1. Unless otherwise stated, expressions in inverted commas reflect the vocabulary of the governance of resources used in period documentation. Readers of this English version should note that the translation of police poses a particular question for this period, when its primary sense was, in the words of Michel Foucault, the “calculation and technique making possible the good use of the state’s forces.” See Michel Foucault, Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1977–78 [2004], trans. Graham Burchell (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), especially chapters 12 and 13. Throughout this article it has generally been rendered as “policy,” except when it occasionally comes closer to a modern sense of surveillance or “policing.” The French term expérience has been translated as either “experiment” or “experience,” depending on the context.

2. Paris, Archives nationales, fonds Marine (hereafter “AN, Mar.”), C⁵ 31, “Requête de la communauté des pêcheurs de Dunkerque,” June 5, 1727, fols. 22–23. The notion of “conservation” that appears in this petition is an old one, and its historicization has already been attempted by numerous scholars. See Luis Urteaga, La tierra esquilmada. Las ideas sobre la conservación de la naturaleza en la cultura española del siglo xviii (Barcelona: Serbal/CSIC, 1987); Richard H. Grove, Green Imperialism: Colonial Expansion, Tropical Island Edens, and the Origins of Environmentalism, 1600–1860 (Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996); Grégory Quénet and Jan Synowiecki, “Ce que conserver veut dire : praxis et historicité de la nature (1770–1810),” Annales historiques de la Révolution française 399, no. 1 (2020): 97–121; Abigail P. Dowling and Richard Keyser, eds., Conservation’s Roots: Managing for Sustainability in Preindustrial Europe, 1100–1800 (New York: Berghahn Books, 2020). I looked at what conservation “meant” from the point of view of ancien régime fishermen in Romain Grancher, “Gouverner les ressources de la mer. Une histoire environnementale de l’inspection des pêches françaises au xviii^e siècle,” Cahiers d’histoire 36, no. 1 (2018): 45–68, here p. 61.

3. Reynald Abad, Le grand marché. L’approvisionnement alimentaire de Paris sous l’Ancien Régime (Paris: Fayard, 2002), 397–564.

4. The archives of the ministère de la Marine (ministry of the Navy) relating to fishing are grouped together in sub-series C⁵ and CC⁵, respectively held by the Archives nationales in Paris (sixty boxes covering the eighteenth century) and the Service historique de la Défense in Vincennes (over six hundred boxes covering the nineteenth century).

5. There is an abundance of literature on expertise and its procedures. See in particular Isabelle Backouche, ed., “Expertise,” special issue, Genèses 65, no. 4 (2006); Backouche, ed., “Devenir expert,” special issue, Genèses 70, no. 1 (2008); Christelle Rabier, ed., Fields of Expertise: A Comparative History of Expert Procedures in Paris and London, 1600 to Present (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2007); Guillaume Calafat, “Expertise et compétences. Procédures, contextes et situations de légitimation,” Hypothèses 14, no. 1 (2010): 95–107; Ursula Klein and Emma C. Spary, eds., Materials and Expertise in Early Modern Europe: Between Market and Laboratory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010); Pierre Lascoumes, “Savoirs, expertises et mobilisations,” in Savoirs experts et profanes dans la construction des problèmes publics, ed. Luduvine Damay, Benjamin Denis, and Denis Duez (Brussels: Presses de l’université de Saint-Louis, 2011), 221–27; Étienne Anheim, “Experts et expertise en Europe (xv^e–xix^e siècle). Histoire et théorie d’une pratique,” in Les experts avant l’expertise. Une généalogie du conseil et du recours à l’expérience, ed. Julia Castiglione and Dora D’Errico (Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2020), 191–206.

6. On the concept of the test and its uses in history and the social sciences, see Danilo Martuccelli, “Les deux voies de la notion d’épreuve en sociologie,” Sociologie 6, no. 1 (2015): 43–60.

7. According to Paul Warde, The Invention of Sustainability: Nature and Destiny, c. 1500–1870 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 90–101, conserving resources in the name of posterity was a common justification for the environmental regulation measures adopted by early modern states from the seventeenth century onwards.

8. As described by Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer, Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985). I see the use of experiments here as an instrument of governance in the sense of Pierre Lascoumes and Patrick Le Galès, eds., Gouverner par les instruments (Paris: Presses de Sciences Po, 2004).

9. Ian Hacking, L’émergence de la probabilité (1975; Paris: Éd. du Seuil, 2002), 69–71; David Gooding, Trevor Pinch, and Simon Schaffer, eds., The Uses of Experiment: Studies in the Natural Sciences (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989); Robert Halleux, Le savoir de la main. Savants et artisans dans l’Europe préindustrielle (Paris: Armand Colin, 2009), 103–39; Stéphane Van Damme, Seconde nature. Rematérialiser les sciences de Bacon à Tocqueville (Dijon: Les presses du réel, 2020), 87–92.

10. For an overview of these interventions, see Frank Zelco, “The Politics of Nature,” in The Oxford Handbook of Environmental History, ed. Andrew C. Isenberg (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 716–42. On the central role of experts in the construction of early modern states, see the work of Eric Ash, including Power, Knowledge and Expertise in Elizabethan England (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004); and “Expertise and the Early Modern State,” Osiris 25, no. 1 (2010): 1–24.

11. A stimulating reflection on the relationship between nature, science, technology, and the state can be found in Alice Ingold, “Écrire la nature. De l’histoire sociale à la question environnementale ?” Annales HSS 66, no. 1 (2011): 11–29. Among the many historical works on knowledge relating to environmental governance at the crossroads of the early modern and modern eras, we should mention Richard Drayton, Nature’s Government: Science, Imperial Britain, and the “Improvement” of the World (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000); Lissa Roberts, Simon Schaffer, and Peter Dear, eds., The Mindful Hand: Inquiry and Invention from the Late Renaissance to Early Industrialisation (Amsterdam/Chicago: Edita/University of Chicago Press, 2007), 85–186; Karl Appuhn, A Forest on the Sea: Environmental Expertise in Renaissance Venice (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009); Thomas Le Roux, Le laboratoire des pollutions industrielles. Paris, 1770–1830 (Paris: Albin Michel, 2011); Étienne Stockland, “Policing the Oeconomy of Nature: The Oiseau Martin as an Instrument of Oeconomic Management in the Eighteenth-Century French Maritime World,” History and Technology 30, no. 3 (2014): 207–31; Alice Ingold, “Expertise naturaliste, droit et histoire. Les savoirs du partage des eaux dans la France post-révolutionnaire,” Revue d’histoire du xix^e siècle 48, no. 1 (2014): 29–45.

