Nicolas-Joseph Thiéry de Menonville

author

Nicolas-Joseph Thiéry de Menonville

1739–1780

An adventurous French botanist and lawyer, he is best remembered for a daring journey into Mexico to study—and secretly carry away—the cochineal insect used to make a brilliant scarlet dye. His strange, high-stakes mission made him a small but memorable figure in the history of science, trade, and empire.

1 Audiobook

Memoria sobre a cultura da Urumbeba e sobre criação da Cochonilha

Memoria sobre a cultura da Urumbeba e sobre criação da Cochonilha

by Claude-Louis Berthollet, Nicolas-Joseph Thiéry de Menonville, José Mariano da Conceição Velloso

About the author

Born in Saint-Mihiel in 1739, Nicolas-Joseph Thiéry de Menonville trained as a lawyer and served as an avocat at the Parlement of Paris. He later turned his attention to botany and economic plants, bringing a practical, curious mindset to the natural world.

He is most famous for a risky expedition to Mexico in the 1770s to obtain cochineal, the tiny insect prized for producing a vivid red dye that was enormously valuable in global trade. Traveling without proper authorization, he studied the insect and the nopal cactus on which it lived, then carried specimens out of Spanish territory—an episode often described today as an early act of biopiracy.

Menonville died in 1780 in Port-au-Prince, in Saint-Domingue. His account of cochineal cultivation was published after his death and helped preserve the story of a botanist whose work sat at the crossroads of science, commerce, and colonial ambition.