




































 

   

Corresponding author  

Giuditta Parolini, TU Berlin, giuditta.parolini@tu-berlin.de   

 

 

 

Building Networks of Knowledge Exchange in Agricultural Meteorology: 

The Agro-Meteorological Service in French Indochina 

 

Giuditta Parolini 

 

 

 

Introduction 

Since its inception, the science of meteorology has been marked by transnational 

ambitions. Networks of observers spread across different nations and collecting meteorological 

observations can be dated back at least to the seventeenth century, when the Italian Accademia 

del Cimento (Academy of Experiment) organised a pan-European network to gather weather 

data.1 In the second half of the nineteenth century, the transnational ambitions of meteorology 

were further strengthened with the creation of the International Meteorological Organization 

(IMO), one of the first scientific organisations devoted to international cooperation. The IMO 

was founded to establish global standards in meteorology and to promote the sharing of 

meteorological data and knowledge among the weather services of the participating countries.2 

The IMO members came from all over the world: from the European countries and their 

colonies, from Russia and later the Soviet Union, from the United States and Canada, from 

Brazil and Argentina, from Japan and, after WWII, also from China. 

Even though European members always formed the overall majority and the meetings 

of the organisation never took place outside of Europe and North America, the IMO remains a 

privileged context for examining the transnational aspects of making and communicating 

meteorological knowledge that are the focus of this special issue. The IMO and its regular 

meetings—halted only during the two world wars—offered meteorologists the opportunity to 

discuss national practices with their peers, debate over the design of instruments for collecting 

and sharing meteorological data, and learn from each other. Through these debates and 

collaborations, which are recorded in the proceedings of the IMO meetings, networks of 

knowledge exchange were built and information on weather and climate circulated all over the 

                                                 

1 James R. Fleming, “Early History of the Meteorological Observing Systems,” in Sciences of the Earth: An Encyclopedia of 

Events, People, and Phenomena, ed. Gregory A. Good (New York and London: Garland Publishing Inc., 1998), 556-558. 

2 Hendrik G. Cannegieter, “The History of the International Meteorological Organisation 1872-1951,” Annalen Der 

Meteorologie, Neue Folge, 1 (1963): 1–280; Paul N. Edwards, “Meteorology as Infrastructural Globalism,” Osiris 21, no. 1 

(2006): 229–50. 

mailto:giuditta.parolini@tu-berlin.de


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world. In my paper, I will use the IMO technical commission on agriculture as a case study to 

discuss how these networks of knowledge exchange worked. 

The IMO technical commission on agriculture was created in 1913 and held its last 

meeting in 1947.3 Among its founding members were the director of the French Weather 

Bureau, meteorologist Charles Alfred Angot (1848–1924), who had been teaching physics and 

meteorology at the National Agronomy Institute in Paris since 1879; the geographer and 

meteorologist Peter Ivanovich Brounov (1853–1927), who was a key figure in the development 

of agricultural meteorology in Russia; the French rural economist Louis Dop (1866–1935), 

who was for many years the vice president of the International Institute of Agriculture (IIA) 

and the person who first approached the IMO with the proposal to set up a technical 

commission on agriculture; the German meteorologist Richard Börnstein (1852–1913), who 

had been collecting meteorological observations at Prussian agricultural academies for 

decades; and the Italian meteorologist Luigi Palazzo (1861–1933), the director of the Central 

Office for Meteorology and Geodynamics in Rome, an institution which also wanted to 

promote agro-meteorological studies.4 

Angot, Brounov, Dop, Börnstein, and Palazzo recommended that the International 

Meteorological Committee, the IMO’s steering body, create a permanent commission for 

agricultural meteorology. They argued that the novelty and the complexity of the problems 

posed by agricultural meteorology required an ad hoc commission and that this commission 

should be staffed not only by meteorologists and climatologists, but also by agronomists and 

botanists, as the problems of agricultural meteorology were multidisciplinary.5 

The IMO Commission for Agricultural Meteorology was tasked with gathering 

information on correlations between weather, climate, and agricultural output, and with 

suggesting best practices for forecasting key events for farmers, such as imminent frosts. The 

commission’s members examined meteorological instruments and recording procedures 

employed in agricultural meteorology and made suggestions for increasing the number of 

stations collecting both meteorological and agricultural data. They also addressed the relevance 

of microclimatological factors to plant growth and the importance of preparing weather 

forecasts and communicating them to farmers. As envisioned by its founding fathers, the 

                                                 

3 The IMO decided to establish a technical commission on agriculture in 1913, but World War I soon halted international 

cooperation in meteorology and the IMO Commission for Agricultural Meteorology held its first official meeting in Paris in 

1919 (Cannegieter, “The History of the International Meteorological Organisation”, 199). The commission worked regularly 

during the interwar years, but with the outbreak of World War II the IMO’s activities again ceased. The commission held its 

last two meetings after World War II, in 1946 and 1947. For the history of the IMO Commission for Agricultural Meteorology, 

see Giuditta Parolini, “The International Meteorological Organization and Its Commission for Agricultural Meteorology After 

WWI,” Acta Historica Leopoldina, forthcoming in 2020, and Giuditta Parolini, Sílvio R. Dahmen, and Sandra Prado, “Using 

Network Analysis to Investigate the History of Agricultural Meteorology,” 13th Workshop on Historical Network Research, 

Mainz: Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur, 2019, 

https://nats.hypotheses.org/files/2019/10/AbstractsParticipants_optimized-1.pdf.Parolini et al. 

4 More biographical information on the scientists who promoted the IMO technical commission on agriculture can be found 

in Anonymous, “Professor C. A. Angot [Obituary],” Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society 50, no. 211 (1924): 

270–71; Anonymous, “Luigi Palazzo, 1861–1933 [Obituary],” Terrestrial Magnetism and Atmospheric Electricity 39, no. 1 

(1934): 71–72; Carl G. von Klinckowstroem, “Börnstein, Richard,” in Neue Deutsche Biographie 2 (online), 1955, 

https://www.deutsche-biographie.de/sfz5069.html. The IIA was founded in Rome in 1905 (Asher Hobson, The International 

Institute of Agriculture: An Historical and Critical Analysis of Its Organization, Activities and Policies of Administration 

(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1931)). Its mission was broad and ranged from the collection of official statistics 

related to worldwide agricultural production to the application of scientific knowledge to farming. During the first half of the 

twentieth century it was one of the most influential agricultural organisations. Today’s FAO, the Food and Agricultural 

Organization of the United Nations, took over the IIA’s legacy. 

5 International Meteorological Organization, Bericht über die Versammlung des Internationalen Meteorologischen Komitees, 

Veröffentlichungen des Königlich Preussischen Meteorologischen Instituts, no. 260 (Berlin: Behrend & Co., 1913). 



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commission was not only staffed by meteorologists and climatologists, but also by 

agronomists, botanists, geographers, and statisticians who contributed their scientific expertise 

to solve problems in agricultural meteorology. 

Over three decades, 132 people in total joined the IMO technical commission on 

agriculture. Of them, about one-third were based outside of Europe and European Russia. 

