French Voyages Research Articles

Dwarf emus from Baudin's voyage (1800–1804): an overlooked engraving by Nicolas Huet (1770–1830)

The French voyage of exploration to New Holland (Australia) between 1800 and 1804, commanded by Nicolas Baudin (1754–1803), made substantial natural history collections, notably capturing dwarf emus from the two distinct populations on King Island (Île King) in Bass Strait (December 1802) and Kangaroo Island (Île Decrès) (January 1803). Two of these emus survived their voyage to France, were housed briefly at the Empress Josephine's menagerie at Malmaison, and then the zoological park of the Jardin des Plantes in Paris. Both died in 1822. With the wild populations on both islands exterminated soon after Baudin's visit, two watercolours, one by Charles-Alexandre Lesueur (1778–1846) and one by Léon de Wailly ( fl. 1801–1824), have been central to the history of the dwarf emus. However, an important contemporary engraving by Nicolas Huet (1770–1830) depicting the two surviving emus in captivity has been overlooked. This essay explores the history of the images of the now extinct dwarf emus, as well as the production and significance of Huet's engraving.

Jean Paulmier, Gonneville and Utopia: The Making and Unmaking of a Myth

The first mention of Gonneville’s land occurs in Abbé Jean Paulmier’s Mémoires of 1664 petitioning the Pope to approve a Christian mission to the as yet undiscovered Terres australes. Central to Paulmier’s argument was the extract from a document purporting to be the travel account of a sixteenth-century navigator, Gonneville. The extract details how the unknown land was discovered after the navigator’s ship L’Espoir had lost its way and landed in the fabled Terres australes, south-east of the Cape of Good Hope. His utopian account of the unknown land played an important role in French voyages of discovery during the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. After Cook’s refutation of the existence of a Great South Land, Gonneville’s land was identified in the nineteenth century as being in Brazil. Recent scholarship, however, has revealed that Gonneville and his story were probably invented by Paulmier. This article examines how and why the Gonneville story became part of the history of French exploration, then details the elements which led to its being discredited.

Matthew Flinders through French Eyes: Nicolas Baudin’s Lessons from Encounter Bay

ABSTRACTThe encounter between Nicolas Baudin and Matthew Flinders off the south coast of New Holland in April 1802 has attracted considerable attention. For many, it has come to symbolise the triumph of the spirit of international scientific cooperation over national rivalries and personal ambitions. Scholarly analysis of the complexities of the encounter moment itself has, however, served to modify this idealised image. The injustice subsequently done to Flinders by François Péron and Louis de Freycinet, who failed to acknowledge his discoveries on this coast in the published account of the French voyage, has also generated much discussion. The impact of the encounter on Baudin and his men, on the other hand, has not been subjected to the same scrutiny. Through a close examination of the archival documentation, this essay offers the French perspective on Matthew Flinders and highlights the ramifications for the Baudin expedition of this fateful meeting with him.

Translation, Plagiarism and Amplification in Mentaberry's Impresiones de un viaje a la China

Adolfo de Mentaberry's 1876 book Impresiones de un viaje a la China is, in large part, an uncredited translation of the China section of Count Ludovic de Beauvoir's 1867–1872 French work Voyage autour du monde: Australie, Java, Siam, Canton, Pekin, Yeddo, San Francisco. However, Mentaberry inserts frequent additions into his translation of de Beauvoir's text. Amplification, or the adding to or changing of material in order to alter the emphasis or significance of someone else's work, was an acceptable practice during the Romantic period and was not considered culpable plagiarism. The sections of Impresiones that are direct translations serve to disseminate information not otherwise accessible to the general public. However, because of his amplifications on the goals and difficulties of the Spanish foreign mission in the text, there is a narrative voice independent of de Beauvoir's, and Impresiones goes beyond the scope of uncredited translation.

