of luxury goods in the Renaissance in France, before his reign.119 Above and beyond the debates about when the consumption of luxury goods began in France, there is no question that the French court’s affection for the oriental lux-ury goods, from diamonds to fl owers to expensive textiles, porcelain, and Arabian horses, was at its height under Louis XIV.

– 231 –

–9–

The Politics of Pleasure French Imitations of Oriental Sartorial

Splendor and the Royal Carrousels

On choisit pour corps le soleil, qui, dans les règles de cet art, est le plus noble de tous, et qui, par la qualité d’unique, par l’éclat qui l’environne, par la lumière qu’il communique aux autres astres qui lui composent comme une espace de cour ... par son mouvement sans relâche, oh il parait néanmoins toujours tranquille, par cette course constante et invariable, dont il ne s’écarte et ne se détourne jamais, est assurément la plus vive et la plus belle image d’un grand monarque.1

Louis XIV2

In 1653 Louis, at age 15, danced dressed as the sun in the Ballet de la nuit. In the décor of night made for the ballet, the adolescent king shone with éclat. Brilliance is a poor translation for the term éclat, but it is the word used in the original French by Peter Burke to characterize Louis’s reign after 1661 and his skill at image building.3 The year 1662 marks the point when the king formally chose the sun to represent his own body.4 The carrousel of 1662 was held to celebrate the birth of Louis’s son and heir. As in the quotation that opens this chapter, he wanted to be the source of all light in the court.5 He used éclat, representations of the sun, in games and ballets to enhance his own glory and to endear himself to the people he ruled. Games, masked balls, operas, and ballets were the political tools of choice for Louis XIV’s domestic and foreign propaganda. The carrousel of 1662, a major tournament on horseback, involved the highest nobility. It was an occasion to highlight the refi nement of the French court to the rest of the world. In the memoirs for the dauphin, Louis wrote:

Honest pleasures have not been given to us by nature without reason; they dissipate the fatigue of work, give one new strength to go back to it; they are at the service of health, calm the troubled soul and the worries of the passions, inspire humanity, polish the mind ... and take away from virtue the bitter edge which would make it at times less sociable and less useful.

He wrote further that festivities were part of a tradition of the people’s free access to their king, of public service: “It is an equality of justice between him [the king] and them, that keeps them within a just and honest society, disregarding the near infi nite


difference of birth and rank and power.”6 His reign was marked by memorable ballets, elaborate waterworks, masked balls, splendid operas, and fi reworks, attended by a large public. The lavishness of his festivities remained unmatched, even later in the frivolous eighteenth century. Louis is best remembered dancing in a ballet as the incarnation of the sun, dressed as Apollo, the Greek sun god. The sun would mark his reign as it had that of ancient Persian monarchs before him.7 The sun and the color red were the main themes in Louis’s representations and self-representations for a good part of his reign.8 Becoming the celestial body around which all else revolved, Louis was the center of the world as its ruler.

Since they fi rst took place in France, tournaments held at such carrousels were strictly reserved to gentlemen of high rank who rode on horseback for a lady of their choice, who gave the prize to the winner. The spectacular festivities held during Louis’s rule invariably revolved around the king or the dauphin. The carrousel of June 5 and 6, 1662, was no exception; it was one of the most lavish public festivities ever built around the monarch, who was both represented as the sun and disguised as a Roman emperor. This carrousel was a series of horse races unprecedented in scale. The participants and their horses wore disguises that represented the nations of the world. The most important noblemen of France were organized in fi ve quadrilles, a group of horse-mounted men. Each quadrille was led by a major political fi gure, the fi rst quadrille by the King himself. The men in the quadrille led by Louis were dressed as the Romans, the horsemen led by his brother, Monsieur, were dressed as Persians, and the Turks were led by the highest prince of the blood after the king’s brother, the Prince de Condé. Condé’s son, the Duc d’Enghien, was “le Roy des Indes.” The Duc de Guise represented “le Roy d’Amérique,” and his quadrille of horsemen were the “sauvages d’Amérique.” Africa was notable for its absence, al-though the French established a commercial counter in Senegal in the same year the carrousel took place in 1662. All the nations important in France’s vision of the world paid homage to Louis XIV, who raced for two days.

This carrousel of 1662 was unprecedented in the number of participants; there were 1,299 participants, ten times the number of people usually involved in a carrousel. Louis demanded the participation of all the major noblemen of his kingdom. One can still count them in the seven magnifi cent paintings made by François Chauveau (1613–1676) and Israël Sylvestre (1621–1691), who were commissioned by the court to commemorate this event, although the paintings were not done immediately.9 Princes, pages, slaves, and exotic animals can be seen in the fi xed hierarchical order that Louis imagined for them. The imagery of slaves following their masters has in-spired Festa Lynn, who asserts that there could not be a single thing in heaven and earth, other than Louis’s order, which served to domesticate the world through the grotesque juxtaposition of prince and slave:

The slaves that follow in the prince’s steps both are and are not out of place: simultane-ously excluded and always already incorporated into the place attributed to them, the

The Politics of Pleasure • 233

“alien” participants in the procession are inserted into a signifying chain that reproduces their identity, rewrites it, and disguises the violence of wrenching people and objects from their original contexts and inserting them in a new and totalized order.10

The order of the carrousel was planned by Louis himself. It celebrated the birth of his heir to the throne of France, the dauphin. The iconography of the sun, the gathering of all the noblemen in France around him, had great domestic signifi -cance after the civil war that had nearly dethroned his father. Louis was the center of the carrousel, dressed as the Roman emperor, and the nobles of France were not only recognizing his rule but the succession of his son to the throne of France.

While this carrousel was one of the most magnifi cent of all such horse races, it was not the fi rst. The description that follows is based on Stephane Castellu-cio’s work on carrousels. Carrousels had a long-established tradition in France. In seventeenth-century France carrousels were erroneously believed to date back to Rome. The ideas of sixteenth-century travelers and humanists that Greece and Rome were France’s past were generally accepted. The Roman garb chosen by Louis to race against “the rest of the world” was an expression of his imperial aims. Yet, the carrousel was oriental in origin. Carrousels, which meant tournaments, games, and races on horseback, were part of a long Arabic tradition of horse games. They had reached Europe through the Moors of Spain and had come to France via Italy. The fi rst was held in France upon the return of the armies of Charles VIII from his Italian campaigns.11 Antoine Furetière’s 1690 dictionary defi nes the carrousel as “a magnifi cent feast given by lords and princes for public rejoicing on occasions such as marriages, royal parades, etc.”12 The carrousel in the seventeenth century consisted of races and games, and not of tournaments between knights. The most popular exer-cise in French carrousels, the course des bagues, was a race run to lift off a metallic ring with a lance. In the carrousel of 1662 a new game was added, the course de tête, the race for heads.

In this race of 1662, the horsemen had to aim at two heads with their lances, the fi rst being a large cardboard head in the shape of a Turk’s head, “une teste de gros carton peinte (sic) et de la forme de celle d’un Turc.” The second head had “the color and shape of a Moors,” according to Claude François Ménestrier.13 Author of an im-portant 1669 treatise on tournaments, jousts, and carrousels, Ménestrier affi rms that this new game of heads came to France from Germany. The wars of the Hapsburgs in Central Europe with the Ottomans must have been at the source of this novel representation of the Turks and the Moors as target heads in the French carrousel. In France, as the French were the traditional allies of the Ottomans since 1535, the Turks had traditionally been represented by the princes of the blood who donned their dress. They were represented by the noble participants in carrousels and were never before set out as lowly cardboard targets.

This was a novel representation in the wake of Louis’s marriage to Marie Thérèse of Spain in 1660. France’s on-again off-again allegiance to the Hapsburgs in the


seventeenth century often strained its relations to its allies the Ottomans. Louis XIV, like Louis XIII before him, married a Hapsburg to consolidate France’s ties with Spain and the empire. The couple fi rst met at the midpoint between Paris and the Spanish border.14 In an important gesture, Marie Thérèse changed from her Spanish fashions into French clothes.15 The recent marriage explained this double discourse in the carrousel; the Turks, allied to Louis, were both represented by the highest noble Prince de Condé; and as enemies of Spain, they were represented by the cardboard target. This form of target was adopted from the games played by the Hapsburgs in their German domains closer to the front where the Ottomans seriously threatened Europe’s borders. Yet, the Prince de Condé was in Turkish garb, a costume that had previously been worn by kings.

The fi rst instance of such aristocratic representation of the Turk in France was in the carrousel of 1559, when Henri II himself had dressed as a Turk to lead princes, who were also dressed in Turkish garb. They raced against princes disguised as Moors.16 Henri Sauval was commissioned by the court to write about the event and noted without much detail that the participants in the carrousel wore white silk gar-ments as did the “Levantines.” Despite a long tradition, carrousels there came to an abrupt end at court after a major accident. After the peace of Coteau Cambraisi between France and the Spanish Hapsburgs, Henri II held a magnifi cent carrousel for the marriage of his daughter Elizabeth to Philip II of Spain. During these races, Henri II was wounded by a lance in the eye and died of his wound. His death prompted the ban of tournaments in the French court. No major carrousels were held until the double marriages of Anne of Austria to Louis XIII and the marriage of Elizabeth of France to Philip IV of Spain in April of 1612. These celebrations of French allegiance with Spain were held in the newly fi nished Place Royale in Paris, today called Place des Vosges.

The Carrousel of 1662

When Louis XIV fi rst thought of organizing the 1662 event, he only had the model of the 1612 carrousel. Due to the troubles of the Fronde, for half a century no car-rousels had taken place in the capital of Paris, save a small one in 1656, while Rouen and Bordeaux had witnessed some magnifi cent events. This was signifi cant, because it pointed to the power attained by provincial noblemen in this period and to the weakness of the royal court. The Fronde, a civil war that nearly ended the monarchy in favor of the French nobility, had marked Louis’s childhood. When the princes of the blood were in revolt against his father, Louis’s hurried fl ight with his mother to Saint Germain was not forgotten by the king. Sleeping on straw while the noblemen took over the palace of the Louvre, and the attempts to oust his father in favor of his brother Gaston, were bitter childhood memories. The carrousel of 1662 was the


occasion to symbolically mark Louis XIV’s power over the princes of the blood and their descendants, and to affi rm his dominion over France.

The Prince de Condé, once a leader of the Fronde, and his son the Duc d’Enghien, were the leaders of two quadrilles that paid homage to the Roman emperor, Louis. The Prince de Condé had sought Spanish help against Mazarin. Louis offered him an opportunity to pay homage. As the people of France watched, the king imposed an elaborate costumed game of submission on the noblesse of France. Disguised as the rulers of the Turks, the Persians, the Americans, and the Indies, the main noblemen of France bowed to Louis’s will and paid for the cost of their outrageously expensive disguises. When some fl inched at the cost and tried to bow out of their participation in this huge expense, Louis’s response was radical: they would lose their formal court appointments, which meant they would lose their income from the king.17 Each par-ticipant was chosen by Louis XIV and had to pay for his costumes and the costumes of his horses, which were dressed just as expensively. The cost of jewels, brocades in gold and silver, and ostrich plumes inconvenienced more than one nobleman. It was seen as a heavy obligation. To show his newly acquired fortune after Mazarin’s death and Fouquet’s arrest, Louis paid for all of their suites, that is, the costumes of their multitude of pages, their trumpet players and drummers, and their horse-grooms.18

The costumes were made by Henri Gissey (1621–1673), who was inspired by the engravings in travel accounts. He had fi rst made the costumes for a modest carrousel race that was run in 1656 in the gardens of the Palais Royal, then called Palais- Cardinal, as it was named for Mazarin. In this race, which everyone knew was for the heart of the young Marie Mancini, Mazarin’s niece and Louis’s fi rst love, Gissey had all three quadrilles of eight horsemen dressed in Roman style. While the carrou-sel was minor, the costumes of 1656 were elaborate, although nothing in his fi fteen years experience at court matched what Gissey and his workshop had to accomplish to create the multitude of costumes for the great carrousel of 1662.

The Place Royale was no longer deemed suitable, and Louis ordered modifi ca-tions to the gardens of the royal palace of the Tuileries for the games. Symbolic of Louis’s new ascent, from then on carrousels were only held in royal palaces. From the carrousel of 1662 onwards, these equestrian games became royal games overseen by the king himself and entirely organized by the monarch, who decided every detail. Louis used the carrousel of 1662 as a political tool to demonstrate his will. The sym-bolism of the costumes he chose for the four quadrilles and the burden of the high expenditure imposed on each of the aristocratic participants showed everyone their rightful rank in the court’s new hierarchy. The carrousel was more than a show; it dictated a new political map of France.

The emperor of the Romans was Louis’s choice again in 1662: “le Roy était vêtu à la Romaine, d’un corps de brocat d’argent rebrodé d’or,” wrote Charles Perrault in his commentary on the paintings that illustrate his retelling of the event.19 Perrault was appointed by Colbert and Louis XIV to record the event. He was also in charge


of collecting treasures for the Cabinet du Roi. Charles Perrault is best known today for his compendium of French fairytales, for collecting tales like Cinderella and Puss in Boots, oral tales commissioned to be recorded by Louis XIV to celebrate French folklore and immortalize it. Perrault was ideal for the carrousel, a political fairytale Louis was fabricating about his new power. This tale was for the consumption of the world at large. Perrault’s account of 1662, luxuriously illustrated, became part of the collection of the Cabinet du roi. A stunning album with images entitled Course de testes et de bagues faies par le Roy et par les princes et seigneurs de la Cour en l’année M.DC.LXII was printed as a potent tool of international and domestic pro-paganda to enhance Louis’s power in the eyes of Europe’s nobility and of several foreign monarchs.20

The Five Quadrilles and Their Political Signifi cance

Charles Perrault’s description may seem a precursor of the modern reporter on the scene. Perrault wrote a full description of the exotic oriental costumes worn by the high nobility. However, the tone lets no one forget that it was an offi cially commis-sioned eulogy. Perrault was a humble scribe at the service of power, and he never alluded to the political signifi cance of the event. The depiction of people dressed in characteristic attire and holding signifi cant attributes representing different regions of the world was a very popular theme in Early Modern art. Maps and tapes-tries were a favorite medium for this form of representation, in which Europe, or in this case France, was always shown as the dominant power. Sometimes the regions of the world, represented by people, were integrated within a larger cosmological frame in which universal domination was Europe’s attribute. These cosmographies, or imagines mundi, were a favored theme in the seventeenth century, and it is inter-esting to note that just as Europe achieved an empire in the late eighteenth century this theme virtually disappeared from European art.21 Like most of the imperial dis-course we have examined since Francis I, it was compensation for not having an empire beyond France.

Along with Perrault’s narrative, two painters, François Chauveau (1613–1676) and Israël Sylvestre (1621–1691), were commissioned to illustrate this story, as images of the carrousel were perhaps even more important than the text, especially for foreign courts. Dreams of empire were only recently successful, as Louis XIV’s predecessors had only established a few footholds beyond Europe. Louis styled him-self as a Roman emperor in the carrousel of 1662 to run against the quatre nations, four nations. Of the four nations represented, three were from Asia: the Persians, the Turks, and the Indians. Along with the fourth, the Americans, all four belonged to the “Indes orientales,” which in this period still included the Americas. Louis’s vision of a Gallia orientalis included all of these regions under the infl uence of France and Catholicism, but the only colonial holdings were American.


Assigned roles in the carrousel refl ected not only one’s rank but one’s relationship to the monarchy in the aftermath of the civil war. Most important was the public homage paid to Louis by his own brother, as the Fronde had been instigated by the ambitions of Louis XIII’s brother. In the carrousel the Persians were considered next in rank to the Romans, as is clearly expressed by the choice of their leadership. Louis chose all the participants personally. He gave the role of the king of Persia to his brother, Monsieur, Philippe d’Orleans (1640–1701). The king’s brother was the most important political fi gure to participate in the games. Monsieur was styled “Roy de Perse” and dressed in Persian garb as imagined by the French. Persia was the traditional enemy of Greece and Rome. In the wake of the Fronde, Philippe’s role as the Persian king and Louis’s as Roman emperor were fraught with political signifi cance, as Philippe was the strongest potential enemy.

The danger of a similar revolt against Louis XIV had long been a preoccupation for Mazarin. He had strived to keep the same pattern of rivalry from developing and had given special attention to Monsieur’s upbringing. According to certain au-thors, he made sure Monsieur grew up effeminate, and actively encouraged Philippe d’Orleans’s homosexuality and his refi ned tastes for oriental china and jewels.22 Mazarin had succeeded in keeping Philippe away from politics and cultivated his taste for leisure, pleasure, and collecting. Monsieur was an avid collector of exotic rarities. Monsieur’s character was also refl ected in the carrousel through his incarna-tion as the king of Persia, who was traditionally seen as decadent and avid of luxury by the Greek and Roman authors that the court read. As the Persians were said to love excess, Philippe’s silver and red costume embroidered with pearls and rubies was by far the most lavish of the carrousel. Monsieur’s high rank and love of luxury were well expressed in this most sumptuous disguise.

The quadrilles were differentiated by the colors of their costumes and their mot-toes. Monsieur’s motto was UNO SOLE MINOR, only the sun is larger than I am. His brother’s symbol was the sun, Monsieur’s was the moon, thus Monsieur’s universal submission to his brother through their mutual planetary incarnations. Gissey had made a cape “mante à la persane,” to distinguish Monsieur as a Persian. It fell in festooned waves of gold ribbons that fl ew behind him as he rode. While the hat was called a “bonnet à la persane,” it had little to do with anything ever worn in Persia. It was surmounted by a slew of red and white ostrich plumes. Several rosettes of large rubies served as clasps on the costume. Persia was Greece’s and Rome’s traditional enemy. The views held about the Persians were negative. Some contemporary French views of the Persians held that despite the fact that Persians had many wives, they were prone to the shameful vice of homosexuality.23 This was certainly not a disturb-ing attribute for the king’s brother, who lived openly as a homosexual.24 Jean Loret, a contemporary observer, described the Persian character not only as debauched, but also as devious. He wrote that the Persians were not great lovers of the truth, as they did not consider it prudent to speak the truth. To convey this negativity, in contrast to his brother’s symbolism of light, Monsieur mounted a black horse. Many of his


insignia symbolized the night. Moon crescents and the moon were powerful remind-ers that Monsieur was a small planet, whose light depended on his brother, the sun.

The contrast with Louis XIV was complete. In the fi rst quadrille, Louis was dressed in fi re-red and gold colors on a golden-hued horse. Everything in his cos-tume refl ected light. The king’s shield, carried by a page, was painted with the sun, while Monsieur’s had the full moon on a black background. Louis wore gold and diamonds with bright red ostrich plumes, the color of fi re, mounted on a Roman hel-met. His motto was UT VIDI VICI, what I saw, I conquered. He was dressed in what the French imagined was a Roman costume. The Romans would have had a diffi cult time recognizing the multitude of ribbons, jewels, and plumes favored by the French court. The royal Roman quadrille piled these ornaments higher on their costumes than all other participants; the fl ashiest was of course the king himself. Louis’s belt was made of rows upon rows of diamonds. These were made from rock crystal; imi-tation was a big industry and these were very expensive fake Indian diamonds made in Paris. He wore fi re-red silk stockings, and his boots were of silver brocade embroi-dered over with gold ribbon. These silver and gold boots were then decorated with many additional gold ribbons and studded with rivulets of rock crystal diamonds that fl ew in the wind during the horse race.

The Prince de Condé led the quadrille of the Turks, the next in rank to the Persians. France’s long-standing diplomatic relations with the Ottomans were not at their best in 1662 and were completely severed by the Ottomans in 1671. The Turkish disguise had traditionally been reserved for the monarch and his family; Henri II was dressed as a sultan in 1559. The royal family chose to be seen in Turkish garb under Louis’s reign. The Gazette recorded that fi ve years after the carrousel, in 1667 when the king decided to continue the festivities of the carnival at Versailles, he held games across from the newly constructed Orangerie. For this occasion, Mademoiselle was “mag-nifi quement habillée à la Turque,” as was the king’s brother Monsieur.25 In the 1662 carrousel the Turkish costume was worn by the Prince de Condé, the highest military fi gure of the court. It was to honor the warring talents of the Ottomans, to honor his power as a military general and paradoxically mark a potentially dangerous enemy. Condé had led the civil war.

Indeed, the Prince de Condé was far more dangerous than Louis’s brother. Louis II de Bourbon, Prince de Condé, called le Grand Condé (1621–1686), was a cousin of Louis XIII who won the battle of Rocroi against the Spanish when Louis XIV was a mere child. His victory and the glory he earned from it made him a threat to the monarchy, as he supported the king’s brother, Gaston. The Grand Condé had only just submitted to Louis XIV in January 1660. France was once again an ally of Spain through Louis’s own marriage to Marie Thérèse. Condé’s role as the Grand Turk in the carrousel came two years after his submission and marked a second, and very pub-lic, declaration of allegiance to the king from the strongest enemy Louis could have had. Condé was representing the world’s most powerful empire, the Ottomans.


Le Grand Condé sported a large fake mustache, inevitably associated with the Turks, for the carrousel of 1662. His costume, like the king’s and Monsieur’s, refl ected his high dignity in its magnifi cence. It was in a harmony of silver, blue, and black. He wore a crimson vest studded with diamonds and turquoises. The pages and grooms in his suite had crescents, a symbol for the Ottomans, scattered across their costumes. The Grand Condé had the most ornate headdress of all, a large tur-ban in silver cloth embroidered with gold, ornamented with brocade, diamonds, and turquoise stones. The turban was topped, unlike anything a Sultan would wear, by four bouquets of ostrich plumes in silver, blue, and black, and each had a tall ai-grette. Nevertheless, unlike the other headdresses worn by princes in the race, the Turkish-style turban was at least somewhat reminiscent of the turban worn by the Ottomans. Both the Persians and the Ottomans, although exotic, were better known to the French than were the Indians and the Americans. The two last quadrilles, which represented these lesser-known places, were the most imaginative of all.

Condé’s son, Henri Jules de Boubon, the Duc D’Enghien (1643–1709), repre-sented “le Roy des Indes.” Gissey surpassed himself in making this quadrille color-ful and spectacular, and what it lacked in accuracy it gained in imagination. One of the musicians was crowned with a large parrot on his head, while two green birds were perched on his shoulders. Despite the parrot, the duc d’Enghien had a head-dress that was supposed to be Indian in style; it was made of brocade that represented gold and silver feathers, which were surmounted by yellow, black, and white ostrich feathers and four “herons,” as Perrault called the tall aigrettes that fi nished the head-dress. His horse’s bridle was covered with diamond rosettes to symbolize the riches of India, but the gems were also fakes made in France. India’s riches were also represented by the profuse use of gold in all the costumes of this splendidly dressed quadrille. The colors of this quadrille were black, brown, and yellow, but it was one of the most multicolored of the groups. Many participants had tall multicolored headdresses. The brown color of the costume was used to symbolize naked fl esh, as the Indians were supposed to be partially nude, but it was not acceptable to see real fl esh in this formal context.

The most imaginative and creative of all the quadrilles was the fi fth, the Ameri-cans. For the quadrille of the Americans, Henri II de Lorraine, duc de Guise, was “le Roy d’Amérique,” and his quadrille were the “sauvages d’Amérique.” His fam-ily had a history of tense, chaotic, and unpredictable relations with the monarchy. Among the four possible powerful enemies representing the four nations submit-ting to Louis, he was the wild card. Although France had no footholds in Asia, it now had several on the North American continent: Annapolis in the Chesapeake Bay since 1603, Quebec in 1608, and later Louisiana beginning in 1682, which became France’s most important prize. The duc de Guise’s role was a fi tting choice made, like all others, by the monarch himself. Gissey produced some of the most poetic and outlandish costumes for this group. Views of the Americans were rather negative.


In Louis Moreri’s opinion of the Americans in his Grand dictionaire historique he wrote: “The peoples of the Americas were savage and cruel, their courage was low, their inclinations vile. The most civilized were the Incas. One fi nds there several anthropophages or man eaters.” He believed there were giants in Patagonia who drank a bucket of wine as if it were a thimble.26 The fabulous nature of these views of the Americans as savages was expressed in Gissey’s animalistic costumes through the extravagant display of skins and feathers.

Perrault’s descriptions and the illustrations show that most of the members of these American groups were themselves represented as animals or as fi sh and shell-fi sh. The trumpet players were disguised as coquilles St Jacques, scallop shells the French knew from their own Atlantic shores, but ornamented with tiger skin to mark their exotic provenance. Some musicians wore green fi sh costumes with large sil-ver scales and crowns of exotic seashells and coral. There were men wearing bear costumes to symbolize the forest. White noblemen wearing brown face and body makeup represented naked black Moorish slaves. Even disguised as slaves, the no-blemen marked their rank by wearing precious short ermine fur skirts. They carried real monkeys on their shoulders. Having monkeys and small dogs was all the rage for aristocrats. Many men and horses had fake dead animals or snakes hanging loosely from them. Some were hung inside out, the color of blood, in order to showcase the savageness of the Americans. The importance of the colonial fur trade of the time was also refl ected in this parade of dead animals and blood, which was to honor of the king’s power over the natural world.

The duc de Guise’s horse as “roi américain” was covered with several dragon heads that spat out a multitude of snakes hanging off its fl ank. His white horse was dressed as a unicorn. Of all the costumes of the 1662 carrousel, the one worn by the duc de Guise as king of the Americans was by far the most fabulous. He was represented as magical; he symbolized a mythical king with supernatural powers represented by the reptiles on the horse’s bridle and mane, and most prominently by the dragon on the headdress. The golden dragon he wore on his head spat out three different levels of ostrich plumes in green and white, topped by three aigrettes. This was the largest headdress, measuring four feet (1.3 m). Many of his accessories were Chinese in style, and the chinoiserie style of his costume was further amplifi ed by several dragon heads and by a mass of dangling dragon tails. His bodice was a multi-tude of dragon eyes, making him look supernatural, but yet distinctly Chinese. Once again, centuries after Columbus, China and America were read as one.

The Carrousel as Propaganda

The homage paid to all things Chinese was perhaps not only orientalist in the Saïdian sense of the word, but instrumental; it had political aims. Louis had great admiration for the emperor of China. His celebrations were political statements.27 He wrote to


the dauphin: “As for foreigners, in a well-organized state that they see fl ourishing elsewhere, what is consumed for what may seem to be superfl uous expenses makes a very advantageous impression of magnifi cence and power, of wealth and gran-deur.”28 He would make this superfl uous consumption court policy. The luxurious horse races of the carrousel were not only a means of domestic propaganda, but also a representation of the world as imagined by Louis. The image conveyed was his domination over the rest of the world. Offi cially commissioned writers and paint-ers recorded the carrousel to send luxurious bound copies of its account to other rulers all the way to East Asia.

Unfortunately nothing has remained of Gissey’s luxurious oriental costumes. L’Inventaire générale du mobilier de la couronne preserves a seven-foot ten-inch-long lance with an ivory handle used by Louis XIV for equestrian games. All we have other than the paintings is Charles Perrault’s vivid description of this event, fi nished eight years after 1662 and published by the Imprimerie Royale in 1670 for the Cabinet du roi. It has a list of the winners. One fi nds that Louis won as many as sixteen of the races but would not accept prizes and had them rerun.29 Perrault’s eyewitness account was completed in four years in 1666, but Colbert also wanted a Latin translation for a vaster diffusion of the account of the carrousel in the courts of Europe.30 He wanted it known that the celebrations of the carrousel of 1662 were a marker of the monarchy’s stability, power, and continuity. Four more years were necessary to illustrate and engrave the magnifi cent volumes.

In 1678 the Latin version was sold for 18 livres and the French for 15 in the city of Paris. Beyond the capital of France the volume served to spread the glory of the French king. Foreign ambassadors were regularly offered the publications made for the Cabinet du roi, and this was the most magnifi cent of the gifts. Some copies left for Poland and Sweden, but most notably the Jesuits were placed in charge of tak-ing a copy of the description of the carrousel of 1662 to the emperor of China.31 The celebrations of the birth of the dauphin, heir to the throne of the Bourbons, were produced in part for the eyes of the emperor of China.32

Imago Mundi

The carrousel refl ected how the world was perceived. The four continents were often represented in European iconography. The fi fth, Australia, although it was known, was only represented after Captain’s Cook’s voyage in 1770, a couple of decades before the fashion of allegorically representing the continents as “nations” died out in France. Therefore its representations in French iconography are rather rare. The absence of Africa is more notable because there certainly was knowledge of Africa in France. When Africa was represented, it was only by naked human beings and by servitude or slavery. In the fi ve quadrilles of the carrousel, two of the four were given animals as their attributes: the Indians and the Americans, which


symbolized that the French viewed these societies as savage and primitive. The positive ideal of the “noble savage” was in the making in the early part of the eigh-teenth century, but savageness in 1662 did not have any redeeming quality, even though it was clearly seen as distinct from the civilized nations represented here by Rome, Persia, and the Ottomans. However, even the “primitives” of America and India were deemed worthy of nobility in the French imagination, as they were rep-resented by princes of the blood. None of the seventeenth-century European ico-nography of Africa ever depicted a prince or a king. In eighteenth-century French paintings, most Africans were depicted serving coffee or tea, as servants or slaves. Sometimes they had no real function except to stand next to the person being por-trayed to represent the power of that person, such as in a portrait of the traveler Jean Chardin.33 In this portrait a young African boy held a map of the world behind the famous traveler.

The concept of the world itself was inherited from the Greeks. The concept of continents as nations, “les quatre nations” in French thought, melded together as an indistinguishable unit a land mass, a climate, its natural products, and its inhabit-ants. The four nations were often represented with two inhabitants, one male one female, and their paraphernalia, most often in the corner or the borders of maps or on frescoes. This continental representation of the world is a very old concept dating back at least to the fi rst millennium B.C., originating in the eastern Mediterranean. Biblical, Phoenician, and Greek geography knew a tripartition of the oikouméne cor-responding to what lay south, north, and west of the Mediterranean. The Greeks had mythologized it with three well-known allegorical fi gures: Europe, Asia, and Libye, the latter called Africa by the Romans.34 Seventeenth-century frontispieces contin-ued this tripartite division of the world: the sultan is Asia in the east, the emperor is Europe in the west, and the Atlas-like fi gure of the slave supporting the world in the south represents Libya, Africa.35 Within this tripartite division of the world for historical justifi cations, Eurasia is artifi cially divided into two continents. Europe artifi cially distinguished itself from Asia on the basis of a common Greek-Roman-Christian heritage.

With European expansion, fi rst America and later Australia were added to this continental representation of the whole world. Within European iconography—in travel accounts, on tapestries, and in paintings—they were placed on the same foot-ing as Asia and Africa. Africa, because of its early association with slavery in the Age of Discovery, was always represented the least often. If it was, it occupied either a lower position on the page or was substituted by animals or paraphernalia. In this iconography the relationship between the continents was contrastive, and Europe was always given the advantageous position on the page, the dominant role. Just as the iconography made familiar by travel accounts and their distorted maps, Louis XIV as Roman emperor represented the superiority of Europe over the other na-tions represented by the princes of the blood. Africa’s absence from this power game speaks for itself.


In this allegorical view of the world, in which nature was assimilated with culture, things existed not only as themselves but carried symbolic meaning. The assimila-tion of nature to culture on each continent carried with it the theory of “climates,” inherited from Greek Galenic medicine. Much of Gissey’s inspiration came from illustrations in travel accounts. This habit of copying earlier sources carried over to iconography, and the costumes that served as inspiration in travel accounts were often anachronistic or even completely erroneous.36

The First Great Event at Versailles: Le Carrousel des Galants Maures, 1685

This fi rst horse races at Versailles were organized by Louis XIV’s heir, the dauphin, at Versailles in 1685. A description sent to the court of Savoy on the day of the event reports on the prodigious number of precious stones observed on the costumes, even on the horses. The observer noted that it was as if the Indes orientales had “vomited all of its riches on that day at Versailles.”37 This disgusting metaphor successfully conveys the excess thought to signify oriental luxury. In a multitude of travel ac-counts, the Orient was the site of luxury. Material luxury and riches were from the Indes orientales and were being deluged upon Versailles. In more than one way, with its fl owers, its orangerie, its ménagerie full of exotic animals, and its écuries with its precious Arabian horses, Versailles was the site of unprecedented luxury. What better way to showcase the glory of Versailles than with another orientalist carrousel? Jean Bérain (1640–1711) had designed the costumes, and he had been much inspired by Gissey’s exotic costumes of 1662, but his far surpassed their splendor. The prizes to be won were swords, in solid gold covered with diamonds and other precious stones, valued at 1,000 golden louis. The second-place prize was a slightly smaller sword worth 800 louis.38

The carrousel of 1685 was recorded in many journals, memoirs, and archives as an event so well attended that the city of Paris was deserted. All the best carriages had taken the bumpy ride to Versailles.39 At Versailles and in Paris bookshops a brochure was ready and sold on the day of the event. It was titled: Brillante Journée, ou le Carrousel des gallants maures, entrepris par Monseigneur le dauphin avec la compares, les courses et les madriguax sur les devises. According to the Marquis de Souches, the cost of the event to Louis XIV was 100,000 louis, and that only covered the costumes of the suite to the princes; those worn by the pages, slaves, and horses. The cost of their own highly ornate costumes had to be covered by the princes and was about twice as much.40

Propaganda and Self-Image

At the Carrousel des galants maures of 1685 many European ambassadors were invited for the purpose of self-aggrandizement and propaganda. This time it was the


dauphin being showcased through the event. As Peter Burke has stressed, the term propaganda in the modern sense can only be traced back to the French Revolution, but it does not mean that the elites of the seventeenth century were unaware of at-tempts of persuasion or of techniques of advertisement and manipulation. Burke has studied Louis’s skill at using images. If the word propaganda is used as meaning “the attempt to transmit social and political values,” the term can be used for the seventeenth century without committing an anachronism or evoking today’s image-making. It was common in seventeenth-century France, particularly under Louis’s guidance, to believe that magnifi cence had a political function, and it was impressive in the literal sense of leaving the viewer with a lasting impression.41

Although the account of the events was sent to the emperor of China, whom Louis grandly called his cousin, his political aims of impressing were chiefl y do-mestic. France in the second half of the seventeenth century constantly represented the rest of the world in text, in architecture, and in the plastic arts, as well as through disguise. Festivities often included costumes and decors at court of les na-tions. Carlo Ginzberg has argued that one can only represent what is not there, and that the representation is the presence of an absence.42 In the absence of empire, of control over the world, this discourse was about control over the French nation, the creation of an absolutist state with the subjugation of the nobility who were dressed as the enemy. Edward Saïd had stated that Europe defi ned itself in opposi-tion to its own representations of the “other.” Louis XIV forged concepts of the French nation in part by describing the rest of the world through games and other forms of representation.

Perhaps Saïd’s oppositional stance is modifi ed here by the new scholarship on hybridity, and by other conceptual ideas, such as “contact zones” that permit an exchange between different societies. French appropriation of the rest of the world was an expression of its own aristocratic culture, and the elite reading texts about the world produced by an elite—France, that is, about fi ve hundred families defi ned by Schwab as the literate elite, was reading the world. To give political meaning to these spaces of representation, such as major court festivities in oriental costume, another idea can be been borrowed from Michel Foucault’s rich toolbox, the concept of heteropia. As opposed to utopia, heteropia denotes alternative real spaces created within a given society. They are the imaginary counter-sites of everyday reality. They serve the function of creating a space of illusion. The festivities at Versailles and the Tuileries could well been seen in this light, with their elaborate decors and the many disguises of the French nobility as “others” denoting an alternative reality.

Foucault has argued that the colonies established by the Jesuits in the New World were created as a compensatory heteropia to French reality, evoking spaces more ordered and arranged more perfectly than reality was in Europe.43 It can be argued that the carrousels or festivities held on horseback in oriental costume were hetero-pia. The mighty Turk became a benign cardboard head to be aimed at, the Persian king was the king’s own brother, and the American Indians were French aristocrats.


Louis’s control over this illusory world was complete. The powerful French nobility were subdued and order was restored within France. The quadrilles on horseback in oriental costume were substitutes for an imperfect and chaotic reality in which Louis had to struggle to gain control of the aristocrats and his relative inability to carve out his piece of the world, outside of Europe. As France achieved imperial power in the eighteenth century, these forms of representations, cosmographies, or imagines mundi of the four nations in costume disappeared from French art.44 Magnifi cent illusions ceased to be a necessity.

Les Nations Represented: Henri Gissey and Jean Bérain

Jean Bérain (1640–1711) designed the costumes for the dauphin’s carrousel held at Versailles in 1685. He was trained under Charles Le Brun (1619–1690). In 1674 he helped Le Brun prepare several important royal festivities. The same year, he was appointed chief designer to the court, dessinateur du cabinet du roi, a post previ-ously held by Henri Gissey. Bérain designed tapestries, accessories, furniture, cos-tumes, gardens, and elaborate stage settings for operas and extravagant theatrical productions indoors and out; these were typically fi lled with fantastic and exotic iconography. After he ravished the audience with two splendid carrousels in 1685 designed for Monseigneur, the dauphin, Bérain received many orders from princes and aristocrats wanting to replicate the splendor of the court.

He worked for the house of Condé as well as the king’s, and later designed the Prince de Condé’s obsequies. The Marquis de Seigneley commissioned Bérain to design illuminations for his château in Sceaux. Night illuminations were new and much prized in the capital. Jean Bérain’s fi rst such work was the illumination of Louis XIV’s equestrian statue at Place des Victoires.45 The night lighting in the city of Paris was an important step for security, but it also amplifi ed the splendor of Paris, its monuments, and its luxury shops and extended the shopping day.46

The orientalist costumes of Henri Gissey and Jean Bérain clearly had their in-spiration in the oriental costumes in travel accounts and the many costume books circulating in Italy and France since the Renaissance.47 New World and Old World alike were often represented through fantasy as much as through accurate accounts. The con quest of Mexico by Cortez was only known in France in 1533, ten years after the fact, through the publication of an account by Peter Martyr, in which Peter wrote about the nobles of Yucatan that “they begin by putting on their shoes of gold, leggings of gold, their breast plate of gold,” and in this way the description of each item in solid gold continued down to every piece of armament. This fantasy vision of El Dorado did little to compete with the discourse about nudity and its savage deco-rations in André Thévet or Jean de Léry.48 Whether it was the famous engravings of Théodore de Bry or the contents of Columbus’s text, both illustrations and text were interpreted fi rst hand as true refl ections of reality.


The semi-nudity of the followers of the roi d’Amérique’s quadrille as designed by Bérain was inspired by views about the inhabitants of the Americas under the pens of Montaigne and Ronsard.49 As for oriental fashions, they were known not only through the many costume books but through the person of the returning travelers themselves, some of whom even chose to stay in oriental dress in Europe, as Taver-nier and Chardin did in their later years. European observers also had access to items of clothing travelers brought back. Since the sixteenth century the wealthy held some costumes, armament, and headdresses in their curiosity cabinets. Dürer had not only admired golden artifacts and arms from Mexico brought to Bruxelles, but a head-dress and all sorts of “bizarre” costumes.

The brothers Ango in Dieppe held an extraordinary collection of objects brought back from Canada and Brazil. André Thévet, who was the keeper of the cabinet du roi, had brought back feathered items and presented them to the king. Among his gifts were a hat made of toucan feathers, feather costumes, tapestries, and headdresses. In his text Thévet had also marveled at the tapestries made with bird feathers that served as shrouds, and had brought some back to show the king.50 Even as late as the end of the seventeenth century, American costumes were a curiosity; two out of the sixteen cabi-nets of curiosity recorded in Paris had among their collections “feather clothing used by the savages of America.” The cabinet de curiosité of the Jardin du Roi assembled by Pitton de Tournefort had “a great number of shoes of all nations of the Levant of very different forms.”51 Beyond iconography there were concrete examples of clothing and headdress in Parisian collections that Henri Gissey and Jean Bérain could reinterpret.

Feathers fi gured prominently in the carrousel costumes of the Americans designed by Bérain, but they were prominent for the three other nations as well. It is of note that the American king wore the tallest ostrich feathers, an import from the Bar-bary coast. As in the cabinets of curiosities, the costumes showed no differentiation between Old World and New World. The familiarity with oriental dress was very old, as the early carrousels prove; given their Arabic origins, maybe it had been natural to conduct them in oriental dress. There were also several paintings representing orien-tal garb. Like Jean-Baptiste Tavernier in his portrait by Laguillère, there were several famous French travelers painted in oriental dress. In this portrait Tavernier is wear-ing the luxurious Persian robes presented to him in Persia by Shah Abbas II. This fancy attire is certainly not the one he traveled in; this was a robe of honor. Tavernier, like many before and after him, had to wear oriental dress to travel in Asia.

When you go from Constantinople, Smyrna or Aleppo with the Caravan, it behoves all people to carry themselves according to the mode of the country; in Turkie like a Turk, in Persia as a Persian; else would they be accounted ridiculous, nay sometimes they would hardly be permitted to pass in some places.52

Travelers, travel illustrations, costume books, collections of objects and head-dresses, and their French reinterpretations by designers for carrousels, masquerades,


court operas, and ballets helped infl uence the use of oriental fabrics and the cut of civil aristocratic costume that went far beyond disguise. As is well known, Louis XIV himself infl uenced the spread of the court’s fashion beyond the court, as a com-mercial policy. This was in great part to boost consumption, as many of the orien-tal imports were now being imitated in France through the factories instituted by Colbert. French industries, like the silk manufacturers of Lyons, were to gain from Louis’s inception of oriental style, his sartorial éclat at court. Louis’s court designer was to play no small part in popularizing fashion beyond the court. Jean Bérain be-came a famous fashion designer when Donneau de Visé published the fi rst fashion plates in the Mercure galant during the 1670s.53 Imitations of oriental dress were present beyond the court. In 1685 Bérain, who copied many of Gissey’s costumes for the carrousel of 1662, had to shorten the coat worn by the Turks in 1662, because a coat inspired by the Janissaries had become fashionable. It was called the Branden-burg, and it was worn shorter. To conform to his fashionable audience’s expectations, Jean Bérain shortened the “oriental” coat.54

Oriental Fashions and Their Infl uence on European Dress

The earliest examples of orientalist fashion are in European religious paintings. Turbans were worn in biblical paintings, illuminations, and sculptures. In a fascinat-ing article called “Jesus Did Not Wear a Turban,” Ian Davidson Kalmar starts with the works of Rembrandt van Rijn. In his David and Uriah, both men are depicted with Ottoman turbans on their heads. Kalmar traces the turban to several earlier works in Italy, Flanders, and France. Other signs of Orientalism are traced to the Persian hat and the curved sword as he found them depicted for an emperor on a folio of the Très riches heures du Duc de Berry (1412–1416), inspired by Michael II Paleologus’s visit to Rome, Paris, and London after the Crusades, from 1399–1402. Paleologus had vainly sought help against the invading Ottomans.55 Kalmer fi nds a hierarchy in which Jesus was occidentalized and never wore a turban in Western art, while the Jews were depicted as Muslims in a turban or head-scarf. The article builds this argument on the fact that Nabil Mattar has demonstrated that the turban eclipsed the crescent and the simitar in importance in European iconography and stood as a symbol of Islam in the Renaissance.56 These arguments both stand, yet there is another element to the depictions of turbans and orientalist dress.

Turbans symbolized wisdom and social rank, as they were donned by painters and scholars for their portraits. One of the earliest examples is Flemish: Man in a Turban, by Jan van Eyck, 1432, held in the National Gallery, London. This painting is regarded by most as a self-portrait of the artist. According to Hans Belting, the gaze of the man in the portrait is self-assured and haughty: Van Eyck’s headwear, a bulky red turban, denotes “the vanity of the artist in relation to his self-portrayal.”57 The painter is portrayed as a proud and fulfi lled artist, part of a class whose standing


had just risen. Hans Belting sees the red turban as a marker of the painter showing off his new rank. Travelers and scientists wore turbans and orientalist dress or even authentic Ottoman and Persian costumes to denote their knowledge of the East and their high rank as merchants, scientists, and scholars. Tied to biblical knowledge, this was no small token; beyond pilgrimage or going to the Holy Land, it meant belonging to a network of informed curieux. The height of this orientalist representa-tion would be reached in the eighteenth century both in France and England.58 The Chinese costume was chosen by Linnaeus; because of his rêve chinois, in his portrait the Swede is depicted in Chinese dress to show his learning.59

Perhaps the most famous portrait of all is Lady Mary Montague’s dressed in her Turkish “habit,” painted by Jonathan Richardson around 1726. This is one of her many portraits in Turkish dress. Her enthusiastic admiration for the dresses of the women she met in the harem is the most famous case of European admiration for Ottoman dress. She lauded the fl uidity of the robes, the freedom from corseting, the freedom to eat, and the bejeweled splendor in the harem.60 Other eighteenth-century representations of Turkish dress are found in the paintings of Jean-Baptiste Ver-mour, Charles Jervas, Godfrey Kneller, and Carl Vanloo. In the late seventeenth- and eighteenth-century depictions of splendid costumes, the Ottoman style began to see some competition from Persian and Chinese dress. Tavernier was painted dressed in Persian garb, as were the Shirley brothers painted in England; these portraits showed off not only pilgrimage, but knowledge of their craft.

The connotations of oriental dress and the turban were not always as negative as in Kalmar’s analysis of biblical paintings, in which occidental meant best. Thomas Kai ser has shown that in the eighteenth century the French aristocracy delighted in posing as Turks, in Ottoman costume.61 As we saw, this went well beyond a few portraits; the carrousels and masquerades at the French court were occasions for the court to pose in oriental disguise at such important moments as the birth of the dauphin. Oriental dress was far more sumptuous, especially the khalat, the robes of honor such as those received by Tavernier, with their splendid silks. Oriental sartorial splendor was known since medieval times, as Marco Polo opened his book of travels with the luxuries of the Orient and spoke of silk before he even described the jour-ney. The case we examined earlier for imitating textiles is better known; less noticed is the borrowing from actual designs in clothing. Charlotte Jirousek has studied the infl uence of Ottoman and Persian fashions on European dress.62 She describes that wearing many layers of silks or cotton always had been a characteristic of Ottoman ceremonial or festive dress as a sign of wealth and status, and that layering several coats of different length was a particular characteristic of Turkish dress. The layers signifi ed luxurious dress and brought modesty and bulk. Because the textiles were so sumptuous, the layers were arranged so as to reveal the beautiful materials. Layer-ing, she argues, became a feature of style in Europe in the late seventeenth century. Most importantly, perhaps, is the infl uence of what was called the “Persian vest” on


the modern male suit. The Persian vest was imposed by Louis’s cousin, Charles II in England:

After the plague and fi re of London in 1665–66 it was widely felt that the licentiousness of the court (including dress) had brought down God’s wrath. Charles did announce a reform, which was to be a “vest” … a term usually associated with eastern garments, and therefore presumably improper attire for a Christian gentleman … In the new ensemble proposed by the King, the exotic vest was to be worn buttoned over the shirt as a more modest covering to that controversial inner garment, but under the coat that had come into fashion, with both being the same length. The entire ensemble was to be made in one fabric, in a sober solid color. A neck cloth, or cravat, was added to the ensemble; an item purported to have been introduced from the costume of Croatian soldiers. The vest soon became a fancier fabric, however. Thus all the components of the modern suit came together.63

The infl uence of oriental fabrics and designs has been very important in Europe since the Renaissance, but it is clearer in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.64 Be-yond the vest, an oriental outer coat for layering was also an infl uence. In an illustra-tion showing a coffee shop there is a representation of a masked arlequin putting his arms through what was called an “Armenian coat” by the seventeenth-century en-graver.65 In the Paris cafés both the owners and the servers had worn long coats. This was not so much an Armenian overcoat as the general top layer worn throughout Mughal India, the Ottoman empire, and Persia, where Parisian Armenian coffee shop owners had come from. That overcoat would become a form of robe for European men called the banyan or banian.66 Noting the popularity of the banian, Jirousek notes that diarist Samuel Pepys bought Indian gowns and posed for a portrait in one, and also that Pepys visited Sir Phillip Howard dressed “in a gown and turban like a Turk”; these gowns were widely imitated by English tailors.

There is also a mention of a rare collection of Chinese vests, admired by Ev-elyn.67 In the eighteenth century everything English was in fashion in France, and these oriental vests for men came to France as English fashions. Even earlier when Charles II came to France, he brought some English customs to court, as he had taken refuge with his relative Louis XIV against the revolution in England, and the English vest was adopted in France. For women the mantua was a fashion that came via Italy, as the name indicates, and later became the French word manteau, for coat. It was a new fashion in the 1680s and remained popular until the 1750s. Instead of the traditional short French bodice with a big décolleté and skirt cut separately and sewn at the waist, the mantua hung straight in one piece from the shoulders, covering them, and had a long train. The train was often looped back or tucked back to show the layering of clothing underneath. It was worn over everything else and draped up over a contrasting petticoat and a stomacher, creating layers.