These extra-European members were located in America (from Canada to Argentina), Africa, 

Australia, and Asia (Fig. 1). They worked in independent states, but also in protectorates and 

colonies of European nations. Their presence ensured that the IMO’s work could circulate all 

over the world, from Santiago de Chile to Tokyo to Wellington. Their role, however, was not 

merely to convey the information gathered in international scientific circles to their home 

countries. They also contributed to the knowledge-making process, because they had first-hand 

expertise in growing tea, coffee, cocoa, and other crops precious for European economies, but 

not suited to the temperate climate, and therefore not studied by European agronomists, 

meteorologists, and climatologists. 

I will argue that the IMO Commission for Agricultural Meteorology’s networks of 

knowledge exchange were not one-way routes departing from Europe and leading to its present 

or former colonies or protectorates, but that they facilitated knowledge transfer towards Europe 

as well as from Europe. This is particularly evident in the case of the agro-meteorological 

service set up in French Indochina by the agronomist and climatologist Paul Carton (1891–

1969).6 

Born at Asnières, in Normandy, Carton received his training in agronomy, with a 

specialisation in tropical agriculture, at the French National Institute of Colonial Agriculture.7 

Before moving to Indochina, he worked as a technical writer for the IIA in Rome, and at this 

stage he became interested in the connections between weather, climate, and agriculture. These 

topics were widely discussed at the IIA, as demonstrated by the participation of its vice-

president, Louis Dop, in the IMO technical commission on agriculture. During his time in 

Indochina, Carton became a member of the IMO commission and remained as such until the 

last meeting in 1947. He was also among the advisers who attended the first meeting of the 

Commission for Agricultural Meteorology (CAgM), which was reconstituted within the World 

Meteorological Organization in 1953.8 

Carton was a very active member of the IMO Commission for Agricultural 

Meteorology. He was eager to learn from the scientific and technological developments taking 

place in Europe, but at the same time he was also ready to present the work his agro-

meteorological service did in Indochina, and to point out the importance of studying tropical 

crops, such as rice, alongside temperate crops. Furthermore, Carton’s interests were not 

confined to agricultural meteorology: they also included the cognate discipline of agricultural 

ecology, and Carton became a member of the Commission for Agricultural Meteorology and 

Ecology set up by the IIA in Rome.9 

                                                 

6 French Indochina encompassed an area roughly comprising today’s Vietnam and nearby territories in Laos and Cambodia. 

7Max Vachon, ‘Carton, Paul’, in Dictionnaire Biographique d’Outre-Mer, 1975, https://wbis.degruyter.com/biographic-

document/R14688. 

8 WMO, Commission for Agricultural Meteorology (CAgM): Abridged Final Report of the First Session, WMO Publication 

no. 27 (Geneva: WMO, 1954). 

9 Girolamo Azzi and Pietro R. Pirotta, “International Institute of Agricultural Ecology,” International Review of the Science 

and Practice of Agriculture, New Series, 3, no. 3 (1925): 766–81. 



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In my paper, I will use Carton’s agro-meteorological service in French Indochina as an 

example of the IMO’s involvement in the circulation of meteorological knowledge between 

East and West. To provide a context for understanding the case of French Indochina, I will 

begin with a discussion of the IMO Commission for Agricultural Meteorology and its 

commitment to facilitate knowledge exchange among its members. I will then provide an 

overview of the extra-European members and their involvement in the commission’s work 

before discussing the case of French Indochina. For the latter, I will not only describe how the 

service was established, but also how Carton used his membership in international 

organisations to acquire and share information on agricultural meteorology, and the reasons 

that brought him to pursue both agricultural meteorology and ecology. In conclusion, I will 

discuss how the networks of knowledge exchange established by the IMO Commission for 

Agricultural Meteorology were based on a two-way exchange of information and how this was 

necessary to acquire knowledge on key commodities produced in tropical areas and heavily 

used in Europe. 

Fig. 1.  Map displaying the location of the IMO Commission for Agricultural Meteorology’s members 

outside of Europe. 

 

 

 

 

 

 



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Networks of Knowledge Exchange in Twentieth-Century Agricultural Meteorology 

In the twentieth century, agriculture was one of the first sectors to develop systematic 

methods for collecting and exploiting weather information.10 At the end of the nineteenth 

century, Russia pioneered the creation of agro-meteorological services.11 The Russian Ministry 

of Agriculture’s Bureau of Meteorology was established in 1896 and managed a network of 

agro-meteorological stations, which counted over 70 stations in 1912.12 Peter Ivanovich 

Brounov, one of the IMO technical commission on agriculture’s founding fathers, was a key 

figure in the development of agricultural meteorology in Russia. Brounov’s Bureau in St. 

Petersburg supervised the agricultural and meteorological observations collected by the 

Russian stations, acquired the resulting data via questionnaires, and summarised and published 

these data. The Russian agro-meteorological service had two main aims. The first was to study 

the correlations between crop growth and meteorological factors, and to produce forecasts 

useful for farmers. The second was to investigate the distribution of crops according to Russian 

climatic regions and to suggest the best plant varieties for each area. 

If Russia paved the way in agricultural meteorology, other countries quickly followed 

suit. By the early 1920s, the US Weather Bureau already had an established network of (mainly 

voluntary) observers based in the agricultural districts. The data collected were used to provide 

specialised services to farmers. The Weather Bureau produced daily or weekly bulletins of 

rainfall and temperature, and, when required, frost warnings, crop-weather bulletins, and so on. 

In the US, meteorological information was disseminated by telegraph, by telephone, and in 

print, because it was essential that it reach farmers quickly.13 

Several other nations, such as Great Britain, France, Italy, Poland, and Japan, 

established agro-meteorological services or were interested in doing so during the first three 

decades of the twentieth century.14 These agro-meteorological services were staffed by 

meteorologists and agronomists and always relied on a network of local stations to collect both 

meteorological and agricultural data. They aided the national farming community by compiling 

weather bulletins and preparing weather forecasts, but they also promoted scientific 

investigations on the correlation between weather and agricultural output. 

The work of agro-meteorological services usually also included research on the 

influence that climate, in general, and microclimate, in particular, had on plant growth.15 

                                                 

10 Vladimir Janković, “Working with Weather: Atmospheric Resources, Climate Variability and the Rise of Industrial 

Meteorology, 1950-2010,” History of Meteorology 7 (2015): 99. 

11 John W. Smith, Agricultural Meteorology: The Effect of Weather on Crops (New York: The MacMillan Company, 1920), 

24–25. 

12 Peter I. Brounov, “Some Considerations of the Organization of the Agricultural Meteorological Service,” Bulletin of Foreign 

Agricultural Intelligence 6 (1916): 309–14. 

13 Gustavus A. Weber, The Weather Bureau: Its History, Activities and Organization, Service Monograph of the United States 

Government no. 9 (New York and London: D. Appleton and Company, 1922). 

