Central Europeans were not obvious candidates for leading positions in the French empire. One of the very few was Móric Beňovský (in Polish, Maurycy Beniowski), an Upper Hungarian nobleman who was commissioned in 1772 by the French king to create a colony in northern Madagascar. In the French empire, administrators and commanders of colonies were, in the eighteenth-century at least, almost always Frenchmen, even if right after the creation of the East India Company foreigners such as Dutchmen or Persians played a great role. 1 Beňovský’s life indeed differed greatly from that of other colonial administrators. He had fled Upper Hungary after having killed his uncle, fought in the War of the Confederation of Bar on the Polish side, been taken prisoner by the Russians and been deported to Kamchatka. From this East Asian peninsula, he had fled to Macao and entered the service of the French king. In Versailles, he was asked to found an establishment on Madagascar, develop peaceful relationships with the indigenous elite, and initiate trade with the local population. Contrary to these instructions and coming with voluntary troops of different, mainly French, central and eastern European, origins, Beňovský soon tried to conquer the region, which ended in disaster. In addition, Beňovský was a confidence trickster: he made up wars and victories, and claimed to have created roads or settlements which, in reality, did not exist, to have incorporated northern Madagascar into the French empire, and to have turned the Malagasy into proto-French people. Although his real life was certainly adventurous enough, he presented fanciful narratives about his experiences and deeds, permanently self-fashioning himself in a creative way.Reference Cultru 2
Beňovský’s story contrasts with the way scholars usually write the history of colonial knowledge in two ways. First, the history of knowledge production in the colonial framework often postulates implicitly that imperial expansion and knowledge production had mutually reinforcing effects.Reference Charles and Cheney 3 For this reason, historiography has a tendency to concentrate on the production of knowledge that was useful for colonial administration. For example, it pays considerable attention to the participation of Central European, especially German, scholars in the great scientific expeditions of the Age of Enlightenment. Scholarship influenced by Said’s Orientalism also tends to see a corollary of colonialism in the production of knowledge. However, most recently, Charles and Cheney have shown that the assumption that knowledge production and colonial expansion went hand in hand is questionable. Studying the French case, they argue that the knowledge produced was mostly not taken into consideration by the central administration, that patronage relationships restricted the flow of information, and that new knowledge was in part disturbing for the colonial system (Ref 3, pp. 127–163). More generally, the concentration on scientific and useful knowledge – from an imperial point of view – might imply a normative bias. The concept of ‘knowledge’ should have nothing to do with the quality of information. It only describes those descriptions of reality that people believe to be adequate.Reference Luckmann and Berger 4
Second, scholarship is greatly interested in exploring the globalisation of knowledge, especially the scientific exchanges between civilisations.Reference Raj 5 But Beňovský did not include knowledge from the Malagasy in the documents he wrote for his hierarchical superiors or the European public. Rather, he propagated fantastic images of Madagascar much in tune with European ideology, but not based on local knowledge.
The case of Beňovský raises the question about the conditions that foreigners had to fulfil in order to make a career in the French empire. This article seeks to answer the question of whether Beňovský’s Upper Hungarian origins contributed to shaping his career, self-fashioning, policy and knowledge production, that is, orientated these in a way that differed from the French colonisers. I would like especially to explain why Beňovský chose to fictionalise his life and to conjure lies about his experiences on Madagascar. Furthermore, even if I do not claim that Beňovský’s way of producing knowledge was typical for French officials (obviously, it was not usual to present totally fictional accounts as real), I think that his case gives some insight into the way information was produced in the French empire, and, beyond that, some insights into European colonial imagination in the Enlightenment period.
