Henri de Graffigny, electroculture and the geneaology of electrical utopias

In 1933, the scientist and popularizer Henri de Graffigny (1863-1934) published a « scientific novel » entitled Electropolis, a utopian fiction set in the Middle East. It depicts the project of a wealthy English industrialist, surrounded by a French inventor, engineers and financiers, who undertake an agricultural revolution thanks to “electroculture”, a new science supposed to boost yields and plant growth. The project consisted of combining solar energy, large dams, new distribution networks and a host of futuristic devices to green the desert at a time of growing European imperialism. This technical utopia of the inter-war period was at the crossroads of the vision of total electrification inaugurated at the end of the 19th century and the growing project to modernise agriculture. It was intended to offer an alternative solution to chemicals, while promising a spectacular increase in agricultural yields. For decades, Henri de Graffigny had been passionate about the benefits that electricity could bring to humanity. Despite the failure and subsequent abandonment of this electric agricultural utopia, it illustrates the weight of alternative visions to the intensive use of oil and the persistence of contemporary electric promises and utopias.