14 Girolamo Azzi, “Per la organizzazione di un servizio di meteorologia agraria,” Rivista Meteorico-Agraria 33, no. 36 (1912); 

Organisation Météorologique Internationale, Commission de Météorologie Agricole: Procés verbaux de la 2ième réunion, 

Zurich, 1926 (Stockholm: Statens Meteorologisk-Hydrografiska Anstalt no. 256, 1927); Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, 

“The Weather and Agriculture in the British Empire,” Journal of the Ministry of Agriculture 36 (1929): 657–62; Émile 

Delcambre, “Sur l’activité scientifique de l’Office National Météorologique, notamment dans ses rapports avec l’agriculture,” 

Comptes rendus hebdomadaires des séances de l’Académie d’Agriculture de France 19 (1933): 413–23; Jean Lugeon, Les 

travaux de météorologie agricole de l’Institut National Météorologique de Pologne (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Specjalne Z 

Okazji Zjazdu Miedzynarodowej Organizacji Meteorologicznej, 1935). 

15 Rudolf Geiger, Das Klima der bodennahen Luftschicht: ein Lehrbuch der Mikroklimatologie. (Braunschweig: Verlag 

Friedrich Vieweg and Sohn, 1927); Girolamo Azzi, Le climat du blé dans le monde: Les bases écologiques de la culture 

mondiale du blé (Rome: Institut International d’Agriculture, 1930).  



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Climatological considerations were essential to select the varieties best suited for cultivation 

in a certain area. Better knowledge of microclimatology was also crucial, because the 

atmospheric layers closer to the ground and the soil conditions were key factors in the growth 

of crops and fruit trees. 

The interest in climatological and microclimatological studies was shared by the 

cognate discipline of agricultural ecology, which also developed in the early twentieth century 

alongside agricultural meteorology. Girolamo Azzi, a founding father of agricultural ecology,16 

defined it as: 

the study of the physical characteristics of environment, climate and soil, in relation 

to the development of agricultural plants, and to the yield of such plants from the 

quantitative (amount of the product), qualitative (quality of the product), and 

generative (characters of the seed) points of view.17 

Azzi’s monograph, Le climat du blé dans le monde (1930) (Wheat Climates of the Earth), 

which was aptly subtitled Les bases écologiques de la culture mondiale du blé (the ecological 

basis of worldwide wheat cultivation), was a first example of a global study that examined both 

climatological and agricultural factors in the cultivation of wheat, the main crop grown in 

temperate regions.18,19 The project started in 1919, when memories of the famine and starvation 

caused by World War I in several European countries were still a painful memory. The IIA 

promoted the research and assigned it to Azzi, due to his long-term involvement in agricultural 

ecology in Italy. The data collection work lasted for years and Azzi’s research was eventually 

submitted as a report to the first International Conference on Wheat, held in Rome in 1927. 

During this meeting, which was sponsored by the Italian Fascist government, it was decided to 

establish an international network of agro-ecological stations to monitor wheat cultivation 

worldwide. However, the project never really took off, because the Italian Fascist 

government’s politics interfered with the IIA’s scientific activity and hindered international 

collaboration. 

The two domains of agricultural meteorology and ecology were interconnected and 

practitioners of agricultural ecology, such as Girolamo Azzi, were also members of the IMO 

Commission for Agricultural Meteorology. Azzi’s work on agricultural ecology deserves a 

special mention in this paper, because it had a long-lasting influence on Paul Carton and on his 

agro-meteorological service in French Indochina. Carton met Azzi early on in his career, while 

he was working at the IIA in Rome, and their friendship continued throughout the decades. He 

regularly cited Azzi’s publications in his scientific papers and, in the 1950s, he wrote the 

preface for the French edition of Azzi’s textbook on agricultural ecology.20 

The IMO Commission for Agricultural Meteorology’s mission was to facilitate 

knowledge exchange among the participating nations. The commission was a forum for 

discussing the meteorological data useful in agricultural meteorology and the most suitable 

instruments for measuring and collecting them. It enabled the exchange of best practices in 

data management and weather forecasting and the sharing of references to the publications 

                                                 

16 Corey Ross, Ecology and Power in the Age of Empire: Europe and the Transformation of the Tropical World (Oxford: 

Oxford University Press, 2017), 336. 

17 Girolamo Azzi, Agricultural Ecology (London: Constable and Company, 1956), xiii. The original Italian version was 

published in the 1920s. 

18 Azzi, Le climat du blé dans le monde. 

19 If not otherwise specified, all the translations from French are mine. 

20 Girolamo Azzi, Écologie agricole (Paris: Ballière, 1954). 



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produced by each nation.21 As part of its mission, the commission also actively promoted 

international cooperation in setting up observational schemes in agricultural meteorology, for 

instance in phenology, lobbied for the development of worldwide experimental schemes for 

testing the correlation between weather conditions and crop growth, and liaised with other 

international organisations interested in agricultural meteorology, such as the IIA. 

Almost 40 nations and their colonial empires were represented in the IMO Commission 

for Agricultural Meteorology during its existence. This wide geographic distribution was a 

resource for the commission’s work, as agriculture is a geographically-located enterprise and 

work in agricultural meteorology can only be conducted where the crops grow.22 Extensive 

geographic coverage was also essential to ensure the success of the commission’s global 

observational and experimental schemes. The extra-European members contributed by 

bringing their experiences with tropical crops such as tea, coffee, and cocoa, which were so 

relevant for Western economies in the first half of the twentieth century. Agronomists and 

meteorologists based in Europe had no direct knowledge of these crops, whose successful 

cultivation required skills and techniques very different from those employed for temperate 

crops. In the following section, I will therefore take a closer look at the members of the IMO 

commission based outside of Europe and at their contributions. From this brief survey, it will 

become apparent that Carton was one of the commission’s most enterprising members and that 

he used the commission as a forum for acquiring knowledge of other countries’ best practices, 

but also to disseminate information on the work of his service in Indochina. 

Extra-European Members of the IMO Commission for Agricultural Meteorology 

 When the IMO Commission for Agricultural Meteorology was established in 1913, 

Canada was the only extra-European country represented, but when the commission was 

officially re-appointed after World War I, there were also members based in Australia and 

French Syria (now Lebanon). During the interwar years, members of the commission could be 

found in Brazil, Argentina, Chile, South Africa, (British) East Africa, Morocco, India, Batavia, 

Sri Lanka, French Indochina, New Zealand, and Japan. The geographic distribution widened 

further after World War II, when members from China, Palestine, Egypt, Rhodesia, Uruguay, 

and Peru also joined the commission. A few of these members joined the commission for only 

a short time, while others, like Carton, maintained their association for decades and actively 

contributed to the commission’s work (Fig. 1 and Table 1). 

 The commission held regular meetings during the interwar years and after World War 

II. However, only a very limited number of members could attend these meetings, and the 

commission’s work was mainly done via the correspondence network built around its 

president.23 The president was in charge of producing regular reports, circulating them among 

the members, organising the publication of the commission proceedings, and collecting 

suggestions about topics to be discussed at forthcoming meetings. While the original 

correspondence is not available, the printed proceedings still provide a selection of these letters 

                                                 

21 The proceedings of the IMO Commission for Agricultural Meteorology contain several short bibliographies of the 

publications produced by each nation on weather and crops. The creation of a journal of agricultural meteorology was also 

discussed, but not approved due to lack of resources. The IMO was, in fact, an organisation without an official status. It had 

only a small budget that just sufficed to support its secretariat, the publication of the conference proceedings, and a few other 

occasional publications considered of general interest for meteorologists. 

22 Giuditta Parolini, “Charting the History of Agricultural Experiments,” History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 37, no. 

3 (2015): 231–41. 

