Knowledge from Experience: The Making of Fisheries Policy (France, 1680–1860)

This article is based on an analysis of some thirty fishing experiments carried out on the coast of the English Channel between the 1680s and the 1860s. It describes the early development of an experimental way of governing marine resources under the ancien régime, followed by its gradual normalization over the course of the nineteenth century. As the article shows, the fishing policies designed to ensure the conservation of these resources were the result of negotiation between the French ministry of the Navy and fishing communities, whose monopoly on the production of fishing knowledge enabled them to defend their technical and legal specificities.