12. Three recent proposals illustrate the decentering enabled by approaches focused on the sea or the shoreline: Jacobina K. Arch, Bringing Whales Ashore: Oceans and the Environment in Early Modern Japan (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2018); Bathsheba Demuth, Floating Coast: An Environmental History of the Bering Strait (New York: Norton, 2020); Tamara Fernando, “Seeing Like the Sea: A Multispecies History of the Ceylon Pearl Fishery 1800–1925,” Past & Present 254, no. 1 (2022): 127–60. Further reflections on this subject can be found in Romain Grancher and Michael W. Serruys, “Changes on the Coast: Towards a Terraqueous Environmental History,” Journal for the History of Environment and Society 6 (2021): 11–34.

13. Benoît Coutancier, “L’administration des petites pêches en France (1681–1896). Le cas du Bordelais” (PhD diss., EHESS, 1985); Urteaga, La tierra esquilmada; Robb Robinson, Trawling: The Rise and Fall of the British Trawl Fishery (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1996); Marco Armiero, “La risorsa contesta : norme, conflitti e technologie tra i pescatori meridionali (xix sec.),” Meridiana 31 (1998): 179–206; Alida Clemente, Il mestiere dell’incertezza. La pesca nel golfo di Napoli tra xviii e xx secolo (Naples: Alfredo Guida, 2005); Micah S. Muscolino, Fishing Wars and Environmental Change in Late Imperial and Modern China (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009); Daniel Faget, Marseille et la mer. Hommes et environnement marin (xviii^e–xx^e siècle) (Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2011); Faget, L’écaille et le banc. Ressources de la mer dans la Méditerranée moderne, xvi^e–xviii^e siècle (Aix-en-Provence: Presses universitaires de Provence, 2017); W. Jeffrey Bolster, The Mortal Sea: Fishing the Atlantic in the Age of Sail (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2012); Marc Pavé, La pêche côtière en France, 1715–1850. Approche sociale et environnementale (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2013); Peter Jones, “Technological Innovation and Resource Management in the Fisheries of the British Isles, ca. 1400–1900” (PhD diss., University of Strathclyde, 2016); Solène Rivoal, Les marchés de la mer. Une histoire sociale et environnementale de Venise au xviii^e siècle (Rome: École française de Rome, 2022).

14. This experiment has been described and analyzed by Alain Corbin, Le territoire du vide. L’Occident et le désir du rivage, 1750–1840 (Paris: Flammarion, 1988), 231–33; Gilles Denis, “Normandie, 1768–1771 : une controverse sur la soude,” in La terre outragée. Les experts sont formels ! ed. Jacques Theys and Bernard Kalaora (Paris: Autrement, 1992), 149–57; Pierre-Claude Reynard, “Public Order and Privilege: Eighteenth-Century French Roots of Environmental Regulation,” Technology and Culture 43, no. 1 (2002): 1–28, here pp. 24–26; Jean-Baptiste Fressoz, L’Apocalypse joyeuse. Une histoire du risque technologique (Paris: Éd. du Seuil, 2012), 132–48. I offer a further analysis below, pp. 18–21.

15. Tim D. Smith, Scaling Fisheries: The Science of Measuring the Effects of Fishing, 1855–1955 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 40–51, 59–62, and 85–94; Richard W. Judd, Common Lands, Common People: The Origins of Conservation in Northern New England (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997), 234–40; Matthew McKenzie, Clearing the Coastline: The Nineteenth-Century Ecological and Cultural Transformation of Cape Cod (Hanover: University Press of New England, 2011), 124–27. On the emergence of fisheries science at the turn of the twentieth century, see also Jennifer Hubbard, “In the Wake of Politics: The Political and Economic Construction of Fisheries Biology, 1860–1970,” Isis 105, no. 2 (2014): 364–78. Abbreviated as TEK, LEK, or FEK (for traditional, local, or fishers’ ecological knowledge), the ecological knowledge of fishing communities inspired an abundance of ethnographic literature in the wake of the surveys carried out in Robert E. Johannes, Words of the Lagoon: Fishing and Marine Lore in the Palau District of Micronesia (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981). See in particular Kenneth Ruddle and Robert E. Johannes, eds., The Traditional Knowledge and Management of Coastal Systems in Asia and the Pacific (Jakarta: UNESCO, 1985); Julian T. Inglis, ed., Traditional Ecological Knowledge: Concepts and Cases (Ottawa: International Development Research Centre, 1993).

16. Fressoz, L’Apocalypse joyeuse, 132–36.

17. Ibid., 136–40 and 148.

18. James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), 11–22. See for example Ramachandra Guha and Madhav Gadgil, “State Forestry and Social Conflict in British India,” Past & Present 123, no. 1 (1989): 141–77; and more recently, on another forest site, Richard Hölzl, “Forêts en guerre. Populations rurales et foresterie moderne dans l’Allemagne préindustrielle, 1760–1860,” in Posséder la nature. Environnement et propriété dans l’histoire, ed. Frédéric Graber and Fabien Locher (Paris: Éd. Amsterdam, 2018), 165–86.

19. This perspective is also inspired by various works of social history that focus on the interactions between those who govern and those who are governed, and on the latter’s ability to influence the creation of legal regulations: Wim Blockmans, André Holenstein, and Jon Mathieu, eds., Empowering Interactions: Political Cultures and the Emergence of the State in Europe, 1300–1900 (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009); Lothar Schilling, “Les effets des lois de police et l’évolution de la gouvernementalité pendant la première modernité,” in Les sciences camérales. Activités pratiques et histoire des dispositifs publics, ed. Pascale Laborier et al. (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 2011), 133–54; Simona Cerutti and Massimo Vallerani, “Suppliques. Lois et cas dans la normativité de l’époque moderne,” L’Atelier du Centre de recherches historiques 13 (2015): 5–17.