23 Even the members of the commission based in Europe were often prevented from attending the meetings in person and 

participated in the commission’s work by letter and telegram. 



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and allow us to reconstruct the contributions individual members made to the commission’s 

work. 

 Despite delays due to the postal system, participation by correspondence facilitated 

the involvement of the extra-European members in the commission’s activities. For instance, 

several meteorological services based outside of Europe, such as the Egyptian Meteorological 

Service and the Tokyo Central Meteorological Observatory, answered the questionnaire 

circulated in the early 1920s, which aimed to understand what kind of national agro-

meteorological services were in operation and their agendas.24 Things did not always proceed 

smoothly. For instance, Carton was able to send his comments on the agenda set for the 1929 

meeting only later than requested, due to “[l’] éloignement de l’Indochine” (the remoteness of 

Indochina) and the consequent delays in receiving the communications sent by the 

commission’s president.25 Eventually, however, Carton’s large correspondence on ten different 

topics, found a space in the printed proceedings. 

 Always by correspondence, the commission collected lists of publications on 

agricultural meteorology produced in the participating nations and members often sent in 

updates on their national services. This practice continued throughout the years. For instance, 

the Argentinian meteorological service, represented at the time by the agronomist Juan Jacinto 

Burgos, supplied several items submitted for the last meeting in Toronto.26 These publications 

concerned multiple topics, ranging from the description of the most recent developments of 

Argentina’s agro-meteorological service to scientific studies concerning frost prediction, soil 

moisture, and phenology. 

 Among the members based outside of Europe, Paul Carton stands out for his frequent 

contributions to the commission’s work in the interwar years. From 1923, when he joined the 

IMO commission, he began to submit proposals on agricultural meteorology, with a specific 

focus on the tropical regions.27 In his proposals he stressed both methodological issues (for 

instance, the co-existence of meteorological and ecological aspects in the investigations on 

weather, climate, and agriculture conducted by agro-meteorological services) and technical 

problems (such as the standardisation of instruments used by agro-meteorological stations). 

 Carton was aware of the scarce representation that tropical agriculture received in 

international organisations and tried to address this gap by providing detailed information on 

his work in Indochina. In response to the IMO commission’s questionnaire of the early 1920s, 

Carton produced a long report on the agro-meteorological service that he was developing.28,29 

As part of the extensive correspondence between Carton and the president of the IMO 

                                                 

24 Organisation Météorologique Internationale, Commission de Météorologie Agricole: Procès verbaux de la 2ième réunion, 

Zurich 1926, 34-85. 

25 Organisation Météorologique Internationale, Commission de Météorologie Agricole: Procès verbaux de la 3ième Réunion, 

Copenhague, 1929 (Stockholm: Statens Meteorologisk-Hydrografiska Anstalt 276, 1929), 51. 

26 Organisation Météorologique Internationale, Commission for Agricultural Meteorology Abridged Final Report, Toronto, 

August 1947 (Lausanne: Imprimerie La Concorde, 1949), 8–11. 

27 International Meteorological Organization, Report of the International Meteorological Conference of Directors and of the 

Meeting of the International Meteorological Committee, Utrecht, 1923 (Utrecht: Koninklijk Nederlandsch Meteorologisch 

Instituut, 1924), 155–56. 

28 Organisation Météorologique Internationale, Commission de Météorologie Agricole: Procès verbaux de la 2ième réunion, 

Zurich, 1926. 

29 The report was written in collaboration with his colleague Étienne Bruzon, the director of the Indochina Central Observatory. 



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commission in 1929, this report was amended to provide information on the progress made 

during the intervening years and Carton regularly sent in updates afterwards.30 

 However, Carton’s contributions to the commission’s work went well beyond 

detailed reports on agro-meteorology in Indochina. They concerned wider topics, such as the 

relationship between agricultural meteorology and agricultural ecology, and they also dealt 

with practical details, such as the suggestion to publish the commission’s proceedings in both 

English and French. Carton never had an opportunity to attend the interwar meetings of the 

commission, but he was always ready to give his opinion on the topics discussed, such as the 

best time unit to be employed in agricultural meteorology or the most suitable equipment to 

monitor microclimatological variables.31 

 Another recurrent topic in Carton’s correspondence was the relationship between the 

IMO Commission for Agricultural Meteorology and the IIA Commission on Agricultural 

Meteorology and Ecology. As a member of both commissions, Carton was eager to promote 

their cooperation and to have an opportunity to participate in their work as a correspondent. To 

strengthen cooperation, he suggested that the IMO commission invite the members of the IIA 

commission to its meetings.32 In addition, he constantly brought relevant topics examined by 

the IIA to the attention of the IMO commission, such as the methodologies to be employed in 

agricultural meteorology and the study of local climate and its influence on plant growth.33 

 Carton’s active role in the international circles of agricultural meteorology was not 

only justified by scientific curiosity. In his communications with the president of the IMO 

commission, he repeatedly stressed the economic value of agricultural meteorology and 

ecology and the necessity of including tropical crops in scientific investigations: 

The members of the [IMO and IIA] commissions have been mainly interested in 

temperate crops. However, in the global economy, tropical crops are of equal 

importance. Consequently, it seems to me essential that an agreement be reached 

between the two commissions for a corresponding ecological study of tropical crops, 

in particular: rice (whose cultivation extends to temperate countries), coffee, tea, cotton 

and hevea [the rubber tree]. Unfortunately, very few representatives of tropical 

agriculture attend the meetings of the two commissions. Therefore, in order to establish 

the work programme to be undertaken and to carry it out successfully, it seems desirable 

that these experts should be consulted and be able to make contacts with each other.34 

Carton suggested that the IIA act as a mediator in the effort to put tropical countries and their 

precious crops on the map, and constantly complained when the time allocated for commenting 

                                                 

30 Organisation Météorologique Internationale, Commission de Météorologie Agricole: Procès verbaux de la 3ième Réunion, 

Copenhague, 1929 (Stockholm: Statens Meteorologisk-Hydrografiska Anstalt no. 276, 1929), 62–65. 

31 Organisation Météorologique Internationale, Procès verbaux de la 3ième réunion, Copenhague, 1929, 55. 

32 Organisation Météorologique Internationale, Commission de Meteorologie Agricole: Procès verbaux des seances de 

Munich, 19–21 Septembre 1932 (Utrecht: Organisation Météorologique Internationale no. 14, 1933), 9. 

33 Organisation Météorologique Internationale, Commission de Météorologie Agricole: Procés verbaux de la 3ième réunion, 

Copenhague, 1929, 51–54. 

34 “Ce sont surtout les plantes des pays tempérés qu’ont eu en vue les membres des Commissions. Or, dans l’économie 

mondiale, les plantes des pays tropicaux sont d’une égale importance. En consequence, il m’apparaît indispensable qu’une 

entente ait lieu entre les deux Commissions en vue d’une étude écologique correspondante des plantes tropicales de grande 

culture, en particulier: le riz (dont la culture s’étend d’ailleurs aux pays tempérés), le caféier, le théier, le cotonnier et l’hévéa. 

