Ian D. Rotherham and David McCallam
82
the eighteenth century were thus explained by the French, English and
Dutch having “abattu les forêts, desséché les marais, contenu les torrens, dirigé les fleuves et défriché toutes les terres couvertes ou surchargées des débris même de leurs productions”.
29
Insofar as his narrative of the civilizing process places such a
clear emphasis on agricultural advances, Buffon’s enlightened earth
science would seem to agree with that of the Physiocrat school for
which agriculture was the basis of all “culture”, be it artisanal, industrial or luxury. As Jeremy Black remarks, the Physiocrats had a point
inasmuch as all contemporary manufacturing processes used only
natural products and hence, at some point in the chain of production,
relied on agricultural activity for their raw materials.
30 Yet Buffon’s
earth science was also informed by other innovative Enlightenment
fields of research, namely, statistics and demography. The great naturalist’s urging to drain marshes would be determined as much, then,
by issues of public welfare as by geological theorizing. For pioneering
demographers of the time such as “Moheau” (the pseudonym of the
baron de Montyon) calculated life expectancy on the marshy plain of
La Napoule to be a startling average of eight years, all age groups
taken together, compared to the relative longevity of thirty-two years
found in the mountainous environs of Apt.
31 As John McManners
states, the succinct conclusion to be drawn from late eighteenthcentury French demography was “live on mountain tops and avoid
marshes”.
32
Buffon’s theories of wetland formation and wetland reclamation also drew on, and fed back into, more diffuse intellectual currents
in the French Enlightenment. For instance, the peasant’s stubborn defence of commons, including marshland, was attacked by the same
sweeping movement of thought that denounced abusive seigneurial
privileges: were both not vestiges of the same depised “feudal” order
that resisted all types of reform in France? Were not peasant fallows,
furlong farming and ridge-and-furrow draining on a par with Gothic
___________________________
29 Buffon, “Époques de la nature”, p. 241.
30 Jeremy Black, Eighteenth-Century Europe, 2
nd ed. (London: Macmillan, 1999), p.
27.
31 McManners, Death and the Enlightenment, p. 100.
32 McManners, Death and the Enlightenment, p. 103.
82
the eighteenth century were thus explained by the French, English and
Dutch having “abattu les forêts, desséché les marais, contenu les torrens, dirigé les fleuves et défriché toutes les terres couvertes ou surchargées des débris même de leurs productions”.
29
Insofar as his narrative of the civilizing process places such a
clear emphasis on agricultural advances, Buffon’s enlightened earth
science would seem to agree with that of the Physiocrat school for
which agriculture was the basis of all “culture”, be it artisanal, industrial or luxury. As Jeremy Black remarks, the Physiocrats had a point
inasmuch as all contemporary manufacturing processes used only
natural products and hence, at some point in the chain of production,
relied on agricultural activity for their raw materials.
30 Yet Buffon’s
earth science was also informed by other innovative Enlightenment
fields of research, namely, statistics and demography. The great naturalist’s urging to drain marshes would be determined as much, then,
by issues of public welfare as by geological theorizing. For pioneering
demographers of the time such as “Moheau” (the pseudonym of the
baron de Montyon) calculated life expectancy on the marshy plain of
La Napoule to be a startling average of eight years, all age groups
taken together, compared to the relative longevity of thirty-two years
found in the mountainous environs of Apt.
31 As John McManners
states, the succinct conclusion to be drawn from late eighteenthcentury French demography was “live on mountain tops and avoid
marshes”.
32
Buffon’s theories of wetland formation and wetland reclamation also drew on, and fed back into, more diffuse intellectual currents
in the French Enlightenment. For instance, the peasant’s stubborn defence of commons, including marshland, was attacked by the same
sweeping movement of thought that denounced abusive seigneurial
privileges: were both not vestiges of the same depised “feudal” order
that resisted all types of reform in France? Were not peasant fallows,
furlong farming and ridge-and-furrow draining on a par with Gothic
___________________________
29 Buffon, “Époques de la nature”, p. 241.
30 Jeremy Black, Eighteenth-Century Europe, 2
nd ed. (London: Macmillan, 1999), p.
27.
31 McManners, Death and the Enlightenment, p. 100.
32 McManners, Death and the Enlightenment, p. 103.