Lalande on Africa: science policies in late eighteenth-century France and the growing interest for the exploration of the continent's inner regions

In his Mémoire sur l’intérieur de l’Afrique (An III de la République, 1794-95) the influential French scholar Joseph Jérôme Lefrançois de Lalande (1732-1807) outlines the goals of a project which directly links scientific exploration to the needs of the State, urging both men of learning and state officials to work closely together in the organization of research missions that enhance man’s knowledge of the geography, natural history and commerce of Africa’s yet unknown inner regions – in particular the vast area between Senegal and the Sudan.
This paper analyzes Lalande’s aims, arguments and claims against the background of scientific, commercial, political and military tensions between France and Britain. It situates Lalande’s discourse within the broader context of the competing “science policies” of both states in the second half of the eighteenth century. The notion of “science policy” as a working hypothesis refers to the way a government applies the knowledge and expertise provided by the scientific world according to the needs of the country.
It is an investigation of the sudden re-emergence of Africa as an object of knowledge in the relationship between power and science. The paper focuses on the continuous interaction between France and Britain in African affairs, and highlights the shift from a mere “enlightened” exploration from the 1720s to the 1780s – a period which saw, on the one hand, the progressive integration of useful knowledge gathered by explorers in African coastal regions into the French “colonial” system, and, on the other hand, the installation of an informal structure of knowledge transfer at the British side – towards Lalande’s revolutionary time – the 1790s – when Africa became the subject of a “Banksian” takeover, enhancing British interest in the “unknown” interior of the African continent by setting up large-scale, interrelated research missions with practical goals (the expeditions organized by the African Association, e.g. Mungo Park), but also provoking reactions from the French side, a reflection of which can be found in Lalande’s dissertation, thus stimulating a new wave of French initiatives in the field.