Joan DeJean has looked into guild confl icts to explain the sudden popularity of the mantua. The guild of the couturiers was created in 1675, but they could not make dresses, which was reserved for the craft of the tailors (tailleurs); yet, as a new imported fashion the mantua did not fall under any guild jurisdiction, so it became the domain of the couturiers.68 The new look was less bare than the previous French fashions, as it covered the shoulders and most of the chest; this modesty was also a feature of oriental clothing, where all parts of the body were covered both for males and females. It had elbow-length sleeves cut kimono-style and was reminiscent of a robe. The mantua was made from a single length of fabric pleated to fi t with a long train, which was ideal for showing the designs of the new elaborately patterned cot-tons and silks. It was considered more relaxed, as it was not fi tted, but it was not a deshabillé (leisure-wear) robe, as the banian was for men. The banian was an infl u-ence from India, as its name indicates, and was worn in England and in its American colonies in the middle of the eighteenth century.69 The preferred fabrics for the man-tua were calicoes, known as indiennes in French; initially worn at home as a robe, the mantua became more formal at the end of the seventeenth century.70

In the domains of uniforms and headgear, the Ottomans set an example that was eagerly copied and became national icons. The Ottoman army coat had a vast impact in Europe. In the 1660s there had been a revolt against French fashions in England. John Evelyn in his treatise, Tyrannus or the Mode, complained to King Charles: “Would the Great persons of England but own their nations and assert themselves as they ought to, by making choice of some Virile, comely Fashion … t’would prove of infi nitely more reputation to us, than now there is.”71 Charles II and his queen decided in 1665 to forgo the silk and lace that Louis XIV had made part of the French court habit. They wore English textiles and employed English tailors, who made two changes, a long vest and Spanish breeches. The long vest was copied from the Prussian army, and it was called a Brandenburg in the Prussian uniform, but it had been inspired by the Ottoman Janissaries. Louis retaliated by wearing the vest and integrating it as the justecorps, or habit in male court costume.

As Jennifer Jones has shown, in 1664 Louis had offi cially created French court dress. He created a justecorps à brevet, which was a brocade outer vest, light blue on the outside, lined with scarlet, and embroidered with gold and silver, and it guar-anteed the wearer some privileges, such as following the king in Saint Germain or Versailles. This was done to consolidate court hierarchy and unity. It became heredi-tary, as the vest was handed down after death, and it brought the heir the privileges associated with it. Female court dress, a grand habit of silk, was also imposed at a later date, in 1670. By Louis’s orders it had to be worn no matter what the constraints were; it was a reaction to the mantua, and to the casual attire it brought.72

In the costumes that Jean Bérain made for the carrousel, ostrich plumes and feath-ers were a main marker of rank in the costumes of the exotic kings. The higher in the hierarchy, the higher the plumes of the racers in the carrousel. The Roi d’Amerique, who represented a continent where France had colonies, had the highest plumes.


Iconography shows that ostrich plumes became a common addition to male head-gear everywhere in Europe in the late fi fteenth century. Jirousek notes that in contact with their enemy the Ottomans and in imitation of their army, Archduke Ferdinand of Austria oversaw and organized a military class known as the Grenzer or Uskok and uniformed them. They paralleled the Ottoman sipahis cavalrymen. The idea of a military uniform was new to Europe. In northern Europe, in imitation of the Austrian uniform copied from the Ottoman model, “the wild plumes of the Landesknecht and his lady can be best compared to the display worn by the deli kanlı as depicted in Nicolas de Nicolay and elsewhere. Plumes, although less outrageous in size, be-came a common addition to male headgear everywhere in Europe from the 1490s onwards.”73 The dress he chose resembled that of the sipahi and included plumes. In France uniforms were not created until the latter part of Louis XIV’s reign. Feathers also served as much prized accessories at court. Louis XIV’s army of 100,000 could swell to 400,000 and was hard to clothe with a uniform, but by 1690 the task was accomplished; Le Tellier and Louvois helped devise a consistent uniform “iconic of royal authority and the rigorous discipline of the absolutist gaze.”74

Oriental Sartorial Splendor and Its Imitations: Fans, Umbrellas, and Diamonds

The fashion system devised by Louis was helped by his court historian Donneau de Visé, and de Visé’s gazette, the Mercure Galant, which, using mannequins and por-traits dressed like the king and queen, helped diffuse court dress in the French elite and beyond France.75 Among the oriental accessories that became part of French dress codes in the seventeenth century, fans had a place of honor at the court of Louis XIV. Fans of feather, silk, wood, or straw mounted on a handle were known since antiquity. The folding fan, on the other hand, is widely considered a Japanese invention that came to China, although the Chinese also claim its invention.76 An important and beautiful subsection of the folding fan, called che shan, or hu shan, or what was known in France as the brisé fan, was the most fashionable fan under Louis XIV. The translation of hu shan is “rigid folding fan.” Hu were ivory writing tablets, pierced at the base and suspended from the waist by a silk cord. If fans were not hand-held they were suspended from the waist by silk cords. Of all of the Chi-nese fans made for export to Europe via the East India Companies, the hu shan has the longest history. The earliest examples of hu shan made especially for export date from 1690 to 1730 in colors made familiar in Europe through Chinese porcelain.77

The Portuguese are universally credited with importing the fi rst Chinese and Japanese fans into Europe in the early sixteenth century. The Dutch and the English East India Companies participated in this trade in the seventeenth century. In the year 1699 alone, the English East India Company recorded the importation of 20,000 of the “fi nest and richest fannes” and an order for 90,000 more: “three quarters to


be on white paper, a quarter on coloured and all to be well painted with fi gures on one side and fl owers upon the other; the sticks to be lacquered black and inlaid with mother-of-pearl.”78 By this time, England had a long-established craft of fan-making, as a 1695 document opposing the company’s trade in fans attests.79 By all accounts the British fan-makers had profi ted from the arrival of Huguenots from France after 1685, as France had succeeded Italy as the center of fan-making in Europe.

The traveler Thomas Coryat (1577–1617) wrote of the widespread use of the fan in Europe at the turn of the seventeenth century, where he found both men and women carrying fans.80 A special corporation of fan-makers was instituted in Paris in 1676, and by 1770 the city of Paris alone had 150 fan-making workshops, employ-ing 6,000 workers.81 Some works speak of a corporation of fan-makers already well organized under Henri IV in 1564.82 Yet, Thomas Coryat wrote around 1600 that the French had no industry and imported their fans from Italy and Spain. Catherine de Medici is widely accredited with introducing the folding fan to the French court. Chinese folding fans, besides taking the same leap as the indiennes and becoming local industries, went further still in their adaptation to French customs. Beyond the fashion for the évantail brisé, which was a noblewoman’s accessory, a number of fan designs were overseen by Louis XIV himself and have been published by Pamela Cowen.83

The fan became a formal medium to celebrate court events. Cowen has studied about forty fan leaves painted with designs to commemorate events, just as did tap-estries and paintings. Cowen believes they were made by the Atelier des Vélins du Roi in Les Invalides on the king’s orders.84

In 1700, sometime after the return of the ship Amphirite, its cargo from China was celebrated by balls and festivities evoking the French China trade; it took a hun-dred pages in the Mercure galant to describe the festivities celebrating France’s suc-cess. In addition to the many caskets of porcelains, according to the Mercure galant in the ship’s cargo there were seventeen chests of lacquered furniture, each holding another four chests, each containing three varnished caskets and a writing desk with golden fl owers designed in relief. Twenty-one additional crates each held very fi nely varnished lacquer cabinets. In addition to this furniture there was a huge cargo of damasks and silks, some 8,000 pieces in all.85

A fan also commemorates the event. At one ball given by Monsieur, the Princess Adelaide was dressed as a sultana and Jean Berain had designed a Chinese buffet. The Ponchartins gave a ball for the Princess Adelaide in a room ornée à la chinoise with the “Rulers of the Orient” as a theme. It is possibly such an event that a fan held at the Greenwich Museum commemorates. The fan displays a number of items of lacquered furniture, porcelains, silks, and Indian cottons, all items brought back by the Amphirite. The fan illustrates a man dressed as a Persian displaying cottons, and a lady dressed à la Turque buying a Chinese fan. Chinese men have black lacquer boxes spread before them. Two men who look Indian carry exotic goods; one has a large porcelain vase on his head and the other is draped in a cotton cloth.


Throughout Europe porcelain was still often called Indian, even by its most avid collectors. The commemorative fan also shows a lady in oriental dress with a basket of fl owers, another oriental import, but one that was not actually recorded for the cargo of the Amphirite. Black lacquer chests were among the fi rst items imported from Japan. On the fan, two were depicted as tables to hold fans, and there are por-celain bowls in blue and white on the other.86 There was certainly no better medium to celebrate the China trade than the semicircular fan leaf commemorating France’s bounty of exotica.

Just as tall fans on handles held by servants and followers had long been a sign of honor since the pharaohs of ancient Egypt, the parasol on a tall handle served the same function. It was a status symbol used by European elite since the late sixteenth century as sun protection. Paper parasols came in the cargos of ships returning to China. John Evelyn recalled buying himself a paper parasol in Marseille in 1644.87 Imitations of the oriental ones were made in Europe as early as the end of the six-teenth century. Joan DeJean tells the tale of the metamorphosis of the parasol into the umbrella. The creation of waterproof textiles was a major scientifi c innovation that had to be tested.

In the summer of 1677, two men jumped into Paris’s Seine river. One of them was nude and was carrying his clothes in a backpack made from waterproof leather. The other wore what could be called the original wet suit, waterproof pants, over his street clothes. A delegation from the Royal Academy of Science (still another institution founded by Louis XIV) had gathered on the river bank to observe the experiment: the academicians were thus able to certify that both men walked away from the dunking with their outfi ts dry. This was such big news that John Locke recorded it in his journal of September 16 1677.88

DeJean goes on to describe the fi rst experiments to create a parapluie (umbrella), and to tell of its patenting by a man called Jean Marius, who was a maître boursier, specialized in making purses. His knowledge of the closing mechanism in purses helped him make the fi rst portable umbrella. Louis XIV was so impressed that he issued Marius a royal privilege. Jean Donneau de Visé weighed in with a piece in the Mercure galant, advertising that he already owned one. The Academy of Sci-ence showered some free publicity on Marius. In 1715 with the permission of the Marquis d’Argenson, chief of police, Marius had a poster plastered all over Paris advertising umbrellas and parasols to carry in one’s pocket. DeJean fi nds the inven-tion of the umbrella to be of great importance to extending shopping days in Paris, and as a boon to the new luxury commerce of the city. The commercialization of the folding umbrella itself certainly had many modern aspects, especially in the fi rst use of a billboard.89 This was a new stride in publicity and an innovation. DeJean’s work puts the emphasis on Louis XIV as the driver of fashions, while many studies have gotten away from this model dear to Elias and argue for the strength of fashion


markets, giving more weight to merchant culture. Yet, even in a study preoccupied by merchant culture, there is no need to deny the central role played by the king in driving fashion and consumption.

At the carrousel of 1662, Louis wore fi re red, gold, and diamonds with bright red ostrich plumes, the color of fi re. The same colors, the plumes, and the diamonds were adopted for his court dress. The central role played by the king in imposing a new dress code of vivid colors against the fashion for dark Spanish colors has been well studied by Jennifer Jones. Like the Persian king or the Ottoman sultan who gave cer-emonial robes (khalat) to worthy ambassadors and courtiers, Louis bestowed a bro-cade vest to male courtiers as a mark of privilege; only those bestowed the vest could be in his presence.90 Joan DeJean has convincingly argued that after 1669 Louis XIV set out to imitate Eastern monarchs in their sartorial splendor, and she has looked into Louis’s splendid diamond collection, which she argues was used specifi cally for this effect. In 1691 Montarsy and Louis Alvarez, who were diamond merchants and polishers, drew up an inventory of the crown jewels at Louis’s request. This inven-tory shows that before the visit of the Turkish ambassador, whom as we saw Louis sought to impress, the king spent 1,500,000 livres ($75 million) on diamonds alone; 900,000 went to Tavernier, who had just returned from buying them in India, and the rest to another merchant named Bazu. At the time of Louis’s death they were worth 12 million livres.91 Alas, the Turkish ambassador had been unimpressed in 1669 and affi rmed that the sultan’s horse wore more than the king of France, but Louis was even more splendid in 1715.

On February 19, 1715, at the last court function he was able to carry off before his death later that year, the reception for the Persian ambassador Mehmet Reza Beg, the king demonstrated just how far he had taken the art of diamond in the years since 1669 and proved to the entire world that no one would be more successful at playing the role of The King. He appeared with the Blue Diamond hanging around his neck; elsewhere on his person he displayed virtually the entire collection of crown jewels all 12 million livres worth. The outfi t was so heavy that royal chroniclers reported the king had to rush away immediately after dinner to take it off.92

The Persian embassy produced a profusion of descriptions. The crowd was so dense in the Galerie des Glaces that even the king was uncomfortable passing through, and as he brushed against the princes to his apartments his costume lost one of its big-gest and most precious pearls, later found by a courtier. No one could bend to look for it immediately as the crowd was terribly dense. Provision was made for the ladies to see, and four tiers of seats were constructed for the princesses and the ladies.

To solve the problem of the ladies being seated in the presence of the king, which was against protocol, they were told not to wear court dress but the rather orientalist deshabillé dress, much like an Ottoman morning dress, which was the rule at Châ-teau de Marly, where the king relaxed and rules were less rigid. The king had ordered them to wear all their gems in their hair. The dauphin next to the king was covered


in diamonds as was his father; he had solid diamond buttons like his father, although not as many as the 125 Louis wore. The Duc d’Orleans also had diamond buttons and double rows of precious stones in his blue velvet habit. Saint Simon describes this habit as winning the prize for bon goût (good taste).93 The glitter of the ceremony refl ected in the Hall of Mirrors must have been intense and had tremendous effect. The fashion for diamonds had been adopted by the Parisian elite and most courtesans were wearing gems.

The Persian ambassador, standing in his plain dress, said that he was arrested by such a brilliant display and that it even surpassed Louis’s reputation as the greatest of emperors.94 Clearly Louis had outdone his imitation of an eastern potentate, not that the Persian ambassador had actually ever seen one. The fi rst man to have entered the Hall of Mirrors preceding the ambassador was an Armenian named Agopjan, who had helped the embassy and had been in charge of hiding the letter and the presents sent by Shah Hussein in his bales of silk. The presents from the Persian king had been paraded in the city of Marseilles. Once on French soil the Persian ambassador had slept with his presents in his room and had made a great case of them. Much was expected of these gifts when at last the trunk containing them, covered in gold cloth, was opened for Louis to behold. It contained exactly 106 very small pearls, 280 tur-quoises, and two gold boxes full of momie, a very precious unguent collected drop by drop from a specifi c rock and considered a cure-all in Persia. It stupefi ed the audi-ence and disappointed Louis XIV to such an extent that it was believed from that mo-ment on that the embassy was inauthentic. As Maurice Herbette, who wrote a book about the Persian embassy, puts it: “the ambassador had committed an unforgivable mistake, he had let down the expectations long created in the French imagination by the word ‘Persia,’ ‘king of kings’ and ‘grand sophy.’ ”95

Madame d’Orléans was astonished that people would not once and for all agree he was a hoax.96 The Duc de Saint Simon, the most famous chronicler of Louis’s reign, wrote that the Persian embassy was more than equivocal. More famously per-haps, Montesquieu accused the ambassador of being a fraud in the Lettres Persanes (1721), when Usbek warns Rustan not to take news of this fraud to Isfahan, lest the ambassador lose his head.97 There is no question that Mehmet Reza Beg was a minor character who had been the kalantar of the province of Erivan, an Armenian province under Persian rule, which is an offi cer in charge of collecting taxes and keeping order. Without the help of the network of Armenian merchants within the Ottoman empire, even this indirect envoy would not have reached France.98 Yet, it was his presents that made the French court regret the huge expenditure for the fi rst envoy to France of the fabled shahs.

Persia was the land of luxury and gold, as recounted many times since the Greeks; Persia could not have been represented by such avarice. The ambassador’s personal avarice, thievery, and temper while in Paris did not help his cause, nor did the fact that he never wanted to go back and seemed to think life more comfortable in France. He was nevertheless an object of great curiosity; engravings were made


and distributed to show him lying in the bathtub he had demanded. Louis XIV had obliged and constructed the tub to the ambassador’s specifi cations. In eighteenth-century France, Mehmet Reza’s daily baths were much discussed, as were his exotic eating habits, but these were not enough to prove anything except that he was from elsewhere. Throngs of people had received him, but six months later everything short of brutality was done to make him leave France. Mehmet Reza Beg did not match what his French hosts imagined Persia or the Persian monarchy to be.

By this time Louis XIV was carrying 15,000 carats of diamonds on his day wear; he wore diamonds even on the buckles of his shoes and on his garters.99 The huge pearl he lost during the reception and recovered through a well-rewarded courtier must have seemed even bigger in the light of the small pearls thrown in front of him by the Persian ambassador. In more than one way Louis had succeeded in posing as an oriental monarch. In several sources his mistresses were called sultanas. The Comte de Bussy called both Madame de Montespan and Mademoiselle de Fontages “les deux Sultanes.”100 Author of Histoire amoureuse des Gaules, the Compte de Bussy had been disgraced by the king for having harmed his brother’s wife, Ma-dame’s, reputation in this work, but de Bussy had good reason to be critical. There are other instances of courtiers using the term: the Marquis de la Fare called Madame de Montespan the Sultana Queen.101 Louis XIV was being noticed both for material and sexual excess; since he could not be criticized openly, the sultanas took the brunt of it. France had a long history of legislating luxury, and in many ways by adopt-ing what was imagined to be oriental sartorial style, Louis made conspicuous, even excessive, consumption the style of the French court. By imposing oriental excess he had gone against some very deeply rooted ideas about luxury that had been prevalent in France for many centuries. If the dress makes the man, in the eyes of his critics, the king of France had styled himself into an oriental despot.

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–10–

Orientalism, Despotism, and Luxury

To have told Abelard that a war with the Dutch was necessary because they were selling their manufactures into France, and because they were carrying French goods on the sea would have amazed and amused him. Yet by the seventeenth century this stance seemed natural and right to many intelligent men. This change was made possible with the in-creasing identifi cation of economic life with national politics and with patriotic interests. From one point of view mercantilism was the economic phase of nascent nationalism, and it was in part on the economic solidarity fostered by mercantilism that nationalism was to build in the future.1

Charles W. Cole

In the last part of the seventeenth century very few porcelains sold in France marked “made in China” were actually Chinese; Dutch imitations marked as Chinese were fl ooding the French markets. The search for authenticity and exoticism took a greater turn. Nothing was as authentic as genuine visitors from Asia. Despite Louis’s dreams of grandeur and his gifts to the Chinese emperor, China never sent envoys to France.2 Aside from a few translators trailing the Jesuits, no one from China formally set foot on French soil, despite Louis’s discourse about the emperor being his cousin. The arrival of the Siamese created what one scholar has called an “exotic fever” at the court of Louis XIV.3 According to a Siamese account, when the fi rst ambassadors of Siam arrived in Paris in 1686, they demonstrated their superiority through their magic. At Versailles, the Siamese demanded that 500 gunmen shoot them in the chest while they stood still in the marble court. When the 500 guns were fi red, not a single bullet scratched their bodies. They were received by the king of France in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles. The Siamese envoys recorded that when they fi rst set eyes upon the French king, they witnessed a supernatural light shining on Louis XIV. He was seated on a gem-studded throne surrounded by a multicolored light. Diamonds and rubies threw fi res that were refl ected in the mirrors of the Galerie des Glaces (Hall of Mirrors), throwing a halo of fi re around the monarch.4

Yet in a French almanac illustrating the same 1686 embassy, none of this glit-tering luxury was apparent. The king was seated on a throne adorned only with textiles, not depicted on a jeweled throne, nor was he wearing any jewels.5 No dazzling lights are to be seen anywhere on the almanac’s rendition of the court. Since only that single Siamese account of the 1686 embassy was known to us,


scholars have naturally treated the Siamese travel account as fabulous.6 Certainly a good part of it was, such as the immunity to gunshots. The French wrote pro-fusely about this spectacular Siamese visit. As we have discussed, Europeans wrote prolifi cally about Asia, while there were very few accounts by visitors to Europe. European interest was in good part due to the riches of Asia, the gemstones, the silks and porcelains, which were only recently part of European luxuries. Asia’s natural resources surpassed Europe’s. Economically Asia was not interested in Eu-rope; at the time its manufactures were far ahead and were poorly imitated in Europe. Eurasian trade was dependant on gold and silver until the end of the seventeenth century. The Siamese were the fi rst to order the new French luxury goods.

The gems imported from Asia were certainly more familiar to the Siamese embassy than the mirrors refl ecting the gems. The enormous new mirrors at Versailles were, save for woolens, one of the rare items manufactured in Europe that were of any inter-est on Asia’s markets. The Galérie des Glaces was new and dazzling to all visitors at Versailles. On the occasion of the embassy, the Siamese ambassador was given a large mirror as a gift. It was a promotional gift, as the king hoped that the Siamese would purchase French mirrors. Indeed, the Siamese put in an order to purchase thousands of them.7 The many items that were included in the order were diverse; the 160 French cannons were predictable, as were the telescopes and glasses and clocks, but more interesting were a list of luxuries: a number of ceremonial velvet and gold masks for the beloved elephants of the palace, elephant harnesses made of red cloth lined with leather decorated with copper stars, and two thousand crystal ornaments to decorate two animals, a male and female elephant. The ambassadors also ordered two globes, one terrestrial and one celestial with inscriptions giving the correct information tran-scribed in Siamese letters, which must have been a feat for French artisans.

The Siamese also ordered seven very large rugs from the rug factory of the Savon-nerie. The rugs were often the best diplomatic gift offered by France, and the Sia-mese order was proof that the factory established by Louis XIII to make carpets “à la façon de Turquie” in 1627 had gained an international reputation as a French luxury. The largest order was for the manufacture of mirrors, obtained by Colbert from Saint Gobain, which received an order for 4,264 mirrors.8 This was a fi rst. Traditionally luxuries traveled to France from the Orient, not from France to the Orient. As we have seen, European courts and grandees were avid collectors and consumers of Asian goods, creating a very unbalanced trade situation. Versailles itself was a dis-play of luxury. Louis had amassed the best gemstone collection in Europe thanks to Tavernier.9 With the 1686 embassy came several important gifts that would further contribute to the palace’s oriental splendor: gold, tortoiseshells, fabrics, carpets, over 1,500 pieces of porcelain, and many pieces of lacquer furniture.10

Parisians waited for hours in the streets to catch a glimpse of the Siamese visi-tors, a scene that was repeated for the Ottoman and Persian embassies. The curiosity of many was never satisfi ed, as the Siamese envoys, unlike their Ottoman and Per-sian counterparts, refused to receive anyone or accept any invitations, which made

Orientalism, Despotism, and Luxury • 259

one of their French chaperones exclaim: “I am tired of their bizzareries . . . they are suited to the profession of sloth.”11 The nobleman guiding them had to fi nd ruses to explain their total disinterest in their French hosts, which was passed off as a form of exotic expression of enthusiasm to avoid diplomatic incidents. The Siamese were very busy, the Nouveau Mercure galant reported, so that every evening they locked themselves in to record everything they saw.

French curiosity about the Siamese visitors was so high that Dirk Van der Cruysse tells us that Donneau de Visé, the director of the Mercure, produced a “Siamese frenzy,” with over two thousand pages about the visitors.12 There were several French accounts of the Siamese visit, and three entire volumes of the news gazette Mercure de France were exclusively devoted to the exotic dress, mores, and moods of the Sia-mese visitors in France.13 At least fi ve almanacs—a new tool of propaganda for the court—were also printed to commemorate the event with images. This propaganda literature, controlled by the court, was so well circulated that it sparked Parisians’ in-terest in Siamese fashions, some promptly adopted by the aristocracy. The Siamese, on the other hand, were awed by the luxury in France and were busy recording it; Kosapan, the ambassador, spent an entire page describing his French bed in infi nite detail. He described its height, its width, the curtains of luxurious crimson silk, the gold tassels, and the precious wood.14

Despite France’s successful production of luxury goods, attitudes toward luxury re-mained complicated and confl icted. Not one of the formal French accounts echoes the Siamese account of gems at court. Not only do they, as one logically expects, fail to mention the magical survival from the shooting of the Siamese ambassadors, but there was no depiction of any of the jewels shining on the king in the almanacs. In French travel accounts about Persia, India, and China, the oriental courts are seen as the locus of luxury, in contrast to the French almanacs that depicted the court at Versailles as sober. Where did the truth lie? When the Siamese saw the French court aglow with gems and light, it was not a fantasy. Despite the almanac, there were French sources that attest to these luxurious surroundings. Among others some were French descrip-tions of Versailles’s Hall of Mirrors in newspapers and gazettes.

The 1682 inauguration of the mirrors at Versailles was described in the Mercure galant as “a dazzling mass of riches and lights, duplicated a thousand times over in just as many mirrors, creating views more brilliant than fi re and where a thou-sand things more sparkling came into play. Add to that the splendor [of] the court’s fi nery and the gleam of their precious jewelry.”15 This Parisian newspaper report echoes that of the Siamese viewers, dazzled by light and jewels; and furthermore, an earlier testimony by Olivier d’Ormesson confi rms that, as discussed, Louis wore gems to receive ambassadors. In 1669, for the Ottoman visit, Louis was wearing an especially tailored vest studded with diamonds whose value d’Ormesson estimated at 14 million livres.16 He was even richer in stones by the Siamese visit. Yet, the court seemed intent on depicting itself as more austere than it really was. The Siamese de-picted themselves as invulnerable to European guns, an event never found in French


sources, while the French court depicted itself as indifferent to the temptations of exotic gems and oriental luxuries.

The confl icting views held about luxury in the late seventeenth century were central to such a double discourse. Views about luxury were fast changing but still deeply marked by the negative attitude of the Catholic Church. The positive views of opulence put forth by the gazettes speak of a new desire for unrestrained consump-tion at Versailles, a feature that was by all accounts a turning point in Louis XIV’s image building.17 By the end of his reign, Paris had a worldwide reputation for lux-ury, not only for the grand scale of consumption at Versailles, but for the luxury goods in Parisian shops and markets. Joan DeJean has argued and demonstrated that the consumption of luxury itself was invented under Louis’s reign.18 Yet, the infl u-ence of the Church had not disappeared, and in fact the French church was becoming more intransigent in its views of trade, luxury, and money. Sumptuary legislation controlled the consumption of luxury goods and largely restricted them to the nobil-ity until the laws disappeared under Louis XV. Despite the fact that the laws were broken, gems, silk, and gold were still identifi ed with the nobility, and as such were markers of class.

There was good reason to depict oneself as frugal, as there was a long tradition of negative views about luxury in France. The construction of Versailles itself is enough to demonstrate the king’s love of luxury, but to appear ostentatious was another issue. Many of these debates within France about luxury, consumption, and over-production in France were older. They stemmed from views about the New World, Hapsburg gold, colonization, and French trade with Asia. The consumption of luxury goods was the concern of successive governments, which dealt with sumptuary laws, and of philosophers, concerned about theory. Mercantilism was an old view, whose zero-sum view of the economy was to protect France against foreign imports and to conserve bullion, and this had been a trade policy since the end of fi fteenth century.19 Thus, Charles W. Cole was right to argue that French economic theory contained within it the kernel of the patriotism and nationalism that would become so loud and clear before the French Revolution.

The negative discourse on luxury was present since ancient and medieval times within the Church, but the conversation over luxury and its consumption became a roaring debate a century later in the years preceding the French Revolution.20 Throughout this period serious economic theories and writings were inspired by the East India trade, China, Persia, and the Levant. To a large degree the New World was also an infl uence because of the shadow of Spain’s success and later its bankruptcy, and France’s longing for hoarding gold and silver. Oriental luxury goods and their European imitations played a central role, both in the debates on luxury in France and in the formation of French economic thought and policy. Domestic production to counter foreign imports also fell into the debate about the need for colonies, which were more often than not seen as harmful to the French economic health. The Church also had economic theories of its own.


Economic Theories and the Birth of Mercantilism

The Church was deeply involved in commercial issues in France even late into the seventeenth century. When in 1671 Louis’s advisors were working on a new formu-lation of commercial laws under Colbert, they grappled with the king’s right to fi x the rate of interest, which had informally been 5 percent under his father, Louis XIII. It was Louis XIV himself, as a good Catholic, who decided that the doctors of the Sorbonne needed to be consulted, and a few were called; far from simply approving it, they made a fuss. They thought this was too important to just approve and called upon the entire faculty of the Sorbonne to see if it would be acceptable for Louis XIV to keep the customary rate of 5 percent. The dean of the faculty, M. Moret, was called upon to speak fi rst. His conclusion was very conservative indeed: money was sterile by nature and could bring no profi t that was not deemed usury by the Church. If one had profi ted from usury in good faith in the past it should be restituted, but it was forbidden to take more in the future under pain of mortal sin. So much for the future of French commerce. Even what had been previously allowed was now forbidden by the theologians of the Sorbonne.21 As early as the fi fteenth century the notion that money was sterile had been abandoned in France. Bullionism, as in conserving gold and silver in France’s borders and preventing their escape, and a growing esteem for gold and silver became acceptable to the French Church, especially after both Catho-lic Spain and Italy had reached such fl amboyant commercial successes. The clergy had long ago, albeit reluctantly, accepted the importance of foreign trade as the only way to enrich France since it had no mines of gold and silver.22 The ban by law of the use of luxury, sumptuary legislation, was the most common measure used in France to conserve gold and silver.

Luxury and bullionism were closely associated in early economic thought. Com-mercial success and abstaining from luxury, especially foreign imports that bled bullion from France, were directly correlated. Therefore, most commercial legisla-tive efforts in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were directed against import-ing foreign luxury goods, especially fabrics.23 The kings of France, as early as the fi rst Valois, were the ones traditionally lending or giving subsidies to enterprising individuals to start factories for domestic production of silk or woolens, in order to prevent foreign imports. For the Church to make such efforts by monarchs and merchants profi tless by claiming that money was sterile was tantamount to a ban on French progress in manufacturing and in foreign trade. As always, just as Asian mer-chants found their way around the Islamic ideas about usury, Catholic France found its own ways to ignore the doctors of the Sorbonne, and France certainly prospered commercially under Colbert, as is well demonstrated by the great specialist of Col-bertisme, Charles W. Cole.

Early modern France is known as the land of mercantilism. Jean Bodin can be seen as a pioneer, as the fi rst in France to formulate the quantity theory of money and convey that it was a crime for kings to tamper with its value. It is not surprising that


money was a philosophical and theoretical preoccupation since Bodin’s Six Books on the Republic, when France had to change its account money from the livres tournois into the écu in 1577.24 The crisis was due not to penury but to an unusual overabun-dance of gold and silver within France that led to devaluation.25 Bodin reiterated many of the ideas of his century on the necessity for the self-suffi ciency of France, as formulated by some important Protestant writers before him. In turn, some Prot-estant reformers would be inspired by Bodin’s work on economy. Some have been discussed before, such as Barthélemy de Laffemas.26 Yet, unlike Laffemas after him, Bodin’s patriotism was mitigated by a strong cosmopolitanism, as he stated that in-ternational trade was ordained by God and remained adamant that France was at its heart: “It is incredible but true that, since 1533 ... a hundred million in gold and twice as much in silver has come from Peru,” only to argue that the Spanish had no choice than to spend that money buying things produced in France.27 He cites the Italians, the English, the Scots, the Norwegians, and the Swedes as having to bring gold and silver from the mines to buy “our” wines, “our” safrans, “our” prunes, “our” pastel (woad), and all “our” salt, which he called manna from heaven.28 To Bodin this was foreign trade, others buying from France, and certainly not France buying from abroad. For centuries to come this ideal of France as the world’s breadbasket domi-nated French economic thought. Bodin’s ideas about Europe being fed by France will be found in French economic writing all the way to the eighteenth century. France as the land of plenty was a theme that was not only going to become lyrical in great literary works, such as those of Rabelais, but it was recurrent under the pen of its most prominent economists and politicians.

The Levant trade was seen as benefi cial by Jean Bodin. In his Discours de Jean Bodin sur le rehaussement et diminution tant d’or que d’argent, he argued that the Levant trade was a cause of French enrichment, that the friendship between the royal houses of France and those of the Ottomans was good. He wrote that French merchants held “boutiques” in Alexandria, Cairo, Beirut, and Tripoli, and had as much credit as Venice and Genoa in Fez and Morocco. Another cause of enrichment Bodin cited was the opening of the new bank of Lyons, which attracted bankers from Switzerland, Italy, and Germany. Bodin noted that Francis I took money from it at 8 percent, his successor started borrowing at 10 percent, then 16 percent and even 20 percent. Foreign bankers therefore brought quantities of gold and silver to France.29 As we know from earlier passages in this book, Bodin was not positive about the debts incurred by the French monarchy, yet he was thrilled by the gold and silver that the bank of the Lyons brought into the borders of France.

Berthélemy de Laffemas, inspired by Bodin’s patriotism, waxed lyrical about the produce of French soil, yet he had less faith that international traffi c meant wealth. He formulated the protectionist view that France had to be protected from foreign trade and from foreigners and must become entirely self-suffi cient. Laffemas argued that attraction to exotic foreign goods would be the ruin of France. In an earlier chapter we examined his experiments in making France a silk-producing country;


he also formulated theoretical ideas that stemmed from the expenditures of France on foreign silk and other luxury goods. Aside from theory and advice to Sully and Henri IV, Laffemas also propagated his ample disdain for the inhabitants of France, whom he deemed too lazy and careless to appreciate its bounty and beauty. His views were to be picked up in many French writings about French merchants, and, as we will see, up through the eighteenth century one can fi nd in Voltaire the same view that the French were poor contenders in international commerce because they were spoiled in their land of plenty.

Laffemas was convinced that in former times France had been a great commercial nation but now it was ruined by the sloth of the French. Businessmen in particular were an object of disgust, as “God when He caused them to be born in so rich and beautiful a country, with such mild skies and such fertile and smiling lands that it can bear and furnish even metals, raw materials, fruits and the like, of which we do not know how to make good use; a fact that has tended to draw off the money of our kingdom.” The bounty of France prevented success in international commerce, as was sung in his poem in the writings of one of the Parmentier brothers about the spices they sought in vain. In Laffemas’s mind gold and silver were the sinews of states and monarchies.30 Their escape had to be prevented even if it meant no foreign goods coming into France, or no foreign trade at all. The word étranger is a litany in his writing and stands as a symbol of all that is destructive to the economy of France.

Barthélémy de Laffemas’s ideas made a mark on French economic thinking. All three of the ideas stated previously would be found in Richelieu’s Testament poli-tique.31 Bullionism, protectionism, and the control of commerce by the king were the policies Laffemas advocated. The monarch had a duty to encourage and to build French manufactures in order to profi t from the raw materials that were the bounty of France. In 1601, Henry IV passed a law because of Laffemas’s views: he hoped to exploit mines in France. Efforts were made to locate French mines. A very interest-ing individual by the name of Jean Chastelet got involved. He had been to the mines of Potosí in Peru, and his knowledge of gold and silver had earned him the title of Baron d’Offenbach after he directed work in the silver mines of Bavaria. For six years, from 1604 to 1610, he scouted out mines for the king, and after Henry IV’s death in 1610, he continued to do so under Richelieu, but he ended his days in jail. He was thrown into the Bastille by the Cardinal de Mazarin on a charge of sorcery by the Church. He claimed that he and his wife had discovered more than a hundred silver and gold mines in the territory of France.32

Henry IV passed many laws under Laffemas’s infl uence to stop foreign imports. The repression of luxury was seen as the sole solution to this escape of bullion. As a frugal Protestant, Laffemas fretted over every bourgeoise now wanting to wear pearls; the ban of luxury in his view was every man’s duty. Pearls were still an ori-ental import in the late seventeenth century. The Parisian art of making fake pearls using the shine from fi sh scales had not yet been invented. He advocated the king’s


ban on all imports into France, except gold and silver, to save France from ruin. He believed that French merchants should be forced by the monarch to exchange their goods against cash and bring cash back into France. Works of art and books made after the rule of Francis I were excluded from this general ban on foreign imports. This form of exception was strictly reserved to the noblesse.

Laffemas also wanted to ban the export of all French raw materials abroad, giving the example of how Italian weavers gained wealth through France’s raw materials.33 France should build factories of its own. During his efforts in silk production within France, Laffemas argued that China had shown that silk was more profi table than wheat or wine, and he hoped that France would produce ten to forty million livres of raw silk a year. Taken as a whole, Henry IV’s reign was one of great economic ef-forts, activity, and prosperity, but perhaps he was not ready to apply the mercantilist doctrines of Laffemas. Charles Woosley Cole has written that Laffemas’s writings were a summary of the mercantilists’ ideas that had prevailed in France, and that Henry IV’s practical efforts to be a mercantilist monarch were “a brief rehearsal for the great epoch of Colbert.”34

Indeed, a period of stagnation and political troubles was to follow. However, there were some seminal thinkers such as Antoine de Montchrétien, who not only refi ned the doctrines of mercantilism but invented the term political economy in the title of his work dedicated to Louis XIII: Traicté de oeconomie politique. He was Norman, but unlike his countrymen who had explored the world, he held that France was a world and if one had seen her, there was no need to see the rest of the world. He bor-rowed a fi gure of speech from Bodin and wrote that wheat, wine, salt, linens, and woolens were the “fi ve inexhaustible fountains” of French riches. All France lacked, he argued, were spices. He pleaded in his Traicté that the French should follow the example of the thriving Dutch and eradicate idleness from France. He pointed out that France was stricken by a plague of idleness. He wrote that “the happiness of man ... consists chiefl y in wealth, and wealth in work.” A good ruler was not one who pun-ished criminals, but one who gave employment to all, and he exhorted Louis XIII to copy the Dutch and provide workhouses for the poor and work schools for children.35 He was killed after participating in a Protestant uprising; many of his views on work and his admiration for the Dutch refl ect his religious leanings. His advocacy for the spice trade should not mask his profound mistrust of things foreign.

De Monchrétien’s views of foreigners and foreign goods were even more strident than Laffemas’s. Foreigners at fairs were spies, and France carried her hospitality too far. They evaded customs, faked bankruptcies, and were sharp money-changers that left the French in the dust. He advocated that all foreigners be put under severe restric-tions in France. Had his opinions prevailed, most probably the fi rst cafés would never have opened in France. He understood why foreigners wanted to be in his beloved France: “It is for the Scythians to come to the Greeks. Honor, courtesy, and industry have chosen to make their home with us. They will be glad to stay here always if we ourselves do not drive them away.”36 There was a paradox in his thinking, as he


advocated that the French throw themselves madly into the Eastern trade. He wrote that sea-power was not a royal toy but the way to greatness. He argued for a merchant marine, not a surprising turn for a Norman, despite his views that France was the world. He envisioned a future with ships going east and west to bring wealth to France. Most importantly, for the fi rst time, in de Montchrétien one fi nds a clear advocacy for colonization, once again, not surprising for a Norman, as they would settle much of the New World. The only positive example he gave for colonies was Jean Bodin’s citation on Roman colonies. Bodin wrote that the Romans conquered colonies and through this method got rid of their poor, their dissidents, and the lazy.37 De Montchrétien also saw colonization as a way to employ the poor and get rid of undesirables.

De Montchrétien believed that the colonization of Canada had not been given proper attention by the king, and indeed he was right; the court did not really support explorers or French settlers properly, and most of the early fi nancing came from mer-chants from Dieppe, like Jehan Ango. He bemoaned the wealth that France would get from America and Africa should the king do what was right. The Dutch were the model for work and commerce, and for conquest, and his model was Spain. De Montchrétien warned that French colonization in the New World should not be an altruistic work of Christianization, as it had been conducted in Canada, but should be for profi t alone. Once colonized, France could get products from its American colonies and avoid paying high prices for oriental goods in the Levant, China, or even for goods from Russia, Sweden, or Denmark:

[By buying] from our own people what we buy at such high prices from foreigners; silks; cottons; raisins; essences; gums; medicinal and aromatic woods; gaiac: sasparilla; sassafras (called in Florida pavagne and in Virginia vuinank); sweet costus; bitter costus; white san-dalwood; lemon-colored sandalwood; yellow sandalwood; china root; casai fi stula; cassia lignea; long pepper and a number of spices; a number of trees like cahninca root, a specifi c for poisons, haneda, excellent against scurvy and painful swelling of the limbs; mechoacan; and possibly rhubarb, since similar roots with same purgative effects are found there; clay for painting or medicine, so carefully guarded in the Levant.38

In addition to getting these materials from the colonies, after a few years one could plant important French products in the colonies like olive oil and woad, that once ac-climated would yield great profi ts. French control of the colonies would supplement French suffi ciency, while regulation and state control exercised by Louis XIII would bring prosperity.39 This was prescient, as it was written about a century before France had any successful plantations.

France continued with its old way, and stricter sumptuary law was supposed to keep money in its borders. A year before Montchrétien’s work appeared in 1615 there was a meeting of minds between the clergy and the Third Estate on strictly banning luxury. They asked the king to repress luxury and to reduce the incredible quantity of money that was drawn from the kingdom to pay for foreign fabrics,


jewels, and ornaments. The Third Estate went further, demanding national customs unity for control, and a national policy in commerce on exports and imports under the king’s control, something that regional France would not know until well after the Revolution.40

According to Cole, around the same time that the Third Estate met in 1614 a large number of anonymous pamphlets appeared, urging the prohibition of all kinds of for-eign things, foreign goods, or even travel to certain foreign lands: banning pilgrim-age to Spain to avoid money going to Spain, evicting Jewish merchants, no longer hiring foreign Swiss guards. If the last measure may seem unrelated, the tie was not simply that they were foreign—the Swiss guards were paid from trade profi ts. Most interesting for our purposes is an anonymous pamphlet Avis au roy en l’occurrence des états généraux, that advocated severing all relations with Turkey and revoking the capitulation, to provoke the immediate cessation of French trade in the Levant. The pamphlet advocated a complete ban on the resulting luxury from the Levant trade and the construction of French manufactures to prevent fi ve of the seven mil-lion écus in gold exported yearly to Ottoman markets. Radically shutting down the Levant trade would cut luxury in France, and also the friendly relations established by Francis I should be revoked, and war should be started with various parts of the Turkish empire. The pamphlet warned that seven million écus were exported yearly out of Marseilles alone. Severing relations with Turkey, as it was referred to in the pamphlet, would strengthen France and weaken Turkey and Italy.

The pamphlet advocated that once the Levant trade was stopped, France would be so sound that only minor, solvable, problems would remain: civil war in France. The solution to this so-called minor glitch was to fi ght the Turks instead, as France had an overpopulation of men. The pamphlet argued that since the nobles would be winning great wars against the Turks, France would be at peace. Only the trade of the city of Marseilles would suffer, but that was a minor consideration as the greater good of the nation was at stake.41 The pamphlet only amplifi ed what most mercantilists believed: that the Levant trade took money out of France and was therefore harmful except to the merchants of Marseilles, who were seen as rapacious. It also coincided with the crusading views held by dévots, who opposed the Levant trade. As such the pamphlet represented the views of a large part of the elite at court under Louis XIII.

Richelieu’s ideas on the Levant trade are often cited as a turning point. Charles W. Cole argues that it had erroneously been believed that Richelieu strongly advo-cated the Levant trade because he was the fi rst not to be a mercantilist. Cole offers several quotations from Richelieu’s political testament that demonstrate that Riche-lieu remained a staunch traditional mercantilist despite his aims to build up a navy for trade. Cole argues that Richelieu advocated the Levant trade only because he was certain, or at least pretended to be, that it did not drain money out of France. Richelieu wrote that the money that went to the Levant was Spanish, not French. He argued, like Bodin, that the wealth of France was in what she produced, her salt, her oil, her wine, her wheat, her prunes; and her wealth did not consist solely in bullion.


That the money draining was Spanish was a technicality, as he certainly would have known that it transited through Provence and was recoined for the Levant market.42 In Richelieu’s Testament politique, he makes it clear that the sole riches of Spain consisted of the gold they got from the Indies. For Richelieu, hoarding bullion within the borders of France to imitate Spain was not prosperity; metal was not suffi cient to build a country’s wealth.43 One of the most important elements of wealth was trade, and trading goods and raw materials from France to other countries was best. As for importing, he preferred the fur trade in Canada as it functioned on bartering goods. Trade was even possible, he argued, without having raw materials and goods pro-duced within the nation. He gave the example of Holland, of a people crammed on a corner of land where there was once only water and sand; the Dutch, said Richelieu, only got butter and cheese from their land, yet they supplied the rest of the world with necessities and luxuries.44 He contrasted this to the wealth of France.

Yet, Richelieu argued, like many before him, that France’s wealth was precisely why she had not gone out to trade like the Dutch. In his view, it was a necessity to avoid buying luxuries from her neighbors, but buying exotic luxury goods directly on Asian markets was less detrimental. Richelieu saw no reasons for avoiding orien-tal luxuries if they were bought by French merchants. What was novel in this stance was that he saw that the problem was not the trade with the Levant per se, but the European intermediaries. He encouraged French trade in the East Indies, but he was not optimistic about French merchants:

Voyages of long duration are inappropriate to their natures. None the less since there comes a great quantities of silks and rugs from Persia, many curiosities from China, and all sorts of spices from that part of the world, which are of great utility to us, this trade should not be neglected.45

As for the use of these goods in France, Richelieu approved previous sumptuary legislation and reinforced it further. He suggested that the fi nes be four times the value of the “illegal fi neries worn.” Embroideries were forbidden to all, as they were mostly from other European countries, especially the Flanders and Italy. As for oriental goods, precious gems, silks, and satins were forbidden to all but the nobles. Carriages, intro-duced to France by Marie de Medici from Italy and still largely imported, were banned to the bourgeoisie. Gilded articles were reserved to the royal family alone.46 Fur was also restricted. The list was clearly a ban on anyone but the nobility wearing or using imports. This meant a status quo. The use of foreign exotic goods was the prerogative of the aristocracy and became synonymous with it. Sumptuary law, already found in Greek cities and Rome, was very old in France, emerging in the thirteenth century in 1279 and 1294.47 The last efforts to enforce it strictly were under Colbert. As was the case with most legislation that went against human impulses, sumptuary law was constantly broken, and this was also the case under Louis XIV. Both in the 1660s and 1670s, Colbert attempted to enforce sumptuary laws that prohibited foreign goods in


order to encourage local silk, linen, and lace-making industries.48 These efforts, even more so than previously, were far from successful.

The Debates about Luxury and Consumption

Colbert’s organization of both West and East India Companies, the Compagnie du Nord, the Levant Company, and all the measures taken to create a luxury industry to prevent importing from European neighbors were instrumental to a period of prosper-ity under Louis XIV. This prosperity was constantly broken by the costly demands of war. Colbert’s 1660 ban on many oriental imports, as well as the increased consump-tion of Asian luxury products in spite of the ban, gave rise to a renewed debate about the role of luxury in France’s political economy. Joyce Appleby has demonstrated how a political struggle in England over the imports of cotton textiles by the East India Company triggered the debate on luxury in the late seventeenth century. The defenders of the company had to attack the balance of trade doctrines, giving rise to a vigorous theoretical debate about the role of luxury in the economic growth of a nation.49 The situation was similar in France, although the opposition was stronger than in England. The debate was on two fronts in the eighteenth century; one debate was about luxury and sumptuary legislation and the effects of foreign imports on the economy, and the other took place theoretically in economic writings. For a long time they were one and the same; economic thinking was about luxury and foreign trade and legislation. Only in the eighteenth century did the two debates take some distance from each other thanks to the physiocrats and their focus on agriculture, but it was not much of a distance.