Colonialism: Beňovský’s Appropriation of a French Enlightenment Discourse
To understand Beňovský’s writings, it is essential to look back at the French colonisation venture on Madagascar in the years preceding his arrival. Between 1769 and 1772, the French had already wanted to create a colony on the Great Island – as Madagascar is often called: the count of Maudave had tried to rebuild the former colony of Fort-Dauphin in the south-east of the island. After the military defeats of the Seven Years’ War, France was searching for new colonies to compensate for its losses in India, and Maudave, a former governor of Karaikal, proposed Madagascar as a base for a new French Empire in the East Indies.Reference Foury 6 This was in some way surprising, because – as a result of the French failure to colonise south-east Madagascar in the seventeenth century – the island had acquired a very negative image in the French public sphere.Reference Tricoire 7 This notwithstanding, in 1767 Maudave succeeded in winning the support of the Minister of the Navy for his colonisation project. To reach this goal, he created a new, overwhelmingly positive image of the Great Island. The French count, who at that time had never been to Madagascar, did not gather new empirical data. Instead, he read, selectively, the most important seventeenth-century book on the Great Island, Flacourt’s Histoire de la Grande Isle de Madagascar (1661). In his own plea for a colonisation of Madagascar, Flacourt had described the island as one of the richest parts of the earth, and the Malagasy as a people asking for French civilisation, laws and religion.Reference de Flacourt 8 Maudave developed these topoi further. In his view, the Malagasy longed for civilisation and order. 9 For this reason, he argued, they would willingly accept French rule. The ‘natural’ authority held by the French meant that a violent conquest would not be necessary; it would be easy, he maintained, to turn the Malagasy into Frenchmen using the soft power of civilisation (Ref. 1, C 5A 2, no. 12, fol. 11; Ref. 9,88, no. 28, fol. 3). 10
Maudave’s assimilationist utopia resumed the French tradition of francisation, a policy previously implemented in Canada during the seventeenth century.Reference Belmessous 11 At the same time, Maudave’s argument incorporated new concepts of mankind’s progress in history that had emerged in the 1750s and 1760s.Reference Michel 12 Even before stadial theories had been clearly formulated,Reference Löwith 13 Maudave deduced the ‘soft’ Malagasy character from their way of subsistence – which he believed was pastoral (Ref. 9, no. 26, fol. 5) – and thought they were destined, like all men, to adopt a European way of life and work. He championed the pleas of some physiocrats for a civilising policy towards the ‘savages’,Reference Baudeau 14 and was even, to my knowledge, the very first French author to formulate the idea of a ‘civilising mission’ (Ref. 9, no. 40, 38). Thus, Maudave’s colonisation plan resulted from a broad and abstract ‘philosophical’ discourse. Indeed, Maudave was an admirer of Voltaire. 15
Maudave, who arrived in September 1768 in Tôlanaro (Fort-Dauphin) – the French outpost in southeast Madagascar – was not successful. He proved politically impotent and isolated in the region. Trade was interrupted, and diseases ravaged the French colonial establishment. In February 1771, Maudave’s expansion project was abandoned and his principles were considered unrealistic by the Minister of the Navy. 16 Nonetheless, after his arrival on Madagascar in 1773, Beňovský soon claimed to have succeeded in doing what Maudave had intended: the establishment of French rule thanks to a just policy and the prestige of civilisation. Five months after his arrival on the north-eastern Malagasy coast, on 22 March 1774, Beňovský wrote to the Minister of the Navy that the local indigenous ‘chiefs’ had pledged allegiance to the French king (Ref. 1, C 5A 4, no. 55, fols. 1–2). Five months later, Beňovský recounted that all the ‘subjected’ chiefs and their peoples were enthusiastic about living under so soft and so just a rule and that they had already given up their violent and barbaric customs (Ref. 1, C 5A 4, no. 36, 47, 48, 49). Beňovský related how he had brought about peace in the region. According to his story, the troops of two Malagasy princes had stood face to face, each on one side of a river, when he came by boat and delivered a speech to both sides. Thanks to his moral authority, he was able to reconcile the enemies. 17 In 1775, Beňovský declared that he had submitted the whole of north Madagascar to French rule without major fights. The subjected area was even supposed to include the powerful Sakalava kingdom of Boina, the most important port city of the north-west coast. The French, he declared, could now conscript 15,000 men into their army if they wished to do so (Ref. 1, C 5A 5, no. 26, 28, 41; Ref. 17, no. 57, fols. 131–32).
Basically, though not without contradictions, Beňovský told the story of soft, humane and civilising imperial expansion. One of his greatest achievements was allegedly the suppression of infanticide. According to the commander of Louisbourg, the Malagasy would kill all babies born on days considered to bring misfortune, those born with a congenital deformity, and those whose first teeth appeared in the upper jaw. In order to suppress this barbaric custom, Beňovský’s wife allegedly gathered all the women of the region and expounded to them on the cruelty of this tradition. The women, touched in their hearts by this speech, exerted pressure on their husbands, and the law was changed (Ref. 1, C 5A 5, no. 36). 18
Beňovský may have had two major sources of inspiration: the patriotic literature about war heroes, which was strongly influenced by classical republicanism in the Enlightenment era, and the numerous novels inspired by Defoe’s famous Robinson Crusoe (1719). Beňovský’s narrative shared several characteristics with the Robinsonades: the hero’s lonely life on a distant island; his efforts and suffering; and the building of civilisation by a single man. The Robinsonades were marked by imperial and masculine fantasies,Reference Philipps 19 , Reference Fougère 20 and, like Beňovský, blurred the distinction between fiction and report (Ref. 20, pp. 51–61, 190–198).Reference Green 21 , 22 Of course, his accounts were totally imaginary, as inspectors Guillaume Léonard de Bellecombe and Étienne Claude Chevreau revealed in 1776. Beňovský led petty wars against local chiefs from the lesser branches of the Sakalava dynasty. His troops were hungry and ill, and the whole region was devastated (Ref. 1, C 5A 4, no. 126; C 5A 7, no. 16, 17, 24, 32–58, 61–64).