20. Making fishermen full actors in conservation policies was already the explicit aim of the ethnographic surveys carried out under the aegis of UNESCO by Robert E. Johannes and Kenneth Ruddle in several fishing communities in the Asia-Pacific region in the 1980s. See also James M. Acheson, Capturing the Commons: Devising Institutions to Manage the Maine Lobster Industry (Lebanon: University Press of New England, 2003); Nigel Haggan, Barbara Neis, and Ian G. Baird, eds., Fishers’ Knowledge in Fisheries Science and Management (Paris: UNESCO, 2007); Fikret Berkes, Coasts for People: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Coastal and Marine Resource Management (New York: Routledge, 2015).

21. Brian Payne, “Local Economic Stewards: The Historiography of the Fishermen’s Role in Resource Conservation,” Environmental History 18, no. 1 (2013): 29–43; Daniel Faget, “Les ‘petites mers’ marseillaises à l’époque moderne. Un ‘commun halieutique’ ?” in La nature en communs. Ressources, environnement et communautés (France et Empire français, xvii^e–xxi^e siècle), ed. Fabien Locher (Ceyzérieu: Champ Vallon, 2020), 125–44.

22. Pierre Rosanvallon, L’État en France de 1789 à nos jours (Paris: Éd. du Seuil, 1990), 58–59.

23. Jean Chadelat, “L’élaboration de l’ordonnance de la Marine d’août 1681,” Revue historique de droit français et étranger 32, no. 4 (1954): 74–98.

24. AN, Mar., C⁴ 179, “Mémoire concernant l’inspection des pesches du poisson de mer,” 1754, not foliated. Under the ancien régime, the seats of Admiralty were exceptional jurisdictions with exclusive authority over matters of the sea. Their officers, appointed by the king and the admiral of France, were endowed with judicial, policing, and administrative powers.

25. Ordonnance de la Marine of August 1681, book 5, title 1, article 1. All citations from the Ordonnance de la Marine refer to René-Josué Valin, Nouveau commentaire sur l’ordonnance de la Marine du mois d’août 1681, 2 vols. (La Rochelle: chez Jérôme Legier, 1760).

26. The classes system, introduced by Colbert in 1665, placed the fishermen of the ancien régime under the supervision of a class commissioner, whose main task was to keep the registers used to record and levy the seafarers in his maritime subdistrict. This system was reformed by the law of 3 Brumaire an IV (October 25, 1795) and became the Inscription Maritime. On this subject, see Jacques Captier, Étude historique et économique sur l’inscription maritime (Paris: V. Giard et E. Brière, 1907); Martine Acerra and André Zysberg, L’essor des marines de guerres européennes, vers 1680–1790 (Paris: SEDES, 1997); Jérôme Sublime, “Les commissaires des classes de la marine en France (xvii^e–xviii^e siècle)” (PhD diss., université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, 2014).

27. Valin, Nouveau commentaire, 2:642. For Nicolas Delamare, Traité de la police, vol. 3 (Paris, 1719), 34–35, fisheries policy consisted of “taking all necessary care not to excessively depopulate” the seas, thereby ensuring “the conservation of species.”

28. Coutancier, L’administration des petites pêches en France, 95–228; Pavé, La pêche côtière en France, 154–63.

29. AN, 127 AP 1, “Extrait du procès-verbal de l’avis général de M. d’Herbigny, commissaire départi pour la visite des ports de France et la réformation des amirautés,” [1670s], not foliated.

30. Foucault, Security, Territory, Population. On this point, see also Paolo Napoli, Naissance de la police moderne. Pouvoir, normes, société (Paris: La Découverte, 2003); Vincent Milliot, ed., Histoire des polices en France des guerres de Religion à nos jours (Paris: Belin, 2020).

31. I borrow these different expressions from Philippe Minard, La fortune du colbertisme. État et industrie dans la France des Lumières (Paris: Fayard, 1998), 16; Napoli, Naissance de la police moderne, 54–55; Foucault, Security, Territory, Population, 313–14.

32. This way of thinking about fish and fishermen forms an extremely coherent, almost formulaic discourse, which can be found in the archives of the fisheries administration throughout the period. See for example Vincennes, Service historique de la Défense, fonds Marine (hereafter “SHDV, Mar.”), CC⁵ 429–430, report addressed to the emperor by Théodore Ducos, minister of the Navy and the colonies, November 21, 1854, pp. 1–6. Surveillance and policing practices at sea have received little attention from historians of the police, even though their analysis would undoubtedly help decompartmentalize a historiography that has undergone profound changes over the last twenty years. For a thought-provoking overview, see Vincent Denis, “L’histoire de la police après Foucault, un parcours historien,” in “Gouvernementalité et biopolitique : les historiens et Michel Foucault,” special issue, Revue d’histoire moderne et contemporaine 60, no. 4/4bis (2013): 139–55, here p. 151. I do not adress this in the article, as it is the subject of another ongoing research project into the application of fisheries policy, but a promising avenue for studying the way in which this policing became more professional and acquired new instruments (registration of boats, zoning of fishing grounds, restrictions on night fishing, conveyance of fleets, etc.) would be to work on the development of the institution of gardes‑pêche (fishing patrols) from 1820–1830 onwards. For a later period and a colonial context, see the recent article by Hugo Vermeren, “Des agents au service de la protection de l’environnement ? Le service des gardes-pêche en Algérie (fin xix^e–début xx^e siècle),” Histoire Politique 48 (2022): https://doi.org/10.4000/histoirepolitique.8528.

33. AN, Mar., C⁵ 28, “Extrait concernant les abus qui se commettent dans la pesche du poisson frais, et le moyen d’y remédier,” April 28, 1722, fol. 149.

34. AN, Mar., B² 256, “Mémoire pour servir d’instruction au Sieur Le Masson du Parc,” October 10, 1723, fol. 49. During the Regency, the Council of the Navy (1715–1723) exercised powers that had previously belonged to the secretary of state for the Navy and the colonies, and which were subsequently restored to this position.

35. AN, 127 AP 1, letter from Le Masson du Parc to the Council of the Navy, March 1722, not foliated. Unfortunately, only a few scattered manuscript fragments remain of this work.