The recent proliferation of books on fashion and consumerism proves the impor-tance of the subject for understanding French economy and politics under the ancien régime. Daniel Roche’s pioneering work already pointed to the eighteenth century as a turning point for consumption and clothing.50 The education of merchants and their social rise also led to their public participation in economic debates.51 The rise of consumption in eighteenth-century Paris, the feminization of fashion and culture, the breaking of class and gender barriers, the rise of the crafts related to fashion, the ex-tinction of sumptuary laws, and the excesses of Marie Antoinette and their surprising ties to subsequent Revolutionary dress codes have been brilliantly studied in some recent works.52 The creation of a fashion press also contributed to this debate.53

Caroline Weber’s seminal study of Marie Antoinette’s frenetic consumption and its social consequences highlights the importance of the sartorial regulations upheld by the sumptuary laws of the ancien régime and the consequences, as well as the political meaning, of defying traditional sumptuary convention. Jennifer Jones and Joan DeJean have both demonstrated that Louis XIV was arbiter of fashion and taste for Europe. DeJean has devoted an entire book to demonstrating that luxury itself was Louis’s creation. The French court sought to extend control over the fashions


it had created, as after Louis XIV’s reign, la mode was a major French export. In France mercantilism was a theoretical model and not a reality. Jones explores the royal creation of a Parisian tradition of coiffeurs and coutouriers, who for the next century dictated much of Europe’s fashion. Jones has showed how Louis exerted domestic political control over his courtiers through dictating sartorial fashion:

Louis XIV devoted much of his long reign (1654–1715) to harnessing the artifi ce, the inconstancy, and the Frenchness of la mode as he strove to extend his power—politically, economically, and culturally—throughout France and across Europe. He did so by assert-ing a distinctively French style, by deploying the artifi ce of fashion for the purpose of court spectacles, and by disciplining fi ckle fashion to the theater of absolutism.54

One of the most interesting parts of Jones’s argument for the rise of fashion and its gendering is the shift that occurred in the eighteenth century, when consumption was no longer the privilege of the nobility. The wealthy bourgeoisie and many groups below them successfully escaped the exceptions made for the nobility through sump-tuary laws. Jones successfully demonstrates that “The wardrobes of virtually all Pa-risians, from manual workers to aristocrats, had increased signifi cantly in value, in number of garments, and in varieties of clothing.” In a gendered analysis of fashion, she also shows that women’s wardrobes became exponentially larger than those of their husbands; at times their holdings were ten times larger. Fashion was feminized and luxury had become the domain of women in the eighteenth century. Yet to en-force this “Frenchness” in fashions, Louis had used foreign goods, worn his famous diamonds, covered his hats and helmets with North African red ostrich plumes, worn brocade, and pushed the use of ribbons and lace. If the last were successfully manu-factured in France under Colbert, much of what was consumed for “Frenchness” was still a foreign import in the eighteenth century.

The new category of “Frenchness” crafted by Louis extended across classes and was a unifying gesture in which clothing marked participation in the nation. The groups enjoying other exotic goods also were well beyond the bourgeoisie.55 Caro-lyn Sargentson’s work on the mercers and their shops has shown that as they had the privilege to sell oriental wares or luxuries, such as paintings and mirrors, they became a powerful guild. She has demonstrated the steady socioeconomic rise of the mercers during this period. This is the same period when one also found not only prosperous merchants but also artisans enjoying some leisure in theater or the fancy cafés of the Palais Royal. Weber’s discussion of Marie Antoinette’s dressmaker and hairdresser and their privileged access to court point to the same social mobility.56

The second debate was not about consumption and luxury and who was allowed to wear what, but about economics. Just the fact that the two debates were no longer one and the same is a notable difference from the past, when regulated consumption in the form of sumptuary laws and bullionism and the avoidance of foreign imports formed the bulk of concerns in economic writing. Regulation and legislation were


now questioned as a path to wealth. Under the pen of the physiocrats, the usual protectionism and bullionism tied to mercantilism would transform slowly into the ideas on free trade that became important in the late eighteenth century. The French debates were an inspiration to Adam Smith, who conceded that he borrowed many of his economic ideas from the French physiocrats.57 The fact that the term laissez-faire itself is French speaks to the importance of this economic debate in France and its French origin. Vincent de Gournay (1712–1759) was a precursor to the physiocrats and one of the main thinkers who inspired Adam Smith.

A wealthy merchant, Vincent de Gournay, was the intendant de commerce at the French court from 1751 to 1758. He was one of the leaders of a powerful group of thinkers interested in reforming the French economy by abolishing any trade restric-tions on foreign imports. His favorite phrase was ‘Laissez faire, laissez passer,’ and he is credited with being the originator of the term laissez-faire. Unlike the French physiocrats who argued for the importance of agriculture, de Gournay regarded the progress of industry and commerce as well as agriculture to all be sources of wealth for the nation. Adam Smith wanted to dedicate The Wealth of Nations to the fa-mous French economist, François Quesnay (1694–1774), a physiocrat who stressed the central importance of agriculture for the economic growth of nations. After los-ing the Seven Year’s War to England, a humiliated France sought ways to regain its stature. Quesnay, a court physician to Louis XV, turned to studying economic ideas to contribute to the glory of France. He was inspired by the Chinese agricul-tural policies he read through travelers and missionaries. As a consequence of his admiration for China, Quesnay was nicknamed the “Confucius of Europe.” He pub-lished his economic ideas in Le Despotisme de la Chine in 1767. China’s agricultural policies were to serve as a model to France. He argued that a nation was made of three forms of citizens: a productive class, a class of landowners, and what he called “la classe sterile.” This sterile class was comprised of anyone who was not occupied by anything related to agriculture and was supported by the two other classes. Mer-chants, artisans, and administrators were part of this sterile group, but he was mostly thinking of speculators and fi nanciers.58

Advocates of free trade, the physiocrats and their followers, would naturally ar-gue for breaking the monopoly of the companies, which had enriched speculators. The Asian trade and the East India Company would become a central issue and came under fi re in the late years of Louis XV. The debate came to a head during the reign of Louis XVI. Raising money for the court and especially for its war in North Amer-ica became urgent. Against the abolition of monopolies of commerce and the East India Company stood a coalition of bankers and fi nanciers led by the Geneva banker Jacques Necker (1732–1804).59 Necker became minister of fi nance despite his Prot-estant religion, and while his opposition to raising new taxes made him popular, his policies of borrowing instead of collecting money from taxes led to attacks against him before the Revolution. The attacks pointed to his policy as cause of the defi cit and France’s bankruptcy.60 Popular because of his no-taxation policies, he was called


back during the crisis of the Revolution to solve the defi cit, only to be disgraced. The fact that he was a Swiss banker, a foreigner who supported foreign trade, played a large role in the attack against him.

Before Quesnay’s ideas on agriculture, despite the lyrical praise of the produce of the French soil, trade was seen as the only possible source of acquiring more wealth. Avoiding imports, as many were exotic luxuries, was central to discussions of a healthy economy for France. Yet, ironically it was in importing an exotic, oriental model that economic arguments broke way from resistance to exotic imports. The Chinese model of organizing an economy around agriculture was what Quesnay ad-vocated for France, and foreign trade was no longer seen as instrumental to either the wealth or the bankruptcy. With this new focus on agriculture, which in fact Olivier de Serres had hoped for long ago and Laffemas advocated by planting mulberry trees in the palace of the Tuileries, French discussions among specialists would break lose from the concepts inherent to French mercantilism. This intellectual distance hap-pened in conjunction with a sharp rise in the consumption of foreign and domestic luxury goods and a disregard for old sumptuary legislation under Louis XV.

There was also a new social model advocated by Quesnay for France in his Le Despotisme de la Chine, a move away from the traditional hereditary privileges safeguarded by sumptuary laws: Quesnay advocated rising through merit, and as in China at the prerogative of the emperor alone. Quesnay admired the way scholars were given power in China; as in Plato’s Republic, in China philosophers became kings, mandarins had power. The idea that there was no hereditary nobility in China fascinated Quesnay, as he was a working-class boy who was self-made. His rise, like that of many others before him, proves that the French social system was not as rigid as its administrative records might refl ect. He did not know how to read until age eleven. Quesnay became a prominent intellectual, part of the Academy of Sciences in Paris. Quesnay, like the Chinese, believed that trade was sterile and only land could bring wealth to the nation. Quesnay’s admiration for the system of China, as he interpreted it, was the basis on which the physiocrat Vincent de Gourney coined the phrase laissez-faire.61 Quesnay’s theories can still be read as a more sophisticated way of celebrating the French “terroir,” the land of plenty.

Despite Quesnay and his friends the physiocrats, luxury remained a key debate during the eighteenth century in many social groups, even more so than it had been previously.62 Discussion about the consumption of the court and nobility became a focus for a much larger public, perhaps because the consumption of luxuries went far beyond the nobility. The new ideas about agriculture did not distract much from the views that luxury was the source of evil for the nation in pamphlets. If the in-creased consumption of exotic and domestic luxuries challenged the Catholic belief that luxury was a sin, the fi erce political debates they sparked were about the effects on France of an even higher infl ux of foreign luxury goods. This opened debates on colonization, on the slave trade, and on the legislation about manufacturing of imita-tions domestically.


It has been argued by John Shovlin that middling elites were concerned about their rank and place and that this new competition for the consumption of luxuries was an element in creating the debate that led to the Revolution. There were no less than 2,869 titles appearing between 1750 and 1789 about economic subjects. Jean Claude Perrolt has argued that this was a higher production than any form of litera-ture including novels.63 The peak of this production was in 1789 with 804 titles, yet as Shovlin puts it, these debates have attracted surprisingly little notice.64 The Catho-lic debate about sin and luxury receded to some degree and gave way to a concern for the national good rather than concern for one’s soul. In this moral and patriotic debate about national wealth, the consumer of foreign luxury came under fi re.

One such notorious instance is an ironic moment of history, when Marie Antoi-nette, the queen of France, aimed for more simplicity and economy, created a gar-ment called the gaulle, a light frilly white muslin dress tied by a simple ribbon. Her portrait painted in 1783 dressed in a gaulle, holding a pink rose, was exhibited at the Salon by her portraitist Elizabeth Vigé-Lebrun. The reaction was immediate and ter-rible. Elizabeth Weber has an entire chapter devoted the domestic consequences of this vestimentary faux pas. The queen had been painted in her underwear, was one contention, and the other was that this was a foreign outfi t on a foreigner. Most para-doxically, she had shed her diamonds, feathers, and brocades, which were required by French court dress since Louis XIV. Marie Antoinette was accused of wasting money on foreign imports. The only measure taken to appease the wild rumors about her was to ban imports of muslin from England and the Levant trade.65 Weber shows how after a certain date Marie Antoinette could do no right; even if stimulating domestic indus-try was patriotic, seen as part of augmenting the wealth of the nation, previously her huge orders of silk from the Lyon silk industry were only interpreted as laying waste to a French industry, since she capriciously required new colors.66 As exotic imported luxuries, or their more affordable French copies, became part of more households, a philosophical debate arose about class, hierarchy, and government.

The debate in France had some similarities to the ones taking place in England and in the prosperous Dutch Republic.67 In Europe, and also in colonial North Amer-ica, the debates about luxury were dominant ones in foreign policy as well as in the domestic sphere. Yet, the philosophical and religious difference between a Catholic society and a Protestant one comes through in subtle ways in the ideas of many of the philosophes writing before the French Revolution.68 Most strikingly, monar-chy was central to the debates on luxury taking place in France; the Dutch concen-trated on the health of the republic and the need for moderation and simplicity. As is well known, many French thinkers had much in common with their peers across the English Channel, not least of all Montesquieu, whose views on the social utility of commerce, commerce as a civic virtue, were not far from the arguments of those supporting the Hanoverian regime in England.69 Debates on luxury and commerce either questioned or justifi ed the political status quo. Luxury, argued Montesquieu, was necessary for monarchies to prosper.


Montesquieu and the Debate on Luxury and Despotism

The debate on despotism in France long predated Quesnay’s work on China. Before China, the models examined by philosophers through travel accounts were Persia, the Ottoman empire, and India under the Mughals. The French precedents for research-ing Asia were not quite as laudatory as Quesnay’s. For Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu (1689–1755), oriental despotism as found in Persia and the Ottoman empire was a corruptive danger. He argued that despotism could best be prevented by a system that was governed by strict laws. Laws would have to oversee and regulate several different bodies, which in turn exercised differ-ent forms of power: legislative, executive, and judicial. As examined in a previous chapter, despotism was already central to Jean Bodin’s political ideas about republics and monarchies. Jean Bodin had already formulated the idea that despotism was ori-ental and not acceptable in Europe. On luxury and monarchy Mostesquieu wrote:

As wealth is unequally divided in accord with the constitution of monarchies, there must be luxury. If wealthy men do not spend much, the poor will die of hunger. There rich must indeed spend in proportion to the inequality of fortunes, and, as we have said, luxury must increase in this proportion. Individual wealth has increased only because it has removed physical necessities from a part of the citizens; these must, therefore, be returned to them.

Thus, for the monarchical state to sustain itself, luxury has to increase from the la-borer to the artisan, to the merchant, to the nobles, to the magistrates, to the great lords, to the principle revenue offi cers, to the princes; otherwise all would be lost.70

Wealth and moral goodness in politics were equated. Montesquieu argued that the consumption of luxury goods was a necessity for the “preservation of the monarchi-cal state.”71 One cannot miss however, that Montesquieu saw luxury as automatically depriving other people, which was part of his argument for restitution. Montesquieu wrote positively about egalitarian consumption on moral grounds: “If wealth is equally divided in a state, there will be no luxury, for luxury is founded only on the comforts that one can give oneself from the work of others.”72 Montesquieu has a clear sense that the lavish lifestyle of the rich is only possible by depriving the poor: “Luxury is founded only on the comforts that one can give oneself from the work of others.”73 He stressed that what has been taken should be restored to the poor, as only justly distributed luxury is benefi cial to society. This ideal of material justice as important to the health of a nation made its way into the writings of Karl Marx. For Montesquieu, a nobleman from Bordeaux, his ancien régime sense of hierarchy seemed to fail him when he wrote quite democratically about some distribution of wealth. “For the mo-narchical state to sustain itself, luxury has to increase from the laborer to the artisan, to the merchant, to the nobles, to the magistrates, to the great lords, to the principal revenue offi cers, to the princes; otherwise all would be lost.”74 The inclusion of the laborer in the distribution of luxury should not be taken for granted, as sumptuary


legislation was still the order of the day. It is perhaps one of the earliest writings on consumption as civic duty for the preservation of the social order; even the poor had a duty to consume for the good of the nation. It reversed the earlier mercantilist views that abstinence from luxury was the formula for the wealth of the nation.

It is certainly historically too early to speak of a citizen-consumer as long as there was a monarchy, but Montesquieu argued that the monarch’s subjects had a civic duty to increase their consumption of luxury for the good of the monarchy.75 Montesquieu’s political analysis of societies aimed to isolate characteristics of each kind of government, and luxury is clearly the mark of monarchy in the sys-tem he devised. Luxury was a social necessity in monarchy, because it was a clear marker of the proper socioeconomic order, but, on the other hand, Montesquieu wrote that luxury was a sign of social corruption in a republic. He fi rmly believed that poverty, which he defi ned as a lack of luxury, ended monarchies, while on the contrary, republics were brought to an end by the corruption created by luxury.76 If Montesquieu believed in upholding monarchies, these positive attitudes toward luxury in his writings would have been a striking contrast from previous views held by the Church and by mercantilists, but they were not, as Montesquieu was a proponent of republics, not monarchies. Their ideas were still close to the Church’s in more than one way.

In Christian thought, luxury was tied to both greed and lust. Luxury was closely associated with connotations of sexual depravity. The French term luxe is sometimes coupled by another name in France, luxure, a term from a classical root luxus, mean-ing excess, indulgence, luxury, and debauchery. Luxus is one of the seven sins. The sin of luxure is depicted as sensual indulgence in French iconography and closely associated with luxuria, meaning excess or riot. Since medieval times, many of the cathedrals in France depicted vice and virtue, which traditionally appeared paired in iconography, just as luxury and chastity were depicted together. The word luxure and the association it had with luxe implied that the consumption of luxury goods and fornication were closely associated in Catholic France. A 1694 dictionary entry makes this clear:

LUXE. s. m. Somptuosité excessive, soit dans les habits, soit dans les meubles, soit dans la table. Le luxe est plus grand que jamais. le luxe des habits. c’est un homme qui aime le luxe. [excessively sumptuous]

Luxure. s. f. Incontinence, lubricité. Le peché de luxure. la luxure est un des sept pe-chez mortels. Ce mot n’a guere d’usage dans le discours ordinaire. [lubricity]

Luxurieux, [luxuri]euse. adj. Lubrique, incontinent. L’Apostre dit que les luxurieux n’auront point de part au Royaume de Dieu. Il n’a guere d’usage dans le discours ordi-naire. (Dictionnaire de l’Académie française, 1st ed. (1694); LUXE (Page 672))

On the rose window of Notre Dame, luxury is represented by a woman titivating herself; grooming, overdressing, and excessive consumption stood for self-love, and


it was seen as contrary to the love of God. Many scholars have shown how Marie Antoinette came under such criticism before the revolution, as the king’s mistresses had been for two generations.77 In a Catholic context, luxury was certainly not seen as a social necessity for the good of the nation, but as a factor of corruption. Montes-quieu and the philosophes maintained this association between excessive consump-tion and unbridled female sexuality in their writing. For instance, he examined both of them together in book seven of The Spirit of the Laws under: “Consequences of the different principles of the three governments in relation to sumptuary laws, luxury, and the condition of women.” In this association of luxury and women we fi nd a third powerful association linked to luxury and women: the East as the locus of luxury. Book seven discusses the consequences of luxury in China, and while examining Montesquieu’s views about the Orient one also fi nds many of his ideas on the role of women in different societies. Travel accounts gave Montesquieu sources to develop the comparative work on political economy and law. In The Spirit of the Laws, the abundant comparisons to China, Persia, and the Ottoman empire are not passing references or mere representations, but essential components of his argu-ments about justice and government.

Luxury and Oriental Despotism

Montesquieu argued that luxury was a necessity for monarchy and for the good of the nation when he spoke of Europe, yet in stark contrast he argued that in China and Persia it was a destructive social force. Climate theory justifi ed the difference as the idea that the temperament of peoples was at the root of forms of government. Views about Turkish despotism in France have been the object of Chapter 2 here, but Persia, India, and even China also loomed large in discussions of both despotism and luxury.78 Since antiquity there has been a ubiquitous association between oriental monarchs and their love of luxury and their corruption. Greek and Roman writers, much quoted in the Renaissance and the seventeenth century, brought the image of the Persian king’s, Xerxes’s, love of excess and gold back into literary fashion. A long passage in Spirit of the Laws is devoted to China and luxury, for which Mon-tesquieu used classical sources as well as travel accounts. Montesquieu quoted the traveler Father Jean Baptiste du Halde (1674–1743) and his writing, Description de l’Empire de la Chine, with the line attributed to the emperor of China: “ ‘Our luxury is so great,’ said the Emperor Kia-y ‘that the people embroider the shoes of the boys and girls they are obliged to sell.’ ”79 The slavery of the ruled people and luxury were seen as one, and luxury and submission were associated even in governments that grew weak under its infl uence.

The chapter that follows this passage from du Halde in the Spirit of the Laws was aptly titled: “On the fatal consequence of luxury in China.” The French philoso-pher wrote that after three of four virtuous princes, their successors were mastered


by corruption, laziness, and luxury. Similar descriptions were also given for many oriental monarchs: “They shut themselves in the palace, their spirits grow weak, their lives are short, the family declines, the important men rise up, the eunuchs gain credit, children only are put on the throne; the palace becomes the enemy of the empire ... the emperor is killed by a usurper.”80 Montesquieu then saw the same cycle of decline occur anew within the successful usurper’s family. In seventeenth-century travel accounts these sins of luxus and luxuria were also attributed to the Orient, and even directly to Islam by French travelers, yet most of these ideas were inherited by the French travelers from the Greeks and the Romans. Jean Chardin’s passage on luxury reads as follows: “A man would be strangely surprised in Per-sia who went thither prepossessed with the ideas given of it by ancient authors, particularly Arian, and Quintus Curtius, for to read their accounts of the luxury, ef-feminacy, delicacy and treasures of the Persians, one would imagine ’twas a country made up of gold.”81

Absurdly, Chardin then went on to write that before Islam, Persia had not suc-cumbed to this destructive corruption of gold and effeminacy. It is startling to read this, as he knew his Greek texts and cited Herodotus on a constant basis, yet he pretended to ignore the many Greek descriptions of Persian effeminacy and luxury dating back to the Greek wars with the Persians, long before the birth of Islam. Despite the fact that Chardin had a rather level-headed and positive description of Islam in his Voyages, Islam was nevertheless seen by Chardin as the cause of Per-sian luxury and decadence.

Both Persia and Chardin’s work on Safavid Persia were of special inspiration to Montesquieu. Many scholars have analyzed his fi ctional Persians visiting Paris in the Lettre persanes. Lisa Lowe interpreted the women’s revolt and the eunuchs’ loyalty in the Lettre persanes as the class struggle that the Revolution would be, with the women representing the peasants who defi ed patriarchy and the eunuch being the nobility who had to guard them for the despotic master.82 It still remains important to trace Montesquieu’s sources: among his books and sources were the Espion Turc, in a late 1717 edition, the travels of Pitton de Tournefort as they appeared in 1717, and the travels of Jean-Baptiste Tavernier in a rare Rouen edition of 1713. A year after the Lettres persanes appeared, the critics Camusat and Bruzen accused it of copying the L’Espion Turc.83 The references to Chardin are Montesquieu’s most sub-stantial; there were two copies of Jean Chardin’s Voyages; one was the partial edition of 1687, and he only bought the 1711 edition in 1720.84 Montesquieu’s use of Char-din as a source is not unique. Jean-Jacques Rousseau referred to Chardin within the text of his Origine de l’inégalité, and used him as a source, as did Voltaire. Rousseau wrote that Chardin had left nothing more to say about Persia.85 Chardin’s travels and descriptions of Persia served as a source for social critique and revolutionary ideas against French absolutism.

A careful reading of the only uncensored 1735 edition of Chardin reveals that perhaps Chardin himself was not devoid of political criticism toward Louis XIV and


absolutism in France. His contemporaries were probably very aware of this, while scholars of Chardin have not really emphasized this aspect. Jean Chardin’s travel account of Persia was entirely written and published outside of France, in London and Amsterdam, with the sole exception of a partial Lyon edition of 1687, which is truncated at the point when he reaches Isfahan.86 The only other work he published in France was Le Couronnement de Soleïmaan Troisième Roi de Perse, published in 1671.87 This work with its prerequisite fl attering preface to the Sun King conformed to the political expectations of the time. It received royal privilege, a sine qua non for publication in France.

As was well known during the ancien régime, publication of works in the French language in Amsterdam or London signaled possible radicalism and criticism of the monarchy.88 As Jonathan Israel has recently demonstrated in Radical Enlightenment, the proximity of Holland and its printing presses, as well as international universities like Leiden, were instrumental in spreading not only Spinoza’s ideas but also those of Descartes, who was banned in his native France.89 The infl uence of England has been clear for years. The Lettres persanes, as well as many of the works by Diderot and Voltaire, later shared the fate of Chardin’s accounts. They were also printed in Amsterdam and reached French thinkers and radicals through Holland or England. These were forbidden works; the 1735 Chardin book was full of criticisms of the Catholic Church, and the Catholic faith in general. Louis XIV had made himself a personifi cation of this faith and turned it into a state religion, banning criticism. Any criticism of Catholicism was punished by brutal methods such as the piercing of tongues, and all criticism of the monarchy was seen as high treason. Montesquieu and Voltaire never signed their names to the oriental tales that disguised criticism of their monarchy. As for Chardin, he prudently never published a complete edition until others did it for him after his death in 1712.

The two other most infl uential texts that served as Persian sources to the philoso-phers of the Enlightenment who wrote on despotism were translations of fi ction. A Thousand and One Nights, by Galland, who had obtained a manuscript in Syria, was translated from Arabic into French in 1704. However, it was often erroneously perceived as a tale of Persian origin, born in ancient Iran or having Indian origins, and most thought of it as a general oriental tale.90 Shaharazade, the narrator of now familiar tales such as “Aladdin” and “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves,” made Gal-land a household name in France. He never fi nished his translation. That task fell to François Petis de la Croix (1653–1713), the younger de la Croix, who succeeded his father as an appointed secretary and translator to Louis XIV.

In the century and a half that separates François Petis de la Croix from Guillaume Postel, French Orientalism had been concentrating on translations and compendi-ums; very few works in Arabic, Turkish, or Persian were ever printed in France. The younger Petis fi nished the translation of A Thousand and One Nights between 1710 and 1712, as Galland had passed away, and translated another work, A Thousand and One Days, which is a central book for depictions of Persia and was equally famous.


Galland’s Nights and Petis de la Croix’s Days have identical structures. Less popular than A Thousand and One Nights, A Thousand and One Days was published only nine times during the eighteenth century and fi fteen times during the nineteenth cen-tury. They were translated into English, Dutch, German, Danish, Spanish, and Italian, and A Thousand and One Days was adapted for the theater by Lesage, Gozzi, and Schiller. So why have they disappeared when Voltaire attested that it was one of the most popular works of his time across Europe? As Voltaire began Zadig he wrote: “In the times when the Arabs and Persians were beginning to write the Thousand and One Nights and The Thousand and One Days, Ouloug Beg preferred to read Zadig.”91 In the nineteenth century, the Austrian orientalist Joseph von Hammer searched for the original Persian manuscript attributed to a certain dervish Mokhles from Isfahan.92 A Thousand and One Days was declared a fake, as he failed to fi nd it. This was to be the precursor of a long tradition of fake texts and imitations passed off as a Persian texts, or portraying a Persian context, such as the Lettres persanes.

As mentioned, Montesquieu wrote but failed to sign his name to the most famous and politically important of all these fakes. The chief character in Montesquieu’s Lettres persanes, named Uzbek, was based on a character in A Thousand and One Days, who travels from Isfahan to Paris. Montesquieu had read Jean Chardin, and he reversed the traveler’s itinerary to Persia and brought the imaginary Isfahani, Uzbek, to Paris. Uzbek wrote letters home addressed to his wives’ eunuchs in the harem. They were the vehicle of a thorough social critique, not of oriental despotism, but of French society and of despotism and absolutism in general. The Lettres persanes, well known and well studied today, was fi rst published in 1721 and became a best-selling work with thirty editions. Several European stories and plays (mainly Italian and French) employed the ruse of an oriental observer of European customs in order to criticize their own society, oppose absolutism, and escape royal censorship. The Orient played a large role in these criticisms. That the harem was used as a symbol for the state was made clear by Montesquieu himself:

In despotic states princes have always abused marriage. They usually take several wives, especially in that part of the world, Asia, where despotism is, so to speak, naturalized. They have so many children that they can scarcely have any affection for them, nor can the children have any for their brothers.

The reigning family resembles the state; it is too weak, and its leader is too strong; it seems extensive, and it amounts to nothing. Artaxerxes had all his children murdered for having plotted against him. It is not credible that fi fty children would conspire against their father, and still less that they would conspire because he had refused to yield his concubine to his eldest son. It is simpler to believe that this was some intrigue in those se-raglios of the East, those places where artifi ce, wickedness, and deceit reign in silence.93

Montesquieu’s Roxanne, Uzbek’s wife in the Lettres persanes, revolted against the rules imposed on her by her master Uzbek and his eunuchs, destroying the whole social order, and thus the state, symbolized by the harem, in her wake. The fi gure


of the oriental despot, familiar through texts from Bodin to Chardin and glanced at in the Lettres persanes, took formal shape in French political discourse through Montesquieu’s Spirit of the Laws, quoted earlier. First published in 1748, Book III, “Of the Principles of the Three Kinds of Government,” used Safavid Persia as the example of despotic government.

Difference of Obedience in Moderate and Despotic Governments. In despotic states, the nature of government requires the most passive obedience; and when once the prince’s will is made known, it ought infallibly to produce its effect ... In Persia, when the king has condemned a person, it is no longer lawful to mention his name, or to intercede in his favour. Even if the prince were intoxicated, or non compos, the decree must be executed; otherwise he would contradict himself, and the law admits of no contradiction. This has been the way of thinking in that country in all ages.

The footnote to this passage in Thomas Nugent’s 1758 English translation says, “see Jean Chardin.”94 Other, less overt, passages continued the oriental disguise. A rela-tively forgotten work, Bijoux indiscrets, studied by Madeleine Dobie, was printed in Amsterdam with no names given either for the publisher or author; nevertheless it sent Diderot to the dungeon of Vincennes where he was imprisoned and interrogated in 1749. The jewels in this orientalist work represent the sexual organs of women in Sultan Mangogol’s harem. In this surrealist text the sex organs (jewels) are capable of speech, as words uttered through the women’s mouths are not deemed truthful. In contrast to their habitual lies, the jewels confessed overtly to their infi delity. Sultan Mangogol and his consort, Mirzoza, are the central characters in an obscene discourse held by the jewels in several imaginary languages. Robert Darnton has demonstrated that many politically subversive texts were erotic texts, something that astonishes the modern reader today. He goes on to argue that they were not seen as pornography in the eighteenth century because erotic literature and philosophy were seen as one in this period.95 In this erotic literature that precedes the Revolution, the harem and other elements of Orientalism were an important component of many texts.

“In hot climates, where despotism usually reigns, passions make themselves felt earlier and as deadened sooner.”96 The views on climate held by all of the French seventeenth-century travelers going to Asia such as Thévenot and Chardin, argued, among other things, that the warm climate of Persia encouraged sensual desire. The Orient had become not only the locus of despotism and luxury, but of sensual deca-dence, based on the views of oriental courts held by many travelers. Sensual deca-dence was itself coupled with greed, vanity, and the love of luxury—all sins in the Catholic world. These sins fi rst attributed to the “other” (i.e., the Persians), were soon to be refl ected on the new political “other” inside France: the hated aristocracy. The court aristocrats were dressed in oriental garb in many politically radical texts.

This literary mimicry was reminiscent of the celebrations of the carrousel at Versailles and the Tuileries when Louis XIV and the aristocrats were dressed as


Persians, Turks, and Americans. Choosing oriental disguise for the aristocracy was natural, as nobles had often chosen it for themselves on important occasions. Their unique legislated prerogative to consume exotic imports was a way of showing rank, and in doing so they were “orientalized.” The fact that the birth of the heir to the French throne was celebrated through horse races by teams representing the Turks, the Persians, and the Americans alone demonstrates the importance of Orientalism and its imagined sartorial splendor in French political discourse. The dauphin’s car-rousel of 1685 was a display of the riches of the Indies. It should therefore come as no surprise that the philosophers chose oriental garb as a disguise for the nobility and the monarchy when they wrote covertly in seemingly long-winded oriental tales against both absolutism and the rule of the aristocracy.

For the reign of Louis XV, Thomas Kaiser has argued that after a political rap-prochement in 1756 with the Ottomans, the vogue for Turqerie was strong and the aristocracy was avid to portray itself as Turks, and to have portraits in Turkish garb, and cites the portraits of Madame de Pompadour as sultana.97 In this excellent ar-ticle he also analyzes how views on Turkish despotism shifted with the political needs of France. In an article written about the Revolution, which takes France’s European foreign policy into account, Thomas Kaiser aptly argues that in the wake of Jansenism, which played an energizing role in the resistance to Parliament doing the crown’s bidding, there emerged an ideological construct in France, widely dif-fused, to bring down the ancien régime on the grounds that it resembled the standard Turkish model. He also points to the fact that, with much encouragement in the Paris cafés of rumors started by the Prussian ambassador, despotism shifted with the political wind and was also applied to Austria after the partition of Poland in 1772. With the new work done on Marie Antoinette and the British practicing blackmail and propagating pornography and pamphlets about the “foreign” Austrian queen, Kaiser’s observation that Austria was seen as despotic in the same period takes on even more importance.98 Marie Antoinette arrived in France in 1770 in a politically charged climate against Austria.99

Orientalist garb and disguise in the political criticism in the works of Montes-quieu, Voltaire, and Diderot, among others, clearly belongs to mounting political tensions of the pre-Revolutionary period, and as overt social criticism became the norm such a disguise was not needed. Despotism in French discourse was no longer reserved to the Persians as in Montesquieu’s The Spirit of the Laws. In 1789, to quote Patrice Higonnet: “All patriots understood that absolutism was really despotism and that privilege was unnatural.”100 The political thought against this form of “oriental” government, which dated to Jean Bodin, took real agency during the Revolution. The tradition of writing against oriental despotism was established and common enough so that royal censors were not fooled by the disguise of the oriental harem in the Bijoux indiscrets, nor were they taken aback by Diderot’s talking sex organs, but im-mediately recognized them as references to a French harem. Madame de Pompadour herself was accused of purveying such a harem for Louis XV, the famous parc aux


cerfs, where barely pubescent girls were sent and imprisoned for the king’s pleasure. If Sultan Mangogol was Louis XV, Mirzoza was the Pompadour.101

The harem was no longer the device used to describe those ruled by an oriental despot elsewhere. It has been analyzed at length how and why the harem became a symbol of the repression of the French monarchy against its people.102 Louis XIV created a new police force and the fi rst prison for women at the Salpêtrière, where women guilty of adultery or guilty of not attending mass were incarcerated.103 The repression of women, who were the fi rst targets of this new police, equated female infi delity with political treason. In these fake oriental tales, it is female infi delity that destroys order in the harem, as presented by Diderot and Montesquieu. In the Lettres persanes, Roxanne’s infi delity and her treason destroyed the sociopolitical order im-posed by the oriental despot who ruled the harem and the world outside its walls.104 Revolution inside brought revolution outside as the ruler is rendered impotent.

Aside from all of the many uses of Persia by the French philosophers in their political criticism of absolutism, one event surpasses all others in importance. That event is the fall of the Safavids from power in 1722, an event perceived as a revolu-tion and described as such by several French works. It produced a profound effect on the political discourse about the idea of revolution, a few decades before the French Revolution. Many works, among them those of Père Raynal and Father Krusinski in his Histoire de la Dernière Révolution de Perse (The History of the Last Revolu-tion of Persia), described not only the Afghan invasion but also the love of Shah Husein for his harem, his love of luxury, and revolts against him in the provinces. The words revolution and revolt came up again and again as the self-indulgent king was contrasted to his starving people who longed to replace him with his brother. As a historian of the Safavids, Laurence Lockhardt was inspired by a long tradition of European writing that concentrated on the fall of the Safavid Shah. In fact, one of the appendixes in Lockhardt’s book abounds with references to the absurd stories and plays describing the fall of the Safavids from power, such as The Persian Cromwell and Tahmasp II, written in Paris in 1758.105

The Safavids were once again a model for Montesquieu. In another passage in The Spirit of the Laws he wrote of the fragility of oriental despotism for the Safavids in particular:

As each prince of the royal family is equally entitled to be elected, it happens that the one who ascends to the throne immediately has his brothers strangled, as in Turkey; or blinded, as in Persia; or driven mad, as with the Monguls; and, if there precautions are not taken, as in Morocco, each time the throne is vacated a horrible civil war follows.106

He went on to say that: “We cannot mention these monstrous governments with-out horror. The Sophi of Persia, dethroned in our days by Mahomet, the son of Myrrweis, saw the constitution subverted before this resolution, because he had been too sparing of blood.”107 This last comment about the sparing of blood shows that


Montesquieu had read Jan Tadeusz Krusinki’s account of the people’s support of the Shah’s brother, whom he had failed to kill. The fall of the Safavids was not seen simply seen as an Afghan invasion, but as a consequence of decadence, drunkenness, sexual excess, and luxury, and of a weak king. These images of material and sexual debauchery are the very same as those that were soon applied to the French court itself. A few decades before the French Revolution, when one spoke of revolution in Paris one spoke of Safavid Persia. Yet, as always there were several intellectuals who saw things differently—they were monarchists. Their discourse is far less noticed.

The Royalist: Abraham Hyacinthe Anquetil-Duperron and the Phantom of Despotism

Not all orientalists believed in the actual existence of oriental despots. Royalist voices were raised against Montesquieu by some French intellectuals of the next generation. Anquetil-Duperron (1731–1805) was considered to be the fi rst orientalist in some traditions. Raymond Schwab presents this contention in his Oriental Renaissance, where he argues for the birth of Orientalism in the eighteenth century with the French in India, and Saïd has argued this in his wake.108 Anquetil-Duperron’s work needs serious study, as neither author noticed Duperron’s politics and his purpose as an orientalist. Anquetil-Duperron railed against Montesquieu in a forgotten work called Dignité du Commerce et l’Etat de commerçant.109 In this work signed “Anquetil-Duperron Voyageur,” he insisted that only the traveler could judge nations and what is good for nations. In other words, Montesquieu was an armchair traveler who used the work of other travelers, and this was not good enough. Most of the work is devoted to the views the French held about merchants and the examinations of edicts passed under Louis XIV to permit noblemen to trade on a large scale or overseas without losing their rank within the nobility. His prose is full of contempt for Montesquieu, who Anquetil-Duperron contended was preoccupied only by revolution and not deep or honest enough to examine how things really were in France. Anquetil-Duperron was especially cruel to Montesquieu’s contention that what was useful to government is inherently good. Montesquieu made the absurd argument “it is useful therefore it is good.” Anquetil-Duperron wrote sarcastically that according to that short-sighted philosophical view: “It is good that the Iroquois eat their prisoners of war and the commerce of Negroes is a good thing.”110

Among several better-remembered works, Anquetil-Duperron wrote a remark-able book: Législation orientale (1778), which argued against the veracity of Mon-tesquieu’s concept of oriental despotism as expressed thirty years earlier in The Spirit of the Laws (1748).111 Anquetil-Duperron’s book on law asserted that oriental despotism did not exist, that the Ottoman empire, Persia, and India were subject to rigorous laws and organized legislation, and he argued for the legality and the ratio-nality of the sociopolitical systems of these countries. He argued this against a long


Greek tradition of attributing oriental despotism to Asia.112 He did this to defend the monarchy in France. His scholarly attempt to describe the governments of the Ottomans, Persians, and Indians as governed by law failed. His book remained unnoticed, and Anquetil-Duperron’s hard work to debunk oriental despotism did not get full recogni-tion in the French journal République des Lettres. As Lucette Valensi has explored, the social and intellectual dimensions of such a failure are inherent to the political climate of France before the French Revolution, where the idea of despotism was a central concept in the criticisms of the institution of monarchy.113 It was precisely because of the same climate that Anquetil-Duperron was exasperated with Montesquieu and tried to demonstrate the “phantom of despotism” as a fake construct.

In this climate Montesquieu’s success in writing fantasies like the Lettres per-sanes stands in stark contrast to Anquetil-Duperron’s attempt to describe reality as he saw it in Persia or India, described in his Législation orientale. His headings speak of his stance, as the fi rst heading reads: “That the manner in which despotism has been represented up to now, which passes for being absolute in these three states cannot but give an absolutely false idea of what they are.” Anquetil-Duperron was not content with the usual traveler’s trope of stating that he was the fi rst to actually see things as they really were, and he attacked his predecessors for this common statement, throwing out a long tradition formed by many travel accounts, not least of all Bernier’s.114 François Bernier’s work would have an impact that Anquetil-Duperron’s never did, as it inspired Marx’s own views on Asia and the Asiatic mode of production. In addition to inspiring Marx’s economic classifi cation of Asian societies as different from Europe’s, other aspects of Bernier’s work have recently been studied by Siep Stuurman. He saw Bernier’s work as a fi rst attempt at a racial classifi cation of the world’s population.115

Unlike Anquetil-Duperron’s, Bernier’s work would have intellectual consequences under the pen of many future admirers. France was not ready for Anquetil-Duperron’s royalist stance on the eve of the Revolution, and there was also little patience for his eulogy of commerce in 1789, at a time when luxury and riches and its commerce were associated with the corrupt monarchy and aristocracy of France. Like Chardin and many orientalists before him, Anquetil-Duperron showed that the profession of merchant was considered as a noble pastime in Asia, that shahs were merchants, and that kings could be the highest merchants of their land. He launched into a full-fl edged eulogy of Louis XVI for his reforms, in particular because he had created the Ministry of Commerce as distinct from the Ministry of Finance.116 Thus in the eyes of many this move exacerbated Louis XVI’s sins.

Also under attack by Anquetil-Duperron were all the writings by French humanists and philosophers, especially Montesquieu, accused of falsifying the state of legal af-fairs in the Ottoman empire, Persia, and India by inventing oriental despotism. To argue against this, Anquetil-Duperron carefully examined legislation on two fronts: he looked at customary legislation and at the laws regarding property. In his second heading: “That in Turkey, in Persia and in Indoustan, there is a code of written law


that obliges the prince as well as his subjects,” Anquetil-Duperron spends a number of pages countering the notion that the monarch’s will alone constituted the law and denied that the monarch was above the law as was characteristic of despotic monarchies. In his third heading, Anquetil-Duperron dispelled what was commonly believed about India since François Bernier’s (1620–1688) travel account, that property only belonged to the despotic monarch, and private property did not exist in des potic oriental regimes. Against this he showed under his third heading: “That in these three states individuals hold property both in real estate and goods that they can enjoy freely.” Unfortunately Anquetil-Duperron’s arguments were forgotten in the literature of the Enlightenment, save for his translations of the Zand Avesta and his writings on the Parsees that brought the ideas of Zoroastrianism to Europe and contributed to deism.117 Unlike Anquetil-Duperron, Bernier’s work had immense consequences on future thinkers, who carried Bernier’s concept of oriental despotism in economic writing well into the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It was Bernier, as inter preted by Engels, that was going to fi nd its way into Karl Marx’s Das Kapital.118

Anquetil-Duperron pointed to the formation of a tradition, a European canon, through which Asia had been falsely defi ned. That his ideas were not accepted in France should come as no surprise. In a sense Anquetil-Duperron was a pioneer and a precursor of the ideas that Edward Saïd would express in Orientalism two centuries later, in pointing to the formation of this false literary canon. Législation orientale was published in Amsterdam in 1778, the mark of sedition to French books even if Anquetil-Duperron was a royalist. However, it did not have the impact of other sedi-tious books. As Anquetil-Duperron was writing, the images of oriental despotism were too important to French domestic politics to be destroyed. His rational descrip-tions of how Asia’s monarchies and societies really functioned helped him label des-potism a phantom, but now oriental despotism has become instrumental in French politics. Anquetil-Duperron’s work was unpopular. As he was trying to displace very old views, images of oriental despotism and oriental sartorial splendor were becom-ing part of the reproaches made in revolutionary pamphlets against the monarchy, the aristocracy, and especially against the new foreign queen of France Marie Antoinette. Anquetil-Duperron was not alone in defending the monarchy; other royalists, some of them far more famous, wrote oriental tales.119

Candide or the Rejection of Riches

Anquetil-Duperron was part of a group of royalist writers who had far bigger celebri-ties in their camp, Voltaire. Although the king had exiled Voltaire from France, the philosopher remained a royalist.120 Candide came out in 1759 in Geneva. It exam-ined, among other things, views about colonization and luxury. As Jacques Van den Heuvel elegantly argues in his preface: “Nothing in Voltaire’s own life was a stranger to the surreal incidents he described in this fantastic tale.”121 Voltaire was deeply


involved in court life under Louis XV, traveled widely, and had shares in several commercial companies. Like Anquetil-Duperron he argued fervently for France to engage in foreign trade. He had read about El Dorado, a utopian paradise lost, in Spanish travel accounts and derided the obstinacy the Spanish showed for its quest, but only because he wanted France to participate in the competition for commerce in Asia.122 Voltaire was for foreign trade but against colonies. In Candide Voltaire de-picted the vanity of attributing great value to the New World’s natural resources, gold and gems. Brazil had been yielding diamonds, gems, and gold for three decades.

Candide and his valet Cacambo were dazzled by El Dorado’s gold, rubies, and emeralds on the toys of children dressed in tattered brocades playing in the streets. To get answers to their questions about this earthly paradise Candide and his valet were guided to a wise old man. The door was silver, the room was covered with gems, and the sofa was upholstered with hummingbirds’ feathers. The old man had witnessed the revolutions of Peru. He said the Incas had very imprudently quit their own land to conquer another part of the world and for this were destroyed by the Spaniards, but El Dorado was hard to conquer:

An Englishman, named Sir Walter Raleigh, actually came very near it a hundred years ago; but the inaccessible rocks and precipices with which our country is surrounded on all sides, has hitherto secured us from the rapacity of the people of Europe, who have an inconceivable fondness for the pebbles and scum of our land, for the sake of which they would murder us all to the very last man.123

Candide listened to the wise man give an account of European rapacity. Voltaire was a staunch critic of France’s colonial policy, dismissing the vast territories of New France as producers of little more than a few furs, but a land that required expensive military protection by the mother country against Great Britain and its colonies. Many shared this view. This was not because he was against imperialism, but because like many in France he believed colonies were harmful to the economic health of France. France was seen as an organic whole. In his article on économie in the Encyclopedie, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, like many before him, had expressed the view that the state was a body, “un corps vivant, organisé et semblable à celui de l’homme.” Rousseau, Voltaire, and Montesquieu before them shared the view that colonial conquest was disastrous to France. Linnaeus also shared these views, as did many eighteenth-century intellectuals. For Voltaire, this stance was against the expense and cost to France, and he pointed to philosophical views and to the lack of colonial goods arriving, not the actual colonial policies of the court. He had an equally mixed stance on slavery. He had made an investment in a slave-trading enter-prise in the port of Nantes. Slave-trading made him one of the twenty richest men in France, yet even some passages of Candide reveal philosophical hostility to slavery. This form of distance between discourse and policy was, as the book has made clear, far too common to be surprising.


Voltaire, a historiographer to Louis XV’s court, wrote a history of Louis XIV on commission. He was a royalist. He also worked for foreign courts, and he wrote a fl attering history of Peter the Great. When reproached about his very positive portrait of Peter the Great, which appeared in 1763, and his overt justifi cation of the tsar’s murder of his own son in the manner of oriental despots, Voltaire’s answer was that he had been well rewarded. “My friend,” he said, “they gave me some beautiful furs, and I am sensitive to the cold.”124 His own commercial interests made him as impa-tient as Anquetil-Duperron with French views on commerce. Like Anquetil-Duperron he believed in the importance of commerce for France, yet it did not mean he had any reason to have affections for the merchant classes. Voltaire complained that these upstarts became idle courtesans instead as soon as they could:

In France the title of marquis is given gratis to any one who will accept of it; and who-soever arrives at Paris from the midst of the most remote provinces with money in his purse ... I need not say which is most useful to a nation; a lord, powdered in the tip of the mode, who knows exactly at what o’clock the king rises and goes to bed, and who gives himself airs of grandeur and state, at the same time that he is acting the slave in the ante-chamber of a prime minister; or a merchant, who enriches his country, dispatches orders from his counting-house to Surat and Grand Cairo, and contributes to the felicity of the world.125

Voltaire was the fi rst who took care of his own social rise and the sartorial splen-dor that went with it. His complaints were that the merchants did not work hard enough and that the colonies did not bring enough wealth. The utility of merchants to the French state was clear to him if they remained merchants. The special legisla-tion that Louis XIV had passed allowing them to trade in 1669 and again 1701, the very edicts admiringly examined by Anquetil-Duperron in his work on the dignity of commerce, had brought social change that questioned the traditional divisions of classes maintained, among other ways, through sumptuary law. The disdain that merchants had been held in throughout the ancien régime remained and explains not only Voltaire’s frustration at their social rise but much of the social tensions between classes that foreshadowed the French Revolution. Against the idea that revolution was in times of economic penury, Alexandre de Tocqueville has argued that France was never as prosperous as before the Revolution.126 Voltaire was right, many had risen well above their rank through wealth. He was among them.

The Death of Colbertism and the French Inspector, and the Rise of the Consumer King

In a powerful analysis that showed how Colbertism and its state inspections of manu-factures were slowly undone by the physiocrats and their followers, Philippe Minard has showed how the ubiquitous inspector, who controlled quality of textiles,


porcelains, and tapestries for the state in the manufactures established by Colbert under Louis XIV, was slowly rendered obsolete by liberal economists arguing for laissez-faire:

“Le mal français” or “un état tantaculaire” enrolled under the liberal banner many his-torians have subscribed to this somber vision. It is politically correct to incriminate a “dirigiste” tradition in French economics as if it were a genetic hereditary disease proper to our country ... this stainless Giant [Moloch] state exists only in political mythology. The administrative machine was not a rock or a bloc insensitive to time.127

There was indeed much change under the physiocrats. De Gournay and Turgot argued that the state system of inspection was archaic and in the domain of “gothic barbar-ity.” In the good tradition of physiocrats looking at England as a model, inspectors and other state functionaries were seen as parasites of a sterile class that impeded progress. A second argument was that the taxes due on marque, manufacturer brands, collected by the inspectors was an undue burden as the market would regulate itself. Turgot argued that this form of state control over quality was no longer needed, that merchant interest and customer information could automatically regulate the market. Merchants, he argued, had self-interest, they would not cheat on quality as they would lose their customers. Customers, he said, were no longer subjected to the state’s sumptuary regulations and could chose where to buy and what to wear. They were experienced and could not be duped; they needed no institutional support for judging quality. He made the mistake of thinking that eighteenth-century markets were transparent to consumers from Rouen to Cadis, but nevertheless his views that consumer would rule the market without problems of cheating from the merchant and the manufacturer did produce substantial changes in policy.128

The third argument that did away with state regulation was fashion and the changing tastes of the consumer. Regulation was rigid and could not follow fashion. Production had to follow demand. In the end Necker, always in opposition to the physiocrats, argued for maintaining the offi ce of brands, the bureau de marque, as it was the only way to tell domestic production from foreign textiles and objects. He ar-gued that regulation was protecting the national economy against foreign goods. This was a point of compromise between Necker’s school of thought and the physiocrats. When it came to national economy against foreign goods, this very divided group of administrators, philosophers, and economists all spoke with one voice.

