Constructing the Zoo: Science, Society, and Animal Life at the Paris Menagerie, 1793-1838

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PROJECT SUMMARY The goal of this project is to complete the archival research for a book on the purposes and practices of the first public zoo, the menagerie of the Museum d'Histoire Naturelle in Paris. Founded at the height of the French Revolution, and situated at the world's premier institution for natural history, the menagerie was conceived as having great scientific potential as well as significant social, political, and moralpotential. The project focuses on the first half-century of the menagerie's existence. The study will examine several topics: (1.) the different functions and interests that the menagerie was capable of serving; (2.)the circumstances under which these early expectations were realized, revised, or reformulated in the course of practice; (3.) the animals of the menagerie and the scientific and popular construction of animal life; (4.) the problematic role that living animals played in the life of the museum; (5.) the studies of animal behavior conducted at the menagerie by Frederic Cuvier, warden of the menagerie; (6.) the multiple actors involved in the menagerie's operations. The research will be conducted primarily in Paris at the French National Archives. The PI will complete examination of an extensive collection of manuscripts that historians of science have not exploited previously: the official reports and other documents from the weekly meetings of the professors of the Museum d'HistoireNaturelle. These materials permit a detailed reconstruction of the life of the menagerie, within the broader context of the operations of the museum .The intellectual importance of this research for the history of science is suggested by the topics to be studied and the methodologiesto be used. It is of direct importance for understanding zoology in France in the age of Cuvier, Lamarck, and Geoffroy St. Hilaire, when French zoology was second to none. It will be an important contribution to recent historical on the scientific andsocial history of zoos, both because of the role of the Paris menagerie as a model for the great wave of zoo construction that occurred in the 19th century and because of the detail in which the Paris Museum's archives allow one to examine this nineteenth century zoo. In terms of broader impacts the work bears on the dual questions of the evolving purposes of zoos and the scientific and popular understanding of animal nature. Controversies over both ofthese topics in recent years need to be situated in the broader perspective that historical study can afford. By understanding the aims, accomplishments, and also the shortcomings of a key institution like the menagerie of the Paris Museum, one can gain a deeper sense of the continuing promises and problems of zoos today, both as social institutions and as sites for scientific investigation, and how views of animal/human similarities, differences, and interrelations have changed over time.