Dispersion and Distortions in the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade

This paper documents the heterogeneity across voyages during the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Output dispersion is highest across Portuguese voyages, lower across French voyages, and lowest across British voyages. We use a structural approach to identify market distortions from wedges in first order conditions. The dispersion in market distortions is highest for Portuguese voyages, followed by French and British. We then calculate the share of output dispersion due to the dispersion in market distortions. Dispersion in market distortions accounts for as much as 17% of the dispersion in output. Dispersion in TFP accounts for the largest share of dispersion in output.

Sailing the Modern Episteme

The invention of the Mediterranean as a coherent analytical concept dates back to early nineteenth-century Europe, just as the new academic disciplines of history, geography, and Orientalism were being institutionalized, amid the wider transformation of the order of words and things into what Michel Foucault termed the “modern episteme.” This is also the period when Egyptian scholar al-Ṭahṭāwī spent about five years in Paris as the spiritual guide of a mission of students sent by the Ottoman governor Meḥmed ʿAlī to train in the new sciences, before returning to Egypt to play a central role in its intellectual life for the next forty years. Wick’s article explores the appearance of the new disciplines and concepts of the European Modern in the works of al-Ṭahṭāwī (notably, but not solely, the famous account of his French voyage) with special attention given to the place of the sea in general and the Mediterranean in particular.

Marc Lescarbot Reads Jacques Cartier: Colonial History in the Service of Propaganda

Marc Lescarbot Reads Jacques Cartier: Colonial History in the Service of Propaganda Carla Zecher The Newberry Library The parliamentary lawyer Marc Lescarbot (ca. 1570-1641) lived at the tiny French settlement of Port-Royal in Acadia (present-day Annapolis, Nova Scotia) for 13 months, beginning in July 1606.1 The colony's commander, Jean de Biencourt, sieur de Poutrincourt, had invited Lescarbot to join the 1606 expedition as its chronicler. Poutrincourt, an impoverished Catholic nobleman and former soldier, hoped to re-make his family's fortune overseas. Lescarbot, a bachelor in his mid-thirties, disillusioned with corruption in Parliament, was pleased to escape Paris and embark on a colonial adventure.2 Funding for Port-Royal was provided by the Protestant merchant Pierre Du Gua de Monts, whom king Henri IV had named his lieutenant general for the "païs et territoires de la Cadie" in 1603, at the same time granting him a monopoly over the Canadian fur trade.3 During the summer of 1606, however, while Poutrincourt's group of new colonists was settling in at Port-Royal, Du Gua and his business associates suffered heavy losses in a skirmish with merchants from Amsterdam in the St. Lawrence valley. As a result, Du Gua's party disbanded, Henri IV revoked the fur trade monopoly, and the colonists were repatriated in September 1607. Back in Paris, Lescarbot amply fulfilled his duties as chronicler by drafting his remarkable Histoire de la Nouvelle France, an 888-page book printed in February 1609. Du Gua having now ceded the abandoned property at Port-Royal to Poutrincourt, the latter hoped to persuade the king to reinstate the colony, and Lescarbot's book therefore took on a promotional as well as a documentary function. The Histoire de la Nouvelle France represents an early example of what would soon become the standard French colonial handbook for the Americas: a work in two or three volumes, one devoted to the author's personal travel narrative, the other(s) presenting an ethnography and/or a natural history. Lescarbot's particular innovation was to combine this genre with another one, already favored in the later sixteenth century: the travel anthology. The first book of the Histoire presents a compilation of historical narratives of the sixteenth-century French voyages to Florida and Brazil. The Canadian voyages of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries follow, in the second book, culminating with Lescarbot's account of his year in Acadia. Book three presents an extensive ethnography of the Indians of North and South America. [End Page 107] Lastly, Lescarbot appended to the volume a 66-page collection of his own poetry titled Les Muses de la Nouvelle France, much of which he had composed in Acadia—what some have called the first text of Canadian literature.4 Throughout the 400 years since the first printing of the Histoire de la Nouvelle France, the travel anthology that opens the volume has consistently attracted less attention than the later sections. Translators, editors, historians, and literary scholars have, not surprisingly, gravitated to the more original material contained in the work: the account of the Acadia colony, the ethnography, and the poetry. They have also focused on the third edition of the Histoire (1617), which is the most comprehensive of the three, since Lescarbot's practice was to add material to successive editions, replacing or updating dedicatory epistles and inserting new chapters. This custom has tended to obscure the fact that Lescarbot did make revisions to the anthology portion of his book for the second edition—specifically, in the section devoted to the narratives of the sixteenth-century explorer Jacques Cartier, a historical figure whom Lescarbot particularly wished to highlight, as a forerunner to Poutrincourt, for the purpose of promoting the Acadia colony to Henri IV. The revisions were necessitated by the acquisition of new information regarding Cartier's voyages to Canada, and in some respects they weakened Lescarbot's initial portrayal of Cartier as a hero...