36. AN, Mar., C⁵ 12, letters patent appointing Le Masson du Parc as Naval commissioner for the inspection of sea fisheries, April 23, 1726, fols. 110–111. The Bureau des Classes’ fishing service was created in 1726 and remained very active for some twenty years, before falling into decline after the departure of Maurepas in 1749 and disappearing in 1757. It was replaced between 1785 and 1790 by a fisheries committee, which was resurrected in 1861 in the form of a sea fisheries technical service. In the meantime, fisheries-related affairs fell under the remit of the Bureau des Classes and then, from 1795, of the Inscription Maritime, within the ministry of the Navy. These organizations ensured administrative continuity and the transfer of archives. On fisheries inspection, see Éric Dardel, État des pêches maritimes sur les côtes occidentales de la France au début du xviii^e siècle d’après les procès-verbaux de visite de l’Inspecteur des Pêches Le Masson du Parc (1723–1732) (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1941). See also the very comprehensive introduction by Denis Lieppe to François Le Masson du Parc, Pêches et pêcheurs du domaine maritime et des îles adjacentes de Saintonge, d’Aunis et du Poitou au xviii^e siècle. Procès-Verbaux des visites faites par ordre du Roy concernant la pesche en mer, 1727–1728. Amirautés de Marennes, de La Rochelle & des Sables d’Olonne (Saint‑Quentin‑de‑Baron: Les Éditions de l’Entre‑deux‑Mers, 2009), xiii–lxiv; and Grancher, “Gouverner les ressources de la mer.”

37. Alain Cabantous, “L’État et les communautés maritimes. Autour de la déclaration royale de 1726,” in Simonetta Cavaciocchi, ed., Ricchezza del mare, ricchezza dal mare, secc. xiii–xviii, vol. 2 (Florence: Le Monnier, 2006), 937–53.

38. “Déclaration du roi pour le rétablissement de la pêche du poisson de mer,” April 23, 1726, preamble. This declaration is reproduced in Valin, Nouveau commentaire, 2:654–57.

39. Ordonnance de la Marine of August 1681, book 5, title 3, article 16. Some of these towed nets were already the subject of exemptions when the Ordonnance was implemented. This was the case for the carte used by Dunkirk fishermen, for example.

40. Valin, Nouveau commentaire, 2:653–54.

41. André Holestein, “‘Rinviare ad suplicandum.’ Suppliche, dispende e legislazione di polizia nello Stato di Ancien Régime,” in Suppliche e gravamina. Politica, amministrazione, giustizia in Europa, secoli 14.–18., ed. Ceccilia Nubola and Andreas Wurgler (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2002), 177–226.

42. Valin, Nouveau commentaire, 2:653–54 (emphasis in the original); “Déclaration du roi qui permet l’usage d’un filet nommé Ret Traversier & Chalut, pour faire la pêche du poisson de mer,” December 20, 1729, preamble, reproduced in ibid., 658–59. Beam trawling was banned again, and then reinstated, by two royal ordinances of April 16 and October 31, 1744, no doubt on the initiative of the inspector Verdier. These attempts to harmonize the taxonomy of fishing gear echo James C. Scott’s reflections on the efforts made by early modern states to “simplify” social practices and make them “legible.” See Scott, Seeing Like a State, 2–3.

43. In this respect, it is interesting to compare fisheries inspections with the manufactures inspections studied by Minard in La fortune du colbertisme.

44. This distinction between measures that impose themselves on reality and measures that embrace it is highlighted by Paolo Napoli, “Mesure de police. Une approche historico-conceptuelle à l’âge moderne,” Tracés. Revue de Sciences humaines 20 (2011): 151–73.

45. Charles-François Tiphaigne de La Roche, Essai sur l’histoire œconomique des mers occidentales de France (Paris, 1760), 148–52. Élias Burgel also considers the notion of “accommodation” in “Le tamaris au siècle des Lumières. De l’arbrisseau de l’inculte au végétal de l’ingénieur (bas-Languedoc, xviii^e siècle),” Histoire & Sociétés rurales 56, no. 2 (2021): 111–76.

46. See the numerous examples mentioned in Romain Bareau, “La réglementation de la pêche côtière sous l’Ancien Régime, aux origines de notre législation,” in Environnements portuaires, ed. Anne-Lise Piétri‑Lévy, John Barzman, and Éric Barré (Mont‑Saint‑Aignan: Publications de l’université de Rouen et du Havre, 2003), 163–78.

47. Sylviane Llinares, “Les amirautés et la politique maritime de la France sous Louis XVI. Enquête, réforme et modernisation autour de l’inspection Chardon (1781–1785)” (HDR diss., Université Bretagne-Sud, 2011).

48. “Décret relatif aux pêcheurs des différents ports du royaume, et notamment à ceux de la ville de Marseille,” December 8–12, 1790, article 1, reproduced in Recueil des lois relatives à la Marine et aux Colonies, vol. 1, Du 8 juin 1789 au 30 avril 1791 (Paris, an V [1796–1797]), 204–209; “Décret relatif à la police de la navigation et des ports de commerce,” August 9–13, 1791, title 5, article 1, reproduced in Recueil des lois relatives à la Marine et aux Colonies, vol. 2, Du 1^er mai 1791 au 1^er juin 1792 (Paris, an V [1796–1797]), 260–70. The situation in the Mediterranean is not comparable to that in the Channel, as the decree of December 8–12 not only enshrined the existence of the fishermen’s prud’homies of Marseille and Cassis, but also allowed for similar ones to be created in other Mediterranean ports. The dissolving of the Admiralty authorities did not lead to a jurisdictional vacuum in these regions, since these community institutions had powers in the areas of policing, justice, and fisheries administration. On this subject, see Gilbert Buti, “Prud’homies de pêche de la France méditerranéenne,” in La pêche : regards croisés, ed. Christophe Cerino, Bernard Michon, and Éric Saunier (Mont‑Saint‑Aignan: Publications de l’université de Rouen et du Havre, 2017), 85–100; Delphine Rauch, Les prud’homies de pêche en Méditerranée française à l’époque contemporaine. Entre justice professionnelle, communauté de métier et préservation du milieu maritime (Nice: Serre, 2018); Florian Grisel, The Limits of Private Governance: Norms and Rules in a Mediterranean Fishery (New York: Hart Publishing, 2021).

