Item #4401784 Voyage autour du Monde, pendant les années 1790, 1791, et 1792… auquel on a joint des recherches sur les Terres Australes de Drake, et un examen critique du voyage de Roggeween…. Charles Pierre Claret de FLEURIEU.
Voyage autour du Monde, pendant les années 1790, 1791, et 1792… auquel on a joint des recherches sur les Terres Australes de Drake, et un examen critique du voyage de Roggeween…
Voyage autour du Monde, pendant les années 1790, 1791, et 1792… auquel on a joint des recherches sur les Terres Australes de Drake, et un examen critique du voyage de Roggeween…
Voyage autour du Monde, pendant les années 1790, 1791, et 1792… auquel on a joint des recherches sur les Terres Australes de Drake, et un examen critique du voyage de Roggeween…

Voyage autour du Monde…
Voyage autour du Monde, pendant les années 1790, 1791, et 1792… auquel on a joint des recherches sur les Terres Australes de Drake, et un examen critique du voyage de Roggeween…

Paris: Courcier, 1809.

Five volumes, octavo, and a quarto atlas; contemporary French quarter calf and papered boards, flat spines banded in gilt with double orange labels, a beautiful set.

The first French commercial voyage to the Northwest coast

Fleurieu's narrative of the voyage of the Solide under the command of Etienne Marchand, the first French commercial voyage to the Northwest coast of America, and the second French circumnavigation (some twenty-five years after Bougainville's). Lada-Mocarski commends this book as "a very important and authoritative work for the history of the Northwest coast".

Fleurieu's narrative of the voyage of the Solide under the command of Etienne Marchand, the first French commercial voyage to the Northwest coast of America, and the second French circumnavigation (some twenty-five years after Bougainville's). Lada-Mocarski commends this book as "a very important and authoritative work for the history of the Northwest coast".

Returning from Bengal in 1788, Marchand had come across the voyager Portlock who told him of the lucrative fur trade between the Northwest coast and China. 'The trading firm of Baux in Marseille underwrote a commercial expedition and purchased and fitted out the copper-sheathed ship Solide, which sailed in December 1790 for the Pacific via Cape Horn. At the Marquesas, Marchand took possession of two islands, Uapou and Nukuhiva (which he named Ile Baux), not knowing of Ingraham's visit on the Hope two months earlier… At the Northwest coast he obtained a large cargo of furs, sailed south to Hawaii, through the Marianas, and reached Macao…This was a successful voyage but a commercial failure. Marchand was unable to sell his furs, and upon his return to France they were impounded by a revolutionary faction and eventually perished. The firm of Baux ultimately lost two-thirds of its capital in the venture…' (Forbes).

Nevertheless, Marchand had proved that in times of peace, the French could compete successfully in the Pacific trade. As Marchand died in 1793, the work was actually written by Count Charles Pierre Fleurieu, himself an explorer. Fleurieu was much more than just an editor here: he put the narrative together from the logbooks of the ship's surgeon Claude Roblet, and Prosper Chanal, the second-in-command. Using these as a foundation he brought together what O'Reilly and Reitman describe as 'un vaste travail de compilation, où les observations géographiques, nautiques, ethnographiques et zoologiques sont confrontées avec celles des voyages espagnols (Mendaña, Quirós), hollandais (Roggeween), anglais et américains (Cook, Ingraham, Roberts, Hergest)…'. As a result the book includes a good account of discoveries along the American coast, from Cortes in 1537 to Malaspina in 1790, including records of Drake, Juan de Fuca, Cook, La Pérouse, Meares, Colnett, Portlock and Dixon. Considerable text is devoted to descriptions of natural history specimens collected en route. The final volume contains a critical analysis of Roggeveen's voyage, and the engraved charts include five of Alaska and the Northwest coast, four of Marquesan interest and one of Hawaii, while the China Sea chart contains important corrections.

The book was published in two versions in Paris in 1798-1800; the octavo format version was reissued in the form offered here, with the simple substitution of a new title-page (Forbes cites a re-issue of the quarto rather than the octavo version, perhaps in error).

Lada-Mocarski, 54 (note); O'Reilly-Reitman, 618 (note); see Dunmore, French Explorers in the Pacific, pp. 342-353, for a discussion of the voyage and its importance.

Price (AUD): $7,200.00

US$4,691.28   Other currencies

Ref: #4401784