Regenerate nature, restore the climate: François-Antoine Rauch and the Annales Européennes de physique végétale et d’économie publique, 1815-1830

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This article studies the campaign launched under the Restoration by the state engineer François-Antoine Rauch to denounce the dangers of deforestation. It analyzes Rauch’s political and intellectual career so as to characterize his position as a “whistle-blower.” It focuses in particular on the content and reception of his journal, Les Annales Européennes de physique végétale et d’économie publique, whose circulation amounted to several thousand copies in the 1820s. This journal contributed to the politicization of deforestation and its climatic consequences in France and proposed a powerful prophetic discourse, both visual and rhetorical, on ecological decline and improvement, casting oriental societies as an environmental foil. In this respect, Rauch made a lasting contribution to the history of European environmental discourse and reflexivity, which we seek to characterize.