49. SHDV, Mar., CC⁵ 418, “Rapport sur la police des pêches maritimes,” September 10, 1816, pp. 1–2.

50. Coutancier, L’administration des petites pêches en France, 167–69; Pavé, La pêche côtière en France, 159–62.

51. Romain Grancher, “La réglementation de la pêche de nuit en Seine Inférieure (1803–1814) : modalités, enjeux, résistances,” in Les nuits de la Révolution française, ed. Philippe Bourdin (Clermont-Ferrand: Presses universitaires Blaise‑Pascal, 2013), 157–72. It should also be noted that environmental history studies devoted to this period suffer from a certain “terracentric” bias, since they totally ignore the existence of the sea and its resources: Caroline Ford, Natural Interests: The Contest Over Environment in Modern France (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2016); Jean‑Luc Chappey and Julien Vincent, “A Republican Ecology? Citizenship, Nature and the French Revolution (1795–1799),” Past & Present 243, no. 1 (2019): 109–40; Laurent Brassart, Grégory Quénet, and Julien Vincent, eds., “Révolution et environnement : état des savoirs et enjeux historiographiques,” special issue, Annales historiques de la Révolution française 399, no. 1 (2020): 3–18.

52. Louis Estancelin, Des abus de la pêche côtière dans la Manche (Abbeville: Devérité, 1834).

53. Ferdinand de Bon, “Exposé de la législation sur la pêche côtière,” in Ministère de la Marine et des Colonies, Statistique des pêches maritimes – 1875 (Paris: Imprimerie administrative de Paul Dupond, 1876), 2–6. The decree relating to the fifth maritime district, Toulon, was not promulgated until November 19, 1859.

54. The office of maritime prefect was created in 1800, the same year as the maritime districts. It was abolished in 1815, then reestablished in 1826. The ordinance of December 17, 1828, entrusted the prefect with the policing of sea fishing. The prefect exercised this role by relying both on the commissioners of the Inscription Maritime, who were responsible for enforcing the laws and regulations on fishing in their subdistricts, and on the Naval officers commanding the garde‑pêches (fishing patrol) vessels, who had inherited the powers of the former Admiralties in criminal matters and were responsible for recording offenses committed offshore and bringing them before the criminal courts.

55. From this perspective, the drafting of these regulations can be compared to the procedures for legalizing local customs analyzed in Louis Assier-Andrieu, ed., Une France coutumière. Enquête sur les “usages locaux” et leur codification, xix^e–xx^e siècles (Paris: Éd. du CNRS, 1990).

56. SHDV, Mar., CC⁵ 429–430, “Pétition des pêcheurs de Dieppe adressée à l’empereur,” June 27, 1854.

57. AN, Mar., C⁵ 31, “Mémoire pour prouver que le filet de la dreige est le filet le plus convenable pour pescher le plus gros poisson,” August 27, 1729, fols. 83–86.

58. In 1739, his successor, Verdier, persuaded Maurepas to reauthorize using the dreige for “a few years’ experimentation” to prove that the ban imposed by the royal declaration of April 23, 1726, was not the cause of “the sterility of sea fish … as claimed by the fishermen” of Dieppe and Le Tréport, who argued that fishing grounds needed to be “plowed” in order to remain full of fish. See AN, Mar., C⁵ 8, “Circulaire aux officiers des amirautés de Picardie et de Normandie,” March 17, 1739, fol. 53; and AN, Mar., C⁵ 33, “Mémoire pour le rétablissement de la pesche de la dreige sur les costes de Picardie et de Normandie,” attached to the letter of Verdier, fisheries inspector, August 24, 1738, fols. 1–6.

59. AN, Mar., C⁵ 24, “Procès-verbal de la visite faite dans l’amirauté de Dieppe,” October 4, 1730, fols. 87–88; AN, Mar., C⁵ 26, “Procès-verbal de la visite faite dans l’amirauté de Saint-Malo,” September 9, 1731, fol. 273. Experiments very similar to these were financed by the Republic of Venice in the second half of the eighteenth century to disseminate new fishing techniques on the Dalmatian coast, according to Solène Rivoal, “De l’expertise savante aux expérimentations économiques. L’action de la Société économique de Split dans la politique halieutique vénitienne (seconde moitié du xviii^e siècle),” in Moissonner la mer. Économies, sociétés et pratiques halieutiques méditerranéennes, xv^e–xxi^e siècle, ed. Gilbert Buti et al. (Paris/Aix-en-Provence: Karthala/MMSH, 2018), 253–67. On demonstrations of instruments, see Liliane Hilaire‑Pérez and Marie Thébaud‑Sorger, “Les techniques dans l’espace public. Publicité des inventions et littérature d’usage au xviii^e siècle (France, Angleterre),” Revue de synthèse 5, no. 2 (2006): 393–428.

60. See, for example, Le Roux, Le laboratoire des pollutions industrielles, 69–108, from whom I borrow this phrase, and Vincent Milliot, “L’admirable police.” Tenir Paris au siècle des Lumières (Ceyzérieu: Champ Vallon, 2016), 193–96.

61. The legal category of riverain referred to the inhabitants of coastal parishes.

62. Ordonnance de la Marine of August 1681, book 4, title 9, article 29; and title 10, articles 1–5.

63. Here I depart from Fressoz’s analysis in L’Apocalypse joyeuse, 132–36, which glosses over these internal divisions within the coastal communities, omitting to specify that the “kelp burners” were full members of these communities.

64. Rouen, Archives départementales de la Seine-Maritime (hereafter “ADSM”), 1 B 5504, “Rapport sur la fabrique des soudes sur les côtes du pays de Caux,” August 13, 1766; Henri-Louis Duhamel du Monceau, “Petite dissertation sur ce qui peut occasionner la disette du poisson,” in Henri-Louis Duhamel du Monceau and L. H. de La Marre, Traité général des pesches, vol. 1 (Paris: chez Saillant & Nyon, 1769), 100–104; Rouen, Bibliothèque municipale (hereafter “BMR”), MS Coquebert de Montbret, Y 43, “Observations générales & particulières sur les loix & les usages relatifs à la coupe du varech, aux pêches, &tc,” 1770, 16–20.

