Background
Louis Antoine de Bougainville was born in Paris on November 12, 1729, and early established a reputation as a mathematician.
(The French entered the Pacific in the late 17th century, ...)
The French entered the Pacific in the late 17th century, but the ocean remained largely a Spanish preserve until British navigators began to cross its vast expanse in the mid 1760s. France's concerns that Britain might establish its superiority in the area, meant they welcomed Louis de Bougainville's voyage of exploration undertaken in 1766-9. After handing over the colony he had established in the Falkland Islands to Spain, he sailed through the still relatively unknown Straits of Magellan into the poorly charted South Pacific. He made a number of discoveries in the south west, but was too late to discover Tahiti, where Samuel Wallis had preceded him by less than a year. Reports on Bougainville's reception there and on life in the island were to create wide interest and controversy in Europe. He then sailed to the Samoan Islands and on to Vanuatu, as far as the Great Barrier Reef, and north towards New Guinea and the Samoan Islands making a number of discoveries and all the while leaving his name to a number of features, the best known of which are the island of Bougainville and the Bougainvillea flower. He returned home by way of the Dutch East Indies and the Indian Ocean. Although Bougainville published an account of his voyage in 1771, his original journal was published only in 1977; the present volume makes the latter text available for the first time in English translation.
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(- La bibliographie de l'auteur - Enumération de ses publi...)
- La bibliographie de l'auteur - Enumération de ses publications - Accompagné du naturaliste Philibert Commerson, de l'ingénieur cartographe Charles Routier de Romainville, de l'astronome Pierre-Antoine Véron et de l'aventurier le prince Charles de Nassau, il part de Nantes, plus précisément de Mindin, le 15 novembre 1766, fait escale dans la rade de Brest d'où il repart le 5 décembre16 pour un voyage autour du monde à bord de la frégate la Boudeuse. Un second bateau, lÉtoile, une flûte (navire de charge), parti de Rochefort le 1er février 1767, le rejoint pour le tour du monde le 13 juin 1767 à Rio de Janeiro après deux rendez-vous manqués aux Malouines et dans l'embouchure du Río de la Plata. Il a embarqué quatre musiciens pour maintenir le moral de ses hommes à bord
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Louis Antoine de Bougainville was born in Paris on November 12, 1729, and early established a reputation as a mathematician.
In early life, he studied law, but soon abandoned the profession. In 1753 he entered the army in the corps of musketeers.
A friend of the philosophe Jean le Rond d'Alembert, Bougainville was elected to the British Royal Society in 1754 in recognition of a work on calculus. He served with distinction as aide-de-camp to Gen. Louis Joseph de Montcalm in Canada during the Seven Years War, assisting in the defense of Quebec. After the war Bougainville-at his own expense-founded a settlement in the Falkland Islands. In 1767, however, he was ordered to surrender the colony to France's ally Spain, which had a prior claim. In return he was given charge of the first official expedition to the Pacific, where he hoped to make discoveries and find an outlet for French expansion. Circumnavigation of the World Aboard the frigate Boudeuse and accompanied by the storeship Étoile, Bougainville sailed from Nantes in November 1766. Rounding the Straits of Magellan, he crossed the Pacific via Tahiti, which he named New Cytheria and which he described in romantic terms. He sailed on to Samoa, which he called the Navigator Group, and to the New Hebrides, which he called the Great Cyclades. From there, moving west, he was turned away from the Australian coast about 100 miles east of Cooktown by dangerous reefs. Bougainville then headed north through the Coral Sea, rounded New Guinea after trouble with the winds, and sailed for home, touching at the Solomons, the Moluccas, and Batavia, and reaching Saint-Malo on March 16, 1769. He thus became the first Frenchman to circumnavigate the globe, and although none of his discoveries was of major importance he gained much useful information and prestige. The lucid narrative which he published in 1771 attracted much attention and strengthened belief in the concept of the "noble savage. "
Rather than return to the army, Bougainville remained in the French navy and fought against the British in the struggle over the American colonies. The major part he played in the Battle of Chesapeake Bay in September 1781 considerably advanced the American cause. His later quarrel with the commander of the French fleet, Adm. de Grasse, however, disillusioned him with the navy, and he retired at the end of the war, returning only briefly after the outbreak of the French Revolution to command the fleet at Brest. As a royalist, Bougainville was out of favor during the Revolutionary period and narrowly escaped execution. Bougainville died on August 31, 1811.
(- La bibliographie de l'auteur - Enumération de ses publi...)
(The French entered the Pacific in the late 17th century, ...)
In 1787, he became a member of the French Academy of Sciences.
An accomplished scholar, he was also a man of action who fought in the Seven Years War, explored the Pacific Ocean, and was the first Frenchman to circumnavigate the world.
He was married in 1781, and had four sons, including Hyacinthe de Bougainville, who all served in the French army or navy.