Malheureusement, lors des réunions des deux Commissions, très rares sont les représentants de l'Agriculture tropicale. Aussi, 

pour établir le programme de l'étude à entreprendre et pour mener à bien son exécution, il semble qu’il serait désirable que 

ceux-ci fussent consultés et pussent entrer en relation entre eux” (Organisation Météorologique Internationale, Procès verbaux 

de la 3ième réunion, Copenhague, 1929, pp. 61–62). 



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on reports and initiatives was inadequate to allow members based outside of Europe to provide 

their opinion by correspondence.35 

 The coexistence of scientific knowledge on agricultural meteorology and ecology 

was always coupled with attention to the economic value of this knowledge in the agro-

meteorological service that Carton set up in French Indochina. In this approach, Carton was 

certainly faithful to Azzi’s understanding of agricultural ecology (and meteorology) as 

practical sciences useful in farm management.36 

 

Name City Nation geography (history) 

Balkan, Aziz Ankara Turkey 

Bamford, Alec Joscelyne Colombo Sri Lanka (British colony) 

Bates, Daniel Cross Wellington New Zealand (British dominion) 

Bergeiro, José Maria Montevideo Uruguay 

Berloty, (Révérend Père) 

Bonaventure 

Ksara Lebanon (French protectorate) 

Bernard, Etienne A. Yangambi Democratic Republic of Congo (Belgian colony) 

de Boer, Herman Johannes Batavia Indonesia (Dutch colony) 

Boughner, Clarence Clarkson Toronto Canada (British dominion) 

Burgos, Juan Jacinto Buenos Aires Argentina 

Carton, Paul Hanoi Vietnam (French colony) 

Connor, Abraham James Toronto Canada (British dominion) 

Fahmy, Hassan Cairo Egypt 

Feige, Rudolf Jerusalem Palestine (British mandate) 

Ferraz, Joaquim de Sampaio Rio de Janeiro Brazil 

Foley, James Charles Melbourne Australia (British dominion) 

Girola, Carlos de Alberti Buenos Aires Argentina 

Hirata, Tokutarō Tokyo Japan 

Hirschhorn, Julio Buenos Aires Argentina 

Jacobs, Woodrow Cooper Washington USA 

Kincer, Joseph Burton Washington USA 

Normand, Charles William Blyth Pune India (British colony) 

Nuño, Waldo Santiago de Chile Chile 

Okada, Takematsu Tokyo Japan 

Patterson, John Toronto Canada (British dominion) 

                                                 

35 Organisation Météorologique Internationale, Commission de Météorologie Agricole: Procès verbaux de la 3ième réunion. 

Copenhague, 1929, 53. 

36 Azzi, Agricultural Ecology, xii. 



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Peake, J. S. Harare Zimbabwe (British colony) 

Pires Xavier, Raul Rio de Janeiro Brazil 

Putnam, Donald Fulton Toronto Canada (British dominion) 

Ripley, Philip Oscar Ottawa Canada (British dominion) 

Roy, A. K. Kolkata India (British colony) 

Sarle, Charles Faye Washington USA (British colony) 

Schindler, Pierre Casablanca Morocco (French colony) 

Seelye, Cassilis James Wellington New Zealand (British dominion) 

Shutt, Frank Thomas Ottawa Canada (British dominion) 

Smit, H. P. Pretoria South Africa (British dominion) 

Smith, John Warren Washington USA 

Stewart, Charles M. Pretoria South Africa (British dominion) 

Sutton, L. J. Cairo Egypt 

T'U, Chang Wang Nanking China 

Taylor, Thomas Griffith Melbourne/ 

Chicago/ Toronto 

Australia (British dominion)/moved to 

USA/moved to Canada (British dominion) 

Tiscornia, José Montevideo Uruguay 

Walter, Albert Nairobi Kenya (British colony) 

Zender Honig, Jacobo Lima Peru 

Tab. 1.  Members of the IMO Commission for Agricultural Meteorology not based in Europe or 

European Russia. Data extracted from Giuditta Parolini, “Membership of the IMO Commission 

for Agricultural Meteorology (1913-1947)”, Mendeley Data, 2020, v1. 

http://dx.doi.org/10.17632/pds6tz443t.1. 

 

The Agro-Meteorological Service in French Indochina 

French colonial expansion in Indochina started in the 1860s in the area corresponding 

to today’s South Vietnam. By the 1880s, the territories under French rule extended to Annam 

and Tonkin, and to nearby territories in Cambodia and Laos. These areas were formally brought 

together in the late 1880s in the Union Indochinoise Française (French Indochinese Union).37 

Indochina was one of the “new” colonies acquired by France after the Napoleonic era, and 

became part of a colonial empire whose geographic extension was second only to that of the 

British empire at the beginning of the twentieth century. In the 1930s, at the time of its 

maximum expansion, the French colonial empire counted 65 million inhabitants distributed in 

four continents: America, Africa, Asia, and Oceania.38 

The systematic exploitation of natural resources in Indochina started at the turn of the 

twentieth century, when the French colonial government, its scientific institutions (such as the 

Pasteur Institute), and private businesses joined forces to establish profitable plantations. In 

                                                 

37 Nicola Cooper, France in Indochina: Colonial Encounters (Oxford: Berg Publishers, 2001). 

38 Michael A. Osborne, “Science and the French Empire,” Isis 96, no. 1 (2005): 80–87. 

http://dx.doi.org/10.17632/pds6tz443t.1


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this mise en valeur (economic development) of the French colonies, science and scientific 

institutions played a primary role, especially after World War I.39 As part of this effort, 

agricultural services and botanical research were among the first sectors to be reorganised after 

the conflict. 

In Indochina the French colonisers were mainly interested in primary resources such as 

rice, rubber, and coffee, and, as such, agricultural development was key to ensuring the 

colony’s increased profitability. In 1924 the colonial government established the Inspection 

générale de l’Agriculture, de l’Elevage et des Forêts (General Inspectorate for Agriculture, 

Breeding, and Forestry) and tasked it with the overall supervision and coordination of the 

agricultural services of the various provinces of the Indochinese Union.40 Capital was also 

important for the economic development of agriculture in Indochina, and it was provided by, 

among others, the Banque de l’Indochine (Bank of Indochina), an institution created in the late 

nineteenth century to support French colonial expansion in Asia. In addition, the political 

authorities in Paris constantly implemented interventionist strategies to support the colonial 

economy in Indochina, especially during the global recession of the early 1930s.41 By the late 

1930s, rice and natural rubber extracted from hevea were the agricultural commodities that 

offered the highest returns and the French colonial administration focused on Indochina as one 

of the most promising colonial economies.42 

Carton left France for Indochina in November 1920 and joined the French colonial 

service as director of the agronomy section of the Institute Scientifique de l’Indochine 

(Indochina Scientific Institute).43 He maintained this position until 1922, when he became 

director of the Bureau des Renseignements Agricoles (Agricultural Information Bureau), which 

was part of the French colonial government’s economic services in Indochina. In 1927, he was 

appointed chief of the Bureau de Climatologie et de Météorologie Agricole (Bureau of 

Climatology and Agricultural Meteorology) and he maintained this position until 1936, when 

he moved on to other advisory and teaching roles within Indochina’s agricultural services. 

