This dissertation explores the history of public prize competitions organized by French scholarly societies (concours aeadémiques) from the 1670s to the 1790s. The central task is to understand the role played by the concours académique in both the cultural and intellectual history of the French Enlightenment, and the political culture of the Old Regime. Based upon an extensive analysis of academic archives held in Paris and the provinces, the author advances three main arguments. First, it is shown that academic prize competitions constituted merely one facet of the contestatory culture that existed in early modernity. The impulse to structure intellectual activities in the form of antagonistic competitions belonged to a deep-rooted cultural model in France (and the West in general). Second, it is argued that the concours académique provided a means for the public, including women and peasants, to participate in a forum of elite intellectual exchange. Moreover, the practice afforded amateur savants a viable pathway into the Republic of Letters. The recognition earned by Jean-Jacques Rousseau via a competition at the Academy of Dijon is only the most well-known example. Third, the author demonstrates that the character of the concours evolved over time, beginning in the seventeenth century as a politically-conservative practice, and transforming in the course of the eighteenth century into a dynamic one, in which conservative views on politics and religion existed alongside more critical and politically-contestatory ideas. Furthermore, it is shown that, once the academies began posing more practical questions, the French monarchy started to involve itself in the concours, essentially using the practice as a means of gathering knowledge from the enlightened public sphere on topics related to public administration, including healthcare and urban planning. In the end, the author concludes (a) that the concours académique offers a means of interpreting the Enlightenment as a set of intellectual practices rooted in critical, public, and participatory exchange, and argues that this particular case study can help revive the cultural history of the Lumières; and (b) that the practice, as a site of political contestation, deserves a place in the history of Old Regime political culture.