Colonialism and Science: Saint Domingue and the Old Regime

After reading James E. McClellan III's Colonialism and Science: Saint Domingue and the Old Regime, one begins to see Saint Domingue in a wholly new way. Science as a tool for colonial development and the slave regime is a topic one does not usually discuss in history courses of slavery in the New World. Indeed, the most common ways to hear of the application of science and industry in slave societies of the Americas is the use of the cotton gin and the development of mechanized sugar mills in the 19th century, so it is important to uncover the various ways in which even during the 18th century, the plantation model in the colonies more closely resembled and took advantage of limited industrialization and science in a way that presaged 19th and 20th century industrial labor.

Indeed, in some cases, cutting edge technology of the 18th century West found its way into Caribbean colonies, particularly the use of the steam engine and locomotives in parts of the British Caribbean and the use of a steam engine pump in L'Artibonite area for irrigation (which ultimately failed, though remains of the Perrier engine can be seen in Haiti today, according to McClellan III). Clearly, the use of science, engineering, applied botany, and medicine were the most important sciences for colonial development, as well as cartography and engineering, which all ensured the survival of a profitable colony, which in turn justified European colonial expansion and the mercantilist policies which supposedly explains why one in eight French were economically tied by trade and profit to the colony of Saint Domingue.

McClellan also uses a worthy introduction and detailed first part to analyze how the context of Saint Domingue's towns, demographics, slaves, and various other factors of colonialism and science impacted Saint Domingue. His extensive coverage of Cap Francois and the other principal cities (Les Cayes, Port-au-Prince) is consistently compared favorably to a French provincial city. And the level of scientific inquiry and advances in medicine and hospital infrastructure in the colony were only rivaled or perhaps surpassed in Dutch Batavia, in Southeast Asia. These scientific missions began with naturalist Jesuit priests in the late 17th and early 18th centuries, who collected useful notes on the flora of Saint Domingue, while future endeavors would emphasise cartography, developing medical infrastructure in the largest cities of the colony (although the author admits that slave healing was usually as efficient or successful as 'Western' medicine, perhaps due to Africans' longer history in the tropics and dealing with tropical climes).

Most of the best scientific inquiry came out of direct state investment and researchers, especially as Saint Domingue was incorporated into French society's scientific interests and collaborations, which included astronomy, engineering (hydraulic and civil engineers collaborated in Saint Domingue, especially with funding by planters, to invest in irrigation projects that successfully fertilized the Cul-de-Sac region, and many other arid or inhospitable parts of the colony), medicine (the widespread use of inoculation for slaves against smallpox in the 18th century stands out), botanical gardens, experimentation with new crops from other regions of the world (think about it, neither sugar nor coffee were native to the Americas, but both became the basic source of wealth for slave plantations), cartography, navigation (learning how to plot one's longitude to aid in sailing, for instance, played a role in expanding trade and success in European shipping around the world), studies of poisons, and the use of science and botany in new industries and trade for the slave society.

It would seem that scientific and medical knowledge reached its zenith with the institutionalization of science among settlers with the Cercle des Philadelphes in 1784, largely forming in response to pseudoscientific 'mesmerism' which had reached popularity with all sectors of Saint Dominguan society. That so many Saint Dominguans took on the pursuit of rational and empirical science seriously against the threat of mesmerism and popular science (such as the ballooning craze of the 1780s that struck Saint Domingue with fervor before being replaced by mesmerism and 'animal magnetism') even if they lacked a background in the field, revealed the degrees to which the pursuit and application of certain branches of scientific study were deemed vital for colonial development and profitability. Of course, the well-known Moreau de Saint Mery appears in this organization, along with several prominent Freemasons (but Freemasonry is proved by McClellan to have played little role in fostering scientific endeavors), as well as the French ministries of the colonies and navy in the decades leading up to the 1780s. Thus, science and colonialism went hand in hand, and colonialism played a role in contributing to scientific communities in Western Europe as an additional source of observations, material, and a practical zone for application of new technologies.

What one wishes to see more of is how slaves themselves approached 'science,' for instance. What of slave healing and medicine? What about slave and African contributions to botany, agriculture, sugar processing and mill technology, or other fields? McClellan states that most sugar mills were powered by animals and humans, although a large minority were water-powered, and windmills were not extensively used (he argues that mathematical fields and pursuits were behind in Saint Domingue when compared to Europe, a factor in explaining some poor surveying and astronomy), but what of black Saint Dominguan contributions to those fields? And in what ways did urban slaves and people of color in the principal cities contribute to the Cercle des Philadelphes and other institutions of learning? Those types of questions will obviously require a great shift in perspective of mathematics and science in precolonial Africa, but deserve an answer. Nonetheless, this is an excellent book illustrating how two significant modern fields, by their very nature, collaborate in European expansion, paving the way for European conquest of Africa (think of the discovery and use of 'Peruvian bark' to treat malaria in the colonies). Tropical pathology, inoculation, and medical advances in general, along with industrialization, became the key fields that aided and abetted European colonialism in the 19th century.