65. Denis, “Normandie, 1768–1771,” 152–54.

66. “Déclaration du roi au sujet des herbes de mer connues sous le nom de Varech ou Vraicq, Sart ou Gouesmon,” May 30, 1731, reproduced in Valin, Nouveau commentaire, 2:632–34. In the Admiralty of Cherbourg, where visits had revealed an overabundance of the resource in relation to agricultural needs, an additional harvest was nevertheless authorized each year during the summer for the production of soda.

67. AN, Mar., C⁵ 8, dispatches from the secretary of state for the Navy to the officers of the Admiralties of Dieppe, Saint‑Valéry‑en‑Caux, and Fécamp, June–September 1739, fols. 150–237; ADSM, 1 B 5504, copy of a letter from the king to the admiral of France, June 9, 1739; ADSM, 1 B 5504, “Rapport sur la fabrique des soudes sur les côtes du pays de Caux,” August 13, 1766. The principle of “prohibition, subject to authorization,” mentioned above, is found again here.

68. “Arrêt du parlement, qui ordonne que l’ordonnance de 1681, Titre 10, concernant la coupe du Varech, ensemble la Déclaration du Roi du 30 mai 1731, seront exécutés selon leur forme et teneur,” March 10, 1769, reproduced in Recueil des édits, déclarations, lettres-patentes, arrêts et règlements du roi registrés en la Cour du parlement de Normandie, depuis l’année 1754, jusqu’en 1771, part 2 (Rouen, 1774), 1123–33.

69. BMR, MS Coquebert de Montbret, Y 43, “Observations générales & particulières sur les loix & les usages relatifs à la coupe du varech, aux pêches, &tc,” 1770, p. 38.

70. Anonymous, “Sur le varech” [1772], in Collection académique, vol. 15 (Paris, 1787), 47–50, here p. 49.

71. Auguste Fougeroux and Mathieu Tillet, “Observations faites par ordre du roi sur les côtes de Normandie, au sujet des effets pernicieux qu’on prétend, dans le pays de Caux, être produits par la fumée du varech, lorsqu’on brûle cette plante pour la réduire en soude” [1771], in Collection académique, vol. 15 (Paris, 1787), 159.

72. Anonymous, “Sur le varech,” 49.

73. “Déclaration [du roi] qui permet à tous riverains des côtes maritimes de cueillir, ramasser et arracher le varech,” October 30, 1772, reproduced in Nicolas Decrusy et al., Recueil général des anciennes lois françaises depuis l’an 420 jusqu’à la Révolution de 1789, vol. 22, 1^er janvier 1737–10 mai 1774 (Paris: Belin-Leprieur/Plon, 1830), 547–51. In the meantime, the officers of certain Normandy Admiralty courts took the decision to enforce the ruling of the Parlement of Rouen, despite the previous dispensations granted by the king. For example, during an inspection tour of the parish of Varangéville on July 6, 1771, the officers of the Dieppe Admiralty fined a dozen coastal residents for burning kelp in stone ovens built on the shore. When asked why they were breaking the rules, one of them, a former sailor called Favrel, replied that it was “just to get some bread.” See ADSM, 214 BP 103, “Procès-verbal d’inspection,” July 6, 1771.

74. Georges Louis Leclerc de Buffon, “Mémoire sur la conservation et le rétablissement des forests,” Mémoires de l’Académie royale des sciences (1739): 140–56.

75. This was explained to them by several “kelp burners,” who even took them to the foreshore to “show them” that “broken or cut stems no longer produce anything, & harm the growth of young plants.” In Anonymous, “Sur le varech,” 49–50.

76. SHDV, Mar., CC⁵ 628–629, “Rapport sur le filet de pêche dit rets traversier ou chalut,” May 4, 1818, p. 1. This conflict has been analyzed in more detail in Romain Grancher, “Écrire au pouvoir pour participer au gouvernement des ressources. L’usage des mémoires dans la controverse sur le chalut (Normandie, premier xix^e siècle),” L’Atelier du Centre de recherches historiques 13 (2015): 175–212.

77. SHDV, Mar., CC⁵ 628–629, “Note sur la pêche au chalut,” p. 8.

78. SHDV, Mar., CC⁵ 578, “Mémoire contre l’emploi abusif du filet appelé communément chausse,” March 17, 1818, pp. 3–5.

79. “Ordonnance du roi qui rétablit la pêche avec le filet nommé chalut ou ret traversier, depuis le premier septembre jusqu’au dernier avril de chaque année,” October 31, 1744, reproduced in Valin, Nouveau commentaire, 2:660.

80. SHDV, Mar., CC⁵ 578, “Rapport sur les causes du désempoissonnement des côtes de Dieppe et de celles des environs,” November 22, 1822, pp. 11–16.

81. SHDV, Mar., CC⁵ 628–629, “Rapport sur le filet de pêche dit rets traversier ou chalut,” May 4, 1818, pp. 5–6.

82. SHDV, Mar., CC⁵ 628–629, letter and supporting documents sent by the commissioner general of the Navy to the ministry of the Navy and the colonies, March 6, 1818. Free access to the fish market and its distribution networks was of course one of the major issues at stake in this affair, partly obscured by the deliberate focus of certain actors on the destructive effects attributed to the beam trawl technique.

83. SHDV, Mar., CC⁵ 628–629, “Rapport sur le filet de pêche dit rets traversier ou chalut,” May 4, 1818, pp. 9–10.

84. SHDV, Mar., CC⁵ 628–629, “Rapport sur le filet de pêche dit rets traversier ou chalut,” May 4, 1818, pp. 26–28.

85. “Ordonnance du roi sur l’emploi des filets de pêche dits rets traversiers ou chalut, et petit chalut à la chevrette,” May 13, 1818, preamble, reproduced in Annales Maritimes et Coloniales 7 (1818): 207–10.

