HEDDE Isidore (EN)
His life and training
Isidore Hedde, who came from Le Puy, lived for many years in Saint-Étienne, where his mother was born, and where his grandfather ran a large business as an ironmonger. In 1818, Hedde attended Villard’s theoretical and practical weaving course in Lyon. He then joined Thiorlien Peyret, a ribbon manufacturer based in Saint-Étienne, where his brother, Philippe Hedde was employed, assisting with the importation of Jacquard looms. Later, Isidore Hedde became an independent worker, which enabled him to master every type of weaving loom and familiarise himself with each stage in the manufacture of silks.
At the beginning of 1843, the Louis-Philippe government took the decision to establish an embassy in China and negotiate and conclude a treaty of friendship, trade, and navigation that would enable the French to benefit from similar advantages as those obtained by the English through the Treaty of Nanking (on 29 August 1842). At the request of the French manufactories that hoped to ‘see new and major Indochinese markets opening up for their products’ (AN (French national archives), F12/2589), the French Minister of Agriculture and Trade decided to include a trade delegation and invite the chambers of commerce of the major cities to make their applications. Isidore Hedde, an applicant from the chamber of the commerce in Saint-Étienne, attracted the Minister’s attention due to his perfect mastery of the manufacture of articles in Lyon and those of the ribbon manufactory in Saint-Étienne. The Minister also noted that the applicant, driven by his own curiosity, often went to Nîmes and Avignon and other manufacturing hubs, and that he could speak several languages and spoke fluent English. In December 1843, the nomination of Isidore Hedde was notified by ministerial letter (AN (French national archives), F12/2589). On 15 December, he received the Instructions drafted by the Ministry, which specified that one of the delegation’s principal missions was to bring French manufactured products to China, and to look into the modifications required to satisfy the tastes and needs of Asian consumers; lastly, he was tasked with identifying the fabrics that could be imported to the country (Faits Commerciaux, no. 3, p. 28). These instructions also included information about trade in the Indian Ocean that had been gathered by the French Navy and various missions.
The trip and mission to China
On 20 February 1844, Hedde, accompanied by his commercial delegate colleagues (August Haussmann (1815–1874), Natalis Rondot (1821–1900), and Édouard Renard (1812–1898)) and the second secretary of the embassy, embarked on a steam frigate, the Archimède. According to the ministerial instructions, the ship had to ‘make as many stops as possible’ (AN (French national archives), F12/2589) by following the western coasts of the Old Continent: Cadiz (2 March 1844), Seville (4 March), Santa Cruz de Tenerife(11 March), Gorée, off the coast of Senegal (17 March), the Cape of Good Hope (2 May), Bourbon (6 June), Trincomalee in Ceylon (on 7 July), Pondicherry (16 July), Madras (26 July), Singapore (5 August), and Manilla (18 August) before reaching on 24 August Macao, where the French Ambassador Lagrené had recently arrived. The delegation stayed several months in the region of the mouth of Pearl River, where it investigated various products, the consumer market, and trade. At the beginning of 1845, the delegation joined the Ambassador on board the Cléopâtre, which left tosail around the South China Sea, with the aim of continuing with the investigations into the Indian and Oceanian markets. The investigators focused on spices, industrial plants (in particular, textiles), dye substances, and other raw materials, and also paid great attention to the Russian, European, and Japanese products available in the local markets, as well as the trade relations between these lands and Russia and Japan.
In October 1845, the Cléopâtre took the mission members to the north of China to pursue their investigative work: the islands of Zhoushan (3 October 1845), Ningbo (12 October), Shanghai (27 October), Suzhou (30 October), Amoy (16 November), and Zhangzhou (19 November), before returning to Guangzhou where the instruments of ratification were exchanged by the two countries. On 22 December 1845, after accomplishing their mandates, the mission set off for France.
