RAYNAL AND JEFFERSON (I)
"L'enthousiasme seul auroit pu surmonter ces difficultés" — Raynal

AM | @HDI1780

- They never met. To the best of my knowledge, Raynal and Jefferson never met. When the American envoy arrived in Paris in early August 1784, Guillaume-Thomas Raynal had just returned to France after his exile. But the author of Histoire des deux Indes was barred from sejourning in the French capital. By the time Raynal returned to Paris to present his famous Adresse à l'Assemblée Nationale (may 1791), Jefferson was already working in New York City as the first US Secretary of State. [Gilles Bancarel. Raynal ou le devoir de vérité. Paris: Honoré Champion, 2004; Jefferson in Paris: 1784-1789].

- Jefferson (cordially) detested Raynal. There is little doubt in my mind that Jefferson had a profound dislike for abbé Raynal. The reason may well be the fact that Histoire des deux Indes does not count him among the founders of the new republic: besides "leur chef, Wasington" (sic), Diderot cites "Hancok (sic), Franklin, les deux Adams" as "les plus grands acteurs dans cette scène intéressante". This is all the more remarkable since Diderot does provide a partial translation of the Declaration of Independence, which he labels the Revolution's "manifeste". [HDI 1780, xviii].

- The degeneracy controversy I. In Query VI of his Notes on the State of Virginia, Jefferson slams the notion that America and all things American tend to degenerate on account of the prevailing humidity in the New World. His specific target is Raynal, who ventured to apply the theory of degeneracy to descendants of Europeans themselves (*). Note that Jefferson cites Volume 7 of the 1774 Maastricht edition of HDI. In other words: he is deliberately omitting the 1780 edition which, thanks to Franklin's persuasion, proved much more benign in terms America's supposed degeneracy.

- The degeneracy controversy II. Only in footnote 15 does Jefferson acknowledge the 1780 edition of Histoire des deux Indes. Still, the tone is pretty harsh: "In a later edition of the Abbé Raynal's work, he has withdrawn his censure from that part of the new world inhabited by the Federo-Americans; but has left it still on the other parts. North America has always been more accessible to strangers than South. If he was mistaken then as to the former, he may be so as to the latter." Here's the main part on Raynal:

So far the Count de Buffon has carried this new theory of the tendency of nature to belittle her productions on this side the Atlantic. Its application to the race of whites transplanted from Europe, remained for the Abbe Raynal. "On doit etre etonne (he says) que Amerique n'ait pas encore produit un bon poete, un habile mathematicien, un homme de genie dans un seul art, ou seule science." (7. Hist. Philos. p. 92, ed. Maestricht, 1774.) "America has not yet produced one good poet." When we shall have existed as a people as long as the Greeks did before they produced a Homer, the Romans a Virgil, the French a Racine and Voltaire, the English a Shakespeare and Milton, should this reproach be still true, we will inquire from what unfriendly causes it has proceeded, that the other countries of Europe and quarters of the earth shall not have inscribed any name in the roll of poets. But neither has America produced "one able mathematician, one man of genius in a single art or a single science."

In war we have produced a Washington, whose memory will be adored while liberty shall have votaries, whose name shall triumph over time, and will in future ages assume its just station among the most celebrated worthies of the world, when that wretched philosophy shall be forgotten which would have arranged him among the degeneracies of nature. In physics we have produced a Franklin, than whom no one of the present age has made more important discoveries, nor has enriched philosophy with more, or more ingenious solutions of the phenomena of nature. We have supposed Mr. Rittenhouse second to no astronomer living; that in genius he must be the first, because he is self-taught. As an artist he has exhibited as great a proof of mechanical genius as the world has ever produced. He has not indeed made a world; but he has by imitation approached nearer its Maker than any man who has lived from the creation to this day.

As in philosophy and war, so in government, in oratory, in painting, in the plastic art, we might show that America, though but a child of yesterday, has already given hopeful proofs of genius, as well as of the nobler kinds, which arouse the best feelings of man, which call him into action, which substantiate his freedom, and conduct him to happiness, as of the subordinate, which serve to amuse him only. We therefore suppose, that this reproach is as unjust as it is unkind: and that, of the geniuses which adorn the present age, America contributes its full share. For comparing it with those countries where genius is most cultivated, where are the most excellent models for art, and scaffoldings for the attainment of science, as France and England for instance, we calculate thus: The United States contains three millions of inhabitants; France twenty millions; and the British islands ten.

We produce a Washington, a Franklin, a Rittenhouse. France than should have half a dozen in each of these lines, and great Britain half that number, equally eminent. It may be true that France has; we are but just becoming acquainted with her, and our acquaintance so far gives us high ideas of the genius of her inhabitants. It would be injuring too many of them to name particularly a Voltaire, a Buffon, the constellation of Encyclopedists, the Abbe Raynal himself, We therefore have reason to believe she can produce her full quota of genius. The present war having so long cut off all communication with Great Britain, we are not able to make a fair estimate of the state of science in that country. The spirit in which she wages war, is the only sample before our eyes, and that does not seem the legitimate offspring either of science or of civilization.

The sun of her glory is fast descending to the horizon. Her philosophy has crossed the Channel, her freedom the Atlantic, and herself seems passing to that awful dissolution whose issue is not given human foresight to scan....

(*)  See my take on the degeneracy controversy in chapter 9 of El 'best-seller' que cambió el mundo.
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