Afrika im Ancien Régime

Die Rolle des frühneuzeitlichen Staates bei der Herausbildung einer Wissenschaft von Afrika im Frankreich des 17. und 18. Jahrhunderts

Abstract

This contribution is dedicated to the emergence of African studies in early modern France. The thesis of this paper is that the absolutist state modeled the epistemic setting for knowledge about Africa. I claim that this knowledge, whether ethnographic, historiographical or archeological in nature, was preconditioned by authoritative state institutions. Concentrating on the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, I demonstrate that the pluralistic approaches of knowledge and information-gathering about Africa have been replaced by a more coherent practice. It was not until the rise of the administrative state under the governments of Richelieu and Colbert that systematic archiving and compilation of knowledge began in France. Finally, the head of state was a monarch who wanted to be 'informed about everything'. Under these circumstances different genealogical threads could develop into a systematic treatment of knowledge about Africa. Thus Africa provided the emerging European knowledge and information culture with an experiential basis for what was to become an important stepping stone in the course of the extensive colonization of Africa during the nineteenth century.