However, for a few years, Beňovský’s fanciful reports seemed credible to the French government. When the Minister of the Navy finally dispatched inspectors, it was not because he had any serious doubts about Beňovský’s accounts, but was only to check if north-east Madagascar was salubrious enough to send settlers to (Ref. 1, C 5A 6, no. 32, no. 39).
Furthermore, even after his lies were discovered, Beňovský was magnificently rewarded after his arrival in Versailles in May 1777. Contrary to Maudave, who had been comparatively sincere, he received honours and money for his fantasy stories, although the Minister of the Navy, Sartine, was well informed about his lies and misdeeds (Ref. 1, C 5A 6, no. 8; C 5A 7, no. 2 and 3; C 5A 8, no. 3, 29, 30, 45, 53, 63, 66, 95, 124, 133, 134, 142). When, in 1783, Beňovský asked for a further 200,000 livres, one of the ministerial employees supported this demand, saying that the French king indeed owed a lot to the former commander of Louisbourg. He had, so recounted the employee, gained the friendship of all the natives without firing a single shot (Ref. 1, C 5A 8bis, no. 186). Even if Beňovský was not successful with this last request, such a comment shows that, apparently, the letters of the Upper Hungarian nobleman were much more broadly received than the reports of the inspectors. What is more, even if not everybody was duped by Beňovský – and Sartine obviously was not – the behaviour of the French government tells us that it seemed more important to reward a servant of the king who had ‘sacrificed’ years and ‘suffered’ on a distant island than it was to judge whether the servant had given reliable intelligence about the places, peoples and events under his command.
How did Beňovský manage to appear credible for several years? First, his narratives were inspired, to a large extent, by Maudave (Ref. 1, C 5A 2, no. 12, fol. 14; Ref. 10, Ms. 888, 49). He narrativised Maudave’s discourse about soft colonial expansion through civilising policy. For example, while Maudave had announced he would put an end to the practice of infanticide, Beňovský declared that he had done so and made up a story showing how. Second, Beňovský tried to monopolise the information flow from Madagascar. He forbade his soldiers and employees to write anything about the situation on the Great Island, and confiscated their letters (Ref. 1, C 5A 4, no. 90, fol. 1; Ref. 1, B 155, fol. 24). Third, the commander on Madagascar made up evidence. He devised letters allegedly written by his officers or his interpreter (Ref. 1, C 5A 4, no. 34, fol. 3; Ref. 17, Asie 4, no. 20, fols. 58–59). He wrote lists of ‘submitted chiefs’, sent fake protocols of the officers’ council, and the texts of treaties he pretended to have concluded with Malagasy princes (Ref. 1, C 5A 5, no. 38, 76; C 5A 6, no. 11; Ref. 17, Asie 4, no. 52, 57, 58). He let his cartographer draw maps of imaginary housing estates, forts and roads (Ref. 1, C 5A 4, no. 13, 46; Ref. 17, Asie 4, no. 49, 74). 23
Adventure: A Foreigner in the European Empires
The cultural patterns Beňovský used in his narratives were not specifically Central European. Rather, they had much to do with the Enlightenment in general and with the way some French authors wrote about Madagascar. The knowledge he produced was framed by an Enlightenment discourse about European superiority. Furthermore, he did not present himself as an Upper Hungarian, but rather as a faithful servant of the French king, who suffered for the glory of the sovereign (Ref. 1, C 5A 3, Nr. 14, pp. 31–32, 37, 39, 46, 59–61, 75, 95–96, 103–104). 24
Nonetheless, it cannot be denied that Beňovský’s discursive strategies were special. They had nothing to do with Central European culture, but might be related to his position as a petty nobleman from another country. As a foreigner of rather humble origins who had fled his country, Beňovský had little support through family networks. In order to attract attention, he had to present himself as an extraordinary personality. As he and his family were almost unknown in France, he had the chance to invent himself anew. On his arrival in Macao, he had already developed a new version of his life story. He asserted that he had been sent by Empress Maria Theresa to Poland in order to defend Catholicism against the Russians. He thus presented himself as a defender of the Catholic faith, whereas he was probably a Protestant (Ref. 1, C 5A 3, Nr. 14, 11–113).