Other regulations prevailed. In a case of “laissez nous faire, protégez nous beau-coup,” the manufacturers of Indiennes in Beauvais wrote to the authorities in 1778 that they suffered losses due to the insubordination of the workers. Not policing markets was one thing, but French manufacturers were reluctant to let go of the state policing workers. This was in the wake of half a century of confrontation between owners of factories and their workers, the most turbulent episode being a strike of 43 days that was ended through the intervention of the royal army. More than willing


to do away with the state’s surveillance on markets, brands, and production norms, the entrepreneurs were only too happy to demand state regulation and policing over workers whom they considered their subordinates by right.

The drapers of Louviers spoke of the “inhuman despotism” of the regulations imposed upon them, while owners spoke of the same regulations as a “soft and le-gitimate” way to maintain the subordination of their workers.129 The inspectors and administrators had argued against laissez-faire by pointing to the Achilles’ heel of the French merchants, the “trahison bourgeoise,” the litany, repeated by Voltaire, that conservative royalists employed against merchant upstarts. The inspectors ar-gued that only they were at the service of the nation and cared about the national good of France, while merchants only aimed to earn enough to buy a municipal or judicial charge to cease to be a merchant and rise above their station. They pointed to the exceptions: the Protestants of Nîmes, true to their class and true to their country. They argued that only state regulation could keep these greedy opportunists from using immediate gain to rise above their station and forsake French commerce.130 Indeed, the issue of class and commerce was a deep issue that did not preoccupy the English or the Dutch. If there was a “mal français,” it was not the tentacles of the state, it was social disdain for commerce and obsession with rank.

Throughout the ancien régime laws had to be made by Richelieu and later Colbert, among others, to encourage noblemen to enter into trade, and promised that this would not lead to loss of rank as had traditionally been the case in France. Ultimately views about commerce, as views about luxury, remained deeply ambiguous. About two decades before the Revolution, when sumptuary laws were no longer respected and a new class of rich bourgeoisie and artisans appropriated the privileges of the nobility, the competition for luxury was at its fi ercest. Marie Antoinette and her excessive con-sumption, and the rise of her very wealthy seamstress and her hairdresser to privi-leges previously only reserved to the nobility at court, symbolized this immense social change.131

Heightened consumption of luxury goods, many of them still exotic, such as diamonds and ostrich plumes, was impoverishing the nobility and making marquis out of merchants.132 In the two decades before the revolution a generalized sense of corruption and decline was constantly brought up in the many pamphlets. Quesnay’s wish that rank disappear in France and that merit alone prevail was being realized very shortly after his book on Chinese despotism appeared, but in the late 1770s the French mandarins on the rise were not philosophers and scholars, but merchants and craftsmen, coiffeurs, seamstresses, and mercers. Not everyone thought that this was the right path for France; the age-old ambivalent views about luxury and commerce would give rise to a new discourse about virtue, especially since the enrichment of merchants also seemed to spell bankruptcy and debt for the nobility and monarchy. That a large part of Marie Antoinette’s debt was to her seamstress Bertin was a case in point.133


As consuming the exotic became a mark of the aristocracy, the new “political economy of virtue” held that excessive luxury was the cause of the nation’s economic and moral degeneration at least a decade before the French Revolution.134 In these events, oriental goods, orientalist writings, and views about oriental despotism played no small part. Political discourse about the new domestic order in France during and after the French Revolution would condemn anything foreign and exotic. Patriotic consumption and abstention from foreign goods became a citizen’s ultimate duty.

Epilogue

Nations, like narratives, lose their origins in the myths of time and only fully realize their horizons in the mind’s eye. Such an image of the nation—or narration—might seem impossibly romantic and excessively metaphorical, but it is from those traditions of po-litical thought and literary language that the nation emerges as a powerful historical idea in the west.

Homi Bhahba, Nation and Narration1

What was exotic was either fl eeting or naturalized to become French according to the caprices of political contingency. As Weber shows for clothing, Marie Antoinette’s white dress, the Gaulle, once decried as foreign by the Parisians, became the patri-otic uniform of most women during the French Revolution. White, the color of the Bourbons, was overwritten as the color of the Revolution. Silk, now fi rmly estab-lished as a domestic French product, was still perceived as exotic. Wearing silk was banned as a foreign commodity after the Revolution in favor of the more patriotic wool, thereby ruining the silk industry of Lyon. The colors worn by the aristocracy and the clergy disappeared from the streets of Paris. Black was deemed evil as it represented the royalist aristocrats. Oriental sartorial splendor, so highly prized by the aristocracy, was seen as corrupt luxury; women donated their precious stones and jewels to the Convention Nationale as a patriotic gesture for France. Consum-ing what was French became a duty, not only in the instance of wearing wool, but in the use of any product that symbolized the domestic, even when it was not actually French, which signifi ed virtue.

As Weber’s study of the social meaning of dress and textiles shows for Marie Antoinette, splendor had become the mark of the foreign queen, whose wardrobe was seen, be it unjustly or not, to have bankrupted France. “Freedom has restored the taste for classical purity in France,” proclaimed the main fashion magazine during the fi rst years of the Revolution.2 Greco-Roman styles were in, orientalist sartorial splendor and luxury associated with the aristocrats were out. The simple white muslin dress once condemned as foreign and therefore ruinous to France was paradoxically worn with patriotic ardor by any revolutionary woman who could afford to be seen in it. It was patriotic, along with cotton and wool, since the Estates General had marked silks and velvets as foreign and as “enemies of the Revolution.”3 That silk was French and was produced in Lyon did not matter; its ties to the aristocracy made it exotic,

– 291 –


foreign. The queen, Marie Antoinette, was seen as a foreigner and depicted several times as an exotic animal in pamphlets, most notoriously as an ostrich with her beak open swallowing gold, the gold of France. The caption read “I digest gold and silver with ease but cannot digest the constitution.”4 An English visitor to Paris remarked that class distinctions had disappeared from dress, that anyone who dared wear a clean shirt was touted as an “aristocratic fop.”5

Napoleon’s war exacerbated the view that what was produced on French soil should be celebrated as good for the nation and good for one’s health. When the wars threatened to cut supplies of exotic colonial goods, the following was one of the many reactions in the same vein. Customers of the restaurant the Rocher de Cancalle wrote to the owner, Monsieur Comus:

When he sees his supply of pepper and ginger diminish, let him double the truffl es, when he no longer has tea to pour us after our meals, let him give us Champagne. Of all of the colonial superfl uities we obstinately only cling to the cup of coffee … The Périgord, the Angoumois, Alsace and Normandy are the colonies that Comus affections, as long as they furnish the mère-patrie [the mother land] with milk, her children will be robust and alert and bold. Let us leave sweets to children, tea to the English and spices to palace people. For us, a people with a frank and loyal appetite let us keep to solid dishes as we do for all the rest. The wines of Bordeaux and Bourgogne, the mouton from Beauvais or the Ardennes, will never fail us, the bay leaf that perfumes our sauces is worth more than all of the products of the Indes orientales and occidentales.6

Clearly identifi ed with consuming the exotic were the gens du palais, the aristo-crats who had “Orientalized” and “Americanized” themselves by consuming imports from les Indes. To be French one ate what the body of the nation, the mére patrie, produced. The metaphor is clear, the fecundity of a female body: France’s milk feed-ing her young and giving them health and courage. The state as body was a metaphor common to many writers of the Enlightenment, both in France and England.

The many female symbols of the French revolution, Victory, Reason, and the Republic, have been noted by several historians. As early as 1754 the Abbé Coyer complained that the old word patrie, the fatherland, had been banned since Riche-lieu, and historian Mona Ozouf noticed that the masculine fatherland did not fi gure in France’s revolutionary festivals.7 Joan Landes has argued that masculine repre-sentation did not disappear, and in fact were still quite ubiquitous. In focusing on the meaning of the Revolution’s depictions of the female body, after an analysis of these allegories Landes argues that “The new female body of the nation served to legitimate something novel—the individual participation irrespective of status in a universal or collective whole.”8 In the same way, the gastronomical journal created by Grimod de La Reynière, quoted earlier, advocated eating products that were uni-versally accessible, eating the produce of France, and it contrasted the milk of France available to all her “children,” with the exotic spices of the Orient reserved for “pal-ace people.” Pointing to parallels between the public and the private spheres, Landes

Epilogue • 293

sees the female embodiment of the nation as eliciting male desire; private passion was bound to public duty through this eroticization of the nation in revolutionary rhetoric. Eating and drinking were private acts, but citizens as consumers were tak-ing part of a public political act by choosing what to swallow, what to eat, what to consume. To eat the produce of France was not simply patriotic, it was participation in the collective identity of France, in the body of France, the land of plenty.

Orientalism before the very end of the eighteenth century was fi rst and foremost about France, a form of very active political participation in domestic issues, as in the debate for or against monarchy. The royalist Anquetil-Duperron was scientifi -cally describing Ottoman legislation to a skeptical audience in France to legitimate the rule of his monarch. Postel was arguing for his monarch’s legitimacy in Europe, as was Bodin while discussing the sultan or oriental despotism. Oriental despotism was instrumental to debates on domestic issues, as Thomas Kaiser has shown for the eighteenth century with regard to France’s foreign policy.9

Anquetil-Duperron could not banish oriental despotism, nor prove it was a phan-tom. What came across well during that period was Count Volnay’s views on the decay of the Ottoman empire and the corrupt rule of the despotic sultan. Volnay was made famous by Edward Saïd’s discussion of how he inspired Napoleon’s expedi-tion to Egypt.10 Travel was so important to him that he had changed his identity and gave himself the name Volnay on the eve of his departure for the Ottoman empire.11 Volnay’s work encouraged many expeditions, among them a Danish expedition that took six years, from 1761 to 1767, to Arabia as described by its sole survivor, Carl Niebhur. According to Justin Stagl, this was to become a model for many European expeditions to follow. These expeditions were to be supplied with an elaborate ques-tionnaire prepared by a team of scholars under the direction of the orientalist Johann David Michelis. Despite never being used in Egypt, Michelis’s survey became a Eu-ropean success, and it was immediately translated into Dutch and French. Centuries after Ramus, the questionnaire was still touted as the best tool for travelers. The questionnaire elaborated by Michelis had a profound effect on French orientalists through the agency of the Comte de Volnay.

In 1783, Volnay left for Egypt. He was twenty-six years old. Since the age of sev-enteen, thanks to an annuity inherited from his mother, Volnay had been part of the main salons of Paris. He had been infl uenced by Diderot, the Baron d’Holbach, and Condorcet. In the encyclopedist fashion he was hoping to become the founder of a universal science. He believed that going to the Ottoman empire was going to allow this ambition to come true—travel would lead him to the “science of man” (science de l’homme).12 Despite the fact that his scientifi c aims have been called a cover, there is no doubt he believed in them, and there is also no doubt that he was a secret agent for the minister Vergennes, a former consul to the Ottoman empire and an ardent admirer of Turkey and the Turks. Once in the Ottoman empire Volnay stayed as in-conspicuous as possible as he fulfi lled his mission of gathering information based on the principles of the Michelis questionnaire.


After a tour of North America gathering similar information, he returned to Paris where he promptly published a two-volume travel account that was an immediate success. His Voyage en Egypte en Syrie pendant les années 1783, 1784 et 1785, published in Paris in 1785 and 1787, was acclaimed as a masterpiece. After the death of his patron Vergennes, he published a successful sequel to his travel account called Considération sur la Guerre actuelle des Turcs in 1788, which he certainly could not have written while Vergennes, a fervent admirer of the Ottomans, was alive. There were always several views, even in the exact same period of time, about the Otto-mans, Islam, and the Orient. In the Considération sur la Guerre actuelle des Turcs, quite unlike his contemporary Anquetil-Duperron, Volnay elaborated on his nega-tive views on the “despotically” ruled Ottoman empire and was the fi rst to discuss in writing the possibility of the French conquest of Egypt, a hot political debate in French political milieus.13 He discussed the issue, however, in order to strongly rec-ommend against the planning of a French expedition with the conquest of Egypt as an aim. Like many before him, he believed that colonies were not good for France.

Volnay inherited the views of the physiocrats, and he became famous for his books, not his experiments in agriculture; like Linnaeus he wanted to domesticate the exotic. Volnay was sent to Corisca by the government of the Directoire, armed with his questionnaire to gather information and farm exotic produce. He bought a farm to experiment with planting oriental crops in the hope of growing enough domestically to avoid foreign imports. Volnay made the acquaintance of the Bonaparte family in Corsica. Despite the fact that by the time Napoleon Bonaparte was to embark with his troops on the ship L’Orient destined for Egypt the two men were on very bad terms, Volnay’s writings were by all accounts still instrumental to Bonaparte’s thinking about the Ottomans and to his ambitions, but in fact Volnay was opposed to the project. Perhaps the best known instance of describing this relationship of text to conquest is Edward Saïd’s.14

Once Napoleon was in Egypt, Volnay sent one of his ubiquitous questionnaires to Cairo for the use of the scholars researching Egypt’s curiosities under the vice presidency of Napoleon Bonaparte, who made two questionnaires and dismissed Volnay’s. The staff of 167 scholars accompanying Napoleon to Egypt was also or-ganized within a new institution, the Institut d’Egypte, an academy to coordinate all the research on Egypt. Napoleon was loath to give Volnay the credit he was due. Vol-nay had worked out the questionnaire with the cooperation of the famous orientalist Jean-Louis Langlés and the linguist Grégoire, who were both, as he was himself, members of the new Institut de France, for which the questionnaire was eventually to become a statistical tool to classify the people of France. As Justin Stagl has argued, in that age of patriotic travel, of ars apodemica, the art of travel that survived was in its most archaic form, and reincarnated as ethnographic fi eldwork.15 The question-naire was made specifi cally to collect information about the religions, languages, sects, ethnic groups, and local conditions in Egypt, but it would fi nd its best use in France.

Epilogue • 295

The Institut d’Egypte came up with a method to serve the French state that went beyond the questionnaire, and it formed a permanent commission in charge of coor-dinating the reports of all the travelers going of the Orient. The goal was to collect instrumental information about the geography, antiquities, agriculture, and commerce of the countries visited. Preferably, this was to be done by specifi c answers to the institute’s questionnaires, devised by Bonaparte on Volnay’s model.16 It had the am-bition to scientifi cally classify the entire Orient at the service of state-power, a state represented at this point by Napoleon and his ambition to conquer Egypt. The political aim of this scientifi c collection of knowledge about Egypt was clear and best summa-rized by Edward Saïd’s statement that one goal of the conquest of Egypt was to render it transparent to the French: “To render it completely open, to make it totally accessible to French scrutiny.”17 The endeavors of this ambitious commission collecting knowl-edge to provide power to the French state were cut short, like the military expedition, by the capitulation of the French army in 1801. Nevertheless, if imperialism failed, its scientifi c methods had been highly effective, and in a short time the 167 scholars within the Institut d’Egypte collected a massive amount of information. To compensate for Napoleon’s humiliating defeat in Egypt, the twenty-three massive tomes of the Description de l’Egypte were published between the years 1809 and 1823.18 Discourse once again was compensating for imperial failure, but this time, unlike other instances previously examined here, it was closely tied to both action and policy.

The massive Description de l’Egypte and its universal aims at classifi cation con-trasted sharply with the relatively short and simple descriptions of the fauna and fl ora of the Orient written by individual travelers such as Pierre Belon. Nevertheless, even as early as the sixteenth century, travel accounts were tied to the commercial, military, and diplomatic ambitions of France and France’s history. Travel accounts cannot simply be read as discourse and dissociated from policy, nor can they be read alone without the vast network that produced the travel texts. They often wrote for each other or borrowed from each other, producing an intertextuality in their works that makes it much sounder to analyze them as networks engaged in producing new knowledge than as individuals writing texts. Despite its imperial discourse, French Orientalism did not result in imperial rule beyond France, most of the state’s attempts failed, and some successes can be attributed to French merchants and corsairs. Even France’s colonies in the Antilles were not won over by the state, but taken over later as a fait accompli. Orientalism did not directly result in statist imperialism, but it succeeded in transforming France, which was the real focus of this discourse about the world. Networks of travelers and orientalists gave rise to important insti-tutions within France. The Collège de France, the Academy of Sciences, the Jardin des Plantes, and the Institut des langues Orientales are all institutions of some im-portance today and have their roots in Early Modern Orientalism in France and its royal sponsorship.

The questionnaires sent out to collect answers since the Huguenot Ramus were a survey aimed at the world beyond France, but in the patriotic eighteenth century they


turned into the best tool for domestic intelligence, as Justin Stagl has well described. Volnay’s questionnaire for Egypt was used by the government of France after the Revolution. France had to be conquered by the Directoire and its nationalist ideals. The country had to be cleaned of its superstition, as Catholicism was now called, cleared of its bells and crosses. Information was needed to conquer the remote vil-lages of the Lot and of the Vendée. There was, however, nothing modern about this relationship of knowledge to power, of desire born in the quiet act of reading preced-ing the brutal act of conquest. Alexander had read Ctesias and imagined his conquest of the Orient before his departure.19 After the Revolution the fi rst territory to conquer was France. In post-revolutionary France the language to impose on this territory was French, along with the culture that went with it. Francis I may have declared French a national language in 1530, but most of France’s population still did not speak French in 1789.

The people to convert were not the savages in Canada, or the inhabitants of Egypt, but the Breton, the Basque, the Alsatian, and the Provençal. All the provincial peo-ples were still speaking their dialects and clinging to local customs. Volnay’s ques-tionnaire elaborated for Egypt was to fi nd its application in the provinces of France. Local folklore, Catholic feasts and superstitions, languages other than French, were now exotic to the norms of French citizenship and the uniformity it imposed. In this internal conquest, in this cause of uniformity, as Stagl has shown, Volnay’s question-naire emerged as instrumental to the commissaires, the government inspectors who were sent to the provinces by the government during the Directoire.20

Marie Louise Pratt has argued that scholars have failed to notice how imperial experiments were imported back into Europe, to classify, subjugate, and bureaucratize the populations of Europe.21 Mona Ozouf in her work on revolutionary festivals calls this phase a “shameful ethnology.” If ethnology was born of travel, it would have plenty of applications at home, not only to classify, to observe, but ultimately to subject. In some of the documents left by the commissaries sent out by François de Neufchâteau with the government’s order “you will be like a pure faithful mirror” to refl ect the peoples observed, commissaries wrote back to Paris with reports of a resis-tance perceived as savage.22 The commissioner for the Finistère considered that “The barbarous idiom that in many cantons is the exclusive language of the governed is the reef against which all our efforts break.”23 In addition to fi lling out questionnaires and observing, as Ozouf has shown, the commissaries were in charge of confi scating crucifi xes by day (even if they returned at night and proliferated like mushrooms on graves) and in charge of silencing and confi scating the bells that marked the time of day, of purging France of any language and superstitious custom that was not French as was part of the Revolution’s program. Indeed, Catholicism, once a state religion, and an instrument of France’s imperial conquest, was no longer seen as French, it was a superstition. What was to replace the crosses and bells of Catholicism?

On May 24, 1792, people were told that the red cap, the liberty bonnet, one in fact much like the ones worn by Turkish and Huguenot slaves on the galleys, was

Epilogue • 297

the emblem of emancipation from all servitude in Greece and Rome. It was to be worn by everyone. Weber writes of the moment when a revolutionary forced the red cap on Louis XVI’s head at a moment when the king of France lost his authority as monarch.24 The oriental despot was conquered. France saw itself as purged of the despotism of the Bourbons and evoked democratic Greece and Rome as France’s past. Yet, just as the government banned all signs and symbols of Catholicism, of the monarchy and the aristocracy, despite practicing a “temporal exoticism” by borrow-ing Greco-Roman garb for its past, France still had to, in Mona Ozouf’s words “fi ll the space of dreams” for its future:

When temporal exoticism failed, this century of voyagers could call on space to feed its dreams. There were the Abbé Mallet’s Danes who held pure religious festivities in the woods to worship a god who was already a Supreme being. There were Mirabeau’s Chinese, who had invented symbolic festivals in which the emperor himself bowed low before “the nourishing plow” (and who were called upon by the organizers of the Revo-lutionary Festival of Agriculture, along with the Peruvians to whom the same cult was attributed). There were the civilized nations of the New World, who, Marbly declared, had returned to the principles of Nature herself. Raynal added that they were capable of renewing the world a second time.25

In renewing herself, revolutionary France turned to the world it had explored beyond its borders to fi nd a universal language of symbols for mankind. The Revolution had no less of an ambition than to break with the past to return to the beginning, to renew the world a second time, but fi rst it had to make its exotic citizens, the “Iroquois of the interior,” French.

– 299 –

Notes

Introduction

1. Quotation from Mary Baine Campbell, Wonder and Science: Imagining Worlds in Early Modern Europe (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1999), 226, a book that has been an inspiration throughout the years.

2. A good example of how orientalists in later times were rewarded: After he re-tired from public service in 1792 Sylvestre de Stacy studied Pahalvi and Arabic full-time, and in 1795 he was given a chair in Arabic at the newly founded École speciale des langues orientales vivantes. In 1806 he became professor of Persian, still holding his chair for Arabic, and secretary of the Academy of Inscriptions from 1832 onwards. He was made a baron in 1813, and, as a rather old man in 1832, he became a peer of France. In 1815 he was rector of the University of Paris. With Abel Rémusat he was joint founder of the Société asiatique and was inspector of oriental types at the royal printing press.

3. The Egyptian government Web site (http://touregypt.net/featurestories/descrip tion.htm) commemorates this.

4. However, Saïd himself showed great interest in the seventeenth century by dis-cussing a few fi gures like Bethelot de Moulainville.

5. Edward Saïd, Orientalism (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978), 79–81. 6. John Doran, Knights and Their Days (London: Bradbury and Evans, 1856), 23. 7. Charles Sigisbert Sonnini de Manincourt, Voyage dans la haute et basse Égypte,

fait par ordre de l’ancien gouvernement, et contenant des observations de tous genres (Paris: F. Buisson, 1799).

8 Although the term Orient is no longer the preferred term to refer to Asia, I have used it here because it is the traditional term for Asian countries during the pe-riod of this study.

9. Guy Tredaniel (ed.), Guillaume Postel 1510–1581 (Paris: Edition de la Mais-nie, 1985), 197.

10. Sophie Linon-Chipon, Gallia Orientalis: Voyages aux Indes Orientales, 1529–1722. Poétique et imaginaire d’un genre littéraire en formation (Paris: l’Université Paris-Sorbonne, 2003).

11. Antoine Galland, Avertissement to Les paroles remarquables, les bons mots et les maximes des Orientaux:Traduction de leurs ouvrages en arabe, en persan & en turc, avec des remarques (Lyon: H. Baritel, 1695), translation my own.

300 • Notes

12. Dictionnaire de l’Académie française, 1st ed. (1694), 159. 13. Bruno Latour, We Have Never Been Modern (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Uni-

versity Press, 1993), 51–52. 14. Norbert Elias, The Civilizing Process: Sociogenetic and Psychogenetic (Oxford:

Blackwell Publishers, 2000). 15. The issue of fashion and the bibliography on it is addressed in the second part

of the book in Chapters 7, 8, and 9. 16. Charles Woolsey Cole, Colbert and a Century of French Mercantilism (Hamden,

Conn.: Archon Books, 1964), vol. 2, 187–95. See also Olivier Pastré, La mé-thode Colbert, ou, Le patriotisme économique effi cace (Paris: Perrin, 2006).

17. Among the eighteenth-century partisans: Neil McKendrick, John Brewer, and J. H. Plumb, The Birth of a Consumer Society: The Commercialization of Eighteenth-Century England (London: Europa Publications, 1982), and Maxine Berg and Elizabeth Eger, eds., Luxury in the Eighteenth Century: Debates, De-sires, and Delectable Goods (New York: Pelgrave, 2003).

For the Renaissance as a start for modern consumption, the discussion of which is all centered on Italy, see, among others: Richard Goldthwaite, Wealth and the Demand for Art in Italy, 1300–1600 (Baltimore, Md., 1993); Richard A. Goldthwaite, The Building of Renaissance Florence: An Economic and Social History (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University, 1980); Chandra Mukerji, From Graven Images: Patterns of Modern Materialism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983); Lisa Jardine, Worldly Goods: A New History of the Renaissance (New York: Nan E. Talese, 1996); and Paula Findlen, “Possessing the Past: The Material World of the Italian Renaissance,” American Historical Review 103, no. 1 (February 1998): 83–114. For the Dutch Republic as the fi rst locus of consumerism in the seventeenth century see Jan de Vries, “Luxury in the Dutch Golden Age in Theory and Practice,” in Berg and Eger, eds., Luxury in the Eighteenth Century, 41. For seventeenth-century origins in England: Linda Levy Peck, Consuming Splendor: Society and Culture in Seventeenth Century England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005). Concern-ing the bourgeois vs. aristocratic origins of modern consumption, the classic debate was between Werner Sombart and Max Weber. Those who see the locus of the consumer revolution in eighteenth-century Britain point to the ascending middle classes, while those who locate it earlier focus on the French courts and Italian cities to point to the aristocratic origins of consumption. For de Vries, the urban society of the Golden Age Dutch Republic generated modern consumer behavior; “Luxury in the Dutch Golden Age.” For an overview on the debates, see Jean-Christophe Agnew, “Coming Up for Air: Consumer Culture in His-torical Perspective,” in John Brewer and Roy Porter, eds., Consumption and the World of Goods (London: Routledge, 1993), 23–25, and Craig Clunas, “Modernity Global and Local: Consumption and the Rise of the West,” Ameri-can Historical Review 104, no. 5 (December, 1999): 1497–1511.

Notes • 301

18. Caroline Weber, Queen of Fashion: What Marie Antoinette Wore to the Revolu-tion (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 2006).

19. For the many who wrote about the subject before Saïd see: David R. Blanks and Michael Frassetto, eds., Western Views of Islam in Medieval and Early Modern Europe: Perception of Other (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999). For a near complete list of the many people who have added their own words to amend Saïd’s binary views of Orient and Occident see Jeffrey Cass, in Inter rogating Orientalism: Contextual Approaches and Pedagogical Practices, ed. Diane Long Hoeveler and Jeffrey Cass (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2006), 1–25.

20. I would like to thank Madeleine Dobie at Columbia University for sending me the proofs of her upcoming article on furniture.

21. Madeleine Dobie, Foreign Bodies: Gender, Language, and Culture in French Orientalism (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2001); see Chapter 3, “Intimacy Exposed: Gender, Race and Language in the Oriental Tale,” and espe-cially illustrations on pages 93–95 for French furniture.

22. Madeline Dobie, “Orientalism, Colonialism and Furniture in Eighteenth-Century France,” in Furnishing the Eighteenth Century, ed. Kathryn Norberg and Dena Goodman (New York: Routledge, 2007), 13–36.

23. Michèle Longino, Orientalism in French Classical Drama (London: Cam-bridge University Press, 2002) is devoted to Orientalism in plays by Molière, Corneille, and Racine.

24. Dominique Carnoy, Représentations de l’Islam dans la France du XVIIe siècle (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1998).

25. Fatma Müge Göçek, East Encounters West: France and the Ottoman Empire in the Eighteenth Century (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987).

26. See Chapter 7 in this book. 27. Roy Porter is chief among them. Roy Porter and John Brewer, eds., Consump-

tion and the World of Goods (London: Routledge, 1994). Chandra Mukerji, Territorial Ambitions and the Gardens of Versailles (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997).

28. One of the rare recent books about the subject is Alastair Hamilton, Arab Cul-ture and Ottoman Magnifi cence in Antwerp’s Golden Age (Oxford: Arcadian Library, 2001).

29. Gülru Necipoglu, Architecture, Ceremonial and Power: The Topkapi Palace in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1991).

30. Jerry Brotton, Trading Territories: Mapping the Early Modern World (London: Reaktion Books, 1997); Kim Hall, Things of Darkness: Economies of Race and Gender in Early Modern England (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1995).

31. Lisa Jardine and Jerry Brotton, Global Interests: Renaissance Art between East and West (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2002).

32. Campbell, Wonder and Science.

302 • Notes

33. Full title: G. Boucher de la Richarderie, Bibliothèque universelle des voyages, ou Notice complète et raisonnée de tous les voyages anciens et modernes dans les différentes parties du monde, publiés tant en langue française qu’en langues étrangères, classés par ordre de pays dans leur série chronologique; avec des extraits plus ou moins rapides des voyages les plus estimés de chaque pays, et des jugemens motivés sur les relations anciennes qui ont le plus de célébrité (Paris: Treuttel et Würtz, 1808). Cited in Daniel Roche, Humeurs vagabondes: De la circulation des hommes et de l’utilité des voyages (Paris: Fayard, 2003).

34. For ideas of Europe see Anthony Pagden, ed., The Idea of Europe: From Antiq-uity to the European Union (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002).

35. Latour, We Have Never Been Modern, 48. 36. Latour, We Have Never Been Modern, 48. 37. Latour, We Have Never Been Modern, 49. 38. For early ideas of the nation in France see David A. Bell, The Cult of the Na-

tion in France: Inventing Nationalism, 1680–1800 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2001).

39. For Guillaume Postel see the following chapter in this book. For Gassendi see Antonia LoLordo, Pierre Gassendi and the Birth of Early Modern Phil osophy (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007). For Abelard see Peter Abelard, The Letters and Other Writings (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2007).

Chapter 1 The First Orientalist, Guillaume Postel

1. “De qui est premier,” Bibliothèque Nationale MSS, f. lat., 3678, f. 49. Original spelling. Unless indicated otherwise all translations in the book are my own.

2. Marion Leathers Kuntz, Guillaume Postel: Prophet of the Restitution of All Things, His Life and Thought (The Hague: Martinus Ninhof Publishers, 1981), 43–51. This is an intellectual biography of Postel based on his manu-scripts.

3. Lefevre d’Etaples, Philip Edgcumbe Hughes Lefèvre: Pioneer of Ecclesiastical Renewal in France (Grand Rapids, Mich.: W. E. Eerdmans, 1984), 66.

4. James Hankins, Plato in the Italian Renaissance (New York: E. J. Brill, 1991); for Ficino’s interest in Egyptian and Persian astrology see M. Bullard, “The In-ward Zodiac: A Development in Ficino’s Thought on Astrology,” Renaissance Quarterly 43, no. 4 (Winter, 1990): 687–708.

5. R. Scheller, “Imperial Themes in Art and Literature of the Early French Renais-sance: The Period of Charles VIII,” Simiolus 12 (1981–1982): 7–36.

6. Michel de Certeau, Heterologies: Discourse on the Other (Minneapolis: Uni-versity of Minnesota Press, 1986), 87.

Notes • 303

7. Marcel Destombe, “Guillaume Postel cartographe,” in Guillaume Postel (1581–1981), ed. Guy Trédaniel (Paris: Editions de la Maisnie, 1985), 371.

8. The experts on Postel are: François Secret, William Bouwsma, and Marion Kuntz. Secret and Kuntz have devoted most of their work to Postel. Both still fi nd his work enigmatic and diffi cult to analyze. Most of Postel’s seventy works remain unexplored.

9. “Nations, like narratives, lose their origins in the myths of time and only fully realize their horizons in the mind’s eye. Such an image of the nation—or narration—might seem impossibly romantic and excessively metaphorical, but it is from those traditions of political thought and literary language that the na-tion emerges as a powerful historical idea in the west.” Homi Bhahba, Nation and Narration (New York: Routledge, 1990), 1.

10. Marion Kuntz, “The Universal Monarchy,” in Trédaniel, Guillaume Postel 1581–1918, 223–56.

11. Kuntz, Guillaume Postel, 250–53. 12. David A. Bell, The Cult of the Nation in France: Inventing Nationalism (Cam-

bridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2001). 13. Marion Leathers Kuntz, “Guillaume Postel and the World State: Restitution and

the Universal Monarchy,” History of European Ideas 4, no. 3 (1984): 299–323. 14. Josée Balagna Coustou, Arabe et humanisme dans la France des derniers Valois

(Paris: Editions Maisonneuve et Larose, 1989), 42. For literacy during this pe-riod see Natalie Zemon Davis, Society and Culture in Early Modern France (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1963).

15. André Thévet, Histoire des plus illustres et plus savants hommes de leurs siè-cles (Paris, 1571). See biography of Postel, 37–48.

16. Thévet, Histoire, 37–48. 17. Coustou, Arabe et humanisme, 44–46. 18. Karen Anderson, Chain Her by One Foot: The Subjugation of Native Ameri-

can Women in Seventeenth Century New France (New York: Routledge, 1991), 44–45.

19. Francois Bluche, ed., “Jesuites” in Dictionnaires du grand siècle (Paris: Fayard, 1990), 790–91.

20. Coustou, Arabe et humanisme, 47 and 56–57. 21. Kuntz, Guillaume Postel, 13. 22. Coustou, Arabe et humanisme, 49. 23. Kuntz, Guillaume Postel, 31 and note 95. 24. According to Thévet, “Il commença alléché du bruit des lettres étrangères,

(de) s’enfl ammer en l’étude de la langue hebraïque et grecque, là où une chose étrange lui arriva. Car ayant entendu d’un sien compagnon que les juifs étaient encore en être (en personne à Paris?) il ne cessa de chercher jusques à ce qu’à grand peine il eut recouvert un alphabet, que lui même étudiant il feuilleta,

304 • Notes

refeuilleta et transcrivit tant de fois.” In Les vrais portraits et vies des hommes illustres; see biography of Postel.

25. Adrien Baillet, Des enfants devenus célèbres par leurs études ou leurs écrits (Paris: Chez Antoine Dezallier, 1688). See his entry for Guillaume Postel.

26. Coustou, Arabe et humanisme, 50. A book of articles has recently been pub-lished about Orientalism and Jews; see Ivan Davidson Kalmar and Derek J. Penslar, eds., Orientalism and the Jews (Waltham, Mass.: Brandeis University Press, 2005). On Jewish Orientalism: Yaron Peleg, Orientalism and the Hebrew Imagination (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2005).

27. Coustou, Arabe et humanisme, 53. 28. Guy Trédaniel, ed., Guillaume Postel 1581–1918 (Paris: Actes du colloque

d’Avranche, 1981), 79. 29. Georges Minois, Censure et culture sous l’Ancien Régime (Paris: Fayard,

1995), 22. 30. Isabelle Pantin, “Latin et langues vernaculaires dans la littérature scientifi que,”

in Sciences et Langues en Europe, ed. Roger Chartier and Pedro Corsi (Paris: EHESS, 1996), 45. The contributions of Orientalism to this early science are explained a little further on in this book; see Chapters 5 and 7.

31. Minois, Censure, 25. 32. See the fi rst two chapters of Minois, Censure. 33. Minois, Censure, 42–46. 34. Ibid., 48. 35. Kuntz, Guillaume Postel, 52. 36. William James Bouwsma, Concordia mundi: The Career and Thought of Guil-

l aume Postel, 1510–1581 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1957), 10, 27.

37. Minois, Censure, Chapter 1. 38. Work on the formal history of the royal college in a later period was undertaken

by Jean Torlais. See Yves Laissus and Jean Torlais, Le Jardin du roi et le Col-lège royal: Dans l’enseignement des sciences au XVIII siècle (Paris: Hermann, 1986), 262–86.

39. Coustou, Arabe et humanisme, 63. For Postel’s contributions to mathematics via Arabic manuscripts see the work of George Saliba.

40. Guillaume Postel, Linguaram duodecim characteribus differentium alphabe-tum, introductio, ac legendi modus longe facilimus. Linguarum nomina sequens proxima pagella offeret (Paris, 1538).

41. Georges Weill and Francis Secret, Vie et caractère de Guillaume Postel: Thèse présentée à la Faculté des Lettres de Paris (Milan: Archè/Les Belles Lettres, 1987), 210–11. Also see Chapter 5.

42. Jacques Paviot, “Autour de l’ambassade de d’Aramon: Erudits et voyageurs au Levant 1547–1555,” in Voyager à la Renaissance, ed. Jean Céard and Jean Claude Margolin (Paris: Maisonneuve et Larose, 1987), 388, footnote 18.

Notes • 305

43. Abel Lefranc, Histoire du Collège de France depuis ses origines jusqu’à la fi n du premier empire (Geneva: Slatkine Reprints, 1970), 380–82. On the charges of Lutheranism against the lisans, 121–23.

44. On this opposition see James K. Farge, Le parti conservateur au XVIe siècle:Université et Parlement de Paris à l’époque de la Renaissance et de la Réforme (Paris: Collège de France: Diffusion, Les Belles Lettres, 1992).

45. Laissus and Torlais, Le jardin du roi, 268. 46. Dominique Carnoy, Representations de l’Islam dans la France du XVIIieme

siècle (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1998), 20. 47. Ramon Lull, Declaratio Raimundi Lulle et de la condamnation de 1277: La

déclaration de Raymond écrite sous forme de dialogue, trans. Cécile Bonmar-iage et Michel (Dudley, Mass.: Peeters, 2006).

48. Carnoy, Representations, 21. 49. Eberhard Horst, Heloisa und Abaelard: Biographie einer Liebe (München: Claas-

sen Verlag, 2004). 50. Bernard de Clairvaux, Oeuvres complètes. XXII, Sermons divers. Tome I: Ser-

mons 1–22 (Paris: Cerf, 2006). 51. Letter of Peter the Venerable to St. Bernard of Clairvaux, from Giles Constable,

Letters of Peter the Venerable, 2 vols. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1967), Letter 111.

52. Carnoy, Representations, 18–23. 53. See entry: “Order of Preachers” in Catholic Encyclopedia (Herbman, Charles

et al. New York: The Encyclopedia Press, 1813): “The following year Brother Phillippe, Provincial of the Holy Land, wrote to Gregory IX that his religious had preached to the people in the different languages of the Orient, especially in Arabic, the most popular tongue, and that the study of languages had been added to their conventual course. The province of Greece furnished several Hellenists whose works we shall mention later. The province of Spain, whose population was a mixture of Jews and Arabs, opened special schools for the study of languages. About the middle of the thirteenth century it also estab-lished a studium arabicum at Tunis; in 1259 one at Barcelona; between 1265 and 1270 one at Murcia; in 1281 one at Valencia. The same province also estab-lished some schools for the study of Hebrew at Barcelona in 1281, and at Jativa in 1291. Finally, the General Chapters of 1310 commanded the master general to establish, in several provinces, schools for the study of Hebrew, Greek, and Arabic, to which each province of the order should send at least one student.”

54. Charles Molinier, Guillem Bernard de Gaillac et l’enseignement chez les Dominicains (Paris: Imprimerie Daupeley-Gouverneur, 1884), cited in “Order of Preachers,” Catholic Encyclopedia.

55. Carnoy, Representations, 23. 56. Machumetis Sarracenorum principis, vita ac doctrina omnis, quae et Ismaeli-

torum lex, et Alcoranum dictur, ex Arabica lingua ante CCCC annos in Latinam

306 • Notes

translata, nunc demum as gloriam domini Jes. C. & ad Christianeiae fi dei confi rmationem, doctorum ac piorum aliquot virirum, nostae adeo religionis arthodoxae antistitum studio & authoritate, velut tenebris in lucem protracta atque edita.

57. Carnoy, Representations, 24. 58. James L. Boyce and Sarah Heinrich, “Martin Luther—Translations of Two

Prefaces on Islam: Preface to the Libellus de ritu et moribus Turcorum (1530) and Preface to Bilibander’s Edition of the Qu’ran (1543),” Word and World, Luther Seminary, Saint Paul, Minnesota 16, no. 2 (Spring 1996), 250–66.

59. Boyce and Heinrich, “Martin Luther,” 252. 60. Ibid., 255. 61. Beginning of Luther’s preface to the 1543 Basel Qu’ran, as translated by Boyce

and Heinrich, “Martin Luther,” 258. 62. Ibid., 263. 63. John Calvin in his Sermons on Deuteronomy (13:1 f) cited in Nigel Lee, Calvin

on Islam (Brisbane, Australia: Queensland Presbyterian Theological College, 2000), 3.

64. Nabil Matar, Islam in Britain, 1558–1685 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 106.

65. Harry Clark, “The Publication of the Koran in Latin a Reformation Dilemma,” Sixteenth Century Journal 15, no. 1 (Spring, 1984): 3–12.

66. Umberto Eco, The Search for the Perfect Language (London: Blackwell, 1995), 122.

67. Ibid., 76. 68. Ibid., 76. 69. Guillaume Postel, De originibus seu de Hebraicae Linguae et Gentis antiqui-

tate deque variarum linguarum affi nitate liber (Paris: Prostant apud Dionysium Lescuier, 1538).

70. For this discussion on race and language see Maurice Olender, Les langues du paradis: aryens et sémites, un couple providentiel (Gallimard: Le Seuil, 1989).

71. Raymond Schwab, The Oriental Renaissance: Europe’s Discovery of India and the East 1680–1880 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1984), 17.

72. Jean-Luc Déjean, Marguerite de Navarre (Paris: Fayard, 1987).

Chapter 2 The Ambassadors

1. Josée Balagna Coustou, Arabe et humanisme dans la France des derniers Valois (Paris: Editions Maisonneuve et Larose, 1989), 44.

2. Coustou, Arabe et humanisme, 44. 3. For the negotiations see Jean Zeller, La diplomatie française vers le milieu du

XVIième siècle d’après la correspondance de Guillaume Pellicier, êvèque de

Notes • 307

Monpellier, ambassadeur de Francis Ier à Venise(1539–1542) (Paris: Hatchett et cie, 1880).

4. Alastair Hamilton, Arab Culture and Ottoman Magnifi cence in Antwerp’s Golden Age (London: Arcadian Library, 2001), 9.

5. Nabil Matar, ed., In the Lands of the Christians (New York: Routledge, 2003), Introduction.

6. Hamilton, Arab Culture, 8–10. 7. Coustou, Arabe et humanisme, 58–59. 8. Guillaume Postel, Des histoires Orientales . . ., ed. Jacques Rollet (Istanbul: Edi-

tions Isis, 1999). See introduction for the death of Ibrahim Pasha. 9. Marion Leathers Kuntz, Guillaume Postel, Prophet of the Restitution of All

Things: His Life and Thought (The Hague: Kluwer Boston, 1981), 32–39. 10. R. J. Knecht, The Rise and Fall of Renaissance France 1483–1610 (Oxford:

Blackwell, 2001), 182. 11. Jerôme Maurand, Itinerario et Viaggio dell’aramata navale di Barbarossa sino

in Levante (Bibilothèque de Carpentras, manuscript number 1777). 12. For details on all these episodes see Knecht, Guillaume Postel, 174–85. 13. For the best description of Catherine Segurane, see Colonel Sykes, “Statistics

of Nice Maritime,” Journal of the Statistical Society of London 18, no. 1 (March 1855): 34–73.

14. Jacques Paviot, “Autour de l’ambassade de d’Aramon: Erudits et voyageurs au Levant 1547–1555,” in Voyager à la Renaissance: Actes du Colloque de Tours 1983, ed. Jean Céard and Jean Claude Margolin (Paris: Maisonneuve et Larose, 1987), 385.

15. Marion Kuntz, “Voyages to the East and their Meaning in the Thought of Guil-laume Postel,” in Voyager à la Renaissance: Actes du Colloque de Tours 1983, eds. Jean Ceard and Jean Claude Margolin (Paris: Maisonneuve et Larose, 1987), 50–60.

16. Ibid. 17. Coustou, Arabe et humanisme, 82. 18. Coustou, Arabe et humanisme, 83. 19. Justin Stagl, A History of Curiosity: The Theory of Travel, 1550–1800 (Chur,

Switzerland: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1995) examines the development of this methodology from 1500 to the 1800s, and more specifi cally the very impor-tant eighteenth-century German contribution to the development of this method-ology, which gave rise to anthropology, ethnology, and universal histories.

20. Stagl, History of Curiosity, 50–51. 21. Ibid., 55. 22. Ibid., 19. 23. Ibid., 66–70. 24. For his life and works see James Veazie Skalnik, Ramus and Reform: University

and Church at the end of the Renaissance (Kirksville, Mo.: Truman State Uni-versity Press, 2002).

308 • Notes

25. Pierre de la Ramé, Grammaire de P. de La Ramee, lecteur du Roy en lVniuersite de Paris a la Royne, Mere du Roy (Paris: l’Imprimerie d’André Wechel, 1572).

26. Stagl, History of Curiosity, 70. 27. Paviot, “Autour de l’ambassade,” 380–84. 28. Jean de Palerne’s account has recently been published in: Jean de Palerne, Péré-

grination d’Alexandrie à Istanbul (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1991). 29. There is a recent incomplete edition in print that is a translation into modern

French: Guillaume Postel, Des histoires Orientales . . . (Istanbul: Editions Isis, 1999). The introduction to this new edition is a diplomatic gesture; seeking a rapprochement between Turkey and France, it states that Turkey should right-fully be admitted within the European Union.

30. Jacques Gassot, Le Discours du voyage de Venise à Constantinople . . . (Paris: A. Le Clerc, 1550).

31. A partial edition by Schaefer was believed to be of little value by Jacques Paviot.

32. There is a whole section on Belon in Chapter 4 of this book, but for a good short biography of Belon and some of his companions see the introduction by Alexandre Merle in Pierre Belon du Mans, Voyage au Levant . . . (1553; reprint, Paris: Chandeigne, 2001), 7–43. It is important to note that, as in many French renditions of the episode of the Turkish presence in Nice and Toulon, the role of the French is skirted with much dexterity.

33. Frank Lestringent, L’atelier du cosmographe, ou, l’image du monde à la Re-naissance (Paris: Albin Michel, 1991).

34. The best analysis of this habit of looking at landscape and claiming ownership can be found in Ali Behdad, Belated Travelers: Orientalism in the Age of Colo-nial Dissolution (Cork: Cork University Press, 1994).

35. Stéphane Yarasimos unearthed some of Nicolay’s activities as an agent when he edited the works of Nicolas de Nicolay for a more recent publication. See Sté-phane Yarasimos, Dans l’empire de Soliman le Magnifi que: Les Navigations & Peregrinations et Voyages, Faits en la Turquie (Paris: Presses du CNRS, 1989).

36. Nicolas Nicolay, Les Navigations, Peregrinations, [et] Voyages, faicts en la Tur-quie (Anvers: Guillaume Silvius, 1576), preface; Nicolas Nicolay, Les IV premiers livres des navigations et peregrinations Orientales. (Lyon: G. Roveille, 1568).

37. Alexandre Merle’s Introduction, in Belon, Voyage au Levant, 16–17. 38. For the origins and purpose of the Jardin du Roi see Chapter 4 of this book. 39. Kuntz, “Voyages to the East,” 50–60. 40. Paviot, “Autour de l’ambassade,” 383. 41. E. T. Hamy, “Le père de la zoologie francaise Pierre Gilles d’Albi,” Revue des

Pyrennés 12 (1819): 561–88. 42. Gabrielle Di Falco, “Pierre Gilles et le geographes grecs mineures,” in Voyager

à la Renaissance, eds. Jean Céard and Jean Claude Margolin (Paris: Maison-neuve et Larose, 1987), 65–84, 388, footnote 18.

Notes • 309

43. For an explanation of the tension between these worldviews in travel writing, see Mary Baine Campbell, The Witness and the Other World: Exotic European Travel Writing, 400–1600 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1988). For the impact of science, see Campbell’s Wonder and Science: Imagining Worlds in Early Modern Europe (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1999).

44. DiFalco, “Pierre Giles,” 65–84. 45. See Frédéric Tinguely, L’écriture du Levant à la Renaissance: Enquête sur les

voyageurs français dans l’empire de Soliman le Magnifi que (Geneva: Droze, 2000), for a good analysis of texts about the Levant.

46. Paviot, “Autour de l’ambassade,” 380–84. 47. Guillaume Postel, De la Republique des Turcs: & là où l’occasion s’offrera, des

meurs & loy de tous Muhamedites par Guillaume Postel Cosmopolite (Poitiers: Enguibert de Marneuf, 1559). In “Au Roy Dauphin,” nonpaginated preface.

48. Both passages are my own translation from the preface of the 1559 Poitiers edition. The words in italics have been left in their original early French spell-ing. De la Republique des Turcs, the 1559 edition.

49. Guillaume Postel, Des histoires Orientales . . . (Paris: Hierosme de Marnef et Guillaume Cavellat, 1575). This is the edition used for the 1999 Istanbul edi-tion. Only the last two parts are transcribed into modern French.