Slippery Word, Ambiguous Praxis: ‘Race’ and Late-18th-Century Voyagers in Oceania

This paper traces the presence, absence, and shifting connotations of the term ‘race’ and the idea of human classification in representations of indigenous Oceanian people by navigators, naturalists and artists on 18th-century British and French voyages. These ambiguous usages signified hardening European attitudes to human difference, as the holistic, ‘environmentalist’ explanations of the natural history of man lost ground to the differentiating physicalism of the new sciences of biology and physical anthropology. However, by correlating the generation of ideas with particular embodied encounters, I question the presumption that voyagers’ representations of indigenous people were entirely determined by preconceptions derived from received knowledge and prevailing discourses. I suggest instead that indigenous behaviour and demeanour left latent countersigns in the language, tone and content of such travel literature and art — on which the emergent metropolitan science of man drew heavily to justify its deductions.

Christine A. Hemming, The Art of the French Voyages to New Zealand. 1769-1846

Christine A. Hemming, The Art of the French Voyages to New Zealand. 1769-1846

Tahiti: the ripples of a myth on the shores of the imagination

Influenced by Henri Lefebvre's ideas about the production of space as a continually evolving dialogic process, I trace the long post‐contact history of “Tahiti” as an entangled place where the production and product are continually intertwined. I examine more than two hundred years of historical twists and turns that result in a dialogic process of place making. Tahiti is generated when the imaginary place collides with the material existence, each reflecting and recasting the other. This intertwined history includes 18th‐century French imperialist philosophies and voyages of exploration; 19th‐century colonial intervention, romantic novels and Gauguin's colourful canvases; and 20th‐century French chocolates, Hollywood movies, French nuclear testing, postcards and more.

Enlightenment and Exploration in the North Pacific, 1741-1805

Saluting an era of adventure and knowledge seeking, fifteen original essays consider the motivations of European explorers of the Pacific, the science and technology of 18th-century exploration, and the significance of Spanish, French, and British voyages. Among the topics discussed are the quest by enlightenment scientists for new species of plant and animal life, and their fascination with Native cultures; advances in shipbuilding, navigation, medicine, and diet that made extended voyages possible; and the lasting significance of the explorers' collections, artworks, and journals.

Part 1: Chapter 2 Outline History of Geological Research

Useful records of observations perhaps began in 1596 with Barents' voyage and resulting chart. The many expeditions until the middle of the eighteenth century were primarily for whaling with minor additions to the charts. In 1758 A. R. Martin led a Swedish voyage and in 1773 C. J. Phipps commanded a British naval expedition, the first of several, to seek a northeast passage to the Pacific. They penetrated no further than Spitsbergen and made useful observations. At that time and for many years the British Admiralty was concerned with extensive Arctic exploration. The elaborate nature of these expeditions was not so much designed for scientific purposes as for useful employment for enterprising officers, with ships in numbers no longer needed in the period of naval supremacy after 1805. Hydrographic survey was often the principal achievement. In terms of efficiency and Arctic know-how the early whalers such as Scoresby were superior. 1827 may be considered as the year when geological work began, with expeditions from Norway (B. M. Keilhau 1831) and Britain (Capt. Parry, e.g. Horner 1860; Salter 1860). Keilhau, a geologist, visited Edgeoya and Bjornoya. Admiral Parry, Hydrographer of the Navy, wintered on HMS Hecla in Sorgfjorden where further specimens were collected. In 1837 an early Swedish expedition was directed by Loven. Then, 1838 to 1840, the French voyage of La Recherche took place under the Commission Scientifique du Nord (e.g. Robert 1840). Only a selection of the many expeditions in the second half of the century are noted here.

