In the 1780s, Cap François was one of the most cosmopolitan cities in the western hemisphere, the cultural capital of Saint Domingue (now Haiti). Blessed with a favorable climate and fueled by the extensive exploitation of slave labor, Saint Domingue emerged as the most profitable of all New World colonies during the last half of the eighteenth century, and during the summer 1784, a group of white residents of Cap François conceived of a plan to elevate the intellectual culture of their colony to match their financial success. Announcing that no society could exist "without the assistance of the sciences and arts," they created the Cercle des Philadelphes.
Although formerly viewed as an outgrowth of freemasonry, the Cercle is now more generally seen as having been motivated by a complex mixture of both Royalist and patriotic impulses among the colonial elite. Devoted to "bonheur commun," they said, and motivated by "l'amour fraternal," the members of the Cercle applied themselves to study of the physical conditions, natural history, and medicine of the colony -- in essence, anything to promote the agriculture, manufactures, sciences, or arts. 1 The president, Louis Narcisse Baudry de Lozières, particularly emphasized the social benefits of "bonne intelligence" and the obligation for gentlemen to commit themselves to intellectual reciprocity and mutual assistance. 2 .
From the outset, the Cercle was greeted warmly. It received official recognition and financial support from the crown as early as 1786, and on May 17, 1789, they were issued royal letters patent, the last group to receive this recognition prior to the Revolution. The Cercle also quickly forged official ties with Académie Royale des Sciences in Paris, with the American Philosophical Society, and with other provincial societies, academies, and museums, exchanging publications with the APS, for example, from at least 1788.
Lead by Baudry de Lozières, an attorney, by the physician Charles Arthaud, and the writer M. F. E. Moreau de Saint Mé, the membership of the Cercle reached a peak of 160 in the late 1780s, drawing from a broad spectrum of the upper (white) classes in Saint Domingue. Physicians, judges and lawyers, planters and merchants, and public officials were all well represented, and the Cercle added a judiciously chosen slate of foreign members, including Benjamin Franklin and Benjamin Rush. It did not, however, long survive. Set back by the Revolution in France, the Cercle finally succumbed to the revolutionary violence in Saint Domingue in 1792.
From the guide to the Cercle des Philadelphes du Cap François Collection, 1784-1787, (American Philosophical Society)