50. See note 54 in Chapter 1 for a full quotation. 51. Luther’s preface to the 1543 Basel Qu’ran, as translated by James L. Boyce and

Sarah Heinrich, 258–60. 52. Postel, De la Republique des Turcs, 5. 53. Guillaume Postel, L’histoire memorable des expeditions depuys le deluge . . .

(Paris: Chez Sébastien Nivelle, 1552). This work remains unpublished since this fi rst edition and not studied, to the best of our knowledge.

54. For a complete explanation see Islamic Medical Manuscripts, available at the site of the U.S. National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health, De-partment of Health and Human Services, 8600 Rockville Pike, Bethesda, MD 20894.

55. Frank Lestrigant, “Guillaume Postel et ‘l’obession turque,’ ” in Guillaume Postel 1581–1918, ed. Guy Trédaniel (Paris: Actes du colloque d’Avranche, 1985), 265–301.

56. Frank Lestrigant, in Guillaume Postel 1581–1918, 268. 57. Herodotus, Histories, ed. Carolyn Dewald and R. Waterfi eld (Oxford: Oxford

University Press, 1998), Book IV. 58. André Thévet, La cosmographie universelle d’André Thevet, . . . (Paris: Pierre

l’Huillier et Guillaume Chaudière, 1575). Cited in Lestrigant (1985). 59. Lestrigant, 269–70; Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, Le carnaval des Romans: de

la Chandeleur au mercredi des Cendres, 1579–1580 (Paris: Gallimard, 1979), 234. Cited in Lestrigant (1985).

60. Lestrigant, in Trédaniel (1985), 269.

310 • Notes

61. Pierre Belon, Observations de plusieurs singularitez . . . (Paris: Marnef, 1588).First modern edition since the original: Pierre Belon, Observation de plusieurs singularitez et choses memorables trouvées en Grèce, Turquie, Judéem Egypte, Arabie et autres pays étranges, ed. Alexandra Merle (Paris: Chandeigne, 2001).

62. Belon, Observations, 510. 63. Belon, Observations, 500. 64. Belon, Observations, 460–62. 65. Postel, De la Republique des Turcs, opening statement of Chapter 1, unpaginated. 66. Some of what Valensi has done can also be found for the Ottomans in the works

of Cornell Fleischer. 67. Ann Blair, The Theater of Nature: Jean Bodin and Renaissance Science (Prince-

ton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1997). 68. Jean Bodin, Les six livres de la République, eds. Christiane Frémont, Marie-

Dominique Couzinet, and Henri Rochais (Paris: Fayard, 1986), a reprint of Les six livres de la Republique de Iean Bodin; plus, L’apologie de René Herpin; auec vn discours & responses du mesme autheur aux Paradoxes du sieur de Malestroit sur le rehaussement & diminution des monnoyes & le moyen d’y remedier (Lyon: Barthelemy Vincent, 1593).

69. Donatella Marocco Stuardi, La République di Jean Bodin: Sovranità, governo (Milano: F. Angeli, 2006). Also a historical study: Stéphane Beaulac, The Power of Language in the Making of International Law: The Word “Sovereignty” in Bodin and Vattel and the Myth of Westphalia (Boston: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 2004).

70. In some translations into English of Bodin’s work seigniorial has been trans-lated as despotic.

71. Bodin, Les six livres, Book II, Chapter 2, 36. 72. Ibid., Book II, Chapter 2, 36–39. He insisted that William the Conqueror made

his subjects his farmers and took the land, once again in Book VI. 73. Ibid., Book II, Chapter 2, 41–42. 74. Belon, Observations, 7–42. 75. On the many writings about the Janissaries by French travelers see Clarence

Dana Rouillard, The Turk in French History, Thought, and Literature (1520–1660) (Paris: Boivin, 1941), 373–83.

76. Ibid., 290. 77. Bodin, Les six livres, Book VI, 77. Translation is my own. 78. Ibid., Book VI, 107. 79. Ibid., Book VI, 108–9. 80. Ibid., Book VI, 115. 81. Michel de Certeau, L’écriture de l’histoire (Paris: Gallimard, 1988). 82. Coustou, Arabe et humanisme, 101. 83. See Yvonne Petry, Gender, Kabbalah, and the Reformation: The Mystical The-

ology of Guillaume Postel, 1510–1581 (Boston: Brill, 2004) for a fi rst and fas-cinating study of this mystical text.

Notes • 311

84. Felipe Fernández Armesto, Columbus and the Conquest of the Impossible (Lon-don: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1974).

85. These directions of East and West are Postel’s. Kuntz, “Voyages to the East,” 58–59.

86. Michael Wintroub, A Savage Mirror: Power, Identity, and Knowledge in Early Modern France (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2006), 93–95.

87. Ibid., 95. 88. Cited in Ibid., 103. 89. For the economic incentive behind Columbus’s voyage and for global trade in

the sixteenth century, see Andre Gunder Frank, ReOrient: Global Economy in the Asian Age (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998).

90. For a full explanation and reading of this famous painting, see Lisa Jardine and Jerry Brotton, Global Interest: Renaissance Art between East and West (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2000), 49–57.

91. Ibid., 56. 92. Ibid., 56–57.

Chapter 3 France in the World

1. Michael Wintroub, A Savage Mirror: Power, Identity, and Knowledge in Early Modern France (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2006), 102.

2. Ibid., 27. 3. Jerry Brotton, Trading Territories: Mapping the Early Modern World (London:

Reaktion Books, 1997), 17. 4. Alexandre-Olivier Exquemelin, Histoire des aventuriers fl ibustiers, ed. Réal

Ouellet and Patrick Villiers (Paris: Presses de l’Université Paris-Sorbonne, 2005), 11.

5. Francis Parkman, Pioneers of France in the New World (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1996), 6–77.

6. Angus Konstam, The History of Pirates (New York: The Lyons Press in asso-ciation with the Mariners’ Museum, 2002), 68.

7. Ibid., 69. 8. Dirk Van der Cruysse, Le noble désir de courir le monde: Voyager en Asie au

XVIIième siècle (Paris: Fayard, 2002), 15–16. 9. Wintroub, A Savage Mirror, 22–23. 10. Binot Paulmier de Gonneville, Le Voyage de Gonneville (1503–1505) et la décou-

verte de la Normandie par les Indiens du Brésil, ed. Leyla Perrone Moisés, trans. Ariane Witkowski (Paris: Chandeigne, 1995). Also: A. Julien, “Textes des voy-ages de Gonneville, Verrazano, Cartier et Roberval,” introduction to Les Fran-cais en Amérique pendant la première moitié du XVIe siècle, ed. Charles Julien, R. Herval, and Th. Beauchesne (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1946);

312 • Notes

and especially Collectif et Ida Mendes Dos Santos, La découverte du Brésil. Les premiers témoignages (1500–1515) (Paris: Chandeigne, 1999), works of Pêro Vaz de Caminha, Amerigo Vespucci, Gonneville.

11. Wintroub, A Savage Mirror, 21. 12. Van der Cruysse, Le noble désir, 19. 13. Wintroub, A Savage Mirror, 21. 14. André Thevet, Histoire d’André Thevet Angoumoisin, cosmographe du Roy, de

deux voyages par luy faits aux Indes Australes, et Occidentale, ed. Jean-Claude Laborie and Frank Lestringant (Geneva: Droz, 2006).

15. F. André Theuet d’Angovlesme, Cosmographie de Levant (Lyon: Tovrnes et G. Gazeav, 1554).

16. Frank Lestringant, Le Huguenot et le sauvage: l’Amérique et la controverse coloniale en France, au temps des guerres de religion (1555–1589) (Paris: Klincksieck, 1999).

17. André Thevet, Le Brésil d’André Thevet: Les singularités de la France antarc-tique (1557), ed. Frank Lestringant (Paris: Chandeigne, 1997).

18. Thevet, Le Brésil d’André Thevet, Introduction by Lestringant, 21. 19. Ibid., 17–21. 20. Mary Baine Campbell, Wonder and Science: Imagining Worlds in Early Mod-

ern Europe (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1999), 49. 21. Stephen Greenblatt, Marvelous Possessions: The Wonder of the New World

(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991). 22. Massimo Montanari, The Culture of Food, trans. Carl Ipsen (Oxford: Black-

well, 1994), Chapters 1 and 2. 23. Felipe Fernández-Armesto, Columbus and the Conquest of the Impossible (Lon-

don: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1974), 161–62. 24. Ibid., 170. 25. Anthony Grafton, April Shelford, and Nancy Siraisi, New Worlds, Ancient

Texts: The Power of Tradition and the Shock of Discovery (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1992).

26. The Journeys of Réné Robert Cavelier, Sieur de la Salle, as Related by His Faith-ful Lieutenant, Henri de Tonty; His Missionary Colleagues, Fathers Zenobius Membré, Louis Hennepin, and Anastasius Douay; His Early Biographer, Father Christian le Clercq; His Trusted Subordinate, Henri Joutel; and His Brother, Jean Cavelier; Together with Memoirs, Commissions, etc., ed. Henri de Tonty, with an introduction by Isaac Joslin Cox (New York: A. S. Barnes & Company, 1905).

27. Grafton, Shelford, and Siraisi, New Worlds, 138–39. 28. Thevet, Le Brésil d’André Thevet, Introduction by Lestringant, 21–25. 29. Grafton, Shelford, and Siraisi, New Worlds, 126. 30. Ibid., 126. 31. Ibid., 120. 32. Ibid., 121.

Notes • 313

33. Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra, How to Write the History of the New World: Histo-ries, Epistemologies, and Identities in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2001).

34. Ibid., 64. 35. Not deciphered until the Napoleonic era, the hieroglyphs ranked high in the

neoplatonic view of the world, a universe of mystery. The world could be un-derstood all at once if one found the key. The mystery that orientalist knowledge sought to solve by deciphering languages was a quest that was quasi-mystical.

36. Cañizares-Esguerra, How to Write the History of the New World, 35, 56, 112–13. 37. Contemporary works examining a hierarchy of civilizations still exist, most

famously Samuel Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (New York: Touchstone, 1997).

38. This was so until some very recent work by Dirk Van der Cruysse and Sophie Linon-Chipon, both cited later for this reconstruction of French Asian endeav-ors based on their fi ndings.

39. Van der Cruysse, Le noble désir, 20–23. Parmentier’s story here is from Van der Cruysse.

40. Vincent Le Blanc, Voyages famevx aux quatre parties du Monde . . ., ed. L. Cov-lon (Paris, 1658).

41. Vincent Le Blanc, The world surveyed, or the famous voyages & travailes of Vincent le Blanc, or White, of Marseilles . . . microform: containing a more exact description of several parts of the world, then hath hitherto been done by any other authour: the whole work enriched with many authentick histories, trans. F. B. Gent (London: Printed for John Starkey . . ., 1660).

42. Henri de Feynes, Voyage faict par terre . . . (Paris: Pierre Rocolet, 1630). 43. Henri de Feynes, An exact and curious suruey of all the East Indies . . . (London:

Thomas Dawson, 1615). 44. This opinion is Dirk Van der Cruysse’s, Le noble désir, 28 and 476, n. 27. I did

not have access to the dissertation. 45. Sophie Linon-Chipon, Gallia Orientalis: Voyages aux Indes orientales, 1529–1722.

Politique et imaginaire d’un genre litteraire en formation (Paris: l’Université Paris-Sorbonne, 2003), 40.

46. Van der Cruysse, Le noble désir, 270–71. 47. Published in Lisbon in 1983 as: De Justo império dos Portugeses. See Ibid., 497. 48. Both accounts have recently been published in François Pyrard, Voyage de

François Pyrard de Laval aux Indes Orientales (1601–1611) . . . (Paris: David Leclerc, 1611; reprint, Paris: Chandeigne, 1998).

49. Cited in Van der Cruysse, Le noble désir, 26. Translation my own. 50. Linon-Chipon, Gallia Orientalis, 37–41. 51. Cited from Van der Cruysse, Le noble désir, 26. 52. Linon-Chipon, Gallia Orientalis, 37–41. 53. Van der Cruysse, Le noble désir, 27.

314 • Notes

54. Paul Butel, Histoire des Antilles françaises: XVIIe–XXe siècle (Paris: Perrin, 2002), 24–29.

55. For all this, see Linon-Chipon, Gallia Orientalis, 30–53. 56. Marc Vigié, Les galériens du roi, 1661–1715 (Paris: Fayard, 1985), 20–22. 57. For Orientalist plays under Louis XIII and Louis XIV, see Michèle Longino,

Orientalism in French Classical Drama (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).

58. For this see Michèle Longino’s work on the play. 59. John B. Wolf, Louis XIV (New York: Norton, 1968). 60. For the infl uence of the dévots: Anthony Levi, Cardinal Richelieu and the Mak-

ing of France (London: Constable, 2000), 269–77. 61. Yves Salem, Un saint universel venu des Pays d’Oc: St. Vincent de Paul et

l’armée, ou, le combat pour la justice (Paris: Editions F.E.R., 1979). The best biography still remains Henry Bedford, The Life of St. Vincent de Paul (New York: D. & J. Sadlier & Co., 1858).

62. John R. Stephens, ed., Captured by Pirates: 22 Firsthand Accounts of Mur-der and Mayhem on the High Seas (New York: Fern Canyon Press, 1996), 932–33.

63. This story, whether apocryphal or not, is told over and over again in most com-pilations about the lives of the saints; if they are in calendar form the name day is July 19.

64. See the introduction by Nabil Matar to Piracy, Slavery and Redemption: Bar-bary Captivity Narratives from Early Modern England, ed. Daniel J. Vitkus (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001).

65. Dominique Carnoy, Représentations de l’Islam dans la France du XVIIieme siècle (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1998), 48.

66. Nabil Matar, Turks, Moors, and Englishmen in the Age of Discovery (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), 60–62.

67. Pierre Dan, Histoire de Barbarie . . . (Paris: P. Rocolet, 1637). 68. William Spencer, Algiers in the Age of the Corsairs (Norman: University of

Oklahoma Press, 1976). 69. Dan, Histoire de Barbarie, 316. 70. John B. Wolf, The Barbary Coast: Algiers under the Turks, 1500 to 1830 (New

York: Norton, 1979), 181–82. Also, Spencer, Algiers in the Age of the Corsairs, 125–26.

71. Robert C. Davis, Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters: White Slavery in the Medi-terranean, the Barbary Coast, and Italy, 1500–1800 (New York: Palgrave Mac-millan, 2003), 23.

72. Davis, Christian Slaves, 74–75. 73. Matar, Turks, Moors, and Englishmen, Chapter 2. 74. Ibid.; also Nebil Matar, Introduction to Piracy, Slavery, and Redemption: Bar-

bary Captivity Narratives from Early Modern England, ed. Daniel J. Vitkus

Notes • 315

(New York: Columbia University Press, 2001); Linda Colley, Captives: Britain, Empire and the World, 1600–1850 (New York: Anchor Books, 2004).

75. Davis, Christian Slaves, Chapter 1. 76. Colley, Captives, Introduction. 77. Colette Beaune, The Birth of an Ideology: Myths and Symbols of Nation in Late

Medieval France, trans. Susan Ross Huston and Fredric L. Cheyette (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), 97–125.

78. Cited in Beaune, Birth of an Ideology, 124. 79. Matar, in Vitkus, 4. 80. Matar, Turks, Moors, and Englishmen, Introduction. 81. Dan, Histoire de Barbarie. 82. Carnoy, Représentations de l’Islam, 28. 83. Ibid., 33. 84. William Oakley, “Ebenezer; or, A Small Monument of Great Mercy,” in Nabil

Matar, Piracy, Slavery, and Redemption: Barbary Captivity Narratives from Early Modern England, ed. Daniel J. Vitkus (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001). This account was composed by another hand, based on Oakley’s notes, which were printed in England decades later in 1675.

85. Jean Baptiste de La Faye, Etat des royaumes de Barbarie . . . (La Haye: M. Uyt-werf, 1704). Cited in Davis, Christian Slaves, who does a historical analysis.

86. Jean Baptiste de La Faye, Voyage pour la rédemption des captifs . . . (Paris: L.A. Sevestre et Pierre François Giffart, 1721).

87. Davis, Christian Slaves, xxvi. 88. Laugiers de Tassy, Histoire des états barbaresques qui exercent la piraterie

(Paris: Chaubert, Hérissant, 1757), vol. 2 of 12. 89. Davis, Christian Slaves, xxvi. 90. Stanley Lane-Poole, The Barbary Corsairs (London: Darf, 1984), 215. 91. Germain Mouette, Relation de la captivité du Sr. Moüette . . . (Paris: Cochart,

1683). This seems to have an Arabic–French dictionary of commercial terms. His account was translated into Arabic in 1990 and is read as a history of the region.

92. Jean-Baptiste Gramaye, Diarium rerum Argelae gestarum. French & Latin: Alger, XVIe–XVIIe siècle: Journal de Jean-Baptiste Gramaye, évêque d’Afrique, ed. Abd El Hadi Ben Mansour (Paris: Cerf, 1998).

93. Bartholomé Bennassar and Luciel Bennassar, Les chrétiens d’Allah: L’histoire extraordinaire des renégats, XVIe et XVIIe siècles (Paris: Perrin, 1989), 374.

94. João de Carvalho Mascarenhas, et al., Memoravel relaçam da perda da nao Con-ceiçam que os turcos queymàraõ à vista da barra de Lisboa; varios successos das pessoas, que nella cativàraõ. E descrippçaõ nova da cidade de Argel, & de seu governo; & cousas muy notaveis acontecidas nestes ultimos annos de 1621. atè 1626 (Lisbon: Antonio Alvares, 1627). Some other stories of captivity: Emanuel de Aranda, Relation de la captivité du sieur Emanuel d’Aranda . . . (Paris, 1657).

316 • Notes

95. João de Carvalho Mascarenhas, Esclave à Alger: Recit de captivité de João Mascarenhas (1621–1626), trans. Paul Teyssier (Paris: Editions Chandeigne, 1993), 74–75.

96. Ibid., 77. 97. Ibid., 75. 98. Matar, Piracy, Slavery, and Redemption, 11. 99. Colley, Captives, 15.

100. Davis, Christian Slaves, 126–27. 101. Bennassar and Bennassar, Les chrétiens d’Allah, 79. 102. Matar, in Vitkus, 5–7. 103. Carnoy, Représentations de l’Islam, 33. 104. Gillian Weiss, “Barbary Captivity and the French Idea of Freedom,” French

Historical Studies 28, no. 2 (Spring, 2005): 231–264. 105. Michel Baudier, Histoire generale de la religion des Turcs . . . (Paris: C.

Cramoisy, 1625), and many later editions. 106. Carnoy, Représentations de l’Islam, 33. 107. Michel Baudier, Histoire de la guerre de Flandre 1559–1609 (Paris: C.

Cramoisy, 1625). 108. Michel Baudier, Inventaire de l’histoire générale des Turcs ou sont descriptes

les guerres des Turcs, leurs conquestes . . . depuis l’an 1300 jusques en l’année 1640. Avec la mort, et belles actions de plusieurs chevaliers de Malte & autres gentilshommes & seigneurs françois, 4th ed. (Rouen: C. Malassis, 1641).

109. Michel Baudier, Histoire de la cour du roi de Chine (Paris: C. Cramoisy, 1626). 110. Alastair Hamilton and Francis Richard, André Du Ryer and Oriental Studies

in Seventeenth-Century France (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). 111. Hamilton and Richard, André Du Ryer, summary of his biography, 18–23. 112. Pacifi que de Provins, Relation dv voyage de Perse, faict par le r.p. Pacifi que

de Prouins . . . Ov̀ vovs verrez les remarqves particvlieres de la Terre Saincte & des lieux où se sont operez plusieurs miracles depuis la creation du monde, iusques à la mort & passion de nostre seigneur Iesus-Christ: Avssi le com-mandement dv grand seigneur sultan Murat, pour establir des conuents de capucins par tous les lieux de son empire. Ensemble le bon traictement qve le roy de Perse fi t au r.p. Pacifi que . . . et fi nalement la lettre & present qu’il luy donna pour apporter au roy treschrestien de France & de Nauarre Lovys. (Paris: Nicolas and Jean de la Coste, frères, 1631).

113. Duncan Nimmo, Reform and Division in the Medieval Franciscan Order, from Saint Francis to the Foundation of the Capuchins (Rome: Capuchin Histori-cal Institute, 1987).

114. Francis Richard, ed., Raphaël du Mans missionnaire en Perse au XVIIième Estat de la Perse. Publié avec Mémoire sur les Jésuites (circa 1662), Estat de la Perse, 1665, De Persia 1684, et la biographie et correspondance du père Raphaël du Mans (Paris: Société de l’histoire de l’Orient, 1995), 18.

Notes • 317

115. Hamilton and Richard, André Du Ryer, 25. 116. Ibid., 27. This is not the Compagnie du Levant created by Colbert in 1670, but

an earlier fl eeting incarnation of it. 117. Louis XIII to André du Ryer, January 7, 1626, manuscript cited in Ibid., annex

1, 10. 118. Hamilton and Richard, André Du Ryer, 29.

Chapter 4 Orientalism As Science: The Production of Knowledge under Louis XIV

1. Fraçois Bluche, Le journal secret (Paris: Editions du Rocher, 1998), 19. 2. Maurice Hamon and Caroline Mathieu, Saint-Gobain, 1665–1937: Une entre-

prise devant l’histoire (Paris: Fayard, Musée d’Orsay, 2006). 3. François Charpentier, L’établissement de la Compagnie française pour le com-

merce des Indes orientales, addressé a tous les Français (Paris: publisher un-known, 1664).

4. Jules Sottas, Histoire de la Compagnie royale des Indes Orientales 1664–1719 (Paris: La Découverte, 1994), 5, 9.

5. On French nationality see Peter Sahlins, Unnaturally French: Foreign Citizens in the Old Regime (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2004).

6. This episode is the object of Chapter 10 in Ina Baghdiantz McCabe, The Shah’s Silk for Europe’s Silver: The Eurasian Silk Trade of the Julfan Armenians in Safavid Iran and India (1590–1750) (Atlanta, Ga.: University of Pennsylvania and Scholar’s Press, 1999).

7. François Martin, Mémoires de François Martin 1665–1696, ed A. Martineau (Paris: Société d’éditions géographiques, maritimes et coloniales, 1931, 1932, 1934), 221–320.

8. Ibid., I, 288. 9. McCabe, The Shah’s Silk, 354–55, and Chapter 5 of this book. 10. The documents on the trial won by Marcara are at the Bibliothèque Nationale:

Bn. Manus. fr. 15529 and Bn. Manus. fr. 8972 have been summarized and com-pared to Martin’s memoirs in McCabe, The Shah’s Silk, 293–326.

11. Sottas, Histoire de la Compagnie, 418–466, and Glenn J. Ames, Colbert, Mer-cantilism, and the French Quest for Asian Trade (DeKalb: Northern Illinois Uni-versity Press, 1996).

12. See Marc Vigié, Dupleix (Paris: Fayard, 1993), and for the new company, see Philippe Haudrère, Les compagnies des Indes orientales: Trois siècles de rencon-tres entre Orientaux et Occidentaux, 1600–1858 (Paris: Desjonquères, 2006); and for sources and travel accounts on India see Philippe Le Tréguilly and Monique Morazé, eds., L’Inde et la France: Deux siècles d’histoire commune, XVIIe–XVIIIe siècles: Histoire, sources, bibliographie (Paris: CNRS Editions, 1995).

318 • Notes

13. The only biography of Bernier is Bernard Bachelot, Le grand voyage de François Bernier, médicin de la Faculté de Montpellier, 1620–1688 (Paris: Im-primerie Artistique Moderne A. Lapied, 1939).

14. François Bernier, The History of the Late Revolution of the Empire of the Great Mogol . . . (London: M. Pitt, 1671).

15. Introduction by Stephane Yarasimos to Jean Baptiste Tavernier, Les six voyages de Jean Baptiste Tavernier . . . (Paris: Maspero, 1981), 19–23.

16. Charles Joret, Jean-Baptiste Tavernier, écuyer, baron d’Aubonne d’après des documents nouveaux et inédits (Paris: E. Plon, Nourrit et Cie, 1886).

17. Dirk Van der Cruysse, Chardin le persan (Paris: Fayard, 1998), 30. 18. Alexandre-Olivier Exquemelin, Histoire des aventuriers fl ibustiers, ed. Réal

Ouellet (Paris: Presses de l’Université Paris-Sorbonne, 2005), 19. 19. The exact date of that fi rst departure is unclear, but Daniel Chardin had a 3,000

livres investment in the new French Company; see Van der Cruysse, Chardin le persan, 34–35.

20. Ibid., 54. 21. The Réponses à Monsieur Cabart de Villarmont was fi rst cited by John Em-

erson in his dissertation. John Emerson, Ex Occidente Lux (PhD dissertation, University of Cambridge, 1969).

22. Jean Chardin, Du bon usage du thé et des épices en Asie: Réponses à Monsieur Cabart de Villarmont, ed. Ina Baghdiantz McCabe (Paris: L’Inventaire, Actes Sud, 2002).

23. Van der Cruysse, Chardin le persan, 120–21. 24. De Villermont or Villarmont’s identity was established by Dirk Van der Cruysse. 25. “Voilà mes réponses au mémoire si je les avois faites en Perse, ou aux Jndes,

elles seroient plus curieuses, et plus satisfaisantes, mais ie n’en ay jamais eu le loisir. . . . A bord d’un vaisseau de la compagnie des I. O. de France nommé le President le 6 mars à 21 degré de latitude internationale.”

26. E. M. Collingham, Imperial Bodies (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2001) explores the nineteenth century; Chardin offers earlier testimony that life in India drasti-cally changed the habits of the Europeans residing there.

27. “L’herbe qu’ils nomment dans les Indes Manga est ce notre chanvre,” Chardin, Du bon usage du thé, 172.

28. Jean Chardin, Journal du Voyage du Chevalier Chardin en Perse . . . (London: Moses Pitt, 1686).

29. Paul Butel, Histoire du thé (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1997). 30. Roy Porter, Bodies Politic: Disease, Death and Doctors in Britain 1650–1900

(Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2001). 31. For details of this see the Introduction in McCabe, The Shah’s Silk, 1–60. 32. De Orta’s work is mentioned in Anna Pavord, The Naming of Names: The

Search for Order in the World of Plants (New York: Bloomsbury, 2005), 320.

Notes • 319

33. Ina Baghdiantz McCabe, Du bon usage du thé et des épices en Asie: Responses à monsieur Cabart de Villarmont ed. Jean Chardin (Paris: Inventaire, 2002), 176.

34. Carnoy still believes Charpentier wrote for Chardin. Dominique Carnoy, Repré-sentations de l’Islam dans la France du XVIIieme siècle (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1998), 168.

35. See Chapter 10. 36. Van der Cruysse, Chardin le persan, 273. 37. Dictionary of Mapmakers, see “Tavernier,” in Tooley’s Dictionary of Mapmak-

ers, ed. R.V. Tooley, Josephine French, Valerie Scott, and Mary Alice Lowen-thal (Tring, Hertsfordshire, England: Map Collector Publications in association with Richard Arkway, 1994–2004), 611.

38. Caroline Weber, Queen of Fashion: What Marie Antoinette Wore to the Revolu-tion (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 2006), 231.

39. Pierre Bayle, “Tavernier,” in Dictionaire historique et critique par Monsieur Bayle, à Totterdam avec privilège 1697 (Rotterdam: R. Leers, 1697), vol. 4, 324.

40. Jean Baptiste Tavernier, Les six voyages . . . (Paris: Chez Gervais Clouzier et Claude Barbin, 1676).

41. Yarasimos, Introduction to Tavernier, Les six voyages, 24. 42. Bayle, Dictionnaire historique, IV: 324–25. 43. Francis Richard, ed., Raphaël du Mans missionnaire en Perse au XVIIième Estat

de la Perse. Publié avec Mémoire sur les Jésuites (circa 1662), Estat de la Perse, 1665, De Persia 1684, et la biographie et correspondance du père Raphaël du Mans (Paris: Société de l’histoire de l’Orient, 1995). See vol. 1, Introduction.

44. Jean Chardin, Voyages du Chevalier Chardin, en Perse, et autres lieux de l’Orient . . ., I: 324.

45. Van der Cruysse, Chardin le persan, 153. 46. There was a ten-day difference between the calendars used in France and En-

gland during this period. In keeping with Chardin’s itinerary I give both dates. 47. There is a letter that confi rms their intimacy as it is addressed to Mrs. Robert

Boyle kept at the Royal Society, Boyle letters 2.11, published by Olivier Bon-nerot, “Perspectives nouvelles sur Jean Chardin,” Traveaux de Linguistique et de Literature, no. X/2 (1972): 84–85.

48. Chardin is mentioned several times in Evelyn’s Diary. John Evelyn, Diary (London: Oxford University Press, 1959), 762–63 and 768–69.

49. Letter to Samuel Pepys (London June 30, 1687). 50. Van der Cruysse, Chardin le persan, 293. 51. Katie Whitaker, “The Culture of Curiosity,” in Cultures of Natural History, ed.

N. Jardine, J. A. Secord, and E. C. Spary (Cambridge and New York: Cam-bridge University Press, 1996), 75.

52. Ibid., 81. 53. Ibid., 86.

320 • Notes

54. Seethe preface to Jean Chardin, Voyages du Chevalier Chardin, en Perse, et autres lieux de l’Orient: enrichis de Figures en Taille-douce, qui représentent les Antiquités et les choses remarquables du Païs. Nouvelle édition, augmentée du Couronnement de Soliman III & d’un grand nombre de Passages tirés du Manuscrit de l’Auteur qui ne se trouvent point dans les Editons précédentes (Amsterdam: La Compagnie, 1735).

55. For this see Mary Baine Campbell, Wonder and Science: Imagining Worlds in Early Modern Europe (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1999), introduc-tion and 16.

56. Campbell, Wonder and Science, 284–88. 57. “Curiosité,” in Le Dictionnaire de l’Academie Française (Paris: Jean Baptiste

Coignard, 1694). 58. Aimar de Ranconet, Thresor de la langve francoyse, tant ancienne que mod-

erne. Av qvel entre avtres choses sont les mots propres de marine, venerie, & faulconnerie, cy-deuant ramassez par Aimar de Ranconnet. . . . Revev et avg-menté en ceste derniere impression de plvs de la moitie; par Iean Nicot . . . Avec vne grammaire francoyse et latine, & le recueil des vieux prouerbes de la France. Ensemble le Nomenclator de Iunius, mits par ordre alphabetic, & creu d’vne table particuliere de toutes les dictions (Paris: D. Dovcevr, 1606; Paris: A. et Je Picard, 1960).

59. “Curieux, [curi]euse. adj. Qui a beaucoup d’envie & de soin d’apprendre, de voir, de posseder des choses nouvelles, rares, excellentes & c. Fort curieux. extremement curieux.”

“Curieux de sçavoir. curieux de voir. il veut tout voir, tout sçavoir, il est cu-rieux. il est curieux de fl eurs, de tulipes. curieux de nouvelles. curieux de pein-tures, de tableaux, de medailles. curieux de livres, de cartes. elles est curieuse en habits, curieuse en linge.”

“Curieux, se dit aussi Des choses, & signifi e, Rare, nouveau, extraordinaire, excellent dans son genre. Cette nouvelle est curieuse. Cette remarque est curieuse. un bijou curieux. On dit, qu’Un livre est curieux, qu’un cabinet est curieux, pour dire, qu’Un livre, qu’un cabinet est rempli de choses rares & curieuses.” Le Dic-tionnaire de l’Academie Française, 1st ed. (Paris: Jean Baptiste Coignard, 1694).

See also: Paula Findlen, Possessing Nature: Museums, Collecting, and Sci-entifi c Culture in Early Modern Italy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994); and Rosalind Wolff Purcell and Stephen Jay Gould, Finders, Keepers, Eight Collectors (New York Norton, 1992).

60. Paul Hazard, La crise de la conscience européene (Paris: Fayard, 1961), 17. 61. José de Acosta cited in Anthony Grafton, April Shelford, and Nancy Siraisi,

New Worlds, Ancient Texts: The Power of Tradition and the Shock of Discovery (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap, 1992), 1.

62. Anonymous, Relation de divers voyages curieux qui n’ont point ete pub-liés qu’on a traduit ou tiré des originaux des voyageurs français, espagnols,

Notes • 321

allemands, portuguais, anglais, hollandais, persans, arabes et autres orientaux, le tout enrichi de fi gure de plantes non décrites, d’animaux inconnus a l’Europe et de cartes geographiques (Paris: Louis Billaine, 1663–72).

63. Roger Hahn, The Anatomy of a Scientifi c Institution: The Paris Academy of Sci-ences 1666–1683 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971), 8.

64. François Bluche, Louis XIV, trans. Mark Greengrass (New York: Franklin Watts, 1986); Bluche, Le journal secret, 56.

65. Hahn, The Anatomy of a Scientifi c Institution, 30. 66. See epilogue in this book and the last chapter of Justin Stagl, A History of Cu-

riosity: The Theory of Travel, 1550–1800 (Chur, Switzerland: Harwood Aca-demic Publishers, 1995).

67. Hahn, The Anatomy of a Scientifi c Institution, 5–21. 68. Alice Stroup, A Company of Scientists: Botany, Patronage and Community at

the Seventeenth-Century Parisian Royal Academy of Sciences (Berkeley: Uni-versity of California Press, 1990), 39.

69. Alice Stroup, Royal Funding of the Parisian Académie Royale des Sciences during the 1690s (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1987).

70. Stroup, A Company of Scientists, demonstrates this despite the fact that le Clerc’s well-known engravings seem to prove the contrary.

71. Ibid., 13 and 43. 72. Ibid., 13. 73. All of this is a summary of Stroup’s introduction. 74. Stroup, A Company of Scientists, 39. 75. Ibid., 40–41. 76. Ibid., 293, n. 25. 77. Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, Le mendiant et le professeur (Paris: Fayard, 1995). 78. Findlen, “Courting Nature,” in Cultures of Natural History, N. Jardine, J. A. Se-

cord, and E. C. Spary, eds. (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 57–90.

79. Patrick Mauries, Cabinets of Curiosities (New York: Thames & Hudson, 2002), preface.

80. Pamela H. Smith and Paula Findlen, eds., Merchants and Marvels: Commerce, Science, and Art in Early Modern Europe (New York: Routledge, 2002).

81. Findlen, “Courting Nature,” 58–59. 82. Olivier de Serres, Le théâtre d’agriculture et mesnage des champs (Paris: Jamet

Métayer, 1600; reprint: Aix: Actes Sud, 2001), 912. 83. Ibid., 913–43. 84. Harold Cook, “Physicians and Natural History,” in Cultures of Natural His-

tory, N. Jardine, J. A. Secord, and E. C. Spary, eds. (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 102.

85. For details on this see: Jacques Mathieu, Le premier livre de plantes du Canada:Les enfants des bois du Canada au jardin du roi à Paris en 1635 recherche et

322 • Notes

rédaction; traduction du livre de Cornuty, André Daviault (Sainte-Foy, Qué-bec: Presses de l’Université Laval, 1998).

86. Mary Louise Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation (New York: Routledge, 1992).

87. Anna Pavord, The Tulip (London: Bloomsbury distributed by St. Martin’s Press, 1999).

88. Anna Pavord, The Naming of Names (New York: Bloomsbury, 2005), 319. 89. Joseph Pitton de Tournefort, Relation d’un voyage du Levant, . . . (Lyon: Anis-

son et Posuel, 1717). 90. Tournefort, Relation d’un voyage du Levant; introduction cited by Yarsimos

in 1982 edition (Paris: Le découverte), 51. 91. Kapil Raj, “Surgeons, Fakirs, Merchants and Crafts People: Making

l’Empereur’s Jardin in Early Modern South Asia,” in Colonial Botany: Science, Commerce, and Politics in the Early Modern World, eds. Londa Schiebinger and Claudia Swan (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005), 253–70.

92. Elemans botanique des plantes du Jadin de Lorixa leur vertu et qualité, tans connus que celles qui ne le sont pas avec leur fl eur fruis et grainne traduit de louria en frances, L’Empereur to Delavigne, January 20, 1699, cited in Raj, “Surgeons, Fakirs,” 254.

93. Ibid., 257. 94. Ibid., 257. 95. Ibid., 265–67. 96. Ibid., 267. 97. Pratt, Imperial Eyes, 34–35. 98. Ingrid D. Rowland, The Ecstatic Journey: Athanasius Kircher in Baroque

Rome (Chicago: University of Chicago Libray, 2000), 87. 99. Sydney H. Aufrère, La momie et la tempête : Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc

et la curiosité égyptienne en Provence au début du XVIIe siècle (Avignon : Editions A. Barthélemy, 1990), 28–77, 325–26.

100. Aufrère, 275–78. 101. For the theoretical study of the reception of the exotic in the postcolonial

period, see Frederick N. Bohrer, Orientalism and Visual Culture: Imagin-ing Mesopotamia in Nineteenth Century Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003) and for both theory and practice in France, Andrew McClellan, Inventing the Louvre : Art, Politics, and the Origins of the Mod-ern Museum in Eighteenth-Century Paris (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999).

102. On the Folklore of the Revolution see the many works of Mona Ozouf the earliest: Mona Ozouf, La fête révolutionnaire, 1789–1799 (Paris: Gallimard, 1976), and also Festivals and the French Revolution (Cambridge, Mass.: Har-vard University Press, 1988).

Notes • 323

103. La Chine d’Athanase Kirchere . . .illustrée de plusieurs monuments tant sacrés que profanes, et de quantité de recherchés de la nature et de l’art. A quoy on à adjousté de nouveau les questions curieuses que le serenissime grand duc de Toscane a fait dépuis peu au P. Jean Grubere touchant ce grand empire. Avec un dictionnaire chinois & françois, lequel est tres-rare, & qui n’a pas encores paru au jour, trans. F. S. Dalquié (Amsterdam: J. Jansson à Waesberge & les heritiers d’Elizée Weyeratraet, 1670).

104. The Padroado was a treaty between the Vatican and the kingdoms of Portugal and Spain. The word as used here denotes the political and religious realm of the Portuguese Empire in the world and its Catholic mission in India.

105. Isabelle Landry-Deron, “Les mathématiciens envoyés en Chine par Louis XIV en 1685,” Archive for History of Exact Sciences 55 (2001): 423–63.

106. Dirk Van der Cruysse, Louis XIV et le Siam (Paris: Fayard, 1991), is one of many works.

107. Donald Lach, Asia in the Making of Europe (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), vol. 3, book I, 219–49.

108. Rhodes cited in Ibid., 230. 109. Despite many errors about Gallicanism in books, the pope was still recognized

as head of the Church in France despite Louis’s ambitions to overshadow his importance.

110. Père d’Orléans, Histoire de M. Constance . . . (Paris: Daniel Horthemers, 1690). 111. Van der Cruysse, Louis XIV et le Siam, 221–33. 112. Ibid., 352. 113. François-Timoléon de Choisy, Journal du voyage de Siam, ed. Dirk Van der

Cruysse (Paris: Fayard, 1995). 114. Landry-Deron, “Les mathématiciens envoyés en Chine,” 431. 115. See the commemorative album: Pierre Labrousse, Langues’O 1795–1995: Deux

cents ans d’histoire de l’école des langues orientales (Paris: Hervas, 1995), 21–22.

116. Jean Chardin, Voyages du Chevalier Chardin . . . (Amsterdam: La Compagnie, 1735), vol. 1, 42–43.

117. Ibid., vol. 1, 20–28. 118. Anahid Ter Minassian, “Les Arméniens du Roi de France,” in Istanbul et les

langues orientales, ed. Frederique Hitzel (Paris: Harmattan, 1995), 217–19. For a collection of good articles see Edhem Eldem, Première rencontre in-ternationale sur l’empire ottoman et la Turquie moderne: Institut national des langues et civilisations orientales, presented at Maison des sciences de l’homme, January 18–22, 1985 (Istanbul: Isis, 1991). A primary source has more details on the enfants de langues in the Ottoman Empire, a manu-script written by an unidentifi ed French ambassador, and in an unidentifi ed hand, concerning commerce between France and the Ottoman Empire, in-cluding the expenses of interpreters, as well as commercial and diplomatic

324 • Notes

issues: Mélanges sur la Turquie: manuscript, [ca. 1723], MS Fr 62. Houghton Library, Harvard University.

119. See bibliography of Primary Sources for these books. On Galland see his intel-lectual biographies: Antoine Galland: Sa vie et son oeuvre (Paris: A. G. Nizet, 1964), and Raymond Schwab, L’auteur des Mille et une nuits: Vie d’Antoine Galland (Paris: Mercure de France, 1964).

120. The best study on the translation and its author is in François Pétis de La Croix, Les mille et un jours: Contes persans, ed. Paul Sebag (Paris: Bourgeois, 1980), 9.

121. Antoine Galland, Journal d’Antoine Galland pendant son séjour à Constanti-nople (1672–73) II, ed. Charles Schefer (Paris: Ernest Leroux, 1881), Appen-dix (letter from Colbert to Galland), 275.

122. Mémoire pour Monsieur de Monceaux . . . B.N. mss A R 67. 123. For more on the Chevalier d’Arvieux see Michèle Longino, Orientalism in Fre-

nch Classical Drama (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 47–48. 124. Antoine Galland, Journal, Schaefer’s introduction. 125. Ibid. 126. Paul Lucas, Voyage du sieur Paul Lucas dans le Levant: Juin 1699-juillet

1703, introduction et notes de Henri Duranton (Saint-Etienne: Publications de l’Université de Saint-Etienne, 1998). His second and third trip were also pub-lished in the same series at the same press in 2002 and 2004.

127. See the last pages of the third volume of his travels published in 2004. 128. Schwab, L’auteur des Mille et une nuits, 98. 129. Schwab, L’auteur des Mille et une nuits, 98–140. 130. Antoine Galland, Trois lettres touchant la critique de Monsieur Guillet, sur le

voyage en Grèce de Jacob Spon, published in Georges Guillet de Saint-Georges, Lettres ecrites sur une dissertation d’un voyage de Grece (Paris: Estienne Michalle, 1679).

131. Schwab, L’auteur des Mille et une nuits, 62–72. 132. Barthélemy Carré, Le courrier du roi en Orient: Relations de deux voyages en

Perse et en Inde, 1668–1674, ed. Dirk Van der Cruysse (Paris: Fayard, 2005). 133. Schwab, L’auteur des Mille et une nuits, 152. 134. Ibid., 149. Féret and Deslandes will be formed by him. 135. Isabelle Turcan, “Référence bibliographiques etemprunts aux textes de rel ation

de voyages dans les dictionaries de l’ancien régime,” in Relations savantes, ed. Sophie Linon-Chipon and Daniela Vaj (Paris: Presses de l’Université Paris-Sorbonne, 2006), 90–91.

Chapter 5 The Turks and the “Other” Within: The Huguenots

1. The word Huguenot was of Swiss origin, eiguenot, and dates to when it denoted the Swiss league of 1520 against a bishop sent by the Duke of Savoy. It was

Notes • 325

used in France since 1560. François Bluche, ed., Dictionnaire du Grand Siècle (Paris: Arthème Fayard, 1990), 738.

2. A dragonnade was common during the religious wars when soldiers occupied homes by force, took and confi scated belongings, brutalized, and killed.

3. Both cited in Frederic Delforge, “Révocation de l’édit de Nantes,” in Bluche, Dictionnaire du Grand Siècle, 1333. See also Bertrand Van Ruymbeke and Randy J. Sparks, Memory and Identity: The Huguenots in France and the At-lantic Diaspora (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2003).

4. The most Christian Turk: or, a view of the Life and Bloody Reign of Lewis XIV. Present King of France (London: Printed in Fleetstreet for Henry Rhodes, 1690).

5. Jonathan Irvine Israel, The Dutch Republic: Its Rise, Greatness, and Fall, 1477–1806 (Oxford: Clarendon Press; New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 629.

6. Faruk Bilici, Louis XIV et son projet de conquête d’Istanbul (Ankara: Société d’histoire turque, 2004), is a fascinating study published at a moment of discom-fort in Franco-Turkish relations, and the author sees these European leagues, especially the fi rst proposed by Sully, as prophetic of the discourse held by the EU today. Just as Postel’s travel account was published in 1999 in a moment of warm relations to celebrate the history of a long friendship with France, publi-cations still refl ect the sentiments between the two countries.

7. Antoine Aubery, De la preeminence de nos roys . . . (Paris: Michel Soly, 1649). Editions in 1650 and 1667 are those I could fi nd but there are more.

8. Alexandre Y. Haran, Le lys et le globe: Messianisme dynastique et rêve im-périal en France à l’aube des temps modernes (Seyssel (Ain): Champ Vallon, 2000).

9. Jacques de Cassan, La recherche des droicts du roy . . . (Paris: Francois Pomeray, 1632).

10. For this see Bilici, Louis XIV, 53. 11. Some sources make clear he failed to pay the promised sum for them, and later

the title was sold by Andreas Paleologus to the Ottomans. 12. Charles Du Fresne Du Cange, Histoire de l’empire de Constantinople . . . (Paris:

De l’Imprimerie royale, 1657). 13. Bilici, Louis XIV, 54. 14. Francis Richard, ed., Raphaël du Mans missionnaire en Perse au XVIIième

Estat de la Perse. Publié avec Mémoire sur les Jésuites (circa 1662), Estat de la Perse, 1665, De Persia 1684, et la biographie et correspondance du père Raphaël du Mans (Paris: Société de l’histoire de l’Orient, 1995). See volume one, introduction.

15. Benoist Pierre, “Le père Joseph, l’empire Ottoman et la Méditerranée au début du XVII° siècle,” Cahiers de la Méditerranée 71, Crises, confl its et guerres

326 • Notes

en Méditerranée (Tome 2). Posted online May 13, 2006: http://cdlm.revues.org/document968.html.

16. Bilici, Louis XIV, 186. 17. Bilici, Louis XIV, 105–6. 18. The archives of the Bibiothèque Nationale contains records of this episode; see

Manus. Fr. n. a. 7487 and n.a. 7490. 19. Antoine Galland, Histoire de l’esclavage d’un marchand de la ville de Cassis,

à Tunis (Paris: Editions la Bibliothèque, 1993), preface. 20. Galland, “Avertissement du Rédacteur,” in Histoire de l’esclavage. 21. Aristocratic women were carried in a chair, a chaise, encased in a wooden box

mounted on two long handles carried by two carriers at the front and back of the chaise.

22. Galland, Histoire de l’esclavage, 134. 23. Catherine Guénot and Nadia Vásquez, eds., Introduction, in Galland, Histoire

de l’esclavage, 12. 24. Dictionnaire de l’Académie française, 1st ed. (Paris: Jean Baptiste Coignard,

1694), 385. 25. Ibid. “Esclavage: s. m. L’s se prononce. Estat, condition d’un esclave. Rude,

dur, cruel, perpetuel esclavage. il estoit en esclavage en Turquie. il aima mieux mourir que de tomber en esclavage.”

26. Lucette Valensi, “Esclaves Chrétiens et esclaves noires à Tunis au XVIIè siècle,” Annales 22 (1967), and Lucette Valensi and Simon Simone Delesalle, “Le mot nègre dans les dictionnaires français de l’ancien régime: Histoire et lexigra-phie,” Langue francaise 15 (1972): 82.

27. There is no place here to speak of the most visible aspect, literature. Despite the many Christians held on the Barbary coast, many Europeans still only knew the world of Barbary slavery through literature. This was yet another way, and per-haps the most effective way to portray Muslim masters and Christian slaves. The most famous of all Spanish captives, Miguel de Cervantes, nicknamed “el Manco de Lepanto” after he was maimed at the battle of Lepanto, spent fi ve years as a slave. The victory of the Catholic league in 1571 at this battle marks the turning point, as the Turks no longer seemed invincible. Cervantes’s fi rst work was a play, The Traffi c of Algiers (1580), based on his experiences as a captive. Cervantes at-tempted to make Spain aware of the slave trade and described his own suffering.

28. Jean Bodin, Les six livres de la république (Paris: Jacques du Puys, 1577), book I, 98; David Brion Davis, The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988).

29. Alain Blondy, “La course en Mediterrannée: Les discours sur la captivité et la servitude,” in Les tyrans de la mer: Pirates, corsaires et fl ibustiers, eds. Sylvie Requemora and Sophie Linon-Chipon (Paris: Presses de l’Université de Paris-Sorbonne, 2002), 43–57.

30. Blondy, “La course en Mediterrannée, 47.

Notes • 327

31. Saint Vincent de Paul has been discussed in more depth in Chapter 4. 32. Charles George Herbman et al., The Catholic Encyclopedia (New York: The

Encyclopedic Press, 1913); see “St. Vincent de Paul.” 33. The most famous Frenchman who spent time as a slave on the Barbary coast

was Saint Vincent de Paul (1580–1660), a captive of Turkish corsairs. Despite and perhaps because of this experience, he devoted his life to caring for the Protestant and Turkish galley slaves held on French galleys. He also hoped to convert them.