A Note on French and Spanish Voyages to Sierra Leone 1550–1585

Writing in the 1590s about Sierra Leone, André Alvares de Almada, a Cape Verde Islands trader who had probably at one time visited Sierra Leone, commended its peoples for being “unfriendly to the English and French,” not least by fighting John Hawkins—the latter remark obviously a reference to Hawkins' well-known visit in 1567/68. But when did the French visit Sierra Leone? Elsewhere I have cited the evidence for three French voyages to the Sierra Leone estuary in the later 1560s, probably in 1565, 1566, and 1567. I now analyze archive material published in two French works that appeared long ago but are probably little known to Africanists, since both concentrate on voyages to the Americas. The first source calendars items in the registres de tabellionage (notarial registers) of the Normandy port of Honfleur relating to intercontinental voyages, the items being mainly financial agreements made before or after voyages. Dates, names of ships, and destinations are supplied for the period from 1574 to 1621: what proportion of all intercontinental voyages from Honfleur during that period is represented in the registers is uncertain. But in the eleven years between 1574 and 1584, there are recorded 24 voyages to both Guinea and America, the ships proceeding across the Atlantic from Africa. The American destination is usually described as “Indes de Pérou,” meaning the Caribbean. The African destination of 15 named vessels making 19 voyages is “Serlione” or “coste de Serlion,” in 15 instances given singly, otherwise with the addition of “et Guinée,” “et Guinée et coste de Bonnes-Gens,” or “et cap de Vert et coste de Mina.” The remaining voyages were to “Guinée,” to “cap de Vert [Cape Verde, i.e. Senegal],” to “cap des Bonnes-Gens” [Ivory Coast], or to more than one of these.

Baudin in Australian Waters: The Artwork of the French Voyage of Discovery to the Southern Lands 1800-1804.

Baudin's early nineteenth-century voyage to Australia - the seventh French voyage of discovery - is a little-known event in both Australian and French history. His mission was broadly scientific, with twenty-two scientists, ranging from botanists to astronomers, on board. This book reproduces the rare and beautiful illustrations of species that they collected, some of which are now extinct. Many of the illustrations, which are now held in the Lesueur Collection of the Museum d'Historie Naturelle du Havre, have only ever before appeared in scientific journals. The 150 full colour illustrations are introduced by essays which give biographical details of many of the artists whose work is represented, and the scientists who accompanied the expedition. The book also includes a select bibliography, a scientific index, and a general index.

Eighteenth-Century French Voyages to the Northwest Coast of North America

Eighteenth-Century French Voyages to the Northwest Coast of North America

Baudin in Australian waters: the artwork of the French voyage of discovery to the southern lands, 1800-1804

Baudin in Australian waters: the artwork of the French voyage of discovery to the southern lands, 1800-1804

Two Early French Voyages to Sumatra

Two Early French Voyages to Sumatra

Early charts of the Falklands

This paper, presented in two parts, is a review of early charts of exploration and claims of possession by French, Spanish, English and Argentinian settlers prior to the mid-nineteenth century. Part 7 suggests that Portuguese knowledge of a south-west passage to the Pacific existed prior to the “discovery” of a strait by Magellan. The Spanish did not capitalize on this knowledge but after Drake's circumnavigation, several English, Dutch and French voyages produced cartographic record of contact with the Falklands.

A French Voyage to the Far East, 1817-18

A French Voyage to the Far East, 1817-18

A FRENCH VOYAGE TO WEST AFRICA IN 1666–1667

Journal Article A FRENCH VOYAGE TO WEST AFRICA IN 1666–1667 Get access F. SWANZY F. SWANZY Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar African Affairs, Volume VII, Issue XXVI, January 1908, Pages 190–204, https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordjournals.afraf.a099069 Published: 01 January 1908