86. SHDV, Mar., CC⁵ 578, “Rapport sur l’essai d’un nouveau mode d’installation du chalut,” April 22, 1822, pp. 1–10; SHDV, Mar., CC⁵ 619, “Rapport de la commission administrative nommée pour examiner diverses questions relatives à la pêche dans les baies de Cancale et de Granville,” March 11, 1844, pp. 1–105; SHDV, Mar., CC⁵ 374, “Rapport de la commission chargée de fournir des renseignements sur les pêches au bœuf,” December 10, 1819, pp. 1–72.

87. On this date, according to Étienne Taillemite, Dictionnaire des marins français (Paris: Tallandier, 2002), 361, Martineau des Chesnez had just been promoted to frigate commander after having worked as an aide-de-camp for the maritime prefect of Cherbourg, then commander of the Granville station, where he was mainly responsible for monitoring fishing.

88. On the institution of the “sharing of the beaches,” which remains little known despite having been widespread over a large part of the Channel and North Sea coasts in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, see Romain Grancher, “Les communs du rivage. L’État, les riverains et l’institution juridique des grèves de la mer (Manche, xviii^e–xix^e siècle),” in Locher, La nature en communs, 145–65.

89. SHDV, Mar., CC⁵ 428, “Rapport sur une mission relative aux bas-parcs accomplie sur les côtes du sous-arrondissement de Dunkerque,” November 21, 1855, pp. 1–43. Unless otherwise stated, all the following quotations are taken from this source.

90. The appearance of “experts” in this report is interesting but intriguing, since the term refers neither to the investigators nor to the fishermen. Perhaps the authors of the report had in mind certain local administrators who were particularly knowledgeable about the sea, such as the fisheries inspector of the Saint-Valéry-sur-Somme subdistrict, whom they described as “one of the most intelligent and knowledgeable men in the field of fishing,” or his superior, the Inscription Maritime commissioner Fournier, who provided them with “a wealth of valuable information” during their mission and witnessed several of their experiments. Fournier himself had carried out a series of trawling experiments the previous year, in response to complaints from fishermen in his subdistrict. Details can be found in SHDV, Mar., CC⁵ 428, “Rapport du commissaire de l’Inscription Maritime de Saint-Valéry-sur-Somme sur le petit chalut à chevrettes,” July 31, 1854.

91. “Décret relatif à l’exercice de la pêche à pied dans le premier arrondissement maritime,” June 13, 1857, reproduced in Bulletin officiel de la Marine 10 (1858): 499–505.

92. Already noted by Fressoz, L’Apocalypse joyeuse, 138, the idea of “taking a definitive position” refers to a conventional discourse on experimentation that can be found, for example, in SHDV, Mar., CC⁵ 374, “Rapport de la commission chargée de fournir des renseignements sur les pêches au bœuf,” December 10, 1819, p. 1; SHDV, Mar., CC⁵ 578, “Rapport sur les causes du désempoissonnement des côtes de Dieppe et de celles des environs,” November 22, 1822, p. 3; and SHDV, Mar., CC⁵ 433, “Note sur les résultats des expériences faites sur trois pêcheries de Granville,” July 29, 1856.

93. Napoli, “Mesure de police,” 165.

94. On the collaboration between fishermen and scientists or administrators, see Gísli Pálsson, “The Birth of the Aquarium: The Political Ecology of Icelandic Fishing,” in The Politics of Fishing, ed. Tim S. Gray (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1998), 209–27; Daniel W. Schneider, “Local Knowledge, Environmental Politics, and the Founding of Ecology in the United States: Stephen Forbes and the ‘Lake as a Microcosm’ (1887),” Isis 91, no. 4 (2000): 681–705; Petter Holm, “Crossing the Border: On the Relationship Between Science and Fishermen’s Knowledge in a Resource Management Context,” Maritime Studies 2, no. 1 (2003): 5–49.

95. Steven Shapin, “The Invisible Technician,” American Scientist 77, no. 6 (1989): 554–63.

96. Brest, Service historique de la défense, fonds Marine, 1 P 10/129, letter from the commissioner of the Saint-Malo Inscription Maritime to the head of the Naval Service at Saint‑Servant, November 9, 1856, not foliated. The bourrache was the wicker trap placed at the mouth of the wooden fishing weirs of Cancale, in which the fish were held prisoner when the tide went out. The aim of this experiment was to assess the effects of different models of bourraches with different sizes of mesh. Similar experiments were carried out at the same time on the stone weirs used at Granville, on the other side of the bay.

97. SHDV, Mar., CC⁵ 578, letter from the commissioner general of the subdistrict of Le Havre to the minister of the Navy and the colonies, December 21, 1821, not foliated; SHDV, Mar., CC⁵ 578, letter from the commissioner general of the subdistrict of Le Havre to the minister of the Navy and the colonies, May 18, 1822, not foliated.

98. SHDV, Mar., CC⁵ 578, “Rapport sur l’essai d’un nouveau mode d’installation du chalut,” April 22, 1822, pp. 1–10.

99. SHDV, Mar., CC⁵ 578, Chambre de commerce de Dieppe, Question soumise au Conseil d’État. Précis sur l’instrument de pêche dit chalut (Paris, 1822), 7. The artificial nature of “small-scale experiments” often makes them dubious, not least because it is only a short step from monitoring to manipulation, as Frédéric Graber points out in Paris a besoin d’eau. Projet, dispute et délibération technique dans la France napoléonienne (Paris: CNRS Éditions, 2009), 234.

100. SHDV, Mar., CC⁵ 578, “Rapport de l’enseigne de vaisseau Foubert,” October 14, 1822 (emphasis in the original).

101. SHDV, Mar., CC⁵ 578, Chambre de commerce de Dieppe, Question soumise au Conseil d’État, 7.

102. SHDV, Mar., CC⁵ 578, “Rapport de l’enseigne de vaisseau Foubert,” October 14, 1822.

103. SHDV, Mar., CC⁴ 1171bis, “Rapport du capitaine du bâtiment garde-pêche Le Chamois,” September 19, 1857.

104. I borrow this expression from Yannick Barthe, Michel Callon, and Pierre Lascoumes, Agir dans un monde incertain. Essai sur la démocratie technique (Paris: Éd. du Seuil, 2001), 127.

105. SHDV, Mar., CC⁵ 428, “Rapport sur une mission relative aux bas‑parcs accomplie sur les côtes du sous‑arrondissement de Dunkerque,” November 21, 1855, pp. 35 and 39.