Carton worked for over 20 years in Indochina and built his scientific career on the work 

in agricultural meteorology and ecology he did there.44 He regularly published scientific 

contributions on weather, climate, and their impact on plant growth in the Bulletin économique 

de l’Indochine (Economic Bulletin of Indochina), in French journals of colonial agronomy 

(such as Agronomie colonial (Colonial Agronomy) and Agronomie tropicale (Tropical 

Agronomy)), and as part of the publications sponsored by the colonial administration.45 Carton 

also wrote a textbook on agricultural ecology in connection with his teaching work at the Ecole 

                                                 

39 Christophe Bonneuil, Des savants pour l’Empire: La structuration des recherches scientifiques colonials au temps de ‘la 

mise en valeur des colonies françaises,’ 1917–1945. (Paris: Éditions de l’ORSTOM, 1991). 

40 Paul Carton, La météorologie agricole en Indochine (Hanoi: Imprimerie d’Extrême-Orient, 1930). 

41 Jonathan A. Bone, “Rice, Rubber, and Development Policies: The Mise En Valeur of French Indochina on the Eve of the 

Second World War,” Proceedings of the Meeting of the French Colonial Historical Society 16 (1992): 154–80. 

42 Michitake Aso, ‘The Scientist, the Governor, and the Planter: The Political Economy of Agricultural Knowledge in 

Indochina During the Creation of a ‘Science of Rubber,’ 1900–1940,” East Asian Science, Technology and Society 3, no. 2–3 

(2009): 232. 

43 All the biographic information on Carton is extracted from Vachon, “Carton, Paul”. 

44 During the 1930s, Carton received awards from the French Agricultural Academy and the French Academy of Sciences for 

his work in Indochina. 

45 Émile Bruzon and Paul Carton, Le climat de l’Indochine et les typhons de la mer de Chine (Hanoi: Imprimerie d’Extrême-

Orient, 1930); Paul Carton, Contribution à l’étude du régime pluviométrique de l’Indochine (Hanoi: Gouvernement général 

de l’Indochine, 1935). 



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supérieure d’agriculture et de silviculture de l’Indochine (Indochina College for Agriculture 

and Forestry).46 

As chief of the Bureau of Climatology and Agricultural Meteorology, Carton was able 

to reorganise and expand the existing network of stations collecting meteorological, 

agricultural, and rainfall data, and to establish a service that addressed both questions of 

agricultural ecology and agricultural meteorology in the interest of farmers, in particular the 

owners of large plantations. As argued by Michitake Aso, plantation agriculture was key to 

promoting ecological studies in Indochina, both in terms of the plant-environment relationship 

(as in Carton’s case) and the human-environment relationship (for instance, regarding diseases 

which affected plantation workers, such as malaria).47 

When he prepared the 1926 report on his service, Carton stated that Indochina did not 

yet have an independent agro-meteorological service, because it was “un pays tropical de 

colonisation relativemente récente” (a tropical country of comparatively recent colonisation). 

Yet, the situation was changing rapidly, because the French colonial administration wanted to 

make the most of the natural resources available in the area. Technical and scientific services 

for agriculture were expanding and Indochina was entering into a period of unprecedent 

economic growth, with more and more requests for land concessions and a constant increase 

in the amount of cultivated land.48 Tropical crops such as coffee, tea, rice, and hevea prospered 

in Indochina’s climate, and Carton’s agro-meteorological service regularly collected 

observations on these plants for meteorological and ecological studies.49 

Carton’s Bureau was based at the Central Meteorological Observatory in Phu Lien, and 

Indochina’s agro-meteorology service was run cooperatively by the colonial administration’s 

agricultural and meteorological departments. The Bureau was also in regular contact with the 

General Inspectorate for Agriculture, Breeding, and Forestry, the directors of the agricultural 

stations, and the plantation owners.50 By the early 1930s, the service was well-established and 

Carton could prepare a comprehensive report on its current state and plans for further 

development.51 The service relied on a complex network of meteorological, climatological, and 

pluviometric stations.52 Meteorological and climatological stations, which required trained 

staff and consistent instrumentation, were distributed only in key areas, such as the coast of the 

Gulf of Tonkin, the coast of the South China Sea, the Mekong River and the Annamese 

Mountains (Fig. 2). On the contrary, the pluviometric stations were distributed all over 

Indochina because they were comparatively easy to run and maintain, as they only required a 

rain gauge (Fig. 3). Yet, the reason for the proliferation of the pluviometric stations was not 

merely the modest investment required in establishing them. Rainfall data were extremely 

                                                 

46 Paul Carton, Cours de climatologie et d’écologie (Hanoi: Gouvernement général de l’Indochine, Inspection générale de 

l’agriculture et de l’élevage, École supérieure d’agriculture de l’Indochine, 1938). 

47 Michitake Aso, Rubber and the Making of Vietnam: An Ecological History, 1897–1975 (Chapel Hill: The University of 

North Carolina Press, 2018), 131. 

48 Organisation Météorologique Internationale, Commission de Météorologie Agricole: Procès verbaux de la 2ième réunion, 

Zurich, 1926, 46–51. 

49 Paul Carton, La météorologie et ses applications dans les pays tropicaux (Hanoi: Imprimerie d’Extrême-Orient, 1930). 

50 Organisation Météorologique Internationale, Commission de Meteorologie Agricole: Procès verbaux des séances de 

Munich, 19–21 Septembre 1932, 24. 

51 Carton, La météorologie et ses applications dans les pays tropicaux. 

52 The description of Indochina’s agro-meteorological service is extracted from Carton (Carton, La météorologie agricole en 

Indochine; Organisation Météorologique Internationale, Commission de Meteorologie Agricole: Procès verbaux des séances 

de Munich, 19–21 Septembre 1932, 112–16.). 



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precious for planters, because they gave indications of the best times to sow and harvest, as 

water availability was important for the growth of tropical crops such as rice. Rainfall 

distribution was also key to agro-meteorological and agro-ecological investigations because it 

was one of the factors that most influenced Indochina’s climate and Carton devoted detailed 

studies to this topic.53 

Indochina’s meteorological stations were mainly staffed by personnel of the 

meteorological services, who gathered data for weather forecasts. According to the number of 

daily observations taken (five or three), the stations were divided into first order stations and 

second order stations. There were also a few semaphoric stations which monitored ship traffic 

and collected meteorological observations. To facilitate communications, telegraphs connected 

all the meteorological stations to the Central Observatory, where the weather maps were 

prepared. 

The climatological stations were staffed mainly by personnel of the agricultural 

services, who gathered data specific to agro-meteorological and agro-ecological studies. The 

agricultural services staff collected detailed qualitative and quantitative observations on the 

main crops by following the requests codified in the forms specifically designed by Carton’s 

service.54 The climatological stations were not directly connected by telegraph to the Central 

Observatory and usually only mailed a monthly summary of their data to the observatory. 

Alongside the official climatological stations sponsored by the French colonial 

government, the Pasteur Institute also supported climatological stations on plantations, as agro-

meteorological information helped plantation managers to plan their operations more 

efficiently. Carton’s Bureau collected, analysed, and published the combined agricultural and 

meteorological data. The Bureau also acted as a central repository for literature on climatology 

and agricultural meteorology for tropical crops. In association with the colonial services and 

the companies that managed the plantations, Carton also organised experimental work in agro-

meteorology and agro-ecology and published the results of these studies. 

