ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on science, medicine, and technology in the French Empire from the French Revolution through the era of decolonisation. It addresses the asymmetric co-evolution of France and its colonies through the history of science, technology, and medicine. This co-evolution has often left the former colonies in a state of dependency struggling to sustain independent scientific communities and retain scientific personnel. Science was a moderate but important part of the package of colonialism and modernisation. Much depended on the circumstances of the colony, the demographic and natural resources it harboured, and the density of French settlement and investment. The North African colonies, especially Algeria, experienced the most intense deployment of science, scientific institutions, and influx of French settlers. Indochina, French West Africa, and other colonies also experienced varying degrees of French science and medicine, industrialisation, rational agriculture, labour practices, and trade. Western medicine, in particular, both through military means and through the Pasteur Institutes, is portrayed as a significant factor in the modernisation process although colonised peoples did not share equally with their French masters in the societal benefits of Western medicine.
