France-South Asia : a flow of knowledge

What does the "Patrimoines Partagés France-Asie du Sud" (Shared Heritages: France-South Asia) project document?

Firstly, to provide some context for this initiative, we have to remember that knowledge and goods first began circulating between France and South Asia in ancient times, continuing into the Middle Ages. The stunning 9^th-century ivory chess pieces known as the Charlemagne Chessmen, sourced from India and housed at the BnF Museum, are a prime example of this. Spices and fabrics were the primary drivers of this trading, documented by accounts such as Marco Polo’s Le Devisement du Monde (Marco Polo’s Travels). Initially handled predominantly by Norman and Malouin merchants on the French side, the trading intensified in the 15^th and 16^th centuries. Transoceanic expeditions unlocked a new spice route, and the resulting accounts of these journeys prompted a flurry of translations. In 1664, Colbert’s state initiative took charge of the trading, with Colbert establishing the Compagnie des Indes (French East India Company).

Indeed, and how did the flow of knowledge start to change in the 17^th century?

The 17^th century brought so many stories and accounts that some authors believed everything had now already been said. And yet, the 18^th century took trade to a new level. Imports from India – luxury furniture, textiles, coffee, saltpetre, spices and narcotics – made up the bulk of the goods shipped to France. It is to these products, used in the fields of gastronomy, nutrition and medicine, that South Asia owed its omnipresence in France.

Europe and France were also present in South Asia, and not just through trading posts; hundreds of military men and adventurers traversed the Indian Subcontinent with their teams of translators, cooks, men-at-arms, grooms etc. Soldiers and other French travellers would share technical knowledge with their fellow travellers, or gifts with the officials. Not only was the exchanging of gifts an essential act of diplomacy; it was also a means of propagating cultural, commercial and technological practices. And so it was that the Indian elite adopted several aspects of European technical knowledge, particularly in relation to weaponry. Similarly, the French and British sent their spies to gather information on Tipu Sultan’s rockets in the late 18^th century. The European-language terms pertaining to numerous objects, hierarchies and technologies, including architecture, thus fuelled trade between the two regions.

Fabrics and fashion also crossed the Indian Ocean to Europe, taking some unusual routes in the process. A number of Indian motifs were adopted, such as tablecloths featuring depictions of mangoes in Brittany or the indiennes of Nîmes. There was much toing and froing, and evidence of these journeys can be found in numerous administrative, commercial, artisanal and even religious archives. As such, we have been able to trace the ‘Jardin de Lorixa’ herbal (a magnificent illustrated manuscript of East Indian flora in the collections of the French National Museum of Natural History) back to the turn of the 18^th century – thanks to the clothing worn by the European man depicted in the frontispiece of this work, identified by an English textile historian. We have even been able to find evidence in the archives of religious missions that has helped us retrace this history.

Jardin de Lorixa © Muséum national d'histoire naturelle (Paris)

What is the importance of being able to access these documents, all housed at one singular site, in terms of understanding this flow of knowledge?

The classification process compartmentalised the collections according to institutional categories (diplomatic, commercial, religious, scientific, scholarly), their official or private purpose or even their form (maps, paintings, manuscripts etc.) Furthermore, one institution’s collections may contain documents relating to other fields. Most importantly, a document will always be at the intersection of several driving forces that prompted its creation, and it will always have an effect beyond its original context. Take, for example, Jean-Baptiste Gentil’s Atlas, which was inspired by the Ain-I-Akbari (‘The Administration of Emperor Akbar’), written by Abul Fazl around 1590. This is a graphic representation of routes in the form of a map serving as a visual translation of a matrix map. It is the product of the access Gentil enjoyed in Faizabad, of scholars, of translators, of officers from various backgrounds who were able to corroborate or update the data, and of artists. The producers of archival objects are both informed and shaped by the local human resources from whom they compile the information. To understand the archives, it is essential to factor in the role of intermediaries.

Aside from this notion of pooling, what new perspectives does Patrimoines Partagés France-Asie du Sud offer us?

The flow of knowledge between Europe and South Asia has largely been viewed through an Anglo-Saxon lens. Yet we cannot understand this flow unless we also include the Lusophone (Portuguese-speaking), Flemish and Francophone worlds. While France adopted a number of Indian elements in the 18^th century (motifs, techniques, terms), the acceptance of Francophone culture in South Asia played a major role in the education of the elites in the 19^th century. India’s intellectual professions invested themselves in authors such as Auguste Comte and Baudelaire, and in Indian studies in France, to a point where the British authorities often tried to limit or ban access to these.

This resulted in ‘Gallophobic’ propaganda by the British press in India, which sought to limit France’s appeal to merely its perfumes and wine. But knowledge flowed at the highest echelons of science, between chemists Marcelin Berthelot and Prafula Chandra Ray, between physicist Jagadish Chandra Bose and the French Académie des Sciences, between Pasteur’s followers and their counterparts in South Asia, and later between Satyendra Nath Bose and Marie Curie. In the early 20^th century, South Asia and France became privileged partners in the adventure that was aviation.

What is at stake when making these archives and collections available to the public?

Patrimoines Partagés France-Asie du Sud is a means of contextualising and correlating these collections, unlocking new perspectives for understanding today’s world, and opposing any simplification that threatens to reduce these to an exclusive, linear narrative. The digital library enables us to trace back these knowledge flows and their ‘peddlers’, intermediaries, informers and other figures who undertook multiple convoluted, multipolar journeys while also helping build the world as we know it. So it is of tremendous importance.

To conclude, let’s take Garcia de Orta’s Colloquies on the Simples and Drugs of India, published in 1563, which was widely circulated across Europe and was translated into French in 1602. It was based on information collected from all regions of India – in every sense of the word at the time. This information circulated in a number of languages and variations of these languages. For example, it mentions that the best aloe vera is found in Socotra. It compares not only the quality but also the prices of numerous plants or stones, as well as corresponding designations and uses. This work sparked new flows of information, and was itself translated. Funding from various archive centres has made it significantly easier to study these routes. 

Published in july 2024