106. Madeleine Akrich, “Les formes de la médiation technique,” Réseaux 60 (1993): 87–98; Annie‑Hélène Dufour, “Poser, trainer : deux façons de concevoir la pêche et l’espace,” Bulletin d’Ecologie Humaine 5, no. 1 (1987): 23–45. On work as a privileged way of understanding nature, see Richard White, “‘Are You an Environmentalist or Do You Work for a Living?’ Work and Nature,” in Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature, ed. William Cronon (New York: Norton, 1996), 171–85.

107. SHDV, Mar., CC⁵ 578, letter from sub-lieutenant Foubert to the commissioner general of the Navy, November 22, 1822, not foliated; SHDV, Mar., CC⁵ 578, “Rapport sur les causes du désempoissonnement des côtes de Dieppe et de celles des environs,” November 22, 1822, pp. 29–30.

108. Calafat, “Expertise et compétences,” 104.

109. In the eighteenth century, the Bay of Cancale was Paris’s main source of oysters, but it also supplied the English market. For background on this case, see Abad, Le grand marché, 519–64, and Robert Neild, The English, the French and the Oyster (London: Quiller Press, 1995), 77–97.

110. Cancale, Archives municipales (hereafter “AMC”), “Registre du greffe oblique de l’amirauté de Saint‑Malo à Cancale,” deliberation of shipmasters, February 20, 1785, fol. 50.

111. AN, Mar., C⁵ 60, “Mémoire sur la pêche des huîtres dans la baye de Cancale,” 1786, fol. 263. The ordonnance issued by the Saint-Malo Admiralty of August 16, 1766, which regulated oyster fishing in the Bay of Cancale, is presented in greater detail in Emmanuelle Charpentier, Le peuple du rivage. Le littoral nord de la Bretagne au xviii^e siècle (Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2013), 148–52.

112. AMC, “Registre du greffe oblique de l’amirauté de Saint-Malo à Cancale,” deliberation of shipmasters, February 20, 1785, fol. 50.

113. AN, Mar., C⁵ 54, letter from the controller general of finance to the minister of the Navy, March 29, 1786, fols. 2–3.

114. AN, Mar., C5 54, “Procès-verbal de la dépopulation des huîtres dans la baye de Cancale,” May 27, 1786, fols. 20–24. Synonymous with “passing the dredge,” the expression faire un ferrée refers to the iron (fer) with which the net was equipped to rake the oysters from the seabed.

115. AN, Mar., C⁵ 54, “Mémoire sur la nature de l’huître, les procédés en usage pour sa pêche, et les lieux où se trouvent les huitrières, par M. Chardon et M. l’abbé Dicquemare,” June 17, 1786, fol. 83. This memorandum was written soon after the minutes cited in the previous note, and expands on their explanations and conclusions.

116. AN, Mar., C⁵ 54, “Procès-verbal de la dépopulation des huîtres dans la baye de Cancale,” May 27, 1786, fol. 24.

117. Shapin and Schaffer, Leviathan and the Air-Pump, 55. On the use of the “collective we” in the narrative structure of experiential accounts, see Christian Licoppe, La formation de la pratique scientifique. Le discours de l’expérience en France et en Angleterre (1630–1820) (Paris: La Découverte, 1996), 53–87.

118. According to SHDV, Mar., CC⁵ 566, “Mémoire sur les pêches locales de Port-Malo et havres environnans, 12 ventôse an III [March 2, 1795],” “Abbé Dicquemare, a well-known naturalist, was the driving force behind this commission.”

119. AN, Mar., C⁵ 54, “Mémoire sur la nature de l’huître, les procédés en usage pour sa pêche, et les lieux où se trouvent les huitrières, par M. Chardon et M. l’abbé Dicquemare,” June 17, 1786, fols. 86 and 93.

120. AN, Mar., C⁵ 54, letter from Commissioner Chardon to the minister of the Navy, May 30, 1786, fol. 15; AN, Mar., C⁵ 54, “Procès-verbal de la dépopulation des huîtres dans la baye de Cancale,” May 27, 1786, fols. 28–29.

121. “Arrêt du Conseil d’État du roi portant règlement pour la pêche des huîtres dans la baie de Cancale,” July 20, 1787, articles 1, 5, and 6, reproduced in Jacques-Joseph Baudrillart, Traité général des eaux et forêts, chasses et pêches, part 4, Dictionnaire des pêches (Paris: Madame Huzard, 1827), 589–92.

122. SHDV, Mar., CC⁵ 680, “Rapport annuel sur la pêche des huîtres dans la circonscription de la station navale de Granville,” 1856, not foliated; letter from the head of the Naval Service to the minister of the Navy and the colonies, November 3, 1858, not foliated.

123. Prosper de Chasseloup-Laubat, “Rapport à l’empereur,” Bulletin officiel de la Marine 16 (1861): 347–48.

124. This expression by Chasseloup-Laubat is reported by Coutancier, L’administration des petites pêches en France, 210. It should be noted that this decree was issued in a context characterized by a European race for international fishing grounds and by the deregulation of fishing against a backdrop of controversy over the inexhaustible nature of the sea’s resources. In Great Britain, for example, the report submitted by the Royal Commission on Sea Fisheries (1863–1866) led to the Sea Fisheries Act of 1868. It recommended the abolition of all existing regulatory measures and the complete liberalization of fishing. On this point, see Hubbard, “In the Wake of Politics,” 365–69; Poul Holm et al., “Marine Animal Populations: A New Look Back in Time,” in Life in the World’s Oceans: Diversity, Distribution and Abundance, ed. Alasdair D. McIntyre (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), 3–23, here pp. 5–7.

125. Michel Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1978–1979, trans. Graham Burchell (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 28.

126. Prosper de Chasseloup-Laubat, “Rapport à l’empereur,” in Ministère de la Marine et des Colonies, Règlement général sur l’administration des quartiers, sous-quartiers, et syndicats maritimes; l’inscription maritime; le recrutement de la flotte; la police de la navigation; les pêches maritimes (Paris: Imprimerie impériale, 1867), vii–xxix (emphasis in the original).