In 1781, Guillares-Thomas Raynal (1713-1796), former director of the ‘Mercure de France’ and one of the best-known members of the Republic of Letters, exile from Paris to evade the decree of the Parliament (25 May) which wanted his imprisonment. It will only return to France in 1784 and Paris only in 1790. What attracted her from Parliament’s rabies? The Paris Court had reached four volumes which had just appeared under the name of Raynal: the political and philosophical history of establishing and trading Europeans in the two Indes. This work, famous at the time, is now the subject of a major critical edition – the first ever made. This recent editorial company takes up an important moment in France’s intellectual life of Ancien Régime and the flow of information not only on a European but global scale. The history of the two Indes (as it was called at the time and as we will call it here) was indeed a remarkable episode in many respects: it had a huge commercial success and led to a national and international debate affecting not only Europe but also the Americas. Its dissemination is due, on the one hand, to the advertising strategies implemented by Raynal and its publishers, but also to the topical nature of the subject under consideration: the colonial expansion and development of foreign trade decided on the wealth of many citizens (administrators, traders, engineers, ratings) and state finances; the geographical and anthropological discoveries aroused the curiosity of the public and many controversy around previously unknown peoples and civilisations.