Insects, dyeing and industry from the Ancien Regime to the First Empire

The Hemipterous parasitic insect of the Kermes oak, a small shrub typical of the Languedoc and Provencal garrigue, the kermes vermilio, was in the Middle Ages and in the modern era an essential raw material to dye textile production scarlet. The weakening of this insect, now endangered all around the Mediterranean, is closely linked to the fate of its host plant. The Kermes oak succumbed to the wave of land clearing launched by the royal administration from 1770 onwards, which continued with the acceleration of the marketing of communal lands during the revolutionary and imperial era. The vermilion kermes became a marginal resource at the end of the 18th century, when colonial trade took a preponderante place in the supply of dye materials. The renewed interest in the vermilion kermes during the Napoleonic era was part of a policy aimed at making the Empire self-sufficient in raw materials to resist the onslaught of its industries by the nation's enemies.