34. For the fate of the Protestants see a reedited account: Michel Bonnefoy, Jean Artigues: Cévenol (1630–1701): Galérien pour la foi: Histoire des galériens protestants de la Vallée Longue du Gardon d’Alès en Cévennes (Charly, France: M. Bonnefoy, 1996).

35. For life on the galleys and their hierarchy and politics see André Zysberg, Les galériens: Vies et destins de 60 000 forçats sur les galères de France 1680–1748 (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1987).

36. Marc Vigié, Les galériens du Roi 1661–1715 (Paris: Fayard, 1985), 178–79. 37. Ibid. 38. Vigié, Les galériens du Roi, 214–15. 39. Louis Abelly, La vie du venerable serviteur de Dieu Vincent de Paul . . . (Paris:

Florentin Lambert, 1664), 400–412. 40. Jean-Noël Biraben, Les hommes et la peste en France et dans les pays eu-

ropéens et méditerranéens (Paris: Mouton, 1975–1976), and Karl Friedrich Meyer, Disinfected Mail: Historical Review and Tentative Listing of Cachets, Handstamp Markings, Wax Seals, Wafer Seals and Manuscript Certifi cations Alphabetically Arranged According to Countries (Holton, Kans.: Gossip Print-ery, 1962), 130–32.

41. Vigié, Les galériens du Roi, 215. 42. For the situation of the Protestants in the galley see a work written in 1708: Jean

François Bion, Relation des tourments qu’on fait souffrir aux Protestants qui sont sur les galères de France (Paris: Grassart, 1881).

43. Ibid., 89. 44. N. Marine, B6 40, fo.103 lettre du 23 mars 1707. 45. Vigié, Les galériens du Roi, 230. 46. Ibid. 47. Ibid. 48. Simon Antoine Charles Dagues de Clairfontaine, Eloge historique d’Abraham

Duquêne, lieutenant général des armées navales de France (Paris: Nyon, Père, 1766), Introduction.

49. Michel Vergé-Franceschi, Abraham Duquesne: Huguenot et marin du roi (Paris: France-Empire, 1992), 13.

50. Ibid., 206. 51. Ibid., 210–21.

328 • Notes

52. Collectif, “La guerre de course en France de Louis XIV à Napoléon 1er,” Col-loque International Marine et technique au XIXe siècle, Paris, Ecole militaire, juin 1987; Marine et technique au XIXe siècle (Vincennes: Service Historique de la Marine, 1988), 91–140.

53. For this issue and its diffi culties see all the defi nitions in dictionaries explored by Isabelle Turcan, “Les corsairs et fi libustiers de la lexographie française,” in Les tyrans de la mer: Pirates, corsaires et fl ibustiers, eds. Sophie Linon-Chipon and Sylvia Requemora (Paris: Presses de l’Université de Paris-Sorbonne, 2002), 13–42.

54. On Doublet his own testimony is excellent. Yvon le Cozannet and Gérard Du-cable, Le corsaire du Roi-Soleil: Jean Doublet (Monaco: Editions du Rocher, 1990), and better still is the latest edition: Noël Le Coutour, ed., Le Honfl eurais aux sept naufrages: Jean Doublet, 1655–1728: Texte authentique de ses mémoires, simplement remis en français contemporain (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1996).

55. Daniel Dessert, La Royale: Vaisseaux et marins du Roi-Soleil (Paris: Fayard, 1996), 186, 220–22, 279.

56. Armel de Wismes, Jean Bart et la guerre de course (Paris: Collection Archives, Julliard, 1965), 61; and also see Armel de Wismes, Pirates et corsaires (Paris: Editions France-Empire,1999).

57. Villier is looking at Mémoires de Doublet, correspondance Marine, sous-série B3 et Conseil du Roi, Série E, Archives Nationales et Archives municipales de Dunkerque.

58. Denise Turrel, Le blanc de France: La construction des signes identitaires pen-dant les guerres de religion (1562–1629) (Genève: Droz, 2005) and also Van Ruymbeke and Sparks, Memory and Identity.

59. Paul Butel, Histoire des Antilles Françaises XVII–XX (Paris: Perrin, 2002), 24–31.

60. Ibid., 27. 61. Ibid., 28. 62. Ibid., 29–50. 63. Ibid., 51–59. 64. Ibid., 86–88. 65. Louis XIV, Code noir ou receuil d’édits, declarations et arrest concernant les

esclaves nègres de l’Amerique (Paris: Libraires Associez, 1685). 66. Louis XIV, 20 January 1685. Francois Bluche, Le journal secret de Louis XIV

(Paris: Editions de Rocher, 1998), 149. 67. Butel, Histoire des Antilles Françaises, 76. 68. See the excellent analysis by Thomas Kaiser, “The Evil Empire? The Debate on

Turkish Despotism in the Eighteenth-Century French Political Culture,” Jour-nal of the History of Ideas 72, no. 1 (March 2000): 6–34.

69. Charles Frostin, Les révoltes blanches à Saint-Domingue aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles: Haïti avant 1789 (Paris: l’École, 1975).

Notes • 329

70. Richard S. Dunn, Sugar and Slaves: The Rise of the Planter Class in the En-glish West Indies, 1624–1713 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1972), 202–7.

71. Frostin, Les révoltes blanches, 78. 72. Charles R. Boxer, The Dutch Seaborne Empire, 1600–1800 (New York: Knopf,

1965). More recently, the many works of Jonathan Israel on Jewish networks, especially Diasporas within a Diaspora: Jews, Crypto-Jews, and the World of Maritime Empires, 1540–1740 (Boston: Brill, 2002).

73. Gabriel Debien, “Les engagés pour les Antilles (1634–1715),” Revue d’Histoire des Colonies 38 (1951): 7–279.

Chapter 6 Coffee and Orientalism in France

1. In a letter dated December 15, 1696. Antoine Galland, De l’origine et du progrès du café . . . (Caën, 1699; reprint, Paris: L’écrivain voyageur, 1992), 12, 76.

2. William Harrison Ukers, All about Coffee (New York: The Tea and Coffee Trade Journal Company, 1935), 8.

3. Jean de Thévenot, Relation d’un voyage fait au Levant, . . . (Paris: L. Billaine, 1665–1684).

4. André Raymond, “A Divided Sea: The Cairo Coffee Trade in the Red Sea dur-ing the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,” in Modernity and Culture: From the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean, ed. L. Fawaz, C. A. Bayly, and R. Ilbert (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002).

5. Carl Vanloo, La sultane prenant le café, Ermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg. 6. See Chapter 9 in this book on carrousel and oriental fashions and disguises. 7. This work has been done for colonial encounters, but this is not the case for

coffee and France, which makes the question even more interesting and com-plex to solve. Marshall Sahlins coined the term “commodity indigenization” to demonstrate that non-Western cultures did not passively accept European goods but incorporated them after transforming them to something more fa-miliar, applying their own terms, in ways that were consistent with their cul-tures: Marshall Sahlins, “Cosmologies of Capitalism: The Trans-Pacifi c Sector of ‘the World-System,’ ” Proceedings of the British Academy 74 (1988): 1–51. Jordan Goodman uses Sahlins’s model to help account for tobacco’s success in Europe: Jordan Goodman, Tobacco in History: The Cultures of Dependence (London: Routledge, 1994), 41–42.

8. For the social aspects of taste formation see Wolfgang Schivelbusch, Tastes of Paradise: A Social History of Spices, Stimulants, and Intoxicants (New York: Pantheon Books, 1992), and Bianca Maria Rinaldi, The “Chinese Garden in

330 • Notes

Good Taste”: Jesuits and Europe’s Knowledge of Chinese Flora and Art of the Garden in the 17th and 18th Centuries (Munich: Meidenbauer, 2006).

9. Michel Tuchscherer, “Coffee in the Red Sea Area from the Sixteenth to the Nineteenth Century,” in The Global Coffee Economy in Africa, Asia and Latin America, 1500–1989, ed. Gervase Clarence-Smith and Steven Topik (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 51–52.

10. For a discussion of civil society and the coffee house in Istanbul and Isfahan, see Said Anjomand, “Coffeehouses, Guilds and Oriental Despotism: Govern-ment and Civil Society in late-17th-early 18th Century Istanbul and Isfahan, and As Seen from Paris and London,” European Journal of Sociology 45, no. 1 (2004): 23–42.

11. Nicolas de Blégny, Le bon usage du thé du caffé et du chocolat . . . (Paris: Esti-enne Michallet, 1687). Also a Lyon edition the same year.

12. Fernand Braudel, Civilization materielle, économie et capitalisme: XVe–XVIIIe siècle (Paris: A. Colin, 1979), 13.

13. One such work on the properties of coffee: François Aignan, Le preste méde-cin; . . . (Paris: Chez Laurent d’Houry, 1696).

14. Sabine Coron, Livres en bouche: Cinq siècles d’art culinaire français, du qua-torzième au dix-huitième siècle (Paris: Bibliothèque nationale de France, Her-mann, 2001). This volume lists a few titles but does not contain a study of them, as the books were part of an exhibit.

15. For views on Dufour’s solid scientifi c knowledge of coffee see the passage on tea in Jean Chardin, Voyages du Chevalier Chardin, . . . (Amsterdam: De la Compagnie, 1735) or the opinions of Jean de La Roque in his work on coffee cited later.

16. As discussed earlier in the book, to avoid confusion the word orientalist is mostly used here to refer to the study of the languages and cultures of the Ori-ent, and when the post-1978 defi nition is used Saïd is clearly credited.

17. It was a reprint from Lyon: Jean Girin and B. Riviere, 1685. The earlier treatise is: Philippe Sylvestre Dufour, De l’usage du caphé, du thé, et du chocolate (Lyon: Jean Girin & Barthelemy Rivière, 1671).

18. Antoine Galland, De l’origine et du progrès du café (Paris: La Bibliothèque, 1992), 5–11.

19. See the preface of a 1992 reprint of Galland’s translation: De l’origine et du progrès du café (Caen: 1699; reprint: Paris: L’écrivan voyageur, 1992).

20. “Je l’ai obtenu par la bonté de M. l’abbé de Louvois, qui se fait un plaisir d’obliger tout le monde, et particulièrement les gens de lettres, et j’y ai trouvé ce que je cherchais. Ainsi, Monsieur, vous autres plus que vous n’avez de-mandé: car vous n’aurez pas seulement l’origine du café à Constantinople, mais encore la première origine avant qu’il n’y fut introduit, et son progrès jusqu’à présent.” Ibid., 14.

Notes • 331

21. Ralph Hattox, Coffee and Coffeehouses: The Origins of a Social Beverage in the Medieval Near East (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1985).

22. Galland, De l’origine, 30–31. 23. For Jaziri’s version of the origins of coffee see: Hattox, Coffee and Coffeehouses, 18. 24. Ibid., 14. 25. Bibiothèque Nationale Ms. arabe no. 4590 al-Jaziri, “Abd al-Qadir ibn Muham-

mad al Ansari al Hanbali ‘Umdat al al-sawfa fi hill al-qawha.” 26. Hattox, Coffee and Coffeehouses, 30–37. 27. This is all faithfully translated in Galland, De l’origine (1992), 42–43. 28. Hattox, Coffee and Coffeehouses, 42–43. 29. Ibid., 40. 30. Summary of Chapter 3 in Ibid. 31. Ibid., 5. 32. Edward Pocoke, The Nature of the drink Kahue, or Coffee, and the beery of

which it is made . . . Described by an Arab Phisitian (Oxford: Hall, 1659). 33. G. J. Toomer, Eastern Wisdom and Learning: The Study of Arabic in Seven-

teenth Century England (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), 166 and n. 86. 34. Pocoke, cited in Ibid., 166. 35. According to Jean de La Roque, the fi rst European who brought the news is

Prosper Alpin, the famous doctor of Padua and great botanist. Jean de la Roque, Voyage de l’Arabie heureuse . . . (Paris: A. Cailleau, 1716), 256.

36. Ibid., 316–17. 37. This is true in gastronomy in general; see L.S.R., Pierre de Lune, Audigier,

L’art de la cuisine française au XVIIe siècle (Paris: Payot, 1995). 38. La Roque, Voyage de l’Arabie heureuse, 260. It seems that it was up to France to

provide something more precise and more accomplished on the subject. One cannot, in effect, say anything more methodological and more in depth than the treatise on coffee by Sylvester du Four, from Monosque in Provence, a simple merchant from Lyon.

39. La Roque, Voyage de l’Arabie heureuse, 262. 40. For Patin the best work is unpublished: Laure Jestaz, “Edition critique de lettres

de Guy Patin” (Thesis, l’Ecole des Chartes, 2001). 41. Most works on chocolate argue for a much later date. 42. Coron, Livres en bouche, 153. 43. La Roque, Voyage de l’Arabie heureuse, 262–63. 44. De Blégny, Le bon usage du thé du caffé et du chocolat. 45. For de Blégny’s biography see Pierre-Jean Tellier, Un aventurier médical au

XVIIe siècle: Nicolas de Blegny (Paris: L. Arnette, 1932). 46. Coron, Livres en bouche, 153. 47. De Blégny, Le bon usage du thé du caffé et du chocolat, 104–5. 48. Ibid., 100–102.

332 • Notes

49. For the transmission of Galen’s views via the editions of his works in Ven-ice and Basel throughout Europe, see several authors in Anthony Grafton and Nancy Siraisi, eds., Natural Particulars: Nature and the Disciplines in Renais-sance (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1999).

50. Jestaz, Chapter 3 of “Édition critique” is devoted to this transmission. On Théophraste Renaudot see Howard Solomon, Public Welfare, Science, and Propaganda in Seventeenth Century France: The Innovations of Théophraste Renaudot (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1972).

51. Steven Lehrer, Explorers of the Body (New York: Doubleday, 1979). 52. Jestaz argues that Patin has been unfairly portrayed as a conservative be-

cause, after all, antimony did kill. He had been called to judge it by the Parlia-ment and had condemned it as a poison. See her Chapter 3, “La querelle de l’antimoine.”

53. La Roque, Voyage de l’Arabie heureuse, 315. 54. His dates are also given as 855–932. 55. Bennett Alan Weinberg and Bonnie K. Bealer, The World of Caffeine (London:

Routledge, 2002), 5. That is, if one accepts that he was referring to coffee; the jurists of Mecca condemning coffee in 1511 had decided that the plant de-scribed in al-Hawi was not coffee, because Rahazes had praised its properties, and in 1511, this did not suit their aims.

56. Ibid., 108–10. 57. Ibid., 105. 58. La Roque, Voyage de l’Arabie heureuse, 365. 59. Question de médecine proposée par Messieurs Castillons et Fouque, docteurs

de la faculté d’Aix, à Monsieur Colomb, pour son agrégation au collège des médecins de Marseille, sur lesquels on doit disputer le 27 février 1679 dans la salle de la Maison de Ville.

60. For a protectionist taxation of 20 percent on foreign merchants, see Gas-ton Rambert, Histoire du commerce de Marseille publié par la chambre de commerce de Marseille en sept tomes (Paris: Plon, 1953–1957). This long work is a thorough study of the Archives of the Chamber of Commerce of Marseilles. There are some as well at the Archives of the Ministère de la Ma-rine in Paris.

61. Ibid., V, 14. 62. An a potu caffé frequentior apoplexia? Bibliothèque Mazarin, A11, 264, 40.

After the Mazarin has moved, I have not been able to relocate this to consult it and get a new call number.

63. An potus caffé cum late salubor? See also Dufour, De l’usage du caphé, 143. 64. For the refi neries: Charles Woosley Cole, Colbert and a Century of French

Mercantilism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1939), vol. 2, Chapter 1. 65. Philippe Hecquet, Traité des dispenses du carême . . . (Paris: François Fournier,

1709), 497.

Notes • 333

66. La Roque, Voyage de l’Arabie heureuse, 363. 67. R. Ian McCallum, Antimony in Medical History: An Account of the Medical

Uses of Antimony and Its Compounds since Early Times to the Present (Dur-ham, England: Pentland Press, 1999).

68. The true etymology of the word is unknown and there are several speculations about both the Greek and Arabic roots of the name.

69. Ray Sturgess, “Death at the Hands of Doctors,” Pharmaceutical Journal 269 (December, 2002): 899.

70. Attributed to P. Guibert, “Chanson sur l’usage du caffé sur ses propiétez et sur la manière de le bien preparer,” Mercure galant, March 1711, 362–64.

71. Nicolas de Bois-Regard Andry, Traite des alimens de caresme, où, L’on expli-que les differentes qualitez des légumes, des herbages, des racines, des fruits, des poissons, des amphibies, des assaisonnemens: des boissons mêmes les plus en usage, comme de l’eau, du vin, de la bierre, du cidre, du thé, du caffé, du chocolat: et où l’on éclaircit plusieurs questions importantes sur l’abstinence et sur le jeûne, tant par rapport au Carême, que par rapport à la santé (Paris: Chez Jean-Baptiste Coignard, imprimeur ordinaire du Roi, ruë S. Jacques, à la Bible d’or, 1713), vol. 2, 371.

72. De Blégny, Le bon usage du thé du caffé et du chocolat, 115, 306. 73. Nicolas de Bois-Regard Andry, Le thé de l’Europe, . . . (Paris: Jean Boudot,

1712). 74. Paul Butel, Histoire du Thé (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1997),

48–56. 75. Marcy Morton, “Tasting Empire: Chocolate and the European Internalization of

Mesoamerican Aesthetics,” American Historical Review 111 (2006): 660–91. 76. Morton, 669. 77. The history of chocolate’s diffusion is the best studied of the three bever-

ages, yet even after several books much remains to be done. See Morton. for a bibliography.

Chapter 7 A “Barbarous Taste”: The Transmission of Coffee Drinking

1. Jean de La Roque, A voyage to Arabia Felix (1708–10); and, A journey from Mocha to Muab (1711–13); and, A narrative concerning coffee; and, An historical trea-tise concerning coffee by Jean de la Roque. And, An account of the captivity of Sir Henry Middleton at Mocha by the Turks in 1612, together with, New travels in Arabia Felix (1788), ed. M. Cloupet (New York: Oleander, 2004), 351.

2. François Augier, La Maison réglée, et l’art de diriger maison d’un grand sei-gneur & autres, tant à la Ville qu’à la Campagne, & le devoir de tous les Of-fi ciers, & autres Domestiques en général. Avec la Véritable Méthode de faire

334 • Notes

toutes sortes d’Essences, d’Eaux de Liqueurs, fortes & rafraîchissantes, à la mode d’Italie. Ouvrage utile et nécessaire à toutes sortes de personnes de qual-ité, gentilshommes de Province, étrangers, bourgeois, offi ciers de grandes mai-sons, limonadiers & autres marchands de liqueurs (Paris: Paul Marret,1692, or counterfeit of same edition, Amsterdam: Paul Marret, 1697), 166.

3. La muse de Cour, December 2, 1666, 28th week, 228. 4. Norbert Elias, La société de cour (Paris: Flammarion, 1993). See especially

Chapter 3, L’etiquette et la logique du prestige, 63–115. 5. Ibid., Chapter 4. 6. La Roque, A voyage to Arabia Felix, 353. 7. For the conquest of Istanbul see Faruk Bilici, Louis XIV et son projet de con-

quête d’Istanbul (Ankara: Société d’histoire turque, 2004). Cemal Kafadar is preparing a study of how coffee drinking changed night life and on the socio-economic impact of coffee houses in Istanbul.

8. H. E. Jacobs, Coffee: The Epic of a Commodity (New York: Viking Press, 1935), Chapter 9. This book, written in the 1930s, has some good information but also some strange arguments about temperament and race that belong to the German ethos of the time and are diffi cult to read seriously today.

9. La Roque, A voyage to Arabia Felix, 308. 10. For comparisons of these two trading diasporas see Chapter 1 by Jonathan Is-

rael and Chapter 2 by Ina Baghdiantz McCabe, in Diaspora and Entrepreneur-ial Networks 1600–2000, ed. Ina Baghdiantz McCabe, Gelina Harlaftis, and Ionna Minoglu (Oxford: Berg, 2005).

11. On the Sephardic Jews there are several important books by Jonathan Irvine Israel; the most recent one is Diasporas within a Diaspora: Jews, Crypto-Jews, and the World of Maritime Empires 1540–1740, Brill’s Series in Jewish Studies (Boston: Brill, 2002), 30. My own work on the Armenians is Ina Baghdiantz McCabe, The Shah’s Silk for Europe’s Silver: The Eurasian Silk Trade of the Julfan Armenians in Safavid Iran and India (1590–1750), University of Penn-sylvania’s Series in Armenian Texts and Studies (Atlanta, Ga.: Scholar’s Press, 1999).

12. See Philippe Hecquet, Traité des dispenses du carême . . . (Paris: François Fournier, 1709). He was a doctor opposed to coffee, who called it “barbarous.”

13. Question de médecine proposée par Messieurs Castillons et Fouque, docteurs de la faculté d’Aix, à Monsieur Colomb, pour son agrégation au collège des médecins de Marseille, sur lesquels on doit disputer le 27 février 1679 dans la salle de la Maison de Ville.

14. La Roque, A voyage to Arabia Felix, 323. 15. For this see Maurice Herbette, Une ambassade persane sous Louis XIV, d’après

des documents inédits, avec treize planches hors texte (Paris: Perrin et cie, 1907). 16. Olivier Lefèvre d’Ormesson, Journal d’Olivier Lefèvre d’Ormesson: Et ex-

traits des Mémoires d’André Lefèvre d’Ormesson, ed. Adolphe Chéruel (Paris: Imprimerie impériale, 1860–1861), volume II.

Notes • 335

17. Ibid., 577–78. 18. Gazette de France, November 6, 1669, 1165. 19. D’Ormesson, Journal d’Olivier Lefèvre d’Ormesson, 578. 20. For these descriptions see Gazette de France for the month of November and

the Mercure Gallant of the same month, 1669. 21. La Roque, A voyage to Arabia Felix, 350–51. 22. See the edicts by Louis XIV cited at the end of this chapter in the section on

guilds. 23. La Roque, A voyage to Arabia Felix, 319: “Finally, one has arrived in this city.

Pascal, Armenian in origin, the one who thought to sell coffee publicly in 1672 at the fair of St. Germain, then installed himself in a small shop on Quai de l’Ecole where he sold coffee for 2 sous 6 derniers a cup.”

24. Bennet Weinberg and Bonnie K. Bealer, The World of Caffeine: The Science and Culture of the World’s Most Popular Drug (New York: Routledge, 2001), 71–73. La Roque did not give this account of Pascal’s booth.

25. La Roque, A voyage to Arabia Felix, 319–20. 26. Notably, Roy Porter, the eminent British historian, was well aware of Pascal’s

contribution. See his chapter, Jan de Vries, “Between Purchasing Power and the World of Goods: Understanding the Household Economy in Early Modern Europe,” in Consumption and the World of Goods, ed. John Brewer and Roy Porter (London: Routledge, 1993), 85–133.

27. La Roque, A voyage to Arabia Felix, 320–21. 28. Jacobs, Coffee: The Epic of a Commodity, 83–84. His comments about the

adoption of coffee from the Armenians by the French are accompanied by re-marks such as: “The Teutonic, the Franconian, characteristics of the Parisians were disappearing. These Parisians like the other inhabitants of Latin countries—like the Milanese, the Neapolitans, and the Marseillais were acquiring a taste for street life on other occasions than the fairs,” 87.

29. New Julfa was the Christian suburb of the capital city of Isfahan. 30. For this and the story of another man named Markara who worked for Colbert

as director of the French East India Company see Baghdiantz McCabe, The Shah’s Silk for Europe’s Silver, Chapter 10.

31. La Roque, A voyage to Arabia Felix, 320. 32. As we will see later, Voltaire denied going there or to any other cafés. 33. Anonymous, Le porte-feuille galant, ouvrage mêlé de prose et de vers. Avec

plusieurs questions sérieuses et galantes (Paris: Jean Moreau, 1700), 3. “Ils entrèrent donc chez les Arméniens, où ils demandèrent des liqueurs et des bis-cuits; car peu de gens se bornent à une prise de caffé, qui n’est souvent que le pretexte d’un plus grand excez [sic].”

34. La Roque, A voyage to Arabia Felix, 382. 35. Pierre Masson, Le Parfait Limonadier ou la manière de préparer le thé le café

et le chocolat, & autre liqueurs chaudes & froides (Paris: Chez Charles Moette, 1705).

336 • Notes

36. Audigier and the edict are cited in one of the best works written about coffee and tea in France: Alfred Louis Auguste Franklin, Le café, le thé et le chocolat (Paris: E. Plon Nourriet, 1893), 197–98.

37. Masson, Le Parfait Limonadier, part 2, 5. 38. Edit du Roy portant rétablissement de la communauté des limonadiers à Paris.

Donné à Versailles, au mois de novembre, 1713. 39. Edit du Roy, portant règlement pour la vente et distribution du café, du thé,

chocolat, cacao et vanille, 1692. 40. Preamble of the edict cited in note 39. 41. Franklin, Le café, le thé et le chocolat, 208. Two centuries later in Franklin’s era,

wine was still seen as the most French of all beverages, which perhaps explains the vehemence with which this historian reacts to the royal edicts about the demise of wine and the rise of what had been exotic novelties now touted by the mon-arch as established, accepted, and even healthful French drinking habits. Louis’s decree and the monopoly would not suffi ce for coffee to be seen as French.

42. Article 12 of the royal edict of 1692, cited in note 39. 43. Arrest du Conseil d’Etat du Roy concernat la vente du caffé, du thé, du sorbec

et du chocolat,1692. 44. Arrest du Conseil d’État du Roy qui ordonee l’exécution des edits, arrest et

règlement pour la vente et distribution du caffé, thé et chocolat, 1692. 45. Déclaration du Roy qui règle la manière dont la compagnie des Indes fera ex-

ploitation de la vente exclusive du caffé, 1723, articles 2 and 3. 46. Ibid., 8. 47. Letter from Madame de Sévigné to her daughter, February 19, 1690. 48. Karl Teply, Die Einführung des Kaffees in Wien: Georg Franz Kolschintzky,

Johannes Diodato, Isaak de Luca (Vienna: Verein für Geschichte, 1980). 49. Weinberg and Bealer, The World of Caffeine, 77. 50. Ibid.51. Ibid., 78. 52. “Le Café est une Graine qui vient de Perse & autres païs du levant, dont il fait

la boisson la plus délicieuse, & la plus ordinaire. Etant préparé, comme nous le venons de dire, ses qualités sont de rafraîchir le Sang, de dissiper & abaisser les vapeurs & les fumées du vin, d’aider à la digestion, de réveiller les esprits, & d’empêcher de trop dormir ceux qui ont beaucoup d’affaires.” Masson, Le Par-fait Limonadier, Book II, 8.

53. Abbé G. Th. Raynal, Histoire philiosophique et politique des établissemens & du commerce des européens dans les deux Indes . . . (1772; reprint, Paris: Décou-vert, 2001), 57. See Le Café in the 1772 edition, Livre III, Chapter XII. “Dans ces contrés où les moeurs ne sont pas aussi libre que parmi nous, où la jalousie des hommes & et la retraite austère des femmes rendent la société moins vive, on imagina établir des maisons publique ou l’on distribuait le café. Celle des Perses devint binetôt des lieux infâme, où des jeunes Georgiens vêtus en cour-

Notes • 337

tisanes représentait des farces impudiques & se prostituaient pour de l’argent. Lorseque Abbas II eut fait cesser des dissolutions si révoltantes, ces maisons devinrent un asile honnête.”

54. Sir John Chardin, Sir John Chardin’s Travels in Persia (London: Argonaut Press, 1927), 242. Reprint of 1724 edition with an introduction by Sir Percy Sykes.This is not based on observation; Chardin uses English travel accounts as a source, notably George Sandys’s (1578–1644) description of Ottoman coffee houses, A relation of a iourney begun an: Dom: 1610: Foure bookes. Contain-ing a description of the Turkish Empire, of Ægypt, of the Holy Land, of the re-mote parts of Italy, and ilands adioyning, 3rd ed. (London: Printed [by George Miller] for Ro: Allot, 1632).

55. Ibid., 241. 56. The information about women and cafés and coffee at breakfast is also given by

La Roque, A voyage to Arabia Felix, 382. 57. Jacques Savary des Brûlons, Dictionnaire universel de commerce microform:

contenant tout ce qui concerne le commerce qui se fait dans les quatre parties du monde . . .: l’explication de tous les termes qui ont rapport au négoce . . .: les mon-noyes reeles d’or, d’argent de billon, de cuivre, d’estain . . .: le detail du commerce ce de la France en général . . .: les édits, déclarations, ordonnances, arrests, et reglemens donnéz en matière de commerce (Paris: J. Estienne, 1723–1730).

58. Ibid., I, 515. 59. J. C. Nemeitz, Séjour de Paris, c’est à dire, instructions fi déles pour les voia-

geurs de condition, comment ils se doivent conduire, s’ils veulent faire un bon usage de leur tems & argent durant leur séjour à Paris (Leide: Jean van Ab-coude, 1727).

60. For example, as cited in Franklin, Le café, le thé et le chocolat, 221: “Sentence de police qui defend à tous le limonadiers . . . de donner à jouer chez eux, 24 juillet 1720.”

61. Evaristo Gherardi, Le Théâtre Italien de Gherardi (Amsterdam: Adrian Braak-man, 1701), vol. 5, 270.

62. The author is unknown. It is not Jean Jacques Rousseau as some popular works on coffee have contended.

63. “L’écossaise, ou le café; comédie en cinq actes,” in Suite du répertoire du Théâtre français, ed. Pierre Marie Michel Depeintre Desroches (Paris: Dabo, 1822), 109.

64. Mercure Gallant, February 1711, 195. 65. Johann Sebastian Bach, Bach’s Coffee Cantata BWV 211, Bach’s Collegium at

Zimmerman’s Coffee House, Leipzig, between 1732 and 1734. 66. “Café du jus de la bouteille tu combats le fatal poison . . .” Book III of Bach’s

Cantates françaises. I thank René Jacobs for this reference. 67. Cemal Kafadar of Harvard University is working on how cafés changed life in Is-

tanbul by creating a night life and bringing lighting, a century earlier than Paris.

338 • Notes

68. François Antoine de Chevrier, Les ridicules du siècle (Paris: Prault, 1752), 73–81.

69. Brûlons, Dictionnaire universel, vol. 2, 424. 70. Louis-Sébastien Mercier, Tableau de Paris . . . Nouvelle édition augmentée

(Hambourg: Virchaux and compagnie, 1782–1783), vol. 12, 297. 71. Sir John Chardin, Sir John Chardin’s Travels in Persia, with an introduction by

Sir Percy Sykes (London: Argonaut Press, 1927), 241. 72. Pierre-Thomas-Nicolas Hurtaut, Dictionnaire historique de la ville de Paris et

de ses environs (Paris: Moutard, 1779), vol. 2, 10. 73. Franklin, Le café, le thé et le chocolat, 261. 74. Ibid., 262. 75. Ibid., 262–72. 76. Ibid., 271–72. 77. Letter of February 27, 1735, cited in Ibid., 290. 78. Cornelius Ver Heyden De Lancey, Coup d’oeil sur deux fi gures curieuses de la

vie parisienne au XVIIIème siècle: Jean Ramponeaux, cabaretier, et Charlotte Renyer, veuve Curé, puis dame Bourette, connu sous le sobriquet de “La Muse limonadière”, avec dix illustrations hors texte originales (Paris: Édition de la Revue des indépendants [1933?]).

79. Franklin, Le café, le thé et le chocolat, 261. 80. Ibid., 295. 81. Wolfgang Schivelbusch, Tastes of Paradise: A Social History of Spices, Stim-

ulants, and Intoxicants, trans. David Jacobson (New York: Pantheon Books, 1992).

82. Camille Desmoulins, “The Internet in a Cup; Coffee Fuelled the Information Ex-changes of the 17th and 18th Centuries,” The Economist (Dec. 20, 2003), 88–90.

83. Born ten years after the revolution, in 1798, from a Huguenot background, Jules Michelet was a fervent republican. Under the rule of Napoleon III, which he resented, Michelet completed his famous Histoire de la révolution française. In 1869, one year before the end of Napoleon III’s rule, he completed a massive 19-volume history of France, Histoire de France.

84. Michelet as quoted and analyzed by Schivelbusch, Tastes of Paradise, 35.

Chapter 8 Domesticating the Exotic: Imports and Imitation

1. Jean de La Roque, A voyage to Arabia Felix (1708–10); and, A journey from Mocha to Muab (1711–13); and, A narrative concerning coffee; and, An his-torical treatise concerning coffee And, An account of the captivity of Sir Henry Middleton at Mocha by the Turks in 1612, together with, New travels in Arabia Felix (1788) / M. Cloupet (New York: Oleander, 2004).

2. La Roque, A voyage to Arabia Felix, 370.

Notes • 339

3. Jean de La Roque, Voyage de l’Arabie heureuse:par l’Ocean oriental, & le détroit de la mer Rouge, fait par les françois pour la premiere fois, dans les années 1708, 1709 & 1710; avec la relation particuliere d’un voyage fait du port de Moka à la cour du roi d’Yemen, dans la seconde expedition des années 1711, 1712 & 1713; un memoire concernant l’arbre & le fruit du café, dressé sur les observations de ceux qui ont fait ce dernier voyage; et un traité histo-rique de l’origine & du progrès du café, tant dans l’Asie que dans l’Europe; de son introduction en France, & de l’établissement de son usage à Paris (Paris: A. Cailleau, 1716), 399.

4. La Roque (2006) 368–69. 5. I thank Dirk Van der Cruysse for looking for him with me. Jonathan Spence

has written a fascinating study about a Chinese traveler in Paris, but it could not be the curious and very learned Monsieur Ouange mentioned by La Roque. Jonathan D. Spence, The Question of Hu (New York: Vintage, 1989).

6. Many thanks to Dirk Van Der Cruysse for his help in trying to confi rm Mon-sieur Ouange’s presence.

7. Mémoires de l’Académie des Sciences (1716): 291. 8. Antoine de Jussieu, Histoire du café (Paris, 1713), Separate from Coll.Acad.

Roy.Sci.Paris, Partie Françoise, 3(1713): 506. 9. Abbé Lecomte, Le capitaine Clieu ou le premier pied de café aux Antilles

(Paris, 1862). 10. Ibid. 11. L’année littéraire, 219. 12. Guillaume-Thomas-François Raynal, Histoire philosophique et politique, des

établissemens & du commerce des Européens dans les deux Indes (Amsterdam: publisher unknown, 1770). This is apparently the fi rst edition; there may have been a limited edition (25 copies?) published in 1770. This was written in col-laboration with Jean de Pechméja, Alexandre Deleyre, Denis Diderot, and oth-ers. Although this is supposed to be the encyclopedia for the “rest of the world,” continuation is promised at the end of volume 6 and was eventually published in 1774 under the title: Tableau de l’Europe.

13. A new edition is available: Histoire philosophique et politique du commerce des établissements Européens dans les deux Indes. A history of the two Indies: A Translated Selection of Writings from Raynal’s Histoire Philosophique et Poli-tique des Etablissements des Européens dans les Deux Indes, ed. Peter Jimack Aldershot (London: Ashgate, 2006).

14. Raynal is the author of a lesser known work: Tableau des marchandises & den-rées parties chaque année, depuis 1748 jusqu’en 1753, des ports d’Espagne pour ses colonies du continent de l’Amérique microform: droits qu’elles ont acquités, leur valeur courante dans le nouveau-monde . . . (Paris?: s.n., 1754?) This is a work that accounts for the exotic imports in France, but it concentrates on what is brought from the American continent.

340 • Notes

15. Joseph Adrien Le Roi, Histoire de Versailles de ses rues, places et avenues depuis l’origine de cette ville jusqu’à nos jours (Versailles: P. Oswald, 1868), book II, 345.

16. Lazare Duvaux, Livre Journal de Lazare Duvaux (Paris: F. de Nobele, 1965), book II, 188, 194, 240, and 262. Cited in Alfred Louis Auguste Franklin, Le café, le thé et le chocolat (Paris: E. Plon Nourriet, 1893), 238.

17. [François] Menon, “Les Soupers de la Cour ou l’Art de travailler toutes sortes d’aliments pour servir les meilleurs tables suivant les quatre saisons,” (1755). BN, V.26995, tome IV, 331. Menon’s fi rst name is unknown and recently hy-pothesized to be François.

18. Histoire de l’Académie royale des sciences, année MDCC LXIII, p. 52. Jus-sieu’s son was Bernard de Jussieu (1699–1777) and his grandson was Antoine Laurent de Jussieu (1748–1836).

19. Raynal, Histoire philosophique et politique, III, 160. 20. François Massialot, Nouvelle instruction pour les confi tures, les liqueurs, et les

fruits: où l’on apprend à confi re toutes sortes des fruits, tant secs que liquides; & divers ouvrages de sucre qui sont du fait des offi ciers & confi seurs; avec la ma-niere de bien ordonner un fruit: suite du Nouveau cuisinier royal & bourgeois, également utile aux maîtres-d’hôtels & dans les familles, pour sçavoir ce qu’on sert de plus à la mode dans le repas (Paris: Claude Prudhomme, 1715), 382.

21. Valmont de Bomare, Dictionnaire d’histoire naturelle (Paris: Didot, 1764); see “Thé,” in Alfred Louis Auguste Franklin, Le café, le thé et le chocolat (Paris: E. Plon Nourriet, 1893), chapter 5, 146.

22. Pierre Hunault, Discours physique sur les propriétez de la sauge (Angers: L. D’Houry, 1698), part I, book V, 144.

23. Charles-Louis François, Joannis Franci veronic theezans, id est collatio veroni-cae Europae cum the chinitico . . . , 2nd ed., Lipssiae, 1701. This was a 138-page book translated by Andry.

24. Franklin, Le café, le thé et le chocolat, 153. 25. Lisbet Koerner, “Linnaeus’ Floral Transplants,” Representations, no. 47, Spe-

cial Issue: National Cultures before Nationalism (Summer, 1994): 144–69. 26. Ibid. 27. Ibid., 147. 28. Antoine de Jussieu, ed., Epistolæ Caroli a Linné ad Bernardum de Jussieu in-

editæ (Cambridge, Mass.: E typis Metcalf, 1854), an offprint or preprint from Memoirs of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (Cambridge, Boston: Metcalf and Co., 1855).

29. Cited by Koerner, “Linnaeus’ Floral Transplants,” 157–58. 30. See Chapter 4. 31. The Twin Flower, a very small plant that is found worldwide in northern for-

ests, and which was his favorite plant, which he named for himself: LINNAEA (linA’a) BOREALIS, borealis meaning: of the northern forest.

32. Koerner, “Linnaeus’ Floral Transplants,” 157.

Notes • 341

33. For all this see the work of Londa Schiebinger, Plants and Empire: Colonial Bioprospecting in the Atlantic World (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2004), 36–38.

34. Olivier de Serres, Le theatre d’agriculture et mesnage des champs (Paris: Jamet Métayer, 1600).

35. Thierry Mariage, L’Univers de Le Nostre (Bruxelles: P. Mardaga, 1990), chapter 1. 36. Johanna M. Menzel, “The Sinophilism of J.H.G. Justi,” Journal of the History

of Ideas 17, no. 3 (June 1956): 300–310. 37. De Serres, Le theatre d’agriculture; and The Perfect Use of Silke-Wormes, and

Their Benefi t, trans. Nicholas Geffe (London: Felix Kyngston, 1607), 9. Mod-ernized spelling.

38. De Serres, The Perfect Use of Silke-Wormes, 9. 39. He wrote a work published in 1606 to articulate his views on factories and

mercantilism: Barthélemy de Laffemas, Du Commerce de la vie du loyal march-and et bien qu’il faict au peuple du royaume (Paris: Chez Iean Millot, 1606).

40. De Serres The Perfect Use of Silke-Wormes, 9. 41. Jean-Pierre Poulain and Edmond Neirinck, Histoire de la cuisine et des cuisi-

niers: Techniques culinaires et pratiques de table, en France, du Moyen Âge à nos jours (Paris: Degraves, 2004), 30.

42. De Serres, The Perfect Use of Silke-Wormes, 7. 43. Ibid., 17. 44. Ibid., 10. 45. Jacques Boyceau, Traité dv iardinage selon les raisons de la natvre et de l’art:

diuisé en trois livres ensemble diuers desseins de parterres, pelouzes, bosquetz et autres ornementz servans a l’embellissement des jardins (Paris: M. Van Lochom, 1638).

46. Mariage, L’Univers de Le Nostre. 47. Andrew Zega and Bernd H. Dams, Palaces of the Sun King: Versailles, Tri-

anon, Marly: The Châteaux of Louis XIV (New York: Rizzoli, 2002), 100. 48. Chandra Mukerji, Territorial Ambitions and the Gardens of Versailles (New

York: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 178. 49. Louise E. Robbins, Elephant Slaves and Pampered Parrots: Exotic Animals in

Eighteenth-Century Paris (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002).

50. André Félibien, Les Divertissements de Versailles, donnés au retour de la con-quête de la Franche-Comté en 1674 (Paris: Imprimerie Royale, 1676).

51. The names of the rooms, an engraving of the Trianon, and architectural infor-mation is available on the offi cial Web site of Versailles: http://www.chateau-versailles.fr/.

52. Elizabeth Hyde, Cultivated Power: Flowers, Culture, and Politics in the Reign of Louis XIV (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005).

53. Ibid., 145–46.

342 • Notes

54. Ibid., 156. 55. Ibid., 156. 56. Ibid., 160. 57. Cited by Ibid., 157. 58. Ibid., 161. 59. Ibid., 162. 60. Ibid., 166. 61. Zega and H. Dams, Palaces of the Sun King, 103. 62. Mukerji, Territorial Ambitions, 178. 63. Ibid., 180. 64. Jean Donneau de Visé, Les amovrs dv soleil, tragedie en machines, representée

sur le theatre du Marais (Paris: Claude Barbin, 1671). 65. Hyde, Cultivated Power, 167. 66. Jean Donneau de Visé, Histoire de Louis le Grand Contenües dans les rapports

qui se trouvent entre les actions & les qualitiés & les vertus des Fleurs & des Plantes. B. N. Manuscrit fonds français, 6995.

67. Hyde, Cultivated Power, 186. 68. Ibid., 189. 69. For this and fl attery by other fl owers see Ibid., 186–95. 70. Ibid., 195. 71. Peter Burke, The Fabrication of Louis XIV (New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univer-

sity Press, 1992). 72. Ibid. 73. For this history see Wilfrid Blunt, Tulipomania (Harmondsworth: Penguin

Books, 1950), and Anna Pavord, The Tulip (London: Bloomsbury distributed by St. Martin’s Press, 1999).

74. Zega and Dams, Palaces of the Sun King, 102–3. 75. Hyde, Cultivated Power, 201. 76. Zega and Dams, Palaces of the Sun King, 107–8. 77. For some examples see Ingelore Menzhausen, Early Meissen Porcelain in

Dresden (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1990), and Ulrich Pietsch, China, Japan, Meissen: The Dresden Porcelain Collection, trans. Ulrich Boltz (Mu-nich: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 2006).

78. For the letters reproduced see William Burton, Porcelain, Its Art and Manufac-ture (London: B. T. Batsford, 1906).

79. For this visit see Dirk Van der Cruysse, Louis XIV et le Siam (Paris: Fayard, 1998), 378–413.

80. Bertrand Rondot, “The Soft Paste Manufactury in Saint-Cloud and the So Saint-Cloud Porcelain Manufactury in Paris circa (ca.1693–1766),” in Discovering the Secrets of Soft-Paste Porcelain at the Saint-Cloud Manufactory, 1690–1766 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1999); see chapter 6 by Geneviève Le Duc, 72.

Notes • 343

81. Lister cited by Le Duc, 73. 82. Le Duc, 72. 83. Rondot, Discovering the Secrets, see Introduction and chapter 4 (“Saint

Cloud and Delft: Two Interpretations of Chinese Porcelain”) by Christine La-haussois and chapter 6 by Geneviève Le Duc.

84. Rondot, Discovering the Secrets, 20. 85. Carolyn Sargentson, Merchants and Luxury Markets: The Marchands Mer-

ciers of Eighteenth-Century Paris (Malibu, Calif.: Victoria and Albert Mu-seum in association with the J. Paul Getty Museum, 1996), 75.

86. Ibid., 75. 87. For this see Jennifer Jones, Sexing la Mode: Gender, Fashion and Commer-

cial Culture in Old Regime France (Oxford and New York: Berg, 2004). 88. See Chapters 9 and 10 in this book, especially the work of Jennifer Jones

cited in chapter 9. 89. Steven Laurence Kaplan, La fi n des corporations, trans. Béatrice Vierne

(Paris: Fayard, 2001). 90. Daniel Roche, History of Everyday Things: The Birth of Consumption in

France, 1600–1800, trans. Brian Pearce (Cambridge and New York: Cam-bridge University Press, 2000).

91. Savary de Brûlons, Dictonnaire universel de commerce (Paris: J. Estienne, 1723).

92. Duc de Luynes mentions this in his Mémoires (Paris: Firmin Didot frères, fi ls et cie, 1860–65).

93. Robert Chenciner, Madder Red: A History of Luxury and Trade (London: Curzon, Caucasus World, 2000), 184.

94. Cited in Ibid., 186. 95. Olivier Raveux, “Spaces and Technologies in the Cotton Industry in the Sev-

enteenth and Eighteenth Centuries: The Example of Printed Calicoes in Mar-seilles,” Textile History 36, no. 2 (November 2005): 131–45.

96. Ibid., 132–33. 97. Ibid., 133. 98. Ibid. 99. The reference is inscribed on the statue of Jean Althen.

100. Chenciner, Madder Red, 182. 101. Ibid., 187. 102. A. Juvet-Michel, “The Controversy over Indian Prints,” CIBA Review 31

(1940): 1091. 103. E. Depitre, La toile peinte en France au XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles. Industrie,

commerce, prohibitions (Paris: M. Rivière et cie, 1912), 11–21. 104. Olivier Raveux, in his upcoming article in Rives, “Ă la façon du Levant et de

Perse: Marseille et la naissance de l’indiennage européen (1648–1689),” Rives nord-méditerranéennes, 29 (to appear, 2008).

344 • Notes

105. G. Schaeffer, “The History of Turkey Red Dyeing,” CIBA Review 39 (1941): 1407–16.

106. Chenciner, Madder Red, 189. 107. “Etat général de toutes les marchandises dont on fait commerce à Marseille par

le sieur Gaspar Carfueil, négociant de la ville de Marseille (1688),” in Brûlons, Dictionnaire universel, book III, 459–62.

108. A Paris: De l’imprimerie de Frederic Leonard, 1704. 109. Claude-Louis Berthollet, Essay on the new method of bleaching: with an

account of the nature, preparation, and properties of oxygenated muriatic acid: to which is now added observations and experiments on the art of dying with madder, trans. Claude-Louis Berthollet (Edinburgh: Printed for William Creech, 1791).

110. Olivier Raveux, in his upcoming article in Rives. 111. “Le rôle joué par les espaces méditerranéens et orientaux au début de

l’industrialisation occidentale, à la faveur des stratégies marchandes en même temps que s’ébauche l’image d’un Orient conservatoire de techniques et pourvoyeur de savoir-faire,” cited by Raveux in L. Hilaire-Pérez, “Cul-tures techn iques et pratiques de l’échange entre Lyon et le Levant: Inventions et réseaux au XVIIIe siècle,” Revue d’Histoire Moderne et Contemporaine 49, no. 1 (2002): 113.

112. Discovered in 1966, mentioned in Donald F. Lach and Edwin J. Van Kley, Asia in the Making of Europe, vol. 3, A Century of Advance. Book One: Trade, Miss ions, Literature. Book Two: South Asia. Book Three: Southeast Asia. Book Four, East Asia (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), vol. 3, Book 1, 114.

113. B. Lemire, “Plasmare la domanda, creare la moda: l’Asia, l’Europa e il com-mercio dei cotoni indiani (XIV–XIX secc.),” Quaderni Storici 41, no. 2 (Au-gust 2006), 481–507.

114. See the appendix to chapter 11 for these debates concerning the rise of mod-ern consumption.

115. Dirk Van der Cruysse, Le noble désir de courir le monde: voyager en Asie au XVIIe siècle (Paris: Fayard, 2002), 28.

116. Ibid., 29. 117. Sargentson, 62. 118. For debates about consumption and luxury in France see chapter 10 of Wer-

ner Sombart, Le bourgeois: contribution à l’histoire morale et intellectuelle de l’homme économique moderne, trans. S. Jankélévitch (Paris: Payot, 1926) and also Luxury and Capitalism (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1967).

