Eugen Schwiedland, “H. Pigeonneau” (1892)

Eugen Schwiedland’s obituary commemorates Henri Pigeonneau as a historian of French commerce whose death interrupted an ambitious scholarly undertaking and deprived the journal of a valued collaborator. Moving from Pigeonneau’s own apprehensions about completing his work to his final publications and intellectual affiliations, the notice makes unfinished scholarship the measure of the loss.

Schwiedland opens with a retrospective passage from the preface to Pigeonneau’s Histoire du Commerce de la France, written eight years earlier:

« Me sera-t-il donné de pousser plus loin ces études et d'entrer dans la période contemporaine? Je l'ignore : ce n'est pas après vingt-huit ans de professorat qu'on a le droit de nourrir de trop vastes pensées et des espérances trop lointaines. »

English translation: "Will it be given to me to carry these studies further and to enter upon the contemporary period? I do not know: it is not after twenty-eight years of professorship that one has the right to nourish thoughts too vast and hopes too distant."

The quotation frames the death as the fulfilment of a fear already present in the historian’s project. Schwiedland emphasizes the interest of foreign economists awaiting the third volume, then introduces private correspondence to show how illness impeded its publication. In November 1891, Pigeonneau reported:

« J'espérais pouvoir publier mon 3$^{e}$ volume au mois de janvier 1892 : malheureusement ma santé fort altérée ne m'a pas permis de travailler depuis le mois de juillet et, bien que j'aille mieux depuis une quinzaine, je n'espère plus être imprimé avant mars ou avril. »

English translation: "I hoped to be able to publish my 3rd volume in the month of January 1892: unfortunately my much impaired health has not allowed me to work since the month of July, and, although I have been better for the last fortnight, I no longer hope to be in print before March or April."

The correspondence also reveals Pigeonneau’s conception of historical writing. Although he possessed extensive documents and notes on wholesale and retail trade, he had deliberately limited their inclusion in his general history. Schwiedland thereby presents scholarly restraint alongside documentary abundance: the historian distinguished the explanatory scope of a general work from the specialized detail appropriate to a separate study.

A survey of recent publications broadens the portrait beyond the unfinished history. Pigeonneau’s subjects ranged from foreign commerce and agricultural regions to seventeenth-century economic conditions, secondary education, colonial questions, and trading companies. This record of activity culminates poignantly in a study whose proofs he could not revise. Schwiedland believes volumes III and IV should be complete and further materials remain among the papers, but leaves responsibility for posthumous publication explicitly unresolved.

The conclusion turns from scholarly achievement to intellectual allegiance. Pigeonneau’s effective support for the journal is associated with his criticism of doctrinaire economists who neglected facts and, conversely, of Chartists who neglected ideas. The obituary thus values a historical economics attentive to both evidence and conceptual interpretation. Its final appeal makes remembrance a responsibility of the “Nouvelle École”:

Nous espérons que la Nouvelle École lui gardera les souvenirs de haute estime qu'il a mérités d'elle à maints égards.

English translation: We hope that the New School will preserve for him the memories of high esteem which he has deserved of it in many respects.

The notice’s significance lies in this conjunction of personal testimony, concern for an unpublished legacy, and a concise statement of the scholarly commitments through which Schwiedland understood Pigeonneau’s contribution.