Robert Fox's The Savant and the State is a survey of the central place held by science in the political turbulence of nineteenth-century France. Covering the period from 1814 to 1914, Fox's work explicates the ‘public face’ of science and its entanglement with politics during the evolution of the French state. Fox's previous work on this subject has highlighted for readers the importance of patronage, state support and institutions for the cultivation of French scientific thought, but with this new volume Fox inverts this relationship by asking how science assisted the state, as it became increasingly bureaucratic and centralized over the course of the century. Fox declares in the introduction that this is a book concerned not with innovation and discovery, but with science's emergent prominence in French society and the individuals and institutions that attempted to define its role in society. Yet there is still an abundance of technical information and knowledge presented; accounts of innovation and scientific discourse are given when relevant to their use as tools in public debate. For example, rather than recounting debates surrounding Darwinism and spontaneous generation, whose technical and ideological details have been thoroughly examined in the secondary literature, Fox instead tells us about their implications for secularism and use in a political context, even when the authors of the work attempted to avoid such discussions.

Three key themes are highlighted explicitly in the introduction, which rather modestly summarizes the rich thematic work found in the volume. The first of these is science's role in the increased levels of bureaucracy in state administration and the utilization of bureaucracy as a tool for centralization by state officials. The second theme is the realization of the benefit to national interests of science education and research, and the following reform of educational systems across France. And the final explicitly mentioned theme is the increased eminence of philosophy directly inspired by the sciences, and its use in oppositional arguments against conservative religious conviction. However, the prevailing trend of the work, drawing on these three themes, is the tension between Paris and the provinces over the course of the century and the author's conviction that the vitality of French science was in absolutely no way limited to the capital. Fox carries out an assault on the common misinterpretation, sometimes cultivated by French scientists themselves, that the activities of Paris-based academics and administrators are representative of the entire nation. By bringing together accounts of both provincial savants and those endorsed by the state, Fox manages to tease out interactions between scientists and politicians both as individuals and collectively, with particular regard to educational reform, scientific careers, and the structure of the scientific community, across the chronology and geography of nineteenth-century France. An additional key argument found in the work is a challenge to declinist accounts of French science in this period, suggesting that historians have believed too much in the convictions of scientists themselves, particularly after French defeat in the Franco-Prussian war of 1870, especially as announcements of French decline were often made by savants so as to garner more resources. Fox suggests that in order to fully understand the status of French science we must first endeavour to plot the nuanced trajectories of emerging disciplines before we can draw such holistic conclusions.

All these thematic statements are supported by an impressively detailed and diverse collection of examples. The Savant and the State is a skilful balance between speculative and thought-provoking thematic work and accounts of the specific, the confined and the material. Biographical accounts of the main actors and their political and intellectual desires punctuate the work and render Fox's thematic conclusions entirely believable. There is an insightful account of the life and work of Auguste Comte, on whom the author places responsibility for the positivism that affects the public nature of science for the rest of the century. Fox tells us of the difficulties Comte had in penetrating Parisian circles, and the resulting development of his positivist thinking, as well as the significant role his student Emile Littré, who founded the Positivist Review in 1867, had on raising Comte's work to the notice of other mid-century philosophers concerned with issues of modernity and liberalism. The use of contemporary views of scientists, politicians and critics exhibits effectively the plurality of sentiment towards science throughout the century and further demonstrates the importance of the local. Specific times, places and contexts are essential to the reconstruction of the different interactions of state officials and savants.

The concluding argument of Fox's work is that ‘science mattered’ and had a ‘constantly prominent place in French public debate’ (p. 274). Further, Fox tentatively suggests that this is true of France more than of other European states and calls for extensive comparative study. Yet the statement ‘it mattered more in France than elsewhere’ (p. 274) is perhaps somewhat misleading and introduces the relatively unhelpful category of ‘more’ for international comparisons. The difference between the ways in which nineteenth-century European states became increasingly supportive of scientific activity, and the mechanisms by which these changes in support and management took place, would likely be a more illuminating comparison than attempting to simply assess whether science penetrated politics in France ‘more’ or to a deeper level than in other states. Fox is correct in his argument that science developed in distinct ways in different national contexts and this justifies his focus on France alone. Yet he also successfully avoids the potential danger of becoming too inwardly focused during a period that saw the steady rise of international scientific communication and cooperation. Fox convincingly makes comparisons with Britain and Germany to demonstrate the importance of national pride for the cultivation of the sciences. French reaction to the automation of the British textile industry and the advancement of steam power are particularly well assessed.

Finally, the book engages with the difficulty of measuring success for science in nineteenth-century France and, to answer this question fully, Fox again advises that we must turn to international comparison. The number of Nobel Prizes is suggested as indicative of success for France, but perhaps if we possessed equally well-researched and insightful books on nineteenth-century Britain and Germany we would be able to answer many of the important questions raised in this brilliant and well-researched volume.