119. See the notes on luxury in the introduction of this book.

Notes • 345

Chapter 9 The Politics of Pleasure: French Imitations of Oriental Sartorial Splendor and the Royal Carrousels

1. We chose as body that of the Sun, which in the rules of this art, is the noblest of all, its unique qualities and éclat, the light it communicates to other stars that accompany it compose the space of the court . . . Through its constant movement that seems tranquil, which it never neglects nor leaves, [the sun] is assuredly the most vivid and beautiful image of a great monarch.

2. Louis XIV, Mémoire pour l’instruction du dauphin, ed. Pierre Goubert (Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1992), 137.

3. Peter Burke, The Fabrication of Louis XIV (New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univer-sity Press, 1992).

4. Translated from the chapter’s epigraph. 5. For Louis’s iconography, see Sabine du Crest, Des fetes a Versailles: Les diver-

tissements de Louis XIV (Paris: Klincksieck, 1990). 6. Louis XIV, Mémoire, 134–35. 7. For Louis’s use of the symbol of the sun and an analysis of carrousels, see Ste-

phane Castellucio, Les carrousels en France du XVIe au XVIIIe siècle (Paris: Les éditions de l’amateur, 2002). The parallel with Persian kings is my own.

8. The image of the Sun King has been well studied by many, as have the repre-sentations of the king. For a good bibliography on these subjects, see Burke, Fabrication of Louis XIV.

9. This painter also illustrated other royal ceremonies, such as those illustra-tions seen in André Félibien, Les divertissements de Versailles, donnés au re-tour de la conquête de la Franche-Comté en 1674 (Paris: Imprimerie Royale, 1676).

10. Lynn Festa, “Empires of the Sun: Colonialism and Closure in Louis XIV’s 1662 Carrousel and Cyrano’s Les Estats et les Empires du Soleil,” Romanic Review 89, no. 4 (Nov 1998): 5–7.

11. Claude François Ménestrier, Traité des tournois, joutes, carrousels et autres spectacles publics (Lyon: Jacques Muguet, 1669), 9–11, 17.

12. Antoine Furetière, Dictionnaire universel (Rotterdam: Arnoult et Reinier, 1690). 13. Ménestrier, Traité des tournois,17. 14. For a thorough analysis of these marriages, see Abbey Zanger, Scenes from the

Marriage of Louis XIV: Nuptial Fictions and the Making of Absolutist Power (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1997).

15. For details of the remise see Ibid. 16. Ménestrier, Traité des tournois, 260–70; Marc de Vulson, Le Vray Theâtre

d’honneur et de Chevalerie; ou, le miroir héroïque de la noblesse (Paris: Au-gustin Courbé, 1648), 247–49.

346 • Notes

17. Jerôme de la Gorce, “Le premier grand spectacle équestre à donné à Ver-sailles; Le carrousel des galants maures,” in Les Écuries royales du XVIième au XVIIième siècle (Paris: Association pour l’Académie équestre de Versailles, 1998), 282.

18. Norbert Elias, La société de cour (Paris: Flammarion, 1985), 158–60. 19. “The king was dressed like a Roman, in a body of silver brocade embroidered

with gold.” Charles Perrault, Course de testes et de bagues faites par le Roy et par les princes et seigneurs de la Cour en l’année 1662 (Paris: Imprimerie Royale, 1670), “Première Quadrille,” plate 9.

20. The descriptions of costumes that follow come in large part from Perrault’s text and from the many illustrations of the event of 1662.

21. Justin Stagl, A History of Curiosity: The Theory of Travel 1550–1800 (Chur, Switzerland: Hardwood Academic Publishers, 1995), 155.

22. Timoléon de Choisy, Journal du voyage de Siam, ed. Dirk Van der Cruysse (Paris: Fayard, 1995).

23. Jean Loret, La muse historique ou recueil de lettres en vers écrite a son altesse Mademoiselle de Longuevills par le Sr. Loret (Paris: H. Champion. 1665), vol. 1 of 5.

24. For his effeminate education and the life story of his favored playmate, a boy brought up as a girl, see Dirk Van der Cruysse’s works on Timoléon de Choisy listed in the secondary sources bibliography of this volume.

25. Magnifi cently dressed as a Turk. 26. Louis Moréri, “Amérique,” in Grand dictionaire historique (Paris: J. Vincent,

1732). 27. Marie-Françoise Christout, Le ballet de cour de Louis XIV 1643–1672 (Paris:

Picard, 1967); Louis M. Fuzelier and Jean Philippe Rameau, “L’Opera-ballet de Campra à Rameau, un genre français,” in Les Indes galantes (Paris: L’Avant-Scène Opéra, 1980), 80–83. Also Jérôme de la Gorce, L’Opéra à Paris au temps de Louis XIV: Histoire d’un théâtre (Paris: Desjonquères/Presses Universitaires de France, 1992).

28. Louis XIV, Mémoire, 135. 29. Castellucio, Les carrousels en France, 32. 30. Bibliothèque Nationale, Nomenclature d’activités française, Colbert (1868) V,

591, 3. 31. Marianne Grivel, Le commerce de l’estampe à Paris (Geneva: Libraire Droz,

1986), 229. 32. Castellucio, Les carrousels en France, 30. 33. For a rare reproduction of this portrait see the cover of Dirk van der Cruysse,

Chardin le Persan (Paris: Fayard, 1998). 34. Stagl, A History of Curiosity, 167. 35. Ibid., 167.

Notes • 347

36. There are some notable exceptions, such as the engravings in Chardin’s travel account, which are reliable, as he had François Grelot accompany him. On Gre-lot see Michèle Longino, Imagining the Turk in Seventeenth-Century France: Grelot’s Version (Durham, N.C.: Duke University, 2000), available at www.duke.edu/~michelel/projects/visions/1.htm.

37. De la Gorce, “Le premier grand spectacle,” 281. For the quote on the riches of the Indes orientales vomited on Versailles.

38. De la Gorce, “Le premier grand spectacle,” 279. 39. De la Gorce, “Le premier grand spectacle,” 277. 40. Castelluccio, Les carrousels en France, 30–33, 43, and de la Gorce, “Le pre-

mier grand spectacle,” 281. 41. Burke, The Fabrication of Louis XIV, 4–5. Also see Louis’s use of fashion as

politics in the fi rst chapter in Jennifer M. Jones, Sexing la Mode: Gender, Fash-ion and Commercial Culture in Old Regime France (Oxford: Berg, 2004).

42. Carlo Ginzberg, “Representation the Word the Idea the Thing,” in Wooden Eyes: Nine Refl ections on Distance (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001), 63–79.

43. Michel Foucault, “Of Other Spaces,” Diacritics 16, no. 1 (Spring, 1986): 22–27. 44. Stagl is the one who noticed this change; A History of Curiosity, 155–71. 45. François Bluche, Le journal secret de Louis XIV (Paris: Editions de Rocher,

1998), 186 46. Ibid., 186. 47. Daniel Defert, “Les collections iconographiques du XVIième siècle,” in Voy-

ager à la Renaissance, ed. Jean Céard and Jean Claude Margolin (Paris: Mai-sonneuve et Larose, 1987), 531–47.

48. Nicole Pellegrin, “Vêtements de peau(x) et de plumes: La nudité des indiens,” in Voyager à la Renaissance, ed. Jean Céard and Jean Claude Margolin (Paris: Maisonneuve et Larose, 1987), 509–31.

49. Ibid., 513. 50. Ibid., 517. 51. Germain Brice, Nouvelle description de la ville de Paris et de tout ce qu’elle

contient de plus remarquable, par Germain Brice. Enrichie d’un nouveau plan & de nouvelles fi gures dessinees & gravees correctement (Paris: J. M. Gandouin, 1725), II, 398, 517.

52. John Baptiste Tavernier, The Six Voyages of Jean Baptiste Tavernier (London, 1678): 47.

53. Jones, Sexing la Mode, 19. 54. De la Gorce, 282. 55. Ian Davidson Kalmar, “Jesus Did Not Wear a Turban,” in Orientalism and the

Jews, ed. Ian Davidson Kalmar and Derek J. Penslar (Waltham, Mass.: Brandeis University Press, 2005), 3–32.

348 • Notes

56. David Blanks, ed., Images of the Other, Europe and the Muslim World before 1700: Cairo Papers 19, no. 2, Cairo Papers in Social Science (Cairo: American University of Cairo Press, 1996): 35–54.

57. Hans Belting, Christiane Kruse: Die Erfi ndung des Gemäldes (Munich: 1994), 125–141.

58. For England, see Linda Levy Peck, Consuming Splendor: Society and Culture in Seventeenth-Century England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005).

59. See this costume reproduced in Lisbet Koerner, “Linnaeus’ Floral Transplants,” Representations no. 47, Special Issue: National Cultures before Nationalism (Summer, 1994): 144–69.

60. Studies citing this are too numerous to cite. One of the latest, which contains a reproduction of her portrait, is Diane Long Hoeveler and Jeffrey Cass, eds., Interrogating Orientalism: Contextual Approaches and Pedagogical Practices (Columbus: Ohio University Press, 2006), 3–5.

61. Thomas Kaiser, “The Evil Empire? The Debate on Turkish Despotism in Eighteenth-Century French Political Culture,” Journal of Modern History 72, no. 1, New Work on the Old Regime and the French Revolution: A Special Issue in Honor of Francois Furet (March, 2000): 6–34.

62. Charlotte Jirousek, “Ottoman Infl uences in Western Dress,” in Ottoman Cos-tumes: From Textile to Identity, ed. S. Faroqhi and C. Neumann (Istanbul: Eren Publishing, 2005), 231–51.

63. John Evelyn, Diary, ed. E. S. Beer (London: Oxford University Press, 1959), 465 and n. 1, cited in Charlotte Jirousek, “Ottoman Infl uences in Western Dress,” in Ottoman Costumes: From Textile to Identity, ed. S. Faroqhi and C. Neumann (Istanbul: Eren Publishing, 2005). The analysis is Jirousek’s.

64. Richard Martin and Harold Koda, Orientalism: Visions of the East in Western Dress, Exhibition catalogue (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1994).

65. See illustration in Joan E. DeJean, The Essence of Style: How the French In-vented High Fashion, Fine Food, Chic Cafés, Style, Sophistication, and Glam-our (New York: Free Press, 2005), fi gure 12.2, 240.

66. See in Richard and Koda, Orientalism, a banyan owned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art: Banyan, ca. 1735. English, Brown fi gured silk faille, Purchase, Irene Lewisohn Bequest, 1981 (1981.208.2).

67. Samuel Pepys, Diary, ed. Robert Latham and William Matthews (London: Bell, 1970), VII, 373; Evelyn, Diary, III, 460, cited in Jirousek, Ottoman Cos-tumes, 131.

68. DeJean, The Essence of Style, 55. 69. See Sue Felshin, Glossary of 18th Century Costume Terminology. Online, 22 Jan

2008. http://people.csail.mit.edu/sfelshin/revwar/glossary.html. “banyan: An undress robe worn by men. The banyan was cut in two basic variations: an unfi tted version somewhat like a kimono or modern bathrobe, and a fi tted ver-sion which somewhat resembled a man’s coat. Circumstances in which a man

Notes • 349

would be seen in a public area in a banyan were limited. Examples: John Sin-gleton Copley [’s painting] Nicholas Boylston, 1767. On the Web at http://cgfa.sunsite.dk/copley/p-copley26.htm; [and the painting by] Edward Savage, The Savage Family, about 1779. On the Web at http://www.worcesterart.org/Col lection/Early_American/Artists/savage/family/painting.html. the man at left of painting wears a banyan.”

70. Jones, Sexing la Mode, 22. 71. John Evelyn, Tyrannus, or, The mode microform: in a discourse of sumptuary

lawes (London: Printed for G. Bedel, 1661), 5, cited in Ibid., 22. 72. Jones, Sexing la Mode, 23. 73. Jirousek, Ottoman Costume; The following sources are all cited by Jirousek to

document her analysis of this important cultural borrowing: Melchior Lorck, Konstantinopel Unter Sultan Suleiman dem Grossen Aufgenomunen Im Jahre 1559, Manuscript: 121 plates of Turkish costumes, animals, and buildings inlaid on 45 sheets (London, 1570–83); Halil İnalcık and Donald Quataert, eds., An Economic and Social History of the Ottoman Empire, 1300–1914 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 340; Nazan Tapan, “Sorguçlar [Crests],” Sanat 3, no. 6: 99–107; Nicolay, Nauigations, Peregrinations and Voyages (London: Thomas Dawson, 1585), Book 3, Chapter 4; I. Kumbaracılar, Serpuşlar [Headgear] (Istanbul: no date), all cited by Jirousek to document her analysis of this important cultural borrowing.

74. Jones, Sexing la Mode, 24. 75. Ibid., 25. 76. The history of the fan is given differently in many sources, the most trustworthy

for lack of better choices being Katherine Morris Lester and Bess Oerke, An Il-lustrated History of Those Frills and Furbelows of Fashion Which Have Come to be Known As: Accessories of Dress (Peoria, Ill.: The Manual Arts Press, 1940); and Alexandre F. Tcherviakov, Fans, from the 18th to the Beginning of the 20th Century: Collection of the Palace of Ostankino in Moscow (Bourne-mouth, England: Parkstone Press, 1998). For court fans under Louis XIV there is Pamela Cowen, A Fanfare for the Sun King: Unfolding Fans for Louis XIV (London: Fan Museum in association with Third Millennium Pub., 2003).

77. Neville John Iröns, Fans of Imperial China (Kowloon, Hong Kong: Kaiserreich Kunst in association with the House of Fans, London, 1982), 59–60.

78. Hosea Ballou Morse, The Chronicles of the East India Company Trading in China, 1635–1834 (Oxford, England: Clarendon Press, 1925), 85.

79. For England there is a good primary source that proves fan-making was an or ga nized craft that took issue with Eastern imports: The Case of the fann-makers microform: who have petitioned the honorable House of Commons, against the importation of fanns from the East-Indies [S.l.: s.n., 1695].

80. Thomas Coryat, Coryats crudities: hastily gobled vp in fi ve moneths trauells in France, Sauoy, Italy, Rhetia co[m]monly called the Grisons country, Heluetia

350 • Notes

aliàs Switzerland, some parts of high Germany, and the Netherlands; newly digested in the hungry aire of Odcombe in the county of Somerset, & now dis-persed to the nourishment of the trauelling members of this kingdome (London: Printed by W[illiam] S[tansby for the author], 1611). Coryat has also written an account of India, which has not been studied: Mr Thomas Coriat to his friends in England sendeth greeting: from Agra the capitall city of the dominion of the great Mogoll in the Easterne India, the last of October, 1616. Thy trauels and thy glory to ennamell, with fame we mount thee on the lofty cammell (London: I. B[eale], 1618).

81. Tcherviakov, Fans, from the 18th to the Beginning of the 20th Century, 27. 82. Morris and Oerke, An Illustrated History, chapter 33. 83. Cowen, A Fanfare for the Sun King, 10. 84. Ibid., 11. 85. Mercure Gallant cited in Ibid., 171. 86. Ibid., 171–73. 87. DeJean, The Essence of Style, 220. 88. Ibid., 221. 89. This is making a very long story short; I recommend reading the whole story,

well told in DeJean, The Essence of Style, 221–29, and her sources T. S. Craw-ford, A History of the Umbrella (New York: Taplinger Publishing, 1970), and Jeremy Farrel, Umbrella and Parasols (New York: Drama Book Publishers, 1985).

90. Jones, Sexing la Mode, chapter 1. 91. See next chapter; there is some disagreement on these numbers; in 1669

D’Ormesson already estimated the collection’s worth at 14 million livres. In his account of the Persian Embassy, Herbette gives this number as 500,000 livres; see Maurice Herbette, Une ambassade persane sous Louis XIV, d’après des documents inédits, avec treize planches hors text (Paris: Perrin et cie, 1907), 160–66.

92. DeJean, The Essence of Style, 170–71. For this last remark by the ambassador I was unable to fi nd a source confi rming it and only fi nd this in DeJean.

93. Herbette, Une ambassade persane, cites Saint Simon and other sources for this event, 161–62.

94. Ibid., 162–63. 95. Ibid., 183. 96. Charlotte-Elisabeth, duchesse d’Orléans, Correspondance complète de ma-

dame duchesse d’Orléans née princesse palatine, mère du régent, trans. G. Brunet (Paris: Charpentier, 1863), letter of October 1, 1717.

97. Charles de Secondat, baron de Montesquieu, Lettres persanes (Cologne: Pierre Marteau, 1721), letter 92 from Usbeck to Rustan.

98. For the details of the trip through the Ottoman empire see Herbette, Une ambas-sade persane.

Notes • 351

99. For this see an engraving reproduced in DeJean, The Essence of Style, 173. 100. Roger de Rabutin, comte de Bussy, Correspondence de Roger de Rabutin,

comte de Bussy, avec sa famille et ses amis, 1666–1693, ed. Ludovic Lalanne (Paris: Charpentier, 1859). I thank Julie Foster for this reference.

101. Charles-Auguste La Fare, marquis de La Fare, Mémoires et réfl ections du Mar-quis de La Fare, sure les principaux événements du règne de Louis XIV et sure le charactere de ceux qui y on eu la pincipale part, ed. Emile Raunie (Paris: G. Charpentier et Cie, 1884), 193: “. . . mai Mme de Montespan avoit toujours été regardée comme la sultane reine.” I thank Julie Foster for this reference.

Chapter 10 Orientalism, Despotism, and Luxury

1. Charles Woosley Cole, Colbert and a Century of French Mercantilism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1939), I, 25.

2. For this gift see the previous chapter discussing the carrousel. 3. Dominique Lanni, Le rêve siamois du Roi Soleil: Récits d’une fi èvre exotique

à la cour du très-chrétien (Paris: Cosmopole, 2004). This is a compendium of texts and travel accounts for Siam in France and France in Siam; see the many works of Dirk Van der Cruysse on Siam and France and on the orientalist Timoléon de Choisy in the bibliography of Selected Secondary Sources.

4. Dirk Van Der Cruysse cites the contents of this account of Phongsawadan in Louis XIV et le Siam (Paris: Fayard, 1991), 15. See also the translation of am-bassador Kosapan’s Journal de Brest, 379.

5. The almanac in question is called La Royale-Reception des amabassadeurs du Roy de Siam par sa Majesté à Versailles. le 1ier Septembre 1686, Ed-mond Rothschild collection, 26985 LR. Cl. CN 60054. Musée du Louvre Arts graphiques.

6. Van Der Cruysse, Louis XIV et le Siam, 15. 7. Sabine Merchior Bonnet, The Mirror: A History (New York: Routledge, 2001), 74. 8. Van Der Cruysse, Louis XIV et le Siam, 401, gives all these items and more. 9. For Jean Baptiste Tavernier, see chapter 4. 10. Described by Timoléon de Choisy, Journal du Voyage de Siam, ed. Dirk Van

der Cruysse (Paris: Fayard, 1995), cited in Carolyn Sargentson, Merchants and Luxury Markets: The Marchands Merciers of Eighteenth-Century Paris (Lon-don: The Victoria and Albert Museum, 1996), 62.

11. Benigne Vachet in Lanni, Le rêve siamois, 45. 12. For a detailed account of this embassy see Cruysse (1991), 373–410. 13. Most of this literature is in part reproduced by Lanni, Le rêve siamois, most of

which is not is in the bibliography of Dirk Van der Cruysse’s work on Siam. 14. Cruysse, 383. 15. Mercure galant, December 1682, cited in Bonnet, The Mirror, 46.

352 • Notes

16. Olivier Lefèvre d’Ormesson, Journal d’Olivier Lefèvre d’Ormesson: et extraits des Mémoires d’André Lefèvre d’Ormesson, ed. Adolphe Chéruel (Paris: Im-primerie impériale, 1860–1861), vol. 2. Note that this number is different than the ones given by DeJean as quoted in the previous chapter.

17. Joan DeJean, The Essence of Style: How the French Invented High Fashion, Fine Food, Chic Cafés, Style, Sophistication, and Glamour (New York: Free Press, 2005).

18. Robert Fox and Anthony Turner, Luxury Trades and Consumerism in Ancien Régime Paris: Studies in the History of the Skilled Workforce (Aldershot, U.K.: Ashgate, 1998); and Maxine Berg and Helen Clifford, Consumers and Luxury:Consumer Culture in Europe 1650–1850 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999). Carolyn Sargentson’s Merchants and Luxury Markets is a brilliant study on the rise of luxury and its consumption in Paris and remains unique.

19. Berg and Clifford, Consumers and Luxury, is about England as are most books about luxury. Nothing for France has surpassed Charles Woosley Cole’s Col-bert and a Century of French Mercantilism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1939).

20. A recent work illuminates the discussions of luxury during those two decades of 1770–1789 and the consequences of court expenditure, especially by Marie Antoinette: Caroline Weber, Queen of Fashion: What Marie Antoinette Wore to the Revolution (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 2006).

21. The record of this meeting is found in manuscripts français 8039, 1–35. Part of the debate can be found clearly summed up in Cole, Colbert, 1–27.

22. F. A. Isembert, ed., Recueil général des anciennes lois française (Paris: Belin-le-Prieur, [1822]), XII 810; XII, 506–7.

23. Cole, Colbert, 15. 24. Up to then the écu had been a coin, not a money of account. It was fi rst minted

as a gold coin during the reign of Louis IX of France in 1266. 25. Jean Bodin, Discours de Iean Bodin sur le rehaussement et diminution des mon-

noyes, tant d’or que d’argent, & le moyen d’y remedier & responce aux Para-doxes de Monsieur de Malestroict: plus vn recueil des principaux aduis donnez en l’assemblee de Sainct Germain des Prez au mois d’aoust dernier, auec les Paradoxes sur le faict des monnoyes (Paris: Jacques Du Puys, 1578).

26. Barthélemy de Laffemas, Les tresors et richesses pour mettre l’Estat en splen-deur & monstrer au vray la ruyne des François par le traffi c & negoce des estrangers: & empescher facilement les petits procez en toute vacation, voir comme la iustice des consuls doit estre supprimee, & autres belles raisons (Paris: Estienne Preuosteau, 1598).

27. Jean Bodin, “Discours,” in Les Six Livres . . . (Paris: Fayard, 1986), 427. 28. Ibid., 428. 29. Ibid., 430–31.

Notes • 353

30. Laffemas, Les tresors, 5–6. 31. The latest edition is: Armand Jean du Plessis, duc de Richelieu, Testament poli-

tique de Richelieu, ed. Françoise Hildesheimer (Paris: Société de l’Histoire de France: Libr. Honoré Champion, 1995). Richelieu’s thoughts will be cited fur-ther. The edition quoted by Cole in his analysis in Colbert is the Amsterdam edition of 1749, which is unavailable at Harvard, but where there is a La Haye 1740 edition.

32. Isambert, Recueil général, 253; and Cole, Colbert, I, 78. 33. Cole, Colbert, 28–31. 34. Ibid., 82. 35. First published in 1615, the edition used here is the 1889 one. Antoyne de

Montchrétien, Traicté de l’œconomie politique: dedié en 1615 au roy et à la reyne mere du roy (Paris: E. Plon, 1889), 21–25, 65, 99, 101 and passim.

36. Ibid., 132. 37. Jean Bodin, Les six livres de la république (Paris: Jacques du Puys, 1577), VI, 49. 38. Montchrétien, Traicté de l’œconomie, 314. 39. Ibid., 220, 229, and 314–27. 40. Cole, Colbert, 84–86. 41. Ibid., 105–8. 42. On French coinage on Ottoman markets see Sevket Pamuk, A Monetary History

of the Ottoman Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). 43. Cole, Colbert, 139–41. 44. Richelieu, Testament, 1211–33 as cited by Cole, Colbert, 140. 45. Richelieu, Testament, 81–84, as cited by Cole, Colbert, 142. 46. Cole, Colbert, 146. 47. Sarah-Grace Heller, “Anxiety, Hierarchy, and Appearance in Thirteenth-Century

Sumptuary Laws and the Roman de la Rose,” French Historical Studies 27, no. 2 (Spring 2004): 311–48.

48. Jennifer M. Jones, Sexing la Mode: Gender, Fashion and Commercial Culture in Old Regime France (Oxford and New York: Berg, 2004). On this failure see Chapter 1: “La Cour: Absolutism and Appearance.”

49. Joyce Appleby, “Ideology and Theory: The Tension between Political and Economic Liberalism in Seventeenth Century England,” American Historical Review 81 (1976): 499–515; Roy Porter and John Brewer, eds., Consumption and the World of Goods (London: Routledge, 1994).

50. Daniel Roche, La Culture des apparences: Une Histoire du vêtement, XVII–XVIIIe siècles (Paris: Fayard, 1989); Daniel Roche, History of Everyday Things: The Birth of Consumption in France, 1600–1800, trans. Brian Pearce (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).

51. Daniel Roche, France in the Enlightenment (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Uni-versity Press, 1998), 164–72.

354 • Notes

52. Clare Haru Crowston, Fabricating Women: The Seamstresses of Old Regime France, 1675–1791 (London: Duke University Press, 2001). Jennifer M. Jones and Caroline Weber.

53. See Jones, Sexing la Mode, and Weber, Queen of Fashion. 54. Jones, Sexing la Mode, 9. 55. Ibid., 11. 56. Carolyn Sargentson, Merchants and Luxury Markets: The Marchands Merciers

of Eighteenth-Century Paris (Malibu, Calif.: Victoria and Albert Museum in association with the J. Paul Getty Museum, 1996).

57. Russell Nieli, “Spheres of Intimacy and the Adam Smith Problem,” Journal of the History of Ideas 47, no. 4 (Oct.–Dec., 1986): 611–24.

58. François Quesnay, “Analyse de la formule arithmétique du Tableau économique de la distribution des dépenses annuelles d’une Nation agricole,” in his Le Tab-leau Économique (New York: Bergman, 1968).

59. The best work to follow this long debate between fi nanciers and bankers on the one hand, represented by the Swiss banker Jacques Necker, and the physiocrats on the other, represented by André Morellet (1727–1819), Examen de la réponse de M. N** au mémoire de M. l’abbé Morellet, sur la Compagnie des Indes (Paris: Desaint, 1769).

60. On Protestant bankers see Herbert Lüthy, La banque protestante en France, de la révocation de l’Édit de Nantes à la Révolution (Paris, S.E.V.P.E.N., 1959) and Daniel Dessert, Argent, pouvoir et société au Grand Siècle (Paris: Fayard, 1984), II, 390–96.

61. David E. Mungello, The Great Encounter of China and the West, 1500–1800 (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefi eld Publishers, 2005), 120.

62. Joseph J. Spengler, “The Physiocrats and Say’s Law of Markets,” Journal of Political Economy 53, no. 3 (September, 1945): 193–211.

63. Jean Claude Perrot, Une histoire intellectuelle de l’écomomie politique au XVIII–XIIIième siècle (Paris: Editions de l’Ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales, 1992). See all this and more discussed in the newest book in English on the subject: John Shovlin, The Political Economy of Virtue: Luxury, Patriotism, and the Origins of the French Revolution (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2006).

64. I shared his surprise. Nearing the end of editing my manuscript I was very happy to see Shovlin’s book, The Political Economy of Virtue, address this crucial issue for France and sorry I could not integrate more of it here.

65. Weber, Queen of Fashion, 159–92. 66. Ibid., 159. 67. For debates in England and in the Dutch republic, see Maxine Berg and Eliza-

beth Eger, eds. Luxury in the Eighteenth Century: Debates, Desires and Delec-table Goods (New York: Pelgrave, 2003).

Notes • 355

68. For France during the Revolution, see Collin Jones and Rebecca Spang, “Sans Culottes, sans-Cafe, sans Tabac: Shifting Realms of Necessity and Luxury in Eighteenth Century France,” in Consumption and Luxury in Europe 1650–1850, ed. Maxine Berg and Helen Clifford (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999), 37–62.

69. Albert O. Hirschman, The Passions and the Interests: Political Arguments for Capitalism before Its Triumph (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University, 1977).

70. Charles de Secondat Montesquieu, The Spirit of Laws (1758; reprint, Cam-bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 99.

71. Ibid., 100. 72. Ibid., 96. 73. Ibid., 99. 74. Ibid., 100. 75. For an analysis of the citizen-consumer in the post-World War II period, see

Lizabeth Cohen, A Consumers Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America (New York: Knopf, 2003).

76. All references are from Charles de Secondat Montesquieu, “Consequences of the Different Principles of the Three Governments in Relation to Sumptuary Laws, Luxury, and the Condition of Women,” in The Spirit of Laws (1758; reprint, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), Part 1, Book VII, chapter 4, 100. Montesquieu is quoting a Roman source: Epitome rerum Romanorum.

77. See works by Lynn Hunt and Robert Darnton. On biographies of the queen a good analysis has just been published: Cécile Berly, Marie-Antoinette et ses bi-ographes: Histoire d’une écriture de la Révolution française (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2006).

78. Thomas Kaiser, “The Evil Empire? The Debate on Turkish Despotism in Eighteenth-Century French Political Culture,” The Journal of Modern History 72, no. 1, New Work on the Old Regime and the French Revolution: A Special Issue in Honor of Francois Furet (March, 2000): 6–34.

79. Jean Baptiste du Halde, “Description géographique, historique, chronologique, politique, et physique de l’Empire de la Chine,” in Montesquieu, The Spirit of Laws (Paris: P. G. Lemercier, 1735), 103.

80. Montesquieu, The Spirit of Laws (1989), 103. 81. Sir John Chardin, Sir John Chardin’s Travels in Persia (London: Argonaut

Press, 1927), 242. Reprint of 1724 edition with an introduction by Sir Percy Sykes, 138–39.

82. Lisa Lowe, Critical Terrains: French and British Orientalisms (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1991), 33 and 55–74.

83. Charles de Secondat Montesquieu, Lettres persanes (Paris: Garnier, 1975), vi. Six possible other original sources have been invoked over two centuries of criticism; see page vii.

356 • Notes

84. Ibid., v–vi. 85. Jean Jacques Rousseau, Œuvres complètes (Paris: Pleiade edition, 1959), vol. 1,

1413, and notes of Confessions, trans. Angela Scholar, edited with an introduc-tion and notes by Patrick Coleman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).

86. Jean Chardin, Journal du Voyage du Chevalier Chardin en Perse, & aux Indes Orientales par la Mer Noire, & par la Colchide. Première partie, qui contient le voyage de Paris à Isfahan (Lyon: Thomas Amaulry, 1687), vol. 2.

87. Jean Chardin, Le Couronnement de Soleimaan Troisième Roi de Perse, et ce qui s’est passé de plus mémorable dans les deux premières années de son Régne (Paris: Claude Barbin, 1671), 1.

88. Anthony Pagden, “The Effacement of Difference: Colonialism and the Ori-gins of Nationalism in Diderot and Herder,” in After Colonialism: Imperial Histories and Post Colonial Displacement, ed. Gyan Prakash (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1995), 169.

89. Jonathan Irvine Israel, Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity, 1650–1750 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001).

90. Muhsin Mahdi, The Thousand and One Nights (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1995), 1–9.

91. Voltaire, Zadig and Other Stories (New York: New American Library, 1961). 92. François Petis de la Croix, Les mille et un jours contes persans (Paris: Christian

Bourgeois, 1980). Recently, after falling into oblivion, the text was published with a commentary by contemporary orientalist Paul Sebag. He offers his own theory about the text.

93. Montesquieu, The Spirit of Laws (1989), 63. 94. Charles de Secondat Montesquieu, The Spirit of Laws, trans. Thomas Nugent,

ed. J. V. Prichard (London: G. Bell & Sons, Ltd., 1914), 27. 95. Robert Darnton, The Forbidden Best Sellers of Revolutionary France (New

York: Norton, 1995), 21 and 87. 96. Montesquieu, The Spirit of Laws (1989), 64. 97. Kaiser, “The Evil Empire,” 17. Also see his article on Madame de Pompadour:

“Madame de Pompadour and the Theaters of Power,” French Historical Stud-ies 19, no. 4 (Fall 1996): 1025–45.

98. Simon Burrows, Blackmail, Scandal and Revolution: London’s French Libel-listes 1758–92 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, forthcoming).

99. Kaiser, “The Evil Empire,” 25. 100. Patrice Higonnet, Goodness beyond Virtue: Jacobins during the French Revo-

lution (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998), 20. 101. For this and other orientalist literature, see Madeleine Dobie, Foreign Bodies:

Gender, Language, and Culture in French Orientalism (Stanford, Calif.: Stan-ford University Press, 2001).

102. Alain Grosrichard, The Sultan’s Court: European Fantasies of the East (Lon-don: Verso, 1998).

Notes • 357

103. Philip F. Riley, A Lust for Virtue: Louis XIV’s Attack on Sin in Seventeenth-Century France (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2001).

104. Alain Grosrichard and others have studied the meaning of the representation of the harem: Alain Grosrichard, Structure du serial: La fi ction du despotisme asiatique dans l’occident classique (Paris: Seuil, 1979).

105. Laurence Lockhardt, The Fall of the Safavid Dynasty and the Afghan Inva-sion of Persia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1958); Tudeusz Jan Krusiński, Historie de la derniere revolution de Perse [Composée sur les mé-moires de J. Krusinski et continuée par J. A. Ducerceau.] (Paris: Briasson, 1728).

106. Montesquieu, The Spirit of Laws (1989), 62. 106. Ibid., 28. 107. Raymond Schwab, La renaissance orientale (Paris: Payot, 1950); Edward

Saïd, Orientalism (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978), 79–81. 108. One copy is held at the Bibiolthèque nationale. Published in 1789, without

name of the printer or place of publication. 109. Jacques Anquetil-Duperron, Dignité du Commerce et l’Etat de commerçant

(Paris: s.n.), 38. 110. Jacques Anquetil-Duperron, Législation orientale: ouvrage dans lequel, en mon-

trant quels sont en Turquie, en Perse et dans l’Indoustan, les principes fon-damentaux du gouvernement, on prouve . . . (Amsterdam: Marc-Michel Rey, 1778).

111. Jacques Anquetil, Anquetil-Duperron: Premier orientaliste (Paris: Presses de la Renaissance, 2005).

112. Lucette Valensi, “Éloge de l’orient, éloge de l’orientalisme,” Revue de l’histoire des religions 4 (1995): 419–52.

113. François Bernier, The history of the late revolution of the empire of the Great Mogol microform:: together with the most considerable passages for 5 years following in that empire:: to which is added a letter to the Lord Colbert touch-ing the extent of Indostan, the circulation of the gold and silver of the world . . . as also the riches, forces, and justice of the same, and the principal cause of the decay of the states of Asia by Monsr. F. Bernier . . .; English’d out of French (London: Moses Pitt, 1671).

114. Siep Stuurman, “Francois Bernier and the Invention of Racial Classifi cation,” History Workshop Journal 50 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000): 1–21.

115. Anquetil-Duperron, Dignité du Commerce, 120–23. 116. Raymond Schwab, Vie d’Anquetil-Duperron, suivie des Usages civils et reli-

gieux des Parses par Anquetil-Dupperron (Paris: E. Leroux, 1934). 117. Karl A. Wittfogel, “The Ruling Bureaucracy of Oriental Despotism: A Phe-

nomenon That Paralyzed Marx,” The Review of Politics 15, no. 3 (July, 1953): 350–59; M. Athar Ali, “The Mughal Polity—A Critique of Revisionist Ap-proaches,” Modern Asian Studies 27, no. 4 (October, 1993): 699–710.

358 • Notes

118. Without Elizabeth Weber’s study, Queen of Fashion, this would not be as evident.

119. Voltaire, Candide ou L’Optimisme (Paris: Gallimard, 1992), see introduction by Jacques Van den Heuvel.

120. Ian Davidson, Voltaire in Exile: The Last Years, 1753–78 (London: Atlantic Books, 2004).

121. Voltaire, Essai sur les moeurs et l’esprit des nations, et sur les principaux faits de l’histoire, depuis Charlemagne jusqu’à Louis XIII (Geneva: n.p., 1769), see chapter titled “Des possessions des Français en Amérique.”

122. Voltaire, Candide, chapter 18, 85. Translation is my own. 123. Voltaire, The Age of Louis XIV (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1963), Voltaire

cited in the introduction by J. H. Brumfi tt, xix. 124. Voltaire, Letters on the English, The Harvard Classics Series (New York: P. F.

Collier & Son, 1909–14), vol. 34, Part 2, Letter X—On Trade. 125. Wealth, however, had changed hands. 126. Philippe Minard, La Fortune du Colbertisme: Etats et industrie dans la France

des Lumières (Paris: Fayard, 1998), 7–8. 127. Ibid., 257–75 and 61. 128. Ibid., 294. 129. Ibid., 192. 130. See Weber, Queen of Fashion, on Rose Bertin’s rise and her declaring a bank-

ruptcy of several million livres before the Revolution to try and recuperate her debts.

131. Ibid., 151–65. 132. Weber’s study of the women who followed Marie Antoinette’s example in

Queen of Fashion makes this amply clear. 133. John Shovlin has demonstrated though hundreds of documents that in eco-

nomic writing; the moral politics of “virtue” were instrumental; see Shovlin’s introduction to The Political Economy of Virtue.

Chapter 11 Epilogue

1. Homi Bhahba, Nation and Narration (New York: Routledge, 1990), Introduction. 2. Journal de la mode et du gôut, cited by Caroline Weber, Queen of Fashion:

What Marie Antoinette Wore to the Revolution (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 2006), 206. For all of the preceding discussion see Weber’s last chapters.

3. Weber, Queen of Fashion, 206. 4. Reproduced and discussed in Ibid., 211. 5. Helen Maria Williams, cited by Ibid., 252. 6. L’Epicurien français, 120 and 121 (Paris: Capelle et Renand, 1808–16).

Notes • 359

7. Mona Ozouf, Festivals and the French Revolution (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1988), 280.

8. Joan B. Landes, Visualizing the Nation: Gender, Representation, and Revolution in Eighteenth-Century France (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2001), 173.

9. Thomas Kaiser, “The Evil Empire? The Debate on Turkish Despotism in Eighteenth-Century French Political Culture,” The Journal of Modern History 72, no. 1, New Work on the Old Regime and the French Revolution: A Special Issue in Honor of Francois Furet (March 2000): 6–34.

10. Justin Stagl, A History of Curiosity: The Theory of Travel, 1550–1800 (Chur, Switzerland: Hardwood Academic Publishers, 1995), 270.

11. He was born Constantin-François de Chasseboeuf in 1757. 12. Sergio Moravia, Filosofi a e Szienze nell’ eta dei Lumi (Florence: Sansoni,

1982). Gives the best account of the birth of the “science de l’homme.” 13. See Introduction for this. 14. Edward Saïd, Orientalism (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978), 81–83. 15. Stagl, A History of Curiosity, 89. 16. Ibid., 270. 17. Saïd, Orientalism, 83. 18. Commision des science et arts d’Egypte, Description de l’Egypte, ou recueil des

observations et des recherches qui ont été faites en Egypte pendant l’expedition de l’armée française (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1809–23). 9 volumes of texts and 14 volumes of plates.

19. Mary Blaine Campbell, The Witness and the Other World: Exotic European Travel Writing, 400–1600 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1988), see chapter 2.

20. Stagl, A History of Curiosity, 281–96. 21. Mary Louise Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation (New

York: Routledge, 1992), 35–37. 22. Ozouf, Festivals and the French Revolution, 212. 23. Ibid., 222. 24. Weber, Queen of Fashion, 246. 25. Ozouf, Festivals and the French Revolution, 5.

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– 399 –

Abbas (Shah), 141Abbot of Cluny (Peter the Venerable), 29 –30Abelard, Peter, 11, 30, 257Academia del Cimento, 115Academy of Inscriptions, 130Academy of Sciences: birth of, 101, 115 –18; Colbert’s

funding of, 116, 117; faculty appointments to, 117; inception of orientalism and, 102, 115 –18; Jesuit mission to China, 125 –27; Journal des Sçavans, 117, 168, 172, 173

“l’affaire du sofa” episode, 130Alcorani seu legis Mahometi et Evangelistarum

concordiae liber (Postel), 25, 40 – 41Aldrovandi, Ulisse, 118Alexander VII, 125 –26al-ghuzat. See corsairs (al-ghuzat); warriors, of

Ottoman empireAlgiers, casus beli with France, 88 – 90The Ambassadors (Holbein), 67Les Amour du Soleil (Donneau de Visé), 217ancien régime, 222, 277, 280, 286Andry, Nicolas Bois-Regard, 181Ango, Jehan, 64, 69Anne of Austria, 85Anquetil-Duperron, Abraham Hyacinthe, 2, 282–84Antoinette, Marie, 6, 112, 268 – 69, 272, 291– 92Appeal for Prayer Against the Turks (Luther), 32d’Aramon, Gabriel, 128Armenians: conversion to Catholicism, 189; diaspora

of, and spread of new products, 186; end of coffee houses, 190 – 94; introduction of coffee to France, 163, 166, 184, 185, 188 – 90; introduction of coffee to Vienna, 196; offers of help against Ottomans, 105

De arte natandi (Digby), 116Aruj, founding of corsairs, 86Audigier, 183, 191Augustine, Saint, 16, 35Avanchintz, Marcara, 104

Baillet, Adrien, 20Barbary Coast, 86 – 88Barberousse. See Khair-ed-Din (Barbrousse)Bart, Jean, 153Barthélemy, Jean Jacques, 77Bayle, Pierre, 112, 128Beaulieu, Augustin de, 82, 107Beg, Ouloug, 278Behdad, Ali, 134Belon, Pierre, 48, 52, 56 –57, 61Belting, Hans, 248Bérain, Jean, 245 – 47

Bergerac, Jean Marteille de, 93Bernard of Clairvaux, 30Bernier, François, 105 – 6, 284Bernier, Nicolas, 199 –200Bible: Latin Vulgate version, acceptability of,

25, 26; translation into French, 24 –26; use of Old Testament by Bodin, 62

Bibliander, Theodor, 32 – 34, 41Bibliothèque orientale (d’Herbelot), 132Bibliothèque Royale, 116Bion, Jean, 149Blaudier, Michel, 96 – 97Blégny, Nicolas de, 165, 168, 174 –77Blondy, Alain, 96, 145Blotius, Hugo, 48Bodin, Jean, 15: account of Francis I, 63; comparison

of rulers with incomes, 61– 62; ideas on despotism, 273; on “modern historical consciousness,” 75 –76; Oriental Despotism, 58 – 64; parallels between Ottoman Sultan/French king, 59; pioneer of mercantilism, 261– 62; Les six livres de la République, 58, 59, 61, 62; use of Old Testament, 62; view of Charles V, 60 – 61; views on slavery, 145

Bomare, Valmont de, 209Bomberg, Daniel, 50Bonnet, Jean, 143, 144Bossuet, Jacques Bénigne, 138, 139Botanical Elements of the Plants in the Garden of

Orixa, Their Virtues and Qualities, Both Known and unknown with their Flowers, Fruits and Seeds, Translated from the Oriya into French (Jussieu), 121

botanical gardens. See Jardin du Roi (botanical garden)botany, rise of, 119: classifi cation system of Tournefort,

121; inauguration, in France, 120; introduction of tulips by Clusius Charles, 120; medicinal garden of La Brosse, 119; naming of plants by de Serres, 119

Bouclier de l’Europe ou la guerre Sainte (Coppin), 141Le bourgeois gentilhomme play (d’Arvieux &

Molière), 84boursier students, 19Boutex, Michel de, 215 –16Bouwsma, William, 21Boyce, James, 33Boyceau, Jacques, 213Boyle, Robert, 113Brazil: diamond mines of, 112; Dutch chased from,

156; fi rst contact with Normans, 72; importation of wood from, 176; luxury items from, 246; Marano Jews from, 156; Portugal’s claim of ownership, 69; reconstruction of, 72 –73; Thévet’s description of, 73; trade with Normans, 70

Index

400 • Index

Breuilly, Jean de, 78Brotton, Jerry, 8, 67– 68Bry, Théodore de, 245Budé, Guillaume, 36, 51Burke, Peter, 218Butel, Paul, 154Byzantine Church, 15Byzantios, Niketas, 29

cafés, 4, 200 –202. See also Armenians; coffee; Dictionnaire universel de commerce (Savary de Brûlon); eighteenth century, 198 – 203; opening of, in Paris, 165, 179, 188 – 90

calicoes (indiennes), 179, 222 – 30, 250, 252, 287Calvin, John, 19, 25, 34, 74cameristes students, 19Campanella (astrologer), 2Campbell, Mary Baine, 1, 74Canada: colonization of, 70, 265; escape from

Richelieu’s grip, 154; fl owers of, book about, 120 –21; fur trade, 267

Candide (Voltaire), 285Cañizares-Esguerra, Jorge, 76cannabis sativa, 109cannons as casus beili, 88 – 90Le capitaine Clieu ou le premier pied de café aux

Antilles pamphlet, 206Capuchins (Christian missionaries): arrival of, in

Ottoman empire, 98; in Constantinople, 128; installation in French embassy, in Istanbul, 141; missions of, in Asia, 106 –7

Carnaval des Romans (Le Roy Ladurie), 56Carnoy, Dominique, 7Caron, François, 104Carré, Bathélemy, 135carrousel, of Henri II, 234Le Carrousel des Galants Maures (1685), 243 – 47;

costume design by Barain/Gissey, 245 – 47; propaganda and self-image, 243– 45

carrousel of Louis XIV (1662), 231–56; choice of themes, 235 –36; costumes by Gissey, 235, 240, 241; course des bagues race, 233; court-commissioned paintings, 232–33; description, 232; fi ve quadrilles, political signifi cance, 232, 236 – 40; homage to Chinese, 240 – 41; imago mundi (world representation), 241– 43; modeling after 1662 carousel, 234; planning by Louis XIV, 233; propaganda aspect of, 240 – 41; symbolism of, 235

Cassan, Jacques de, 139Cassini, Jean Dominique, 117, 127casus belli, between France and Algiers, 88 – 90Catherine of Medici, 71, 79Catholicism/Catholic Church. See also Vatican:

Armenian conversions to, 189; condemnation of Islam, 28; conversion of Phra Naraï, 126; creation of Propaganda Fide, 87; defense against Protestantism/Islam, 87; England’s struggles against, 34; Huguenots vs., 71; jihad on, 90; negative view toward luxury, 260, 272, 274 –75; opposition to treaty with Ottomans, 37; punishment for criticism of, 277

Caunay, Pierre, 78censorship: birth of, 24 –26; criticism of, in stories

and plays, 278; slavery, 143, 145; of Sorbonne’s theologians, 52

Champlain, Samuel de, 79, 226Chappuzeau, Samuel, 112Chardin, Daniel, 107– 8Chardin, Jean, 107– 8: absolutism of France, 276 –77;

Grelot as illustrator for travels, 130; positive writings about coffee, 197; scientifi c interests of, 113, 114; self-imposed exile, 112; travel accounts of, 109; views on infl uence of climate, 110 –11; visit to India via Persia, 129

Charlemagne, 3Charles III, 42, 43Charles V, 37, 39: Bodin’s anger at, 63; Bodin’s view

of, 60 – 61; division of world, with Portuguese, 65; fi nancing of Magellan, 67; question of legitimacy of, 62; signing of Peace of Crépy treaty, 41

Charles VI, 20Charles VIII, 15 –16; ordering French translation of

Bible, 28; rights to title of Emperor of Byzantium, 140Charpentier, François, 103Chauveau, François, 232Chesnau, Jean, 49China. See also tea: Jesuits in, 124 –27; Louis

XIV’s admiration of, 102 – 3, 257; manufacture of porcelain products, 257; manufacturing/naval techniques of, 108; short route offered by Columbus, 74 –75; tea exports from, 166, 181; travel accounts about, 259

Chinon, Gabriel de, 112chocolate, 165: Audigier’s interest in, 183; Blégney’s

research on, 174; importation/exportation by Sephardic Jews, 186; Masson’s interest in, 191; popularity in Louis XIV’s court, 192

Choisy, François-Timoléon de, 127Christianity. See also Capuchins (Christian

missionaries): reinterpretation by Postel, 25; view of luxury/luxury goods, 260, 272, 274 –75

