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The Anecdotes de notre temps depuis 1715 à 1736 is a set of 52 manuscript volumes acquired by the Royal Library in 1789 during the sale after the death of the Duke of Richelieu. Archivists itemized the majority of the volumes in the early 19th century and the documents in these volumes got dispersed in different thematic collections of the National Library of France. They generally combined a text and an image and referred to as anecdotes. Fortunately, a particular stamp assures their traceability and permits to identify them in the National Library. In this manner, an anonymous volume preserves around forty anecdotes containing 67 drawings and engravings of fauna and flora concerning the French colonial empire. A reconstruction was made through an intra-inter-trans structuralist approach to reconstruct first the micro-stories behind each anecdote in order to infirm the date of most of the iconographic documents. This approach also made it possible to determine the nature of the collection in the 19th century but also to identify invariabilities leading to the involvement of Antoine-Denis Raudot, class-intendant and secretary of the French Navy. It is believed that this corpus represents in fact the “pre-anecdotes” until Raudot's death in 1737, from which the Count of Maurepas must have drawn in order to partially compile the 52 volumes of Anecdotes de notre temps during his exile (1749-1774). This result and the fact that Raudot's went to New France (1705-1710) as a second clerk now permitted to identify a second set of eight Canadian anecdotes and to be presented here. The transfer of Raudot's “pre-anecdotes” corpus to Maurepas is explained partially by various events that occurred in 1737, the year when Raudot died (heritage, appropriation, saving).

Keywords: Secrétariat de la Marine, Jardin du Roi, Académie des Sciences, Compagnie des Indes, Cabinet de Curiosités, Circulation des savoirs, Cultures coloniales, Colonies françaises, Iconographie, Premières Nations, Comte de Maurepas, Antoine-Denis Raudot, Duc de Richelieu, Le Masson du Parc, Pierre Le Chevalier, Jussieu, XVIII siècle

How can we ensure that our work as researchers is useful? Despite the growing institutionalization of the ways in which scientific knowledge is articulated in research, an “institutional epistemology” is structuring academic research according to which researchers may not act based on the constructive (or transformative) properties they produce. This scientific autonomy represents at once an important condition for a type of research that is not reduced to its instrumental virtues and a challenge for partnership research projects. Starting from an account given by a researcher whose intellectual and professional trajectory sheds light on the fundamental challenges of joint research, our article looks in particular at ways of overcoming tensions (epistemological, political, etc.) that put joint research to the test while at the same time as constituting that test.

Keywords: recherche conjointe, interdisciplinarité, transformation sociale, récit de pratiques, Jean-Pierre Revéret, joint research, interdisciplinarity, social transformation, account of practices, Jean-Pierre Revéret

Does the understanding and appreciation of humorous material evolve with age according to children’s need for humor? To answer this question, we presented 222 elementary school students, aged 8–10 years on average, with humorous comic strips taken from children’s literature. Using this material, they were asked to perform two tasks: a task involving the production of inferences to measure their level of understanding of humour, and a task consisting of evaluating the humour contained in the comic strips. The children’s propensity to produce, but also to seek out, humour was measured using a tool adapted to this population of young students: the French version of the Need for Humor Scale (Picard & Blanc, 2013). Two main results can be reported: First, the need for humour seems to follow a developmental curve, at least in the age group considered, with a greater propensity to seek humour than to produce it. Secondly, and surprisingly, the need for humour does not appear to mediate the relationship between age, understanding, and appreciation of humour in children. These results deserve to be considered in order to further explore and consolidate the idea that humour could be a lever to be used in the school context for pedagogical purposes.

Keywords: need for humour, besoin d’humour, humour appreciation, appréciation de l’humour, compréhension de l’humour, humour comprehension, BD humoristiques, humorous comic strips

In this paper, the dynamics of early coffee production in the Americas are identified through cross-referencing of historical, genealogical, agronomic, and climatological data. We revisit the history of the diffusion of the coffee-tree, growing in the greenhouses of Amsterdam, towards the Dutch colonies by means, amongst others, of the barely exploited works such as by the English botanist Richard Bradley. In 1714, the latter spent time in the Hortus medicus of Amsterdam permitting us to propose corrections in the early historiography of the diffusion of coffee-trees. We start with the analysis of the Bradley's work and continue with a synthesis on the diffusion of coffee-trees in European greenhouses and their introduction into the Dutch colonies of the Guianas (Suriname, Essequibo, Berbice) and Curaçao. The date of 1714 can be retained as introduction date of the coffee-tree in Suriname from the greenhouses of Amsterdam but the introduction of coffee actually shows two seperate sequences (1696-1700 and 1706-1723). The gap (1701-1705) between these sequences can be related to climatic changes and possibly linked to temporary global warming. Finally, we also stress the importance of coffee-tree trade between colonies and the start of new plantations by comparing family ties, the roll of taxes (capitation) and local legislation revealing new insights on the situation in Suriname during the first decade of the XVIIIe century, prelude to the economic success of investors in this new cash crop.

Keywords: Coffea arabica, café, caféïculture, construction et échanges de savoirs, Richard Bradley, serres d'Amsterdam, Hortus medicus, Suriname, Essequibo, Guyanes, cultures coloniales, transferts de plantes, modélisation, paléo-climat, XVIII

In the last decades of the 19th century, the colonization of the African continent coincided with the popularity of ethnographical spectacles in Europe. On tour in European zoos, cabarets, fairs, as well as in colonial and universal expositions, these representations displayed indigenous groups of individuals from recently or soon-to-be colonized regions. While France, Great Britain and Germany competed overseas to affirm their colonial power, these countries welcomed the same spectacles in their respective capital cities and provincial towns. Drawing on examples borrowed from France, England, Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, this study examines the ways these spectacles were represented in European literatures and visual arts. Although these spectacles “displayed” a wide variety of peoples, not only groups from Africa, this article focuses exclusively on works which depict peoples from this continent. In treating the works in question as “cultural signals”, to use Jean Devisse’s expression, it aims to identify the types of visual or literary consumption that these artistic productions elicit. The article adopts an essentially rhetorical perspective in order to attempt to determine the types of identification which the reader /consumer is encouraged to assume. These may be a naïve, imperialist consumption of the “savage” animal, a form of civilizing compassion that can change to suspicion during war times, or an erotic complicity that can go as far as sketching out a challenge to ethnocentrism.

Keywords: spectacle, spectacle, ethnographic, ethnographique, savage, sauvage, empire, empire, representation, représentation