ABSTRACT
The mid-1760s was a time of particular interest in the English steel industry by the French government. A large number of attempts were made by French technologists to try to produce good native steel. The apparently powerful array of scientific skills addressed to the steel-making conundrum may have diminished French interest in gaining the relevant technology by the suborning of workers. Over most of the eighteenth century France regarded with a jealous eye the superior technology and production of steel in England. France herself produced a certain amount of so-called 'natural' steel, well known in continental Europe but only briefly of importance in England, particularly in the late sixteenth century. The English industrialist, Edward Chamberlain, already involved in chemical manufacture in Normandy before the Revolution, claimed to have made some steel but needed more workmen and material to make a real contribution.
