Contenu du sommaire : Financer les institutions et les activités scientifiques au tournant des XVIIIe et XIXe siècles

This article analyses the practices of royal financing of academic institutions of science by focusing on the example of the Royal Academy of Sciences, the first institution to offer scholars a status remunerated by a pension for scientific research. The financing of the Academy has not be systematically studied, except for the period from 1666 to 1715, because of the wide dispersion of sources. This study reconstructs the financial conditions of the Academy in the eighteenth century. It documents not only the efforts made by its members to secure sustainable financing, but also the contributions of certain members to the increase in the budget. The financial stability acquired under the Old Regime made possible argument justifying public investment to scientific activities relevant to public finance within the Revolutionary context.

How did scientists who studied the living world in the eighteenth century make a living from their scientific work ? As a contribution to this socio-historical enquiry, the author uses the cases of two botanists, Antoine-Laurent de Jussieu (1748-1836) and Michel Adanson (1727-1806). Both belonged to the Parisian naturalist sphere, attended the same institutions and studied the same subject. Yet their social horizons and their life trajectories separated them significantly. Jussieu was an heir, an aristocrat, an annuitant who « occupied himself » with science, and was socially attached to the Parisian upper-middle class. Adanson, on the other hand, began his career without any wealth or qualifications, with the professional status of a clerk, and lived until the age of thirty-eight, spending the summit of his scientific creativity perilously close to the level of the economic dependency.

At the turn of the nineteenth century, a small number of women whose lives are made visible from archives managed to carve out a place for themselves in scientific production. Integrated into scholarly collectives in astronomy, natural history or chemistry, their work for the collective, like that of their male colleagues, was remunerated in multiple forms – work contracts, annuities, pensions, and gratuities in kind financed by political institutions such as the Maison du Roi, or scholarly institutions like the Academy of Sciences, in addition to private funds or even public subscriptions. Invested in a more autonomous practice, some of them benefited from occasional contracts, negotiated their rights as authors or posed as scientific entrepreneurs, developing a commercial activity from their scholarly skills. They could enjoy successively, or even simultaneously, these varied forms of contractualization and legitimization of their scientific work.

While nearly all clubs and societies disappeared during the Revolutionary period, the Lycée républicain was among the few institutions that continued to function. Renowned throughout Europe, this institution's legal status and administration, the presence of many women in its student body, and its economic model based on subscriptions made it highly original. Given the high quality of its professors and their teachings, it aspired to be recognized by the public authorities as an institution of higher learning in the sciences. The circumstances and upheavals of the Revolution were to weaken substantially its financial situation. The shareholders sought to attract new subscribers through various means to re-establish its financial stability ; professors were also required relinquish their fees for three years. It was only under the Consulate that the Lycée managed to restore its budgetary solvency.

The Connaissance des temps is the oldest of the astronomical and nautical ephemerides, published under the auspices of the Royal Academy of Sciences, without interruption ever since March 1679. It is the model on which the royal astronomer Nevil Maskelyne built his Nautical Almanac in 1767, the future « best-seller » in ephemeris during the nineteenth century, and the chief competitor of the Connaissance des temps. The astronomer Jérôme Lalande made changes to this publication beginning in 1760, changes that would be felt well into the twentieth century. In 1786, his successor, Pierre Méchain, transformed the ephemeris into a nautical almanac at the request of the Minister of the Navy, who further financed the first use of calculator of the Connaissance des temps under the Academic aegis. Passing through the Revolutionary period without too many difficulties, Lalande ensured the continuity of publication for the Connaissance des temps. In 1795, he was also with Lakanal the co-founder of the Bureau des Longitudes, and the supporter of the Comité d'instruction publique, the Dépôt de la Guerre and the Bureau du Cadastre. With the aid of these funds and various other supporters, Lalande and his various « cooperators » ensured the continuity of this important scientific work, from the end of the Old Regime and the suppression of the academies in August 1793 until the First Empire and the resumption of the production of the ephemeris by the Bureau des Longitudes. The study follows the means of financing of this ephemeris, and thus attempts to understand the motivations of the various personalities of this history.

During the last years of the Old Regime, the naturalist Faujas de Saint-Fond managed to accumulate comfortable pensions. But with the « end of the privileges », his wages accorded by the Crown of France were jeopardized. Thus began a series of epistolary battles between the naturalist and the public authorities. At first, Faujas struggled to maintain his retributions despite a procedure of liquidation that would last seven years. Then, once his status as professor of Geology at the National Museum of Natural History was confirmed by the law, he again took up his pen to obtain financing for his geological travels. Through this case study, the whole apparatus of the French administration is illuminated, especially the financial management of the scholarly staff between Revolution and Empire.

The treatment of madness evolved during the French Revolution within institutions specializing in the accommodation of the insane. Among them, the house of Charenton warrants special status since it was under the supervision of, and partly financed by, the Ministry of the Interior. The analysis of the financial accounting of this institution affords an insight into the therapeutic practices, and the different forms for the treatment of madness practiced in this establishment at the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

If the creation of national printing workshops initially responded to the urgent need to print and disseminate laws throughout the territory of the new Republic, the prerogatives of the national printing house were quickly expanded to include the publishing of scholarly works and periodicals sold to profit their authors. Despite the monetary crises and difficulties of supplies, this establishment became one of the cogs in the wheel of a policy of encouraging the sciences implemented during the Republic. The advent of the Empire marked a break in the financial management of the institution, but also in the attributions allocated to the printing house. The challenge from then on was not so much in supporting the production of scholarly knowledge, but in contributing to the glorification of imperial political power.