Pierre Poivre

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Lithograph by E. Conguy (19th century)

Pierre Poivre (born August 23, 1719 in Lyon , † January 6, 1786 in Saint-Romain-au-Mont-d'Or ) was a French physiocrat , enlightener and horticultural expert. He was also a missionary in China and Cochinchina , intendant of Mauritius and Réunion and a member of the Order of the Holy Spirit ( Ordre du Saint-Esprit ).

Live and act

Pierre Poivre was the son of Hilaire Poivre (1671-1739), a cloth merchant from Lyon and his wife Marie Pompallier (1699-1770). He had a brother, Denis Poivre. The paternal grandfather, Gabriel Poivre (* 1644), and his wife Marie Greney had two sons, Hilaire Poivre and Jean Poivre (1673–1740), from whose line Pierre Sonnerat comes.

Missionary in Cochinchina and China

Pierre Poivre attended the school of the Missionnaires de Saint-Joseph in Croix-Rousse (Lyon), then the seminary of the Paris Mission . However, he was not ordained a priest.

In 1741 he traveled to the China Mission as a missionary . He was active in Cochinchina, Guangzhou and Macau . In 1745 he traveled to India as a member of the French East India Company and was involved in a sea battle with the British on the way. His wrist was shattered by a cannonball; then part of his right arm had to be amputated. He was taken prisoner by the British.

Explorer and botanist

He was released in Batavia , the trading center of the Dutch East Indies . He found his passion through the spice trade there: the world of spices . In 1746 he traveled to Pondicherry , the capital of French India . After a shipwreck, he was picked up by a Dutch ship that was seized by British ships. Again Poivre fell into British captivity and was brought to Guernsey .

After his release, Poivre traveled to Mauritius in 1753 . He tried - initially in vain - to plant nutmeg trees there . On his way back to France in 1756, his ship was captured by British ships. He was captured for the third time in British captivity, this time in Cork . He was released in April 1757.

After his further release, Poivre began to publish the results of his botanical explorations. Scientists became aware of him. He was accepted into the Académie des sciences, belles-lettres et arts de Lyon . From 1754 he was a corresponding member of the Académie des sciences in Paris at the suggestion of René-Antoine Ferchault de Réaumur . He dealt extensively with political and economic issues, particularly international trade.

Director of the Île de France and the Île Bourbon

In 1766 Poivre was appointed director of the Île de France (Mauritius) and Île Bourbon ( Réunion ) in the Indian Ocean. He finally succeeded in introducing clove and nutmeg to Mauritius and Réunion. Until then, the Dutch had a quasi-monopoly on these spices in East India. To procure the spices, Poivre organized the robbery and smuggling of these plants and their seeds from the Banda Islands in the South Moluccas between 1769 and 1770 . Poivre was also responsible for introducing these aromatic plants to the Seychelles .

In northern Mauritius, Poivre founded the botanical garden known today as Sir Seewoosagur Ramgoolam Botanical Garden with 25 hectares and tropical plants and trees from Africa, Asia, North and South America and islands in the Indian Ocean.

family

His wife was Marie Françoise Robin de Livet (1749–1841). Pierre Poivre married Marie Françoise on September 5, 1766 in Pommiers in what is now the Rhône department . The children Marie Poivre (1768–1787), François Julienne Ile-de-France Poivre (1770–1845) and Sarah Poivre (1773–1814) came from this connection. After the death of her husband, Marie Françoise married Pierre Samuel du Pont de Nemours in 1795 .

Originally L'Heure du Berger , by Chevalier de la Biollière, commanders of L'Etolle du Matin , renamed Poivre Atoll in 1771 .

Honors

The Poivre Atoll ( Amiranten ) is named after him.

reception

Poivre's book The Adventures of a Philosopher was read with interest by Thomas Jefferson . Most of all, his description of the cultivation of mountain rice in Vietnam caught Jefferson's attention.

