Scientific Collaboration and the French Intervention in Mexico, 1861–67

My paper focuses on Mexican scientific collaboration with French forces during the French intervention (1861-1867). I am interested in the ways that Mexican scientific elites facilitated the work of French scientific institutions, such as the Commissions Scientifique du Mexique (CSM) and the Commission Scientifique, Littérature et Arts (CSLA). In 1864, shortly after the French military successfully established a French-backed puppet monarchy in Mexico, Emperor Napoleon III founded the CSM, tasked with achieving the “scientific conquest” of Mexico. Shortly before that, Archille Bazane, the head of the French military in the country, created his own commission (the CSLA), comprised of both French and Mexican researchers. In both these institutions, Mexican scientists and collaborators enabled the French study of their country. Yet, much of the historiography on these institutions focuses on the highly centralized, paternalistic, and “failed” nature of French scientific study in Mexico, or on the structure of the CSM and CSLA. Discussion of the roles of local scientists within French commissions is lacking, especially in the Anglophone literature. My project focuses on these Mexican Scientists, and the work they did before the French intervention in Mexico, during the intervention, and afterwards. I am especially intrigued by the ways these men shaped the knowledge about Mexico's environment, archeology, and people that French voyagers brought back to Paris.

Because this project concerns the history of science, the poster session format will be the ideal way to present my findings. Many of the primary sources that I work with are pictorial. The CSM and CSLA created numerous pictures depicting Mexico’s flora, geography, archaeological sites, and other features. These images, some of which were published in the official findings of the CSM, reveal the intricate ways that the commission wished to portray Mexico’s environment and its archaeological patrimony. Some of these images were also republished in later publications by former attachés of the commission. I want to use the poster presentation format to reveal the ways that these images were used to portray Mexico. However, by combining them with other sources produced by French and Mexican scientists, I will use the poster format to suggest the ways that Mexican scientific and intellectual elites shaped French portrayals of Mexico’s environment and people. For example, in an 1885 book, Lucien Biart, a French explorer and former correspondent for the CSM, deferred to the works of Mexican intellectuals like Manuel Orozco y Berra to explain the content of a print of a piece of Mayan “decoration.” Although he did not say so in his 1885 book, the image Biart described had previously been published in the official publication of the CSM.