The investigations carried out by Hedde
Shortly after his nomination, Hedde, like the other commercial delegates, departed to collect information and samples in the cities where manufactories or industries were located that were pertinent to their investigations, such as Lyon, Saint-Étienne, Saint-Chamond, Nîmes, Orange, Avignon, Le Puy, and Tours. These samples were intended to familiarise potential Asian clients with a certain number of French products, such as dye samples.
On the first stopover, in Cadiz, and on each subsequent stopover, Hedde and his colleagues observed the local cultures and collected information about the natural conditions, customs, trade, products, and manufacture, and so on. They assembled collections of samples of natural resources and products that were likely to be of interest to French industry. Consular agents, dealers, and French and European manufacturers living in the places, as well as members of certain scholarly societies, gave them invaluable help, enabling them to quickly gather a good deal of precise and detailed information during the brief stopovers.
A fairly large number of reports about the commercial situation and industries of each replenishment stop were sent back to the French Minister of Agriculture and Trade. These reports were often accompanied by seed and plant specimens (e.g. mulberry seeds and leaves, and the seeds of plants used for dyes), samples of natural products, and local or imported manufactured articles, as well as drawings, most of which represented local manufacturing processes. These drawings, which illustrated certain processes that were unknown in France, were made by the delegates themselves or by the sailors or soldiers who were part of the expedition, and even by indigenous painters from whom they were commissioned (Mau, C.-H, 2004, pp. 32–42). In several of his reports, Isidore Hedde provided details of the processes used in the silk industry and silk textiles, such as the preparation of the ‘Chaya-vert‘ (Aldenlau lia ambellata, Lin.)—a substance used for red dye, which had a great reputation (AN (French national archives), F12/2589)—, and the reeling and scouring of silk at Guangzhou, and weaving practised at Zhangzhou and Malacca.
Like several members of the mission, Hedde was a man of many skills and had a great sense of curiosity. He was fascinated by the history, culture, administration, politics, industries, and particularly the natural history of the regions he visited. He left behind a great deal of highly refined and well-observed written material. In fact he did not merely observe the state of the industries in Asia, but also sought to retrace the history of their diffusion. Hence, in the reports he sent to the Ministry of Agriculture and Trade, Hedde described the state of the development of sericulture in the French colony in India. He reported that in the establishment run by the botanist George Samuel Perrotet (1793–1870) in Pondicherry, 12 to 15,000 mulberry bushes were counted and that ‘the rearing of Syrian and European hybrid silkworms’ was practised (AN (French national archives), F12/2589). He also carried out historical research into the vulgarisation of sericulture in Insulindia (Hedde, I., 1846, pp. 529–532).
The collection
After Hedde’s return to France in 1846, exhibitions were held successively in cities that had a major silk industry: in Paris (1846), Lyon (1847), Saint-Étienne (1848), and Nîmes (1849); many of the products brought back from the expedition were exhibited to professionals and the general public. In addition to these exotic collections, the event held in Saint-Étienne exhibited the results of analytical and comparative studies of these products, in particular, silks, silk textiles, and Chinese dye substances.
The objects collected comprised samples of sericulture (e.g., mulberry seeds and leaves, silkworm eggs, cocoons, and chrysalis specimens), silks and silk textiles, the utensils used in rearing silkworms, looms for emptying the silk cocoons, weaving looms, and those used to prepare the weaving, as well as drawings that illustrated the detailed processes of working with silk, mulberry cultivation, raising silkworms, the manufacture of silks, and silkworms, and their trade. Aside from certain silk and dye products used for trials and experiments, the samples of silk and silk textiles and objects are now held in several establishments, such as the Cabinet des Estampes in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, the library of the Musée des Tissus Anciens in Lyon, the central library of the Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers, and the Archives Nationales. Aside from ribbon samples brought back by Hedde, the Musée d’Art et d’Industrie in Saint-Étienne also holds analyses of dyes and scale models made by French craftsmen based on Chinese models and the descriptions provided by Hedde, which were exhibited in 1848.
