Table Of ContentWar, Culture and Society, 1750–1850
Series Editors: Rafe Blaufarb (Florida State, USA), Alan Forrest (York, UK), and
Karen Hagemann (Chapel Hill, USA)
Editorial Board: Michael Broers (Oxford, UK), Christopher Bayly (Cambridge,
UK), Richard Bessel (York, UK), Sarah Chambers (Minneapolis, USA), Laurent
Dubois (Durham, USA), Etienne François (Berlin, Germany), Janet Hartley
(London, UK), Wayne Lee (Chapel Hill, USA), Jane Rendall (York, UK), Reinhard
Stauber (Klagenfurt, Austria)
Titles include:
Katherine B. Aaslestad and Johan Joor (editors)
REVISITING NAPOLEON’S CONTINENTAL SYSTEM
Local, Regional and European Experiences
Richard Bessel, Nicholas Guyatt and Jane Rendall (editors)
WAR, EMPIRE AND SLAVERY, 1770–1830
Eveline G. Bouwers
PUBLIC PANTHEONS IN REVOLUTIONARY EUROPE
Comparing Cultures of Remembrance, c. 1790–1840
Michael Broers, Agustin Guimera and Peter Hicks (editors)
THE NAPOLEONIC EMPIRE AND THE NEW EUROPEAN POLITICAL CULTURE
Gavin Daly
THE BRITISH SOLDIER IN THE PENINSULAR WAR
Encounters with Spain and Portugal, 1808–1814
Charles J. Esdaile and Philip Freeman
BURGOS IN THE PENINSULAR WAR, 1808–1814
Occupation, Siege, Aftermath
Alan Forrest, Etienne François and Karen Hagemann (editors)
WAR MEMORIES
The Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars in Modern European Culture
Alan Forrest, Karen Hagemann and Jane Rendall (editors)
SOLDIERS, CITIZENS AND CIVILIANS
Experiences and Perceptions of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars,
1790–1820
Alan Forrest and Peter H. Wilson (editors)
THE BEE AND THE EAGLE
Napoleonic France and the End of the Holy Roman Empire, 1806
Rasmus Glenthøj and Morten Nordhagen Ottosen
EXPERIENCES OF WAR AND NATIONALITY IN DENMARK AND NORWAY,
1807–1815
Marion F. Godfroy
KOUROU AND THE STRUGGLE FOR A FRENCH AMERICA
Karen Hagemann, Gisela Mettele and Jane Rendall (editors)
GENDER, WAR AND POLITICS
Transatlantic Perspectives, 1755–1830
Leighton James
WITNESSING THE REVOLUTIONARY AND NAPOLEONIC WARS IN GERMAN
CENTRAL EUROPE
Catriona Kennedy
NARRATIVES OF THE REVOLUTIONARY AND NAPOLEONIC WARS
Military and Civilian Experience in Britain and Ireland
Catriona Kennedy, and Matthew McCormack (editors)
SOLDIERING IN BRITAIN AND IRELAND, 1750–1850
Men of Arms
Ralph Kingston
BUREAUCRATS AND BOURGEOIS SOCIETY
Office Politics and Individual Credit, France 1789–1848
Kevin Linch
BRITAIN AND WELLINGTON’SS ARMY
Recruitment, Society and Tradition, 1807–1815
J.R. Moores
REPRESENTATIONS OF FRANCE IN ENGLISH SATIRICAL PRINTS 1740–1832
Julia Osman
CITIZEN SOLDIERS AND THE KEY TO THE BASTILLE
Pierre Serna, Antonino De Francesco and Judith Miller
REPUBLICS AT WAR, 1776–1840
Revolutions, Conflicts and Geopolitics in Europe and the Atlantic World
Marie-Cécile Thoral
FROM VALMY TO WATERLOO
France at War, 1792–1815
Mark Wishon
GERMAN FORCES AND THE BRITISH ARMY
Interactions and Perceptions, 1742–1815
Christine Wright
WELLINGTON’S MEN IN AUSTRALIA
Peninsular War Veterans and the Making of Empire c.1820–40
War, Culture and Society, 1750–1850
Series Standing Order ISBN 978–0–230–54532–8 hardback
978–0–230–54533–5 paperback
(outside North America only)
You can receive future titles in this series as they are published by placing a
standing order. Please contact your bookseller or, in case of difficulty, write to us
at the address below with your name and address, the title of the series and one
of the ISBNs quoted above.
Customer Services Department, Macmillan Distribution Ltd, Houndmills,
Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS, England
Kourou and the Struggle
for a French America
Marion F. Godfroy
Associated Researcher, Institut d’Histoire de la Révolution française, Sorbonne
Paris I; Associated Researcher, Centre d’histoire en recherches quantitative, Caen;
Visiting Teacher at Amiens University
Translated by Ly Lan Dill
Translated with the assistance and support of the administration
of French Guiana
© Marion F. Godfroy 2015
Foreword © Patrice Higonnet 2015
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2015 978-1-137-36346-6
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this
publication may be made without written permission.
No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted
save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence
permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency,
Saffron House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS.
Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication
may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
The author has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this
work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published 2015 by
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN
Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited,
registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke,
Hampshire RG21 6XS.
Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC,
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
Palgrave Macmillan is a global academic imprint of the above companies
and has companies and representatives throughout the world.
Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States,
the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries.
ISBN 978-1-349-47302-1 ISBN 978-1-137-36347-3 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9781137363473
This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully
managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing
processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the
country of origin.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Godfroy, Marion F.
[Kourou, 1763. English]
Kourou and the struggle for a French America / Marion F. Godfroy;
translated by Ly Lan Dill.
pages cm—(War, culture and society, 1750–1850)
Summary: “Kourou and the Struggle for a French America explores the famous
enterprise of the French monarchy, taking place immediately after the Seven Years
War—the establishment of a French colony in America. Kourou was to be a
wonderful revenge, directed by the brightest scientific minds of the Enlightenment as
they sought to create a new settlement akin to El Dorado. The French government
promised free travel, and other advantages never offered before. The settlement was
deemed so important that the British government maintained a close eye on its
development. However, the fantastic ideal of this new French colonial world became a
grand failure, and a political disaster. Kourou marked the end of the French attempts
for an American colony, and the shift of attention to Africa and Asia, her ‘second’ world
empire”—Provided by publisher.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-349-47302-1 (hardback)
1. Kourou Expedition, 1763–1765. 2. French Guiana—History—To 1814. 3. French
Guiana—Colonization—History—18th century. 4. Kourou (French Guiana)—History—
18th century. 5. France—Colonies—America—History—18th century. I. Title.
F2462.G6313 2014
988.2—dc23 2014020333
Typeset by MPS Limited, Chennai, India.
To my beloved mother and father
My daugther Elisabeth and my son Stanilas
And my husband Cédric
The concept of the Atlantic world as a coherent whole involves
a creative shift in orientation from nationalistic, longitudinal,
and tele logical structures towards horizontal, transnational, trans-
imperial, and multicultural views, as the mind’s eye sweeps laterally,
across the past’s contemporary world rather than forward to its later
outcomes.
Bernard Bailyn, Soundings in Atlantic History: Latent Structures and
Intellectual Currents, 1500–1830, Harvard University Press, 2009.
Contents
List of Figures and Tables viii
Foreword by Patrice Higonnet ix
Acknowledgements xii
Introduction 1
1 Farewell Quebec 8
2 The Realm of the Golden King 31
3 The Americas 45
4 White Colony 60
5 Forces Present 70
6 Mirages 77
7 From the Rhine to the Atlantic 104
8 Disaster Ahead 119
9 Kourou 125
10 The Trap is Sprung 141
11 Turgot’s Disgrace 161
Conclusion 173
Chronology of events 177
Glossary 186
Biographies 188
Notes 196
Index 232
vii
List of Figures and Tables
Figures
6.1 Origins of settlers, mapped on present-day German lande 81
6.2 Origins of settlers, mapped on present-day French regions 83
6.3 Placard presenting in French and German the same
description of the multiple benefits of a trip to
“New Caïenne” 90
6.4 Age of settlers waiting to board 99
7.1 Arrivals and departures to and from the settler
centers, 1763–4 112
7.2 Monthly head-counts in the various centers (bar chart)
and death rates (line) from 1763 to 1767 114
Tables
6.1 Settlers’ previous employment 86
6.2 Settlers’ country of origin 87
6.3 German settlers’ lands of origin 87
viii
Foreword
Kourou? Not a household word, unless you happen to be into European
space launches. And Kourou in historical lore? There, just about all read-
ers will draw a complete blank. Which is too bad, because as the French
edition of this excellent book points out, Kourou, in 1763–65, was “le
dernier rêve de l’Amérique française,” the last (and failed) gasp of the
French monarchy’s effort to build a durable and economically viable
colony on the (South) American continent. Kourou today is not (even)
the capital of French Guiana, and Kourou in the past was never a world
capital, but as it had become a successful Jesuit settlement before the
liquidation of that religious order its site became the goal of what was
probably the largest government-planned colonial French settlement:
heretofore, Guiana – with its priests and a mere 2,000 slaves – had been
an insignificant backwater. Now, after the disastrous treaty of 1763 it was
to be the pivot – in the imagination of key modernizing bureaucrats –
of a new French landed empire: so it was that the abbé Raynal – now
justly forgotten, but in the 1780s, one of Europe’s cultural heroes and
a stern abolitionist – explained in his Histoire Philosophique & politique
des deux Indes, first, that in the past “(French) Canada … by its location,
by the bellicose genius of its inhabitants, by its alliance with the sav-
age tribes which had befriended the frank and free spirit of the French
character) had balanced, or at least worried New England”; and second,
that as regarded the future, “the loss of this great (northern) continent”
had driven Versailles “to find support in another continent,” and that
it hoped “to find it in Guyanna, by settling there a national and free
population which would be singlehandedly capable of resisting foreign
attacks, and in time, be able to help other colonies when circumstances
might require it.” Some 17,000 migrants – many of them Germans – were
recruited as potential settlers of this new El Dorado; 14,000 of them got
to the French Atlantic seaports of Rochefort and St-Jean-d’Angély. After
a two-month voyage, 13,000 of them actually set foot in Kourou, where,
within a few months, 9,000 of them were laid to rest. Only 3,000 men and
women managed to find their way back to Europe. Tens of thousands of
Rhinelanders, many of them from the Palatinate, had gone to Pennsylvania
and had done quite well. Others, in Guiana, were not so fortunate.
The Kourou expedition was no fly-by-night operation: its size was
eloquent, as was also the status of its sponsors, starting with Louis XV’s
ix