With a new edition of his book Voyages d'un philosophe (1768) in German in 1997, Pierre Poivre's life and work found new attention. His book is a mixture of travelogue and political-economic considerations. Among other things, he subjects Montesquieu's theory of “ oriental despotism ” to an empirical critique. Poivre was one of the last European authors of the time who did not come to Asia with the firm conviction of European superiority over the rest of the world.

Title page of Voyages d'un philosophe ou observations sur les mœurs et les arts des peuples de l'Afrique, de l'Asie et de l'Amérique , reprinted 1769

Works (selection)

  • Voyages d'un philosophe, ou observations sur les moeurs et les arts des peuples de l'Afrique, de l'Asie et de l'Amérique. Yverdon 1768.
    • Travels of a Philosopher 1768 . Introduced, translated and explained by Jürgen Osterhammel (= foreign cultures in old reports, vol. 4). Thorbecke, Sigmaringen 1997, ISBN 3-7995-0602-0 .
  • Oeuvres complettes [sic] de P. Poivre: intendant des isles de France et de Bourbon, correspondant de l'accademie des science, etc: précédées de sa vie et accompagnées de notes. Fuchs, Paris 1797.

literature

  • Marthe de Fels: Pierre Poivre ou l'Amour des épices . Hachette, Paris 1968.
  • Madeleine Ly-Tio-Fane: Pierre Poivre et l'expansion française dans l'Indo-Pacifique . In: Bulletin de l'École française d'Extrême-Orient , Vol. 53 (1967), pp. 453-512 ( online ).
  • Louis Malleret: Pierre Poivre . École française d'Extrême-Orient / Adrien-Maisonneuve, Paris 1974.
  • Jürgen Osterhammel: Introduction . In: Pierre Poivre: Travels of a Philosopher 1768 . Thorbecke, Sigmaringen 1997, pp. 7-40.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Paul Dieudé: Histoire de la famille Poivre . Besançon 1998.
  2. ↑ Genealogy overview
  3. ↑ Jacques Weber (ed.): Le monde créole. Peuplement, sociétés et human condition, XVIIe – XXe siècles . Les Indes savantes, Paris 2005, ISBN 2-8465-4059-4 , p. 51.
  4. ↑ Susan Richter: Plow and Rudder. On the interweaving of rule and agriculture in the Enlightenment . Böhlau, Cologne 2015, ISBN 978-3-412-22355-7 , p. 138.
  5. ^ Paul Boudet: Un voyageur philosophe. Pierre Poivre en Annam (1749-1750) . In: Cahiers de la société de geographie de Hanoi , issue 36, 1941, pp. 7-25.
  6. ^ Madeleine Ly-Tio-Fane: Mauritius and the Spice Trade. The Odyssey of Pierre Poivre . Esclapon, Port Louis 1958.
  7. ↑ Olivier Le Gouic: Pierre Poivre et les épices: une transplantation réussie? In: Sylviane Llinares, Philippe Hroděj (eds.): Techniques et colonies (XVIe – XXe siècles) . Publications de la Société Française d'Histoire d'Outre-Mer, Paris 2005, ISBN 2-85970-032-3 , pp. 103–126, here p. 108.
  8. ^ List of members since 1666: Letter P. Académie des sciences, accessed on February 5, 2020 (French).
  9. ^ Xavier Charlet: Les idées politiques de Pierre Poivre . Mémoire de DEA d'Histoire du Droit et des institutions, Université Jean Moulin Lyon III, Lyon 1995.
  10. ↑ Joseph Balloffet: Le mariage de Pierre Poivre . In: Almanach du Beaujolais , year 1943, pp. 75–85.
  11. ↑ Jürgen Osterhammel: Introduction . In: Pierre Poivre: Travels of a Philosopher 1768 . Thorbecke, Sigmaringen 1997, pp. 7-40, here p. 26.
personal data
SURNAME Poivre, Pierre
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French horticultural specialist
DATE OF BIRTH August 23, 1719
PLACE OF BIRTH Lyon
DATE OF DEATH January 6, 1786
Place of death Saint-Romain-au-Mont-d'Or