THE TIME OF ENLIGHTENMENT Constructing the Future in France, 1750 to Year One This page intentionally left blank The Time of Enlightenment Constructing the Future in France, 1750 to Year One WILLIAM MAX NELSON UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS Toronto Buffalo London © University of Toronto Press 2021 Toronto Buffalo London utorontopress.com Printed in Canada ISBN 978-1-4875-0770-1 (cloth) ISBN 978-1-4875-3678-7 (EPUB) ISBN 978-1-4875-3677-0 (PDF) Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Title: The time of enlightenment : constructing the future in France, 1750 to year one / William Max Nelson. Names: Nelson, William Max, 1976– author. Description: Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20200346431 | Canadiana (ebook) 20200346601 | ISBN 9781487507701 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781487536787 (EPUB) | ISBN 9781487536770 (PDF) Subjects: LCSH: Enlightenment – France. | LCSH: Enlightenment – France – Influence. | LCSH: Forecasting – Social aspects – France – History – 18th century. | LCSH: Future, The – Social aspects – France – History – 18th century. | LCSH: Future, The – Philosophy. | LCSH: Philosophy, French – 18th century. | LCSH: France – Intellectual life – 18th century. Classification: LCC B1925.E5 N45 2021 | DDC 194 – dc23 CC-BY-NC-ND This work is published subject to a Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial No Derivative License. For permission to publish commercial versions please contact University of Toronto Press. University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial support from the University of Toronto Libraries in making the open access version of this title available. University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial assistance to its publishing program of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council, an agency of the Government of Ontario. Funded by the Financé par le Government gouvernement of Canada du Canada Contents Acknowledgments vii Introduction 3 1 Making Time Different: Historical Change and the Laws of Nature 21 2 Living the Future: Ideas of Progress and Uncanny Temporality 37 3 “The Explosion of Light”: The Economic Order and the Scientifc Revelation of the Future 60 4 Generating Time: Buffon and the Biological Instruments of Futurity 95 5 The Time of Regeneration: Renewal, Rupture, and Beginning Anew in the French Revolution 121 Conclusion: Colonizing the Future 144 Notes 155 Index 215 This page intentionally left blank Acknowledgments Given the subject matter of this book, it is perhaps fitting that I devel- oped it over a long period in which I was able to see the historical change of both it and myself. One of the happy side effects of the temporality of this book is that it has allowed me to meet many new friends and colleagues, gain new family members, engage with interlocuters, and witness an explosion of scholarship on the history of time. For reading and commenting on parts of this book at various stages of its development, I thank Anika Bavas, Francis Cody, Paul Cohen, Dan- iel Crosby, Andrew Curran, Catherine Desbarats, Nicholas Dew, Helen Dewar, Gustavo Garza, Anthony Grafton, Allan Greer, Karl Gunther, Jens Hanssen, Julie Hardwick, István Hont, Alexandra Hui, Lynn Hunt, Margaret Jacob, Eric Jennings, Madhavi Kale, Michael Kwass, Kevin Lambert, Mary Lindemann, Laura Mason, Kirstie McClure, Sarah Mor- timer, William O’Reilly, Anthony Pagden, Jason Pearl, Bhavani Raman, Peter Hanns Reill, Jacques Revel, Pernille Rge, Joshua Rosenblatt, Emma Rothschild, Mary Terrall, David Todd, Lilia Topouzova, Eliot Tretter, and M. Norton Wise. In addition, I have benefited from com- ments from seminar audiences at California Institute of Technology, Cambridge University, McGill University, UCLA, University of Miami, and Université de Montréal. It was my great privilege to begin this project as a doctoral student supervised by Lynn Hunt. She was unfailingly supportive and encour- aging as an advisor, challenging and wise as a reader. Over the years, she has provided not only invaluable comments on my work but also an example of an ideal mentor. M. Norton Wise was also an important supporter of this project from the beginning; he introduced me to the tableau économique, and his early encouragement and guidance were critical. Anthony Pagden helped me grapple with the intellectual his- tory of the Enlightenment, and Mary Terrall aided me in my encounters viii Acknowledgments with eighteenth-century life sciences. I am grateful to Kirstie McClure for her theoretical acumen and insightful questions. For financial support of this research, I thank the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the California Institute of Technology, the Centre for History and Economics (Magdalene College and King’s