Autograph manuscript.
Autograph manuscript notes on the languages of Oceania.

At sea, in Oceania? c. 1840.

Four pages of closely written manuscript notes, large folio, with erasures and corrections.

Studying Aboriginal & Oceanic languages on board Dumont d'Urville's Astrolabe

A fascinating manuscript relating to the ethnography of Oceania, written by the second-in-command on board Dumont d'Urville's flagship the Astrolabe, Gaston de Rocquemaurel, showing him closely studying the languages of the Malay peninsula, Australia and the Pacific.

A fascinating manuscript relating to the ethnography of Oceania, written by the second-in-command on board Dumont d'Urville's flagship the Astrolabe, Gaston de Rocquemaurel, showing him closely studying the languages of the Malay peninsula, Australia and the Pacific.

It is most uncommon to have such primary source material which reveals the raw research being done during a voyage of exploration, especially in terms of their interactions with local peoples. The internal evidence of the manuscript confirms that it must have been written around 1840, at the time when Dumont d'Urville was sailing in Australian waters, which is why it relies on books which reference the pioneering work of voyagers including Freycinet, Duperrey and Bory de St. Vincent.

Rocquemaurel (1804-1878) was born in a small town near Toulouse but went to Paris to learn science, his most famous teacher being François Arago, who would become one of his more influential patrons. Although he always dreamt of being appointed to a voyage of exploration, actively petitioning to join Dumont d'Urville's first voyage in 1826