Meteorological and climatological stations in French Indochina had slightly different 

equipment, because, as mentioned, they served different purposes. Only meteorological 

stations had mercury barometers as pressure was a key variable for preparing weather charts, 

while only climatological stations gathered data on the air temperature above the soil, because 

this was a crucial factor in microclimatological studies on the correlation between plant growth 

and weather conditions. The meteorological instruments and the instrument shelters used in 

Indochina were in many cases modified versions of European ones, although in some 

instances—for example, the weather vane adopted by the data collecting stations—they were 

designed ad hoc by the staff of the Central Observatory. 

Many of the meteorological instruments used by the Indochina service were self-

recording because there was not enough staff to attend regularly to the instruments and take 

the readings at the required times. The problem posed by the insufficient staff was also 

heightened by the rapid expansion of the Indochinese agro-meteorological service, which grew 

from fewer than 30 stations in 1925–1926 to a complex network of over 500 stations six years 

later. In 1932, 36 of these stations were meteorological, 62 climatological, and 437 

pluviometric. The growth of the service was prompted by an increase in the number of 

plantations and the consequent requests of support from plantation owners, as well as by the 

                                                 

53 Carton, Contribution à l’étude du régime pluviométrique de l’Indochine. 

54 The forms can be found in Carton, La météorologie et ses applications dans les pays tropicaux. 



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development of aviation and the necessity for more detailed and reliable weather forecasts for 

flights in Indochina. 

The agro-meteorological service’s stations were manned by local and European staff 

working for the agricultural, forestry, and meteorological services of the French colonial 

administration. In addition, missionaries, members of the Pasteur Institute in Indochina, 

representatives of the Indochinese sugar industry, staff of the Michelin company (which owned 

extensive hevea plantations), and staff of local hospitals contributed to collect weather and crop 

data.55 We do not know anything in detail about the local staff, except that they were trained 

in the institutions established by the French colonial government, such as the Indochina Central 

Observatory, before beginning fieldwork. In his scientific publications, Carton does not 

provide information on local meteorological and agricultural practices, because, as many of his 

contemporaries, he did not pay much attention to local knowledge.56 Yet, his agro-

meteorological service could not have existed without the native staff manning meteorological, 

climatological, and pluviometric stations. Furthermore, Carton and colleagues could not ignore 

local agricultural practices, when the control of crop pests, such as rice parasites, was at stake.57 

The agro-meteorological service in Indochina pursued research in agricultural ecology 

by investigating the relationship between the crops of economic interest to the French 

colonisers and the local environment (soil type, humidity, solar radiation, etc.). Carton 

provided a very specific reason for working on ecological as well as meteorological issues: he 

argued that in the tropics, the quality of weather forecasts was limited by the small network of 

data collecting stations and by the scarce staff available for data analysis. The weather bulletins 

produced, therefore, might be suitable for aviation and navigation, but were not detailed enough 

for agriculture, where the only valuable forecasts were those that could give precise indications 

to farmers about the best time to sow and harvest, and that aided in the management of the 

farming operations.58 

For this reason, Carton advocated the ecological approach, where the relationship 

between weather factors and plant growth was investigated according to the long-term 

perspective of the climate, not the short-term perspective of the weather. Carton conceived of 

climate as an average of meteorological factors, such as temperature, humidity, solar radiation, 

and rainfall, and he saw the main task of agricultural ecology as assisting in “adapting crops to 

the climate, through the choice of new varieties and of judiciously designed cultivation 

methods applied at the most appropriate times”.59,60 Carton’s agro-ecological choice was 

motivated by the practical use of agro-meteorological knowledge in French Indochina. To 

transform the recently colonised area into a profitable enterprise, the French colonisers had to 

understand what crops could thrive in the area and how their productivity could be enhanced 

                                                 

55 A comprehensive list of stations and their staff can be found in the 1932 Proceedings of the IMO Commission for 

Agricultural Meteorology (Organisation Météorologique Internationale, Commission de Meteorologie Agricole: Procès 

verbaux des Séances de Munich, 19–21 Septembre 1932, 113–14.). 

56 Aso, Rubber and the Making of Vietnam, 147. 

57 F. Bugnicourt, “Principaux cryptogames parasites du riz en Indochine et traitement à leur opposer,” Bulletin économique de 

l’Indochine (1934): 1188. 

58 The U. S. Weather Bureau recognised the importance of local weather forecasts and produced specific bulletins for each 

cultural district (Organisation Météorologique Internationale, Commission de Météorologie Agricole: Procès verbaux de la 

2ième réunion, Zurich, 1926, 42–44). The most famous activity of this kind is probably California’s citrus fruit frost service 

(Floyd D. Young, Frost and the Prevention of Damage by It (Washington, D. C.: U.S. Department of Agriculture, 1920)). 

59 Original text in French: “adapter les cultures au climat, par le choix des variétés nouvelles et par des méthodes de culture 

judicieusement conçues et appliquées aux époques les plus convenables”. 

60 Carton, La météorologie agricole en Indochine, 7. 



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by exploiting Indochina’s environmental conditions. As Aso argued, ecology was a key asset 

in establishing hevea plantations in Indochina, but more generally it supported the production 

of agricultural commodities such as tea, coffee, and rice.61 

Carton’s description of the key aspects of agricultural ecology and its economic value 

is indebted to Girolamo Azzi’s theories, but Carton’s Bureau constantly worked to adapt agro-

meteorological instruments and theories developed in Europe to Indochina’s climate.62 This 

was not a small task, because the scientific knowledge discussed in the Western circles of 

which Carton was a member had been produced in environmental conditions completely 

different from those of Indochina. For instance, when Carton opened Indochina’s first forestry 

station, which was located at Trang-Bôm, in the south of the country, he was inspired by the 

work done in Swedish and French forests, but the problems he had to deal with were completely 

different from those of the studies he referred to. The fluctuations in temperature, humidity, 

and evaporation that created Indochina’s forest microclimate and the causes of soil 

acidification in the French colony were very different from those in Europe. Swedish and 

French studies provided suggestions, but Carton could only approach the problem by testing 

and collecting local data in order to understand what observations were meaningful and how 

they could be analysed and interpreted. As in forestry, also in agriculture theories were 

imported from the West, but they could only be valuable, after being tried and tested on 

Indochinese soil and radically modified to account for the local climate and its influence on 

plant growth. 

In turn, the results of these investigations attracted interest in Western scientific circles, 

which did not have first-hand experience of environmental conditions in the European colonies, 

but which assisted in the exploitation of the colonies’ agricultural and forestry resources. 

Indochina was primarily an economic asset for France, and associations like the Paris-based 

Association Colonies-Sciences (ACS) ensured that Carton’s work in agricultural ecology 

found an audience in the homeland, where meteorologists and agronomists were not so 

receptive of ecological thinking in the 1920s.63 During the interwar years, the ACS, which was 

supported by banks (in particular, the Bank of Indochina) and by large corporations, was the 

main association that brought together scientists, colonial administrators, and economists 

interested in developing the French colonies. The ACS promoted scientific studies in the 

colonies and circulated the resultant technical knowledge within the French political and 

economic circles in charge of the colonial administration.64 There is, therefore, scope in the 

concluding section of the paper for a reflection on the exchange of meteorological knowledge 

between East and West, and for a discussion of the role that international bodies, such as the 

IMO Commission for Agricultural Meteorology, had in this exchange. 