Beňovský also added a sentimental touch to his story: according to his narrative, he had fled Kamchatka with the governor’s daughter, who loved him, but who died on his arrival in China. The Upper Hungarian nobleman even organised a mock burial ceremony for the girl, but the Dominican monks found out that the corpse in the coffin was that of a man.Reference Orłowski 25 On the whole, Beňovský’s discursive strategy was successful: he was soon considered to be an unusual man, having gathered experience ‘with the savage’ and he was employed by the minister of the Navy for this reason (Ref. 9, XVII/mémoires/88, no. 42, fol. 2). 26
Beňovský’s fanciful reports on his activities on Madagascar were thus a continuation of the only strategy he could follow to make a career in the French state. In the eighteenth century, the French administration usually did not appoint foreigners to leading functions. Ministers chose people they knew or those who were integrated into well-established patronage networks. 27 However, Beňovský’s discursive strategy also showed its limits. Although the former commander of Louisbourg was richly rewarded for his services on Madagascar, the French administration was not subsequently willing to give him another leading position in the colonial world (Ref. 25, p. 208). Beňovský thus tried to gain employment with other imperial powers, especially Britain. In London, he presented himself as the sovereign of a Malagasy state that sought Britain’s protection (Ref. 1, C 5A 8bis, no. 184, 185, 193; Ref. 25, pp. 208–209). To reach this goal, he refashioned his narrative and wrote his memoirs, which were published only after his death and soon became a bestseller. With this book, he probably hoped to win influential people to his cause and gain British support like the adventurer Theodor Neuhoff, who had been supported by the British government after claiming to be the king of Corsica (Ref. 1, C 5A 8bis, no. 184).
The published memoirs differ in several ways from the narratives Beňovský had written for the French Minister of the Navy. In his memoirs, Beňovský portrayed himself as an independent actor who concluded treaties in his own name, not for the French king. The French government, he wrote, had asked him to subdue the island by force, but he had disobeyed and chosen to use ‘soft’ means.Reference Beňovský 28 He had been successful, he continued, but the Minister of the Navy sent inspectors to arrest him and regain control over the island. Beňovský contended that he proudly received his would-be captors and quit the service of the French king (Ref. 28, pp. 14–23).
The climax of the memoirs’ narrative is reached when the natives choose Beňovský as an ‘ampansacabe’ or ‘king of the kings’ of Madagascar. Once again, Beňovský may have come across the idea about this election from one of Maudave’s texts: in his diary, Maudave asserted that the Malagasy did not consider him a Frenchman, but ‘the son of a mighty chief from the north [of Madagascar]’ who was raised in France.Reference Ms 29 Probably inspired by this detail, Beňovský invented the title ‘ampansacabe’ during the editing of his memoirs in the early 1780s (Ref. 25, pp. 162–208). His version was similar to Maudave’s: an old Malagasy woman had spread the rumour that he was the offspring of the reigning dynasty, and the natives had elected him as an ‘ampancasabe’ in a formal assembly (Ref. 28, pp. 308–309). The enthronement allegedly took place shortly before the inspectors came to arrest him. Beňovský describes in great detail the impressive ceremonies, consisting of a military parade, speeches, blood oaths, homage and women dancing (Ref. 28, pp. 417–419, 424–429). In the framework of a second range of ceremonies lasting three days and containing, among other elements, a vow made by women dancing in the moonlight, the new king introduced a state constitution and created a government and laws (Ref. 28, pp. 444–461).
As he explains how and why he became king, Beňovský simultaneously describes the emergence of the Malagasy from a natural state and the creation of civil life through a social contract. Beňovský’s memoirs are therefore especially reminiscent of Rousseau’s ‘contrat social’: the wild Malagasy did not live in innocence, but in a degenerated state of anarchy. Recognising their misery, however, the Malagasy elected a Lycurgus – a historical figure that Rousseau very much admired – to rule over them, but with their consent.Reference Leduc-Fayette 30 At the people’s will, Beňovský claimed, he had suppressed the slave trade (Ref. 28, pp. 444–461, p. 456). Thus, the memoirs were not merely a document meant to gain British patronage; they were also a more complete example of ‘enlightened’ colonialism, adding elements from philosophie to the Robinsonade that Beňovský had originally written for the French Minister of the Navy.