Chronographia (Theophanes the Confessor), 29City of God (Augustine), 16Clairac, Etienne, 72Clement VII (Pope), 98Clusius, Charles, 120Code noir, issuance by Louis XV, 144, 157–58coffee, 4, 163 – 82. See also cafés; Paris: association

with tobacco smoking, 194; Audigier’s interest in, 183, 191; bans on, 169 –70, 198; birth of French café, 165; Blégney’s research on, 174 –77; coffee plants, domestication of, 205 – 8; Colomb’s research on, 177– 82; end of Armenian coffee houses, 190 – 94; fashion, politics. commerce, 184; fi rst cup, by al-Dhabhani, 168; French colonization and, 205 – 8; French Revolution and, 198 –203; Galland on, 167–71; guilds, 186; Hattox on, 169 –71; importance during Ramadan, 170; introduction to France, 110, 163 – 82, 166, 184, 185, 188 – 90; al-Jaziri on, 168 – 69; La Roque on, 172 –73, 180, 185, 188 – 90; Louis XIVs politicization of, 185, 191– 94; Martinique, 163, 206, 207– 8; medical ideas about, 166, 168, 171–72, 184; Nairon on origins, 168 – 69; Persia, 166, 196 – 98; recipes for, 194 – 96; societal infl uences of, 165 – 66; spread of drinking, 186 – 88; substitution with tea, 208 –10; writings by Jaziri, 168

Colbert, Jean-Baptiste: defeat at Gigery, 151; expedition to India, 104; fl ower trade and, 214, 215 –19; founder of French navy, 151; funding

Index • 401

of French Royal Academy of Sciences, 116, 117; institution of naval servage by, 146; involvement with Trianon, 216; manufacturing problems encountered by, 226; mirror manufacturing legacy, 102; organization of luxury industries, 268; porcelain manufacturing, 220; reincarnation of Compagnie du Levant, 103; relationship with Duquesne, 150 –54; search for ancient manuscripts, 130; silk production, championing of, 214; Trianon, 218 –19

Colbertism, death of, 286 – 89Cole, Charles, 260Coligny, Gaspard de, 71, 73Collège de France, 27Collège de trois langues, 26, 65Collège du Roi, 47, 115, 117, 119 –20, 130Colley, Linda, 90, 95Colomb, Claude, 177– 82Columbus, Christopher, 66, 71; background information

about, 74 –75; bringing sugar cane to Hispaniola, 156; claims against, 72; Postel’s view of, 65

Compagnie de Guninée, 158Compagnie de Saint Christophe, 158Compagnie des Isles d’Amerique, 156Compagnie du Levant (Richelieu), 103, 155Compagnie Orientale de Dieppe, 82Compaignie des Indes Occidentales (of Colbert), 156Comprehensive Book (Al-Razi), 110 –11Confutatio Alcorani (Byzantios), 29Considération sur la Guerre actuelle des Turcs

(Volnay), 294Constantinople: coffee drinking in, 163, 198; étameurs

(tinsmiths) from, 227; fall of, 140; fi rst French embassy, 39 – 40; Galland’s trips to, 131; hurdles of French ambassadors in, 127; Postel’s mission to, 39 – 40, 41; second French embassy, 43 – 44

consumption, debates about, 268 –72Coppin, Jean, 141Corpus Toledo (European Qu’ran translation), 29, 30, 31corsairs (al-ghuzat). See also piracy/pirating:

collaboration of, 87; French ships as targets, 89; Galland’s escape from, 143; Khair-ed-Din/Aruj, founding fathers of, 86; Louis XIV cooperation with, 153; protection of, 94 – 95

Cortelli, Procopio, 189 – 90Cortez, Hernando, 70Cosmographie du Levant (Thévet), 49, 73Coteau Cambraisi, Peace of, 234Le Couronnement de Soleïmaan Troisième Roi de

Perse (Chardin), 277Cousin, Jean, 72Crignon, Pierre, 78Critique of the Alcoran (de Cusa), 33Cusa, Nicholas de, 33Cyropedie (Xenophon), 59

Dams, Bernd H., 214, 219Dan, Pierre (Father Dan), 88 – 89, 91– 93, 96Danser, Simon, 88 – 89Darnton, Robert, 279d’Arvieux, Laurent, Chevalier, 84Das Kapital (Marx), 284Davis, Robert, 89, 94De Clieu, Gabriel Mathieu, 206 –7Defoe, Daniel, 223

DeJean, Joan, 250, 254, 268 – 69Della Valle, Pietro, 163Delle navigationi et viaggi (Ramusio), 55Denys of Byzantium, 51Description de l’Egypte, 295Description de l’Empire de la Chine (Baptiste du

Halde), 275Description nouvelle des merveilles de ce monde et de

la dignité l’homme (Crignon), 78Description of Egypt (Marcel), 1d’Esnabuc, Pierre Belain, 83despotism: Bodin’s ideas on, 273; Montesquieu and

debate on, 273 –75; oriental, and luxury, 275 – 82; phantom of, and Anquetil-Duperron, 282– 84; Safavid Persia as example of, 279

Le Despotisme de la Chine (Quesnay), 270 –71al-Dhabhani, Jamal-al-Dini, 168Dialecticae Institutiones (Ramus), 47diamond collection. See also gems/gem trade;

Golconda diamond; Hope diamond; Louis XIV, 4, 5, 106, 111–12, 187, 230, 238 – 39, 251–56, 257, 259, 269; Tavernier, sold to Louis XIV, 111–12

Dictionnaire (Bayle), 112Dictionnaire universel de commerce (Savary de

Brûlon), 199, 222Diderot, Denis, 197, 207, 277: imprisonment of, 279;

infl uence on Volnay, 293; presentation of harem, 281; stance against polygamy, 54

Digby, Edvard, 116Dignité du Commerce et l’Etat de commerçant

(Schwab), 282Dinteville, Jean de, 67Diodato, Johannes, 195 – 96Discourse on Pirates (Mainwaring), 87Discours sur l’anatomie du cerveau (Stensen), 116Dissertation sur l’origine des langues (Leibniz), 35Dobie, Madeleine, 7, 134Dominicans, 19, 29, 31Donneau de Visé, Jean, 217, 247Doublet, Norman Jean, 154dragoman (interpreters), importance of, 126 –28dragonnades, 137, 150du Cange, Charles du Fresnes, 140Duchy of Savoy, 64Duclos, Samuel, 117Dufour, Philippe Sylvestre, 166, 168, 173 –74Du Halde, Jean Baptiste, 275du Mans, Raphaël, 98, 140Duncan, Daniel, 179Duquesne, Abraham: founder of French navy, 151;

relationship with Colbert, 150 –54; settling in Switzerland, 158; ship named after, 150

du Ryer, André, translation of Qu’ran into French, 97–100Dutch East India Company (VOC), 80 – 81, 83, 104,

110, 114, 122, 185, 223

East India Company: bankers/fi nanciers of, 270; Colbert, 179; creation of, 72, 80, 82, 102, 103, 152; petition of Louis XIV to form, 72

Ecole des junes langues, 128economic theories, and birth of mercantilism, 261– 68Edict of Nantes, 34, 79, 95, 117, 137, 138, 146, 226Egypt: attack proposal of Leibniz, 139; French trade

with, 98; heiroglyphs, 77; Napoleon’s expeditions

402 • Index

against, 166, 293; Ottoman conquest of Mamluk state if, 165; Thévet’s trips to, 49; Volnay’s travels to, 293

Eilas, Norbert, 184Eléments de botanique (Tournefort), 121Elements (Euclid), 31Elias, Norbert, 185, 228embassies of France, in Constantinople: First, 38 – 40;

Noitel, 43; Second, 43 – 44l’Empereur, Nicolas, 122, 123l’Empire d’Orient (Gallia Orientalis), 139Encyclopédie (Diderot & d’Alembert), 207encyclopedists, of eighteenth century, 48Enfants célèbres (Baillet), 20enfants de langues, 133England. See also Royal Society of London: captivity

narratives, 90 –91; Chardin’s arrival in London, 113; competition for French Antilles, 70; humiliation at Tangiers, 90; invasion of France, 41; struggle against Catholicism, 34

English East India Company, 80, 113, 251d’Entrecolles, Father, 220Erasmus, 51étameurs (tinsmiths) from Constantinople, 227Etat des royaumes de Barbarie, Tripoly, Tunis, et.

Alger (de la Faye), 92Etat present au just de l’Empire Othoman (Petis de la

Croix), 141Eulogius (Saint) of Córdoba, 29Europe: admiration of Ottoman military, 56; café’s of,

198 – 99; carrousels introduced to, 233; climate theory of Bodin, 60; collapse of tobacco prices, 155; dreams of uniting, 16; encounters with New World, 75; exotic imports to, 165; importance of oriental fabrics/designs, 249; indignation at brutality of Catholic brothers, 148; infl uence of oriental fashion on, 247–51; interest in Indian drugs in, 110; introduction of coffee in, 109, 172, 185; Islam conversions in, 86 – 88; Protestantism, 137–38; publication of Hebrew books, 20 –21; rivalry for Holy Roman Emperor title, 139; spread of silk to, 212; struggles for supremacy of, 37; Turk threats to, 54, 138; unifi cation of, 140 (See also Order of the Christian Militia)

Evelyn, John, 113, 250Explicit instruction in the cultivation of silkworms and

the winning of silk for the Imperial-Royal hereditary lands (von Justi), 212

Family of Love, 25fashion: café society, 198, 200; for chocolate, 192; for

coffee drinking, 183, 185, 186 – 88; Louis XIV as arbiter of, 5 – 6, 184, 221, 221.247, 247, 268 – 69; for luxury goods from Siam, 222–30; manners, spread of, 184; for orange, citron, lemon trees, 213; oriental fashions, 246, 247–56; for printed calicos from Persia, 223 (See also indiennes); for tobacco, 83; Turkish to Chinese decors, 190

Father Dan. See Dan, Pierre (Father Dan)Fernandez, Valentin, 46Feynes, Henri de (Comte de Monfart), 79 – 80Ficino, Marsilio, 15 –16Findlen, Paula, 4, 118Flaschat, J. C., 227

Fleury, Jean de, 70, 154: approach of Martinique, 154; pirating of Spanish galleons, 70

Florida (Terre des Bretons), Huguenot settlement, 71–72France: Armenian introduction of coffee, 163, 166,

184, 185, 188 – 90; birth of Academy of Sciences, 101, 116 (See also Thévenot, Melchisédec); casus belli with Algiers, 88 – 90; embassies in Constantinople, 39 – 40, 43 – 44; English invasion of, 41; exploration, under Henri IV, 79; imperial ambitions of, 70 –71; Jesuit scientifi c mission to China, 124 –26; land of mercantilism, 261; occupation of Toulon, 40 – 41; on-again off-again allegiance to Habsburgs, 233 –34; Ottoman Empire as mirror of, 55 –58; peace of Coteau Cambraisi with Spanish France, 234; porcelain collection of, 220; Protestant exit from, 138; role during Crusades, 139; settlement in French Antilles, 156; version of Academy of Sciences, 115

Francis I, 3; aid to Ottoman’s, 41; anger at Charles III, 42; appointment of Pastel to teach Arabic, 26 –27, 28; appointment of Winter as royal physician, 51; Bodin’s accounts of, 63; Brazil trade embargo, 69; competition with Italy/Hapsburgs, 40; complaints against papacy, 66; establishment of French as national language, 52; goodwill gesture by Khair-ed-Din, 38; Indian Ocean exploration, 77–79; Italian defeat of, 70; letter or marque to Terrien, 70; meeting with Postel, 17; parochial record keeping system, 18; sponsorship of French humanists, 51; treaty with Süleyman the Magnifi cent, 37; unifying role in Postel’s vision, 15

Franco/Sabir (common language), 95Frangipani, Jean, 38Franklin, Alfred, 191– 92Franklin, Benjamin, 202Freistas, Serafi m dei, 81French Antilles, 70: issuance of Code noir by Louis

XV, 157; Normans in, 154 –59; slavery in, 158French East India Company (FREIC), 80, 84, 103 – 6, 220French Revolution, 5, 6, 27, 43, 58, 158, 200, 221, 260Frostin, Charles, 158Furetière, Antoine, 233Furnishing the Eighteenth Century (Longino), 7Fuzelier, Louis, 200

Galland, Antoine, 3, 51, 142: admission to Academy of Inscriptions, 130; coffee, 67, 163, 167–71; escape from corsairs, 143; naming as antiquaire du roi, 132; translation of A Thousand and One Nights, 128, 131; trips to Istanbul, 130

Gallia Orientalis concept, 3, 140galoches (gypsy) students, 19 –20gardens. See Jardin du Roi (botanical garden); Trianon

de PorcelaineGargantua series (Nasier), 28Gassendi, Pierre, 105Gassot, Jacques, 49Gelidius, Jean, 20gems/gem trade, 107– 8, 122, 254 –55, 258General Introduction to Astronomy (Abu Ma’shar), 31Gerard of Cremona, 55Gilles, Pierre, 48 – 49, 50, 51Gissey, Henri, 235, 240, 241, 245 – 47

Index • 403

Golconda diamond, 111–12Gonneville, Binot Paulmier de, 72Goody, Jack, 214Gounay, Henri, 97Gournay, Vincent de, 270, 271Gouvea, Antoine de, 20, 21, 69Grafton, Anthony, 75, 76, 115Grand dictionaire historique (Moreri), 240Greek language studies, 29Greek Orthodox Church, 28Gregor the Armenian. See ArmeniansGrelot, Guillaume-Joseph, 129Gritty, Andrea, 62Grosrichard, Alain, 134Grotius, Hugo, 81, 114Guignes, Joseph de, 77guilds: coffee’s infl uence on, 186; end of Armenian

coffee houses, 190 – 94; Lemonade and spirit merchants, 191; Louis XIVs sale of limonadiers guild, 191– 93; negotiation of slave labor, 150; production of siamoise, 222

Gulistan (Baudier), 97, 99Gyllius, Petrus, 51

Hahn, Roger, 116Hakluyt, Richard, 225, 227Hall, Kim, 8Hall of Mirrors (Versailles), 255, 257, 259Hamilton, Alastair, 97, 98, 99Hapsburgs: defense of Vienna, 139; Francis I’s

competition with, 40; Mulay Hasan’s refuge with, 39; on-again off-again allegiance of France, 233 –34; rivalry with, for Holy Roman Emperor title, 139

Haran, Alexandre, 139harem(s): Lady Montague, 248; literature about, 54,

131, 197, 279, 280; Louis XV, 280 – 81; Sultan court, 133; Sultan Mangogol, 279; used as symbol for state, 278, 281

Hattox, Ralph, 169 –71Hazard, Paul, 115Hebrew language: studies by Postel, 20 –21, 34 –36,

44; teaching of, by Paradis, 26Hecquet, Philippe, 179 – 80Heinrich, Sarah, 33Hennepin, Louis, 75Henri II, 47: letter to Pope Julius III, 22; marriage to

Catherine of Medici, 71; massacre of Huguenots, 22; orders to d’Armamon, 50; participation in 1559 carrousel, 234; unifi cation/glorifi cation of reign by, 72

Henri IV, 8: assassination of, 88; exploration of France under, 79; issuance of Edict of Nantes, 79; silk enterprise of, 212–13; treasures of Indes Orientales, 79 – 82

Henri VIII, signing of Peace of Crépy treaty, 41d’Herbelot, Barthélemy, 132herbs. See Jardin du Roi (botanical garden)De heresibus liber (John of Damascus), 28Héret, Mathurin, 73 –74, 75. See also Singularités de la

France Antarctique (Thévet)Herman the Dalmation, 31Hernandéz de Toledo, Francisco, 118 –19Higonnet, Patrice, 280Histoire amoureuse des Gaules (Compte de Bussy), 256

L’Histoire de la Barbarie (Dan), 92Histoire de la cour du roi de Chine (Baudier), 97Histoire de la guerre de Flandre 1559 –1609

(Baudier), 97Histoire de l’esclavage d’un marchand de Cassis

(Galland), 142historical knowledge (historica), 46Histories, book IV (Herodotus), 55The History of the Conduct of the Dutch in Asia

(Tavernier), 107The History of the Last Revolution of Persia

(Krusinski), 281Holbein, Hans, 67Holland: competition for French Antilles, 70; Dutch

chased from Brazil, 156; gift of coffee plant to France, 205 – 8

Holy League, 64Holy Roman Emperor, 37, 84, 139Hope diamond, 112Hortus Malabaricus (Van Reed), 122Hoskins, John, 113Hubblethorn, Morgan, 225Huguenots: accusations against Villegaignon, 74;

attraction to piracy/Islam, 95; establishment in French Antilles/North America, 154 –59; limiting communication of, 148; Louis XIII’s initiatives against, 82 – 83; massacres of, 22, 71, 79; penalty for leaving France, 137– 38; raids on Hispaniola/Cuba, 71; revocation of Edict of Nantes, 137; role in exploration of New World, 71– 72, 73; slavery, 146, 147; ties to East India Company, 106 –12

humanism/humanists: cities of importance to, 48; court sponsorship of, 22 – 24, 51; Renaissance, and Ars apodemica, 45

Huygens, Christiaan, 117Hyde, Elizabeth, 218

INALCO. See Institute for Oriental Languages (INALCO)

l’Incarnation, Marie de, 226Indes Orientales treasures, under Henri IV, 79 – 82India: Chardin’s travel accounts, 109; Colbert’s fi rst

expedition to, 104; Indian Ocean exploration, 77–79; Jesuit travels to, 20; manufacturing/naval techniques of, 108; opening of trade by Martin, 104 –5; ships sent by Louis XIV, 72

indiennes (calicoes), 179, 222– 30, 250, 252, 287; Amsterdam/Paris demand for, 224; edicts forbidding manufacture of, 227; India/Ottoman manufacture/export of, 223 –24; madder dying technique, 226; preferred fabrics for mantua, 250

indigo crop, 158 –59Innocent XI (Pope), 138Inquisition, condemnation/imprisonment of Postel,

44 – 45Institute for Oriental Languages (INALCO), 127Instituto hebraica (Paginu), 21Inventaire des meubles de la Couronne, 222Islam. See also Alcorani seu legis Mahometi et

Evangelistarum concordiae liber (Postel): coffee (qahwa) drinking, 165, 168; condemnation by Vatican, 28; conversions to, by Europeans, 86 – 88, 94; Danser’s conversion to, 88; Dan’s portrayal

404 • Index

of, 92; Greek theorlogians and, 28 –29; Huguenot attraction to, 95; Postel’s attacks on, 25

Ismaelique, 52Israel, Jonathan, 277Istanbul. See ConstantinopleItaly: Francis I’s competition with, 40; humanists of,

51; infl uence of captivity accounts, 90

Jacobs, H. E., 189James II, 126Jan III Sobiesky (King of Poland), 138Jardin du Roi (botanical garden), 118 –23, 206, 246Jardine, Lisa, 8, 67– 68al-Jaziri, Abd al-Qadir, 168 – 69Jervas, Charles, 248Jesuits: establishment of colonies in New World, 244;

importation of wood from Brazil, 176; Postel’s involvement with, 19; sent to China, by Louis XIV, 125 –27

Jesus, 35“Jesus Did Not Wear a Turban” (Kalmar), 247Jews/Judaism. See also Hebrew language: banning

of, by Charles VI, 20; Code noir, 157; importation/exportation of chocolate, 186; infl uence on Postel, 17; Luther’s attacks against, 33 –34; Marano Jews, from Brazil, 156; observation of persecution, by Mascarenhas, 95; Orientalism of, 20 –22; Talmudic/Kabbalistic books, 17, 44, 66

jihad on Spain/Catholicism, 90Jirousek, Charlotte, 248 – 49Joachim of Fiore (Abbot), 2John III (King of Portugal), attack on French ships,

69 –70John (Saint) of Damascus, 28Jones, Jennifer, 250, 268 – 69Journal des Sçavans (Academy of Sciences), 117, 168,

172, 173Jove, Paul, 55, 61Julius III (Pope), 22De jurae praedae commentaries (Grotius), 81Jussieu, Antoine de, 121, 122, 123, 206De Justo império Lusitnorium (Freistas), 81

Kabani, Reina, 134Kabbalah, 17, 44, 66Kaiser, Thomas, 280kalamkari/qalam-kar (pen-work), 223Kalmar, Ian Davidson, 247Das Kapital (Marx), 284Kara Mustafa, 138Khair Beg, 169 –70Khair-ed-Din (Barbrousse): conquest of Tunisia, 38;

founding of corsairs, 86; friendship with Francis I, 38, 40; seige of Toulon participation, 41

Kircher, Athanasius, 124Kneller, Godfrey, 248Knights of Malta, 64, 71, 188Kolschitzky, Georg Franz, 195Kuntz, Marion, 21, 54, 65

Laet, Johan de, 114La Faye, Jean-Baptiste, 92Laffemas, Barthélemy de, 212–13, 214, 226, 228, 262– 64

La Forest, Jean de, 39laissez-faire, 270 –71Landes, Joan, 292La Roque, Jean de, 172–73, 180, 185, 188 – 90, 205Las Casas, Bartholomé de, 75Latin Vulgate version of Bible, 25, 26Latour, Bruno, 10Layne, Jacques, 20Le Blanc, Vincent, 78 –79Le Brun, Charles, 245le Clerk, François, 71Lecture of the Science of Languages (Müller), 35Lefèbre, Pierre, 20Lefèvre, Jacques, 51Législation orientale (Anquetil-Duperron), 282Leibniz, Gottried Wilhelm, 124; Dissertation sur

l’origine des langues, 35; global conquest plans of, 2; proposed attack on Egypt, 139

Le Nôtre, André, 213 –14Leopold I, 195Le Roy Ladurie, Emmanuel, 56, 118Léry, Jean de, 74, 245Lestringant, Frank, 9, 55, 56, 73Lettres édifi antes et curieuses (Jesuit letters), 124Lettres persanes (Montesquieu), 101, 255, 276,

277–78, 281, 283Levantine Tartars, 55 –56Levant trade markets, 3, 40Lewis, Reina, 133Limonadiers et marchands d’eau de vie (Lemonade

and spirit merchants) guild, 191– 93Linnaeus, Carl, 208 –14Lister, Martin, 220literature. See Orientalist literature, birth ofLobelius, Matthaeus, 120Lockhardt, Laurence, 281Longino, Michele, 7, 84, 133Longueil, Christophe de, 91De l’origine et du progrés du café (Galland), 168 –71Louise de Savoie, 37Louis XIII: attack of Salé/freeing French captives,

96; commissioning of Cassan, 139; destruction of Montpellier herb garden, 119; establishment of carpet factory, 258; growth of slaves/slavery, 144 – 45, 146; initiatives against Huguenots, 82–83; Jesuit’s importance to, 19; success reaching Asia under, 84; voyages under, 82

Louis XIV. See also carrousel of Louis XIV (1662); Versailles: ambitions of, 102; arbiter of fashion, 5 – 6, 184, 221.247, 268 – 69; astrological predictions regarding, 2; attempts at politicizing coffee, 185; bombardment of Barbary coast, 96; commercial relationships of, 103; cooperation with corsairs, 153; creation of school for translators, 127–29; diamond collection of, 4, 5, 106, 111–12, 187, 230, 238 –39, 251–56, 257, 259, 269; exclusion of Protestants from gem trade, 108; growth of slaves/slavery, 144 – 45, 146; Jesuits sent to China by, 124 –26; “l’affaire du sofa” episode, 129; Ottoman embassy to, 128, 187– 88; penalty for Huguenots leaving France, 137–38; Persian embassy to, 254 –56; petition to form East India Company, 72; relationship wtih Emperor of China, 102–3, 257; sale

Index • 405

of mastery of limonadiers guild, 191– 93; Siam’s presentation of luxury goods to, 222; Trianon de Porcelaine of, 214 –19; use of games, balls, operas, ballets, 231–32; visit by Siam delegation, 125, 257–59; war failures of, 90

Louis XV: appointment of De Clieu, 207; coffee pot collection, 208; harem of, 280 – 81; issuance of Code noir, 157; vogue for Turqerie during, 280

Lowe, Lisa, 276Loyola, Ignatius de, 19Luca, Isaak de, 195Lucas, Paul, 130Lulle, Raymond, 29Luther, Martin: attacks against Jews,

33 –34; censorship of, by Vatican, 24 –26; “Muhammadanism,” 33; support of Biblander’s Qu’ran, 32–34, 41, 54

Lutheranism, 27luxury/luxury goods. See also chocolate; coffee;

siamoise/indiennes; silk; tea; Versailles: from Asia, 4, 103, 207; Catholic/Christian view of, 260, 272, 274 –75; Colbert, 101–2, 268; consumption, debates about, 268 –72; French attitudes towards, 259 – 60; gems/gem trade, 107– 8, 254 –55, 258; from Holland, 219; marker of class, 5; Montesquieu and debate on, 273 –75; oriental despotism, 275 – 82; Paris as center of consumption of, 103; sale of, by mercers, 221–22; successful production of, by France, 259

Madagascar, 78, 83, 104Magellan, Fernando, 67Mainwaring, Henry, 87La Maison bien reglée (Audigier), 183, 191Maliban the Armenian. See ArmeniansMan in a Turban (Van Eyck), 247Marano Jews, from Brazil, 156Marcel, Joseph, 1Marie de Medici, 85Marie Thérèse (wife of Louis XIV), 233 –34maritime law (Le réglement pour la mer), 83 – 84Mark of Toledo, 32Marriage, Thierry, 213 –14Marseilles: calico manufacturing in, 223 –24; center

of support for Capuchins, 141; competition for Ottoman markets in, 80, 86; free port status, 127, 145; Levant trade, 39 – 40; principal port for coffee, 185; Savary de Brève’s trade with, 98; ships of, lost to corsairs, 144

Martel, Charles, 28Martin, François, 104 –5Martin de Vitré, François, 81, 82Martinique, and coffee production, 163, 206, 207– 8Martyr, Peter, 245Marvelous Possessions (Greenblatt), 74The Marvelous Victories of Women in the New World

(Postel), 64, 66Marx, Karl, 273, 284Mascarenhas, Joao: narrative of Christian captives,

93 – 94; observation of Jewish persecution, 95massacres, of Huguenots, 22, 71, 79Masson, Paul, 191Mattar, Nabil, 90, 247

Maurand, Jerôme, 40Mecca, ban on coffee, 169 –70, 198Medina, Pedro, 50Melanchton (Protestant scholar), 32, 34Melman, Billie, 134Menendez, Pedro de, 71Ménestrier, Claude François, 233mercantilism: birth of, and economic theories, 261– 68;

Colbert, 216, 218; de Laffemas, 212–13; zero-sum view of economy, 260

mercers, rise of, and porcelain, 219 –22Mercier, Sebastien, 200Mesoamerican scripts, 77Method for the Easy Comprehension of History

(Bodin), 58Methodus Apodemica/Ars apodemica. See travel

accounts (Methodus Apodemica/Ars apodemica)Methodus apodemic in eorum gratiam qui cum fructu

in quocunque tandem vitae genere peregrinari cupiunt (Zwinger), 48

Les mille et une nuits (Galland), 167Ministry of Foreign Affairs (France), 2Mirandola, Pico, 34 –35Moeurs des sauvages amériquains (Father Lafi teau), 114Montespan, Madame de, 215Montesquieu: debate on luxury and despotism,

273 –75; interest in travel accounts, 63; Lettres persanes, 101, 255, 276, 277–78, 283; presentation of harem, 281; stance against polygamy, 54; work on comparative government, 58

Moors, 5, 28, 87, 91, 182, 233, 234Moreau, François, 9Moreri, Louis, 240Moretus, Plantin, 110Morin, François, 220Morisco, jihad on Spain/Catholicism, 90The Most Christian Turk, or View of the Life and

Bloody Reign of Lewis XIV Present king of France containing an account of his Monstrous Birth pamphlet, 138

Motte, Philemon de la, 92Muhammad, 30, 31, 33 –34Mukerji, Chandra, 217Mulay Hasan, 39mysticism/spiritual quests, 40

Nairon, Faustus, 168 – 69Napoleon Bonaparte: creation of “Army of the Orient,”

1; expeditions to Egypt, 1, 116 –17, 166, 294 – 95Nasier, Alcofribas. See Rabelais, FrançoisThe Nature of the drink Kahue, or Coffee...Described

by an Arab Phistian (Pocoke), 171navy (La Royale) of France: build-up of, 145 – 46;

Colbert/Duquesne as founders of, 151; slavery, 146Necipoglu, Gülru, 8Necker, Jacques, 270 –71nephetne, 163Neufchâteau, François de, 296Never, Duke of, 140New World: claims of discovery of, 16, 69, 71, 72;

establishment of Jesuit colonies, 244; European encounters with, 75; fantasy representation at carrousel, 245; Postel, 64 – 65

406 • Index

Nice. See also Ségurane, Catherine: heroism of Catherin Ségrane, 42– 43; Ottoman siege of, 40, 41– 43

Nicolay, Nicolas de, 48 – 49, 50Noitel, Charles de, 129, 132nonalphabetical scripts, 76Normans: contact with Brazil, 72; in French Antilles,

154 –59; Puy de Palinod poetry society, 66; running of Atlantic trade, 3

North America: French territories in, 70, 239; Huguenots established in, 71, 154 –59; Louisiana territory, 70 –71; Verrazano’s explorations of, 64; Volnay’s tour or, 293

Norton, Marcy, 182Notes sur divers endroits de l’écriture Sainte

(Chardin), 114Le Nouveau Cuisinier Royal et Bourgeois (Andry), 181Nouveaux mémoires sur l’estat de la Chine

(Le Comte), 125Nugent, Thomas, 279

Oakley, William, 92Observations de plusiers singularitez et choses

memorables (Belon), 56 –57l’Obsession turque (Lestringant), 55Old Testament, 17, 62On Precipitates (Herman the Dalmation), 31On Substances (Herman the Dalmation), 31On the Astrolabe (Herman the Dalmation), 31On War Against the Turk (Luther), 32Oporinus, Johannes, 25Opuscula Grammatica Hebraica (Tissard), 20De Orbis terrae concordia (Postel), 16, 25, 35Order of the Christian Militia, 140oriental fashions, 246, 247–56: brocade outer vest,

250; fans, umbrellas, diamonds, 251–56; imitations of, 251–56; long overcoats, 249 –50; Ottoman army coat, 250; Persian vests, 248 – 49; turbans, 247– 48

Orientalism (Saïd), 1, 284Orientalist literature, birth of, 128 –33, Antoine. See

also Galland, Antoine: Bibliothèque orientale, 132; Colbert’s search for ancient manuscripts, 129; importance of dragoman, 126 –28; A Thousand and One Days, 132; A Thousand and One Nights, 128

Oriental languages (12th-16th century), 28 –32: Arabic translations by Herman the Dalmation, 31; Domican/Persian/Turkish language studies, 29; Ketton’s translation, 31; Postel’s study of Hebrew, 20 –21; Studia Linguarum (school), 29

Oriental Renaissance (Schwab), 282Origine de l’inégalite (Rousseau), 276De originibus seu de Hebraicae linguae et gentis

antiquitate (Mirandola), 35Orta, Garcia da, 110d’Ortière, Gravier, 141, 142Ottoman Empire: Armenian offer of help against,

105; avania levied on Egyptian trade, 99; Belon’s observations of, 61; Bodin’s interest in, 58 – 64; Le bourgeois gentilhomme play, 84; coffee drinking, 164, 165, 168; friendship with France, 3, 37, 38; importance as trading partners, 127; mirror of France, 55 –58; Postel’s travel accounts about, 52–55; siege of Nice, 41– 43; slaves/slavery, 144; war with Safavids, 50

L’Ouverture, Toussaint, 203Ozouf, Mona, 297

Pacifi que de Povins, Père, 98Pain, Andres, 196Paleologus, Andreas, 140Palmyran/Phoenician letters, 77Pantagruel (Rabelais), 28Paradis, Paul, 26Le Parfait Négociant (Savary de Brûlon), 144Paris: center of luxury good consumption, 103;

coffee’s condemnation by Faculty of Medicine, 173; imitation of Turkish coffee houses, 200; opening of cafés, 165, 179, 188 – 90; success of coffee in, 163, 184, 185

Paris, Treaty of, 105Parmentier, Jean, 66, 78Parmentier, Raoul, 78Pascal the Armenian. See ArmeniansPatin, Guy, 173, 175, 176Paul III (Pope), 19Paul V (Pope), 140Pauw, Cornelius de, 77Peace of Coteau Cambraisi, 234Peace of Crépy, 41Peiresc, Nicolas-Claude Fabri de, 123 –24Père Joseph, Capuchin, 140The Perfect Use of Silke-Wormes, and Their Benefi t

(Serres), 212Perrault, Charles, 206, 236Persia. See also Safavid/Safavid Persia: coffee

and, 166, 196 – 98, 207; language studies, 29; manufacturing/naval techniques of, 108

The Persian Cromwell (Lockhardt), 281Peter the Venerable (Abbot of Cluny): delivery of

Abelard’s body to Heloise, 30; translation of Qu’ran to Latin, 29 –30, 31–32, 32, 92

Petis De La Croix, François, 163Petis de la Croix, François, 130, 132, 141, 277Phaulkon, Constantin, 125Philip II, 71, 118philosophes (radical thinkers), 58, 63, 272, 275, 292A philosophical and political history of the

settlementes and trade of the Europeans in the East and West Indies (Ranyal), 207

Phra Naraï (King of Siam), 125, 126physiocrats, of France, 270, 271piracy/pirating: by Anglo-Turks, 87; by de Fleury, of

Spanish galleons, 70; by de Sores, 71; Huguenot attraction to, 95; by le Clerk, 71

The Planisphere (Ptolemy), 31Plantarum seu stirpium historia (Lobelius), 120Platter, Felix, 118Pocoke, Edward, 171Polo, Marco, 248Pompadour, Madame de, 221, 280porcelain: Colbert’s manufacturing of, 220; Father

d’Entrecolles, 220; Kakiemon ware, of Japan, 220; made in China designation, 257; rise or mercers, 219 –22; styles of, 220 –21

Portugal: Brazil ownership claimed by, 69; claims of New World ownership, 69; expulsion of Sephardic Jews, 186; John III ‘s attack on French ships,

Index • 407

69 –70; merger with Spain, 80; Postel’s trip to, 21; trade, 70

Postel, Guillaume, 15 –36, 277: appointment to teach Arabic, 26 –27; attacks against Islam/Protestantism, 25; Family of Love membership, 25; French embassies, 39 – 40, 43– 44; history as revelation, 16 –17; imprisonment by Inquisition, 44 – 45; intellectual milieu of, 18–20 (See also Sainte Barbe Collège); Jewish infl uences, 17; language studies, 20 –21, 34 –36, 40, 44; Loyola’s infl uence on, 19, 20, 44; meeting with Francis I, 17; meeting with Ottomans, 37; mission to Constantinople, 39 – 40, 41; New World, 64 – 65; reinterpretation of Christianity, 25; scientifi c contributions, 48 – 49; second French embassy, 43 – 44; travel accounts about Ottomans, 52–55; travel as spiritual/intellectual journey, 45; trip to Portugal with de Gouvea, 21; universalistic vision of, 15 –17, 65

Postel, writings of: Alcorani seu legis Mahometi et Evangelistarum concordiae liber, 25; The Marvelous Victories of Women in the New World, 64; De Orbie terrae concordia (Postel), 16; De la République des Turcs (Postel), 52

Pratt, Marie Louise, 6, 120, 296privateering, 38 –39, 69, 103Propaganda Fide, 87Protestants/Prostestantism, 25. See also Luther,

Martin: attraction to privateering, 38 –39; belief in observation, 114; early interest in Orientalism, 29, 34; exclusion from gem trade, 108; exit from France, 138; participation in Orientalism, 29; slavery, 148

Prudhomme, Louis Marie, 200Puy de Palinod poetry society (Normans), 66Pyrard de Laval, François de, 81, 82

quadrilles (at carousel of 1662), political signifi cance of, 232, 236 – 40

Quakerism, 25Quesnay, François, 124, 270 –71, 273Qu’ran, 29 –30. See also Corpus Toledo (European

Qu’ran translation): Biblander’s version, 32–34, 41, 54; du Ryer’s French translation, 97–100; Latin translation, 29 –30, 31

Rabelais, François, 28, 51Raisin, Antoine, 108Ramadan, and coffee, 170Ramé, Pierre de la. See Ramus, PierreRamus, Pierre, 45 – 48: advocacy for travelers to India,

110; commonalities with Postel, 47; disciples of, 48 (See also Blotius, Hugo; Zwinger, Theodor); Ramus Questionnaire, 45 – 48, 113; travel as spiritual/intellectual journey, 45

Ramusio, Giovanni Battista, 55Rauwolfe, Leonard, 163Raveux, Olivier, 223 –24, 226Raymond, André, 164Raynal, Guillaume-Thomas-François, 5, 197, 198, 207Refutation of the Alcoran of brother Richars,

Preaching order (Luther), 32, 33Refutation of the Sect or Heresy of the Saracens (Peter

the Venerable), 30

Relations des tourments qu’on fait souffrir aux Protestants sur les galéres de France (Bion), 149

religionnaires. See HuguenotsReligion Pretendu Reformée (PRR), 137Renaissance humanism, 45Renaudot, Théophraste, 175Renyer, Charlotte, 201République des Lettres (Bayle), 173De la République des Turcs (Postel), 52, 54, 57Résponses à Monsieur Cabart de Villarmont (Chardin),

108, 109Rhodes, Alexandre de, 125 –26Richard, Francis, 97, 98, 112Richardson, Jonathan, 248Richelieu: Compagnie du Levant, 103; creation of

Compagnie des Isles d’Amerique, 155; tobacco, 154 –55; voyages under, 82 – 86; writing of maritime law, 83 – 84

Robert of Ketton, 31Roche, Daniel, 9, 222, 268Roe, Thomas, 80Rogriguez, Simon, 20Rondelet, Guillaume, 120Rotroandro, G., 104Rousseau, Jean Baptiste, 76, 199, 202, 276Royal Society of London, 113 –16Rudolph, Philippe, 196

Sacy, Sylvestre de, 1, 167Safavid-Ottoman war, 50Safavid/Safavid Persia: Chardin’s work on, 276;

example of despotic government, 279; fall from power, 281– 82; Safavid-Ottoman war, 50

Saïd, Edward, 1, 2, 9, 10, 133, 166, 284Saint Barthelemy massacres, 47Sainte Barbe Collège, 18 –20: center of geographical

knowledge, 18; language studies by Postel, 20; Postel’s meetings with Loyola, 19, 20; types of students, 19 –20

De Saluberrima potione Cahue (Nairon), 168Sandys, George, 163sarrasin (Arabs during crusades), 30Saumaise, Claude, 124A Savage Mirror (Wintroub), 72 –73Savary de Brûlon, Jacques, 144, 199, 222Savory de Brèves, François, 98, 99Schliefi nger, Londa, 4Schwab, Raymond, 131–32, 282science/scientifi c experimentation. See also Academy

of Sciences; botany, rise of; Royal Society of London; Vesalius, Andreas: curiosity (defi ned), 115; Gilles elephant dissection, 50, 51; Jardin du Roi (botanical garden), 118 –23; Jesuit mission to China, 125 –26; Protestant belief in observation, 114; rise of botany, 119; Stensen’s brain discourse, 116; 16th/17th century birth of, 114

scripts, hierarchy of, 76, 77Scythians, 55 –56Second Crusade, 30Second French embassy, to Ottomans, 43 – 44; texts

of, 48 –52Ségurane, Catherine, 42– 43Seigneley, Marquis de, 245

408 • Index

Sephardic Jews, 186Serres, Olivier de, 119, 212, 213servage to navy, 146Sévigné, Madame: coffee recipes, 194 – 95;

introduction of coffee breakfast habit, 198; letters of, 196 – 97

Shovlin, John, 272Siam: account of fi rst vision of Louis XIV, 257; debut of

ambassadors, at Versaille, 222; delegate visit to Louis XIV, 125, 257–59; ordering of French goods, 258

siamoise/indiennes, 222–30; chafarcanios, 223; evolution to siamoisesde Rouen/toile de Charente, 225; guild production of, 222; kalamkari/qalam-kar (pen-work), 223; Marseillais piqué cottons, 225; Micmac red dying technique, 226; process of dying with madder, 225, 228; toiles fl ammés, 222, 223; toiles piquées de Marseilles, boutis (Marseilles quilting), 224

silk: Colbert’s championing of production, 214; enterprise of Henri IV, 212 –13; Serres, 212 –13

Singularités de la France Antarctique (Thévet), 73 –74Les six livres de la République (Bodin), 58, 59, 61, 62Les six voyages de Jean Baptiste Tavernier

(Tavernier), 111slaves/slavery: association with Ottomans/Turks, 144;

Bion’s account of, 149; Bodin’s views of, 145; coffee and, 164; fi ning of slave employers, 150; French dictionary defi nition, 144; in galleys of Louis XIII/Louis XIV, 144 – 45, 146; involvement of guilds, 150; Louis XIV limitation of brutality towards, 149; L’Ouverture’s fi ght against, 203; religious/commercial aspects, 145; Voltaire and, 285

Smith, Adam, 270Société des Missions, 125Society of Jesus, 19Sores, Jacques de, 71Sottas, Jules, 104Spain: Elizabeth’s victory over Spanish Armada, 80;

expulsion of Sephardic Jews, 186; infl uence of captivity accounts, 90; jihad on, 90; massacre of Huguenots, 71; merger with Portugal, 80; Spanish Inquisition, 87, 102, 106; trade of, 70

Spieser, Jean Michel, 140The Spirit of the Laws (Montesquieu), 275, 280, 281spiritual quests, 40Spon, Charles, 173 –74Spon, Jacob, 132St. Valentines Day massacre, 79Stagl, Justin, 45, 46, 295Stensen, Niels, 116Stroup, Alice, 117Studia Linguarum (school for languages), 29sugar crop, 158 –59Süleyman the Magnifi cent: alliance with Francis I, 37,

50; battle with Safarvids in Persia, 50; conquest of Hungary, 32; response to Louise de Savoie’s letter, 37–38; war with Safavids, 50

La sultane prenant le café painting (Vanloo), 164Sylvestre, Israël, 232syncretism concept (Mirandola), 35

Tableau de Paris (Mercier), 200Tahmasp II (Lockhardt), 281

Talbor, Robert, 176Talmud, 44Taschard (Jesuit Father), 126Tassy, Laugiers de, 92 – 93Tavernier, Jean-Baptiste, 84, 134, 140: Golconda

diamond, 111–12; Laguillère’s portrait of, 246; travels to India, 106 –7

tea: Audigier’s interest in, 183; Blégney’s research on, 174; cultivation of tea, 208 –14; Masson’s interest in, 191; origins of, 166; teapot of Louis XV, 208

Terre des Bretons. See Florida (Terre des Bretons)Terrien, Jean, 70Territorial Ambitions and the Gardens of Versailles

(Mukerji), 217Le theatre d’agriculture et le Mesnage des champs

(Serres), 212Théâtre d’Agriculture (Serres), 119Theophanes the Confessor, 29Thévenot, Jean, 107: creation of French Academy of

Sciences, 116; descriptions of Brazil, 73, 74; Héret’s lawsuit against, 75; Huguenot accusations against, 74; introduction of coffee to France, 163; travel accounts of, 197

Thévenot, Melchisédec, 107, 131Thévet, André, 245Thirty Years War, 84Thököly, Imre, 138Thoughts on Public Safety pamphlet (Leibniz), 2A Thousand and One Days (Petis de la Croix), 132A Thousand and One Nights (trans. Galland), 120, 129,

131, 277Tissard, Francis, 20tobacco: association with coffee drinking, 194;

fi rst descriptions of, 73; onset of fashion for, 83; Richelieu and, 154 –55; sale in Parisian cafés, 189; Warner’s success with, 155

tobacco, onset of fashion for, 83toiles de Charent, 223toiles fl ammés, 222, 223toiles piquées de Marseilles, boutis (Marseilles

quilting), 224Tott, François Baron de, 2Tournefort, Joseph Pitton de, 120, 121, 246Tractatus de modo converti infi deles (Lulle), 29trade: attack on French ships, 69 –70; avania levied on

Egyptian trade, 99; Brazil embargo by Francis I, 69; with Egypt, 98; Francis I’s letter or marque to Terrien, 70; gem trade, 107– 8; importance of Ottoman Empire, 127; Levant markets, 3, 40; Ottoman markets, 91; pirate status of nations, 70

Traité des dispenses du caréme (Hecquet), 180Traité Historique de l’origine & du progrés du café

(La Roque), 172travel accounts (Methodus Apodemica/Ars apodemica),

45 – 48: about China, 259; about Greece, 52; about India, 259; about Muslims, 91; about Persia, 259; Belon, 49; Chappuzeau, 112; Chardin, Jean, 109, 277; Chesnau, 49; Crignon, 78; de Feyne, 80; de la Faye, 92; Gassot, 49; Gilles, 49; La Roque, 172; Le Blanc, 78 –79; Postel, 49, 52–55; Pyrard de Laval, 81, 82; Ramusio, 46, 55; Roe, 80; Tavernier, 111; Thévenot, 197; Tournefort, 121; Volnay, 293 – 94

treaties: Paris, 105; peace of Coteau Cambraisi, 234;

Index • 409

peace of Crépy, 41; Suleiman with Francis I, 37; Westphalia, 84

Treatise des Dispenses de Carême (La Roque), 180Trianon de Porcelaine, 214 –19; Boutex’s supervision

of, 215 –16; Colbert’s marketing of fl owers, 218 –19; dedication to Madame de Montespan, 215; Donneau de Visé’s involvement with, 217–18; elite’s enchantment wi-217th, 216; Lachine lacquer work, 219; ties between gastronomy-sexuality, 215

Tringuley, Frédéric, 52Trinitarian order, 91– 92, 92, 96Tunisia: attack on Nice, 40; Khair-ed-Din’s conquest

of, 38; Mulay Hasan’s fi ght for throne, 39turbans, 247– 48Turcan, Isabelle, 134La Turciade (Père Joseph), 140Turcicarum rerum commentarius (Jove), 55Turco-Calvinism, 33, 34. See also Edict of NantesTurkey: coffee exports to France, 185; observations of

Postel, 54; occupation of Toulon, 40 – 41; siege of Vienna, 138

Turkish language studies, 29Turquesque, 52Tyrannus, or the Mode (Evelyn), 250

Umdat al safwa fi hill al-qahwa (Jaziri), 168universalistic vision, of Postel, 15 –17, 65University of Coimbre, 21Use et coutumes de la mer (Clairac), 72

Valensi, Lucette, 57–58Valentine, Basil, 180Van der Cruysse, Dirk, 9, 126, 134, 259Van Eyck, Jan, 247van Heemskerck, Jacob, 81Vanloo, Carl, 164, 248Vatican: attitude toward oriental languages, 26, 29; call

for censorship by, 24; condemnation of Islam, 28; papal censorship initiative, 24 –26; power struggle with Henri II, 22; Propaganda goals, 124

Vermour, Jean-Baptiste, 248Verrazano, Giovanni da, 64, 69Versailles: cabinet moved to, by Louis XIV, 130; Le

Carrousel des Galants Maures, 243 – 47; coffee drinking, 187, 195; debut of Siamese ambassadors, 222; exotic plants/animals at, 117, 208, 214; growing oranges in, 191; Hall of Mirrors, 255, 257, 259; invitation of Duquesnes by Colbert, 151; living quarters of Louis XIV, 215; Marie Antoinette’s escape from, 112; Ottoman visits to, 129, 187

Vesalius, Andreas, 51Vienna: Council of, 28, 29; Hapsburg defense of,

139; introduction of coffee, 185, 195 – 96, 198; Ottoman’s halted at, 63, 86; siege of, 32, 138, 195

Vienna, Turk seizure of, 138Vieussens, Raymond, 180Vigié, Marc, 150Vigne, André de la, 15 –16Villarmont, Cabart de, 108, 109Villegaignon, Nicolas Durand de, 73 –74Villehardouin, Geofroy, 140Villier, Patrick, 154Vincent de Paul, 85 – 86, 96, 146, 148Vives, Juan Luis, 48Volnay, Count, 292 – 93, 293 – 94Voltaire, 124, 199, 202; Candide, 284 – 86; slave

trading, 285; stance against polygamy, 54von Justi, Heinrich Gottlieb, 212Voyage de François Pyrard de Laval aux Index

Orientales (Pyrard de Laval), 81Voyage de l’Arabie Heureuse (La Roque), 172Voyage en Egypte en Syrie pendant les années 1783,

1784 et 1785 (Volnay), 293 – 94Voyage fait par terre depuis Paris jusqu’a la Chine

(de Feynes), 80Voyage pour la rédemption des captifs aux royaumes

d’alger et de tunis, fait en 1720 (de la Faye), 92

Warner, Thomas, 155warriors, of Ottoman empire, 95The Wealth of Nations (Smith), 270Weber, Carolyn, 6, 268, 291, 297Weber, Elizabeth, 272Westphalia Treaty, 84Wheeler, George, 173Whitaker, Katie, 113William the Conqueror, 60, 66Wintroub, Michael, 66, 69, 72–73Wonder and Science (Campbell), 8Worldly Goods (Jardine), 8Wren, Christopher, 113

Xavier, Francis, 20Xenophon, 59

Yawheh, 35

Zega, Andrew, 214, 219Zwinger, Theodor, 48

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