                                                 

61 Aso, Rubber and the Making of Vietnam. 

62 Carton, La météorologie et ses applications dans les pays tropicaux. 

63 Michitake Aso, ‘How Nature Works: Experts, Ecology, and Rubber Plantations in Colonial Southeast Asia, 1919–1939,” in 

Comparing Apples, Oranges, and Cotton: Environmental Histories of the Plantations, ed. Frank Uekotter (New York: Campus 

Verlag, 2014). 

64 Bonneuil, Des savants pour l’Empire, chapter II. 



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Fig. 2.  Map displaying meteorological and climatological stations in French Indochina in 1930. The 

image is extracted from a digitised copy of Paul Carton, La météorologie agricole en Indochine 

(Hanoi: Imprimerie d’Extrême-Orient, 1930). (Source: gallica.BnF.fr) 

 

 



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Fig. 3.  Map displaying the network of pluviometric stations in French Indochina in 1930. The image 

is extracted from a digitised copy of Paul Carton, La météorologie agricole en Indochine 

(Hanoi: Imprimerie d’Extrême-Orient, 1930). (Source: gallica.BnF.fr) 

 

 

 

 



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Agro-Meteorological Knowledge Between East and West 

As argued by Fleming, Janković, and Coen, histories of weather and climate must take 

into account both global and local perspectives.65 On the one hand, meteorology, as practiced 

on an international scale by the IMO, can be considered a case of “infrastructural globalism”.66 

On the other hand, though, “surveillance, control, and domination” required meteorological 

and climatological knowledge produced locally, especially in the European colonisation of the 

tropics.67 The coexistence of global and local factors is evident in the networks of knowledge 

exchange built by the IMO Commission for Agricultural Meteorology and in the way 

meteorological and climatological information circulated through these networks. The IMO 

commission’s success as an international body depended on the agro-meteorological work 

done locally by its members and on their willingness to share their knowledge in an 

international context. Without this interplay of global and local knowledge, first-hand 

information on tropical crops would not have reached European scientific circles and 

worldwide observational and experimental schemes in agricultural meteorology would not 

have been established. 

The agro-meteorological service in French Indochina I examined in my paper offers a 

clear example of this interplay of global and local perspectives in meteorology, with particular 

reference to the circulation of weather and climate information between East and West. It is 

true that most of the meteorological instruments employed in Indochina were manufactured in 

France, that the key people who managed the agro-meteorological service were members of 

the French colonial establishment trained in European institutions, and that the service was run 

according to Western standards; yet, it would be misleading to conclude that the exchange of 

agro-meteorological knowledge was one-way only, from Europe to Indochina. To succeed in 

its mission—that is, to support colonial agriculture and in particular the development of large 

and profitable plantations for European companies—Carton’s agro-meteorological service had 

to modify meteorological instruments and make them suitable for tropical conditions. Carton 

also had to adapt Western ideas on agricultural meteorology, developed where weather services 

had been at work for decades and tested only on crops grown in temperate areas, to the 

specificities of a newly colonised region, Indochina, where infrastructures for collecting and 

communicating weather data were still limited and where tropical crops were cultivated. 

In response to the limitations of weather forecasting in Indochina, Carton made 

agricultural ecology an integral part of his agro-meteorological service and shifted the focus 

from preparing weather bulletins, which was not an achievable goal in the recently colonised 

area, to mapping and understanding the local climate. The starting point for Carton’s 

investigations in agricultural ecology were the theories developed by the Italian Girolamo Azzi, 

who studied wheat extensively, but these theories could not be transposed verbatim to the study 

of tropical crops. Carton and his fellow colonial officers had to gather data on the response of 

plant varieties to Indochina’s climate and organise experimental work on tropical crops in 

collaboration with local plantation owners. This local research was a necessary step for 

gathering climatological and microclimatological knowledge which could be useful in the 

successful cultivation of crops profitable for the French colonisers. Yet, Carton’s work did not 

remain confined to the local domain of Indochina. The scientific experience gained from 

                                                 

65 James R. Fleming, Vladimir Janković, and Deborah R. Coen, eds., Intimate Universality: Local and Global Themes in the 

History of Weather and Climate (Sagamore Beach: Science History Publications, 2006). 

66 Edwards, “Meteorology as Infrastructural Globalism.” 

67 Fleming, Janković, and Coen, Intimate Universality, xi. 



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tropical crops flowed back to Europe through Carton’s extensive correspondence with the 

presidents of the IMO commission and enabled the commission to include tropical crops in its 

debates. Moreover, as pointed out before, Carton’s research on agricultural ecology was 

brought to the attention of French agronomists and meteorologists, through associations like 

the ACS. It would be simplistic, therefore, to envision the IMO Commission for Agricultural 

Meteorology as an organisation interested only in exporting knowledge from Europe to its 

colonies. The commission was also eager to learn from the work done by the non-European 

members and recognised that tropical crops were an essential part of the global economy in the 

first half of the twentieth century.  

It would be very interesting to extend the present investigation beyond Indochina and 

examine how the work of the IMO Commission for Agricultural Meteorology benefitted from 

the contributions of other members based outside of Europe, especially in the East. The 

Japanese meteorologist Takematsu Okada was a member of the IMO commission for several 

years and, in one case, he attended a meeting of the commission in person. The Dutch 

meteorologist Cornelis Braak, the commission’s last president before World War II, had 

worked in the Dutch East Indies before taking up a position at the Royal Meteorological 

Observatory in de Bilt. Unfortunately, neither Okada nor Braak were as keen correspondents 

as Carton. Their contributions to the IMO commission cannot be reconstructed in detail from 

the Proceedings that today are the only resource available to understand how the organisation 

built its networks of knowledge exchange.68 Nor there are specific studies on agricultural 

meteorology in the East that can be accessed by an international audience and can be connected 

to the information available on the IMO commission. One can only hope that more case studies 

on the development of meteorology and climatology and their practical applications outside of 

Europe and the United States will increase in coming years, inspired by the same agenda that 

has motivated this special issue. Hand-in-hand with the increased interest in writing global 

histories, the historiography of meteorology, and of the atmospheric sciences more generally, 

can significantly grow and develop. 

 

 

 

Acknowledgments 

Research for this paper was sponsored by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (Project No. 

321660352). I thank the library of the World Meteorological Organization and the Swedish 

Meteorological and Hydrographic Office for making available copies of the proceedings of the 

IMO Commission for Agricultural Meteorology. A preliminary draft of this article was 

presented at the conference of the European Society for the History of Science (London, 

September 2018). I thank the conference participants for the helpful suggestions received there. 

 

                                                 

68 The World Meteorological Organisation does not have any archival holdings related to the work of the IMO Commission 

for Agricultural Meteorology. Occasionally, correspondence related to the commission emerges among the private papers of 

its members (e.g. the R. A. Fisher Papers held in the archives of Rothamsted Research, ref. STATS 6.3), but this 

correspondence is fragmentary and does not allow us to systematically reconstruct the IMO commission’s work. 