Conclusion
Beňovský’s narrative failed to gain the support of the British government, but he did succeed in convincing private men in London and Baltimore to invest in a company that would use his position as an ‘ampancasabe’ to facilitate slave trading. In October 1784, a ship left Baltimore with Beňovský and 61 others on board, heading for the Great Island (Ref. 1, C 5A 8bis, no. 209, fol. 2; Ref. 1, C 5A 8bis, no. 239, fol. 1; C 5A 8 bis, no. 190; Ref. 25, pp. 162–216). In July 1785, Beňovský and his companions tried to settle in northern Madagascar, but were attacked by troops of the Sakalava king of Boina (Ref. 1, C 5A 8 bis, no. 202 and 239, fols. 1–5). They managed to flee and to attack a small trading post belonging to the French on the north-east coast (Ref. 1, C 5A 8 bis, no. 203, fol. 1). Beňovský, pretending to be sovereign, began to build a village in the region which he had formerly ruled for the French, and – thus provoked – the governor of the Mascarenes sent a military expedition to stop him. Beňovský was killed in the French attack in 1786 and died with a weapon in his hand as a self-nominated ‘king of the kings’ of Madagascar (Ref. 1, C 5A 8 bis, no. 213, fol. 4; Ref. 9, XVII/mémoires/88, no. 97, fols. 5–6).
Even in the last phase of his colonial career, the narratives developed by Beňovský were inspired by the French Enlightenment. However, they also had to do with his origins: his marginal social position both enabled and almost forced him to be especially creative and imaginative in order to make a career. Beňovský used the French Enlightenment vision about universal progress in history to present his policy as a soft policy of persuasion and civilisation of the Malagasy, as his predecessor, Maudave, had done, but he did so in a most creative way. He invented new narratives and used different media to create the illusion of an ‘enlightened’ policy, to become a celebrated hero, and thus he gained support for his career plans.
Although hardly typical, Beňovský’s case also gives some insights into the mechanisms of patronage, knowledge production, and decision-making in the French empire. It is striking that, however fantastic this information, it was taken seriously by the French administration and thus soon constituted real knowledge. The production of new colonial knowledge by Maudave and Beňovský, and its reception in Paris and Versailles, shows that the Enlightenment worldview strongly influenced the ideas of the political elite in the second half of the eighteenth century. It also demonstrates that the French government was heavily dependent on the information given by a few actors on the periphery. Considering the centralisation of decision-making in the French empire, this dependence was a real obstacle to the development of adequate policies. To be sure, a few years later it became clear that Beňovský was a liar. However, this did not have the consequences one could expect. Large-scale colonisation of Madagascar was abandoned for a while, but Beňovský was richly rewarded by the minister and his knowledge was not fundamentally called into question. This shows that the dominant logic in knowledge production was neither scientific nor bureaucratic, but courtly.
After having quit the service of the French king, Beňovský wrote literature in order to get employment. The fact that the story he presented could seem realistic to his contemporaries, as the comments on his memoirs by renowned scholars such as Johann Reinhold Forster and his son Georg, among others, show,Reference Beňovský 31 says a lot about European imagination in the age of Enlightenment. For the European public, the superiority of civilisation was such that it seemed probable that ‘barbarians’ would freely submit themselves to a civilised man and expect to receive law and order from him. For this reason, Beňovský fascinated a large reading public across the continent. After his death, thanks to the publication of his memoirs, the Upper-Hungarian petty nobleman became a European phenomenon.
Damien Tricoire completed his PhD at LMU Munich and the Sorbonne, with a thesis about the interdependences between the Catholic Reform and politics in Poland-Lithuania, France, and Bavaria, with a focus on the state cult of the Holy Mary (published in German in 2013 under the title Mit Gott rechnen and in French in 2017 under the title La Vierge et le Roi). Since 2011, he has been an assistant professor at the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg. In 2014, he published - together with Andreas Pečar – a book on the Enlightenment, criticising common narratives about modernity (Falsche Freunde). He has just completed a monograph on the topic ‘The colonial dream: knowledge, enlightenment, and the French-Malagasy early modern encounters’ and published a volume with the title Enlightened Colonialism (Palgrave Macmillan).