College, Cambridge University), the Council on Library and Information Resources, the Huntington Library, the Society for French Historical Studies, UCLA, and the University of Toronto. I moved a number of times since this project began, one of the great benefits of which has been the opportunity to make so many new friends and colleagues along the way. From my time at Cambridge University, I am indebted to colleagues at the Centre for History and Economics and Trinity Hall, particularly Caitlin Anderson, Richard Baker, Mary-Rose Cheadle, Martin Daunton, Gareth Stedman Jones, Melissa Lane, Inga Huld Markan, James Montgomery, William O’Reilly, Gabriel Paquette, Pedro Ramos Pinto, Pernille Rge, Emma Rothschild, David Todd, and Sasha Turner. At the University of Miami, I’d like to thank Michael Ber- nath, Eduardo Elena, Karl Gunther, Mary Lindemann, Michael Miller, Kate Ramsey, Dominique Reill, Tim Watson, and Ashli White. From my time at the Institute for Historical Studies and the Department of His- tory at the University of Texas at Austin, I thank Benjamin Brower, Jorge Caizares-Esguerra, Lina del Castillo, Judith Coffin, Venkat Dhulipala, Julie Hardwick, Philippa Levine, Tracie Matysik, Michelle Moyd, Rob- ert Olwell, Jim Sidbury, and Ellen Wu. I am also beholden to all of my colleagues at the University of Toronto in the Department of Historical and Cultural Studies at UTSC and in the Graduate Department of History. For their professional support, friendship, and critical conversations, I am grateful to Paul Cohen, Rick Halpern, Jens Hanssen, Jennifer Jenkins, Eric Jennings, Russ Kazal, Thomas Lahusen, Bhavani Raman, Natalie Rothman, Mohamad Tavakoli-Targhi, and Lynne Viola. In other parts of the university, and Toronto more generally, I also thank Naisargi Dave, Boris Pantev, and Kenneth Rogers. At the University of Toronto Press, it was a pleasure working with my editor Len Husband; I’m deeply thankful for his wise stewardship, use- ful suggestions, and unfailing support of the book. I also thank copy- editor Terry Teskey for her sharp eye and sensible suggestions, Leah Connor for her work overseeing production, and Sergey Lobachev for his work on the index. For their love and support, I thank my parents Bill and Joan and my sister Anika. They all read the manuscript at various stages, though I Acknowledgments ix have so much more to thank them for than that. As well I thank newer family members Ven, Reni, Venci, Maggie, Denis, Maria, and David. Finally, I am deeply grateful to my wife Lilia Topouzova, a true part- ner in life and thought. It has been a joy to share the fullness of the world with her. Whether we are exploring larger topics or experiencing the everyday, I am constantly renewed by being with her. Max Topou- zov Nelson came into the world during the writing of the book, and he also helped me see the world anew. I would like to thank them both for totally transforming my experience of time. This page intentionally left blank THE TIME OF ENLIGHTENMENT Constructing the Future in France, 1750 to Year One This page intentionally left blank Introduction A comparison of three books about Paris published across the last three decades of the eighteenth century, all by the same French author, Louis- Sébastien Mercier, reveals striking examples of how far historical expe- rience during this period exceeded many people’s expectations about what the future would, and could, bring.1 In his bestselling book of 1771, Mercier wrote about a dream-like vision of Paris in which he found “broad and beautiful streets” and “encountered no carriages ready to flatten me.”2 These safer and more easily navigated streets presented such a contrast with Mercier’s famil- iar experience of Paris that he returned to this orderliness, safety, and efficiency several times in the book. He found that aristocrats were no longer able to ride in coaches, while sumptuary legislation outlawed the six-horsed luxury carriages sometimes driven by financiers, cour- tesans, and dandies trying to outdo the nobles. In this improved ver- sion of Paris, pedestrians moved freely and easily, since the only people allowed to move around the city by coach were those “distinguished by their public service and bent under the weight of old age.”3 “I no longer saw the ridiculous and revolting scene of a thousand coaches jammed together, remaining immobile for three hours,” Mercier wrote.4 Although these passages could be read as opening a small and rather modest window into the everyday experiences and annoyances of Pari- sians around 1770, read in light of the two other books by Mercier they reveal how imagination and expectation were constrained by historical circumstances and an inherited sense that the future would be funda- mentally like the past and present. In fact, these short passages about