La centralisation monarchique et la naissance des sciences sociales. Voyageurs et statisticiens à la recherche de la France à la fin du XVIIIe siècle

The building of a centralized State and the making of Social Sciences in France. Travellers and statisticians in late 18th century. A. Burguière. A new kind of French travellers appears at the eve of the Revolution of 1789 recording their journey in the French countryside in an ethnographical way. This ethnographical insight in the cultural diversity of French peasantry grew up during the Revolution and the Empire but turned, with the scholarly activities of the Académie Celtique, into a reductionnist explanation by a Celtic background. By emphasizing the vestiges of a very old Celtic culture (older than the Greek or the Roman one) instead of the national character inherited from their Gallic ancestors, they expressed their preference for an universalist conception of Culture. This preference that can be explained by centralized structure of the State in France and its unitarian conception of society, oriented the development of a scientifical insight in French society toward a quantitative and sociological approach instead of an anthropological one.Burguière André. La centralisation monarchique et la naissance des sciences sociales. Voyageurs et statisticiens à la recherche de la France à la fin du XVIIIe siècle. In: Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales. 55ᵉ année, N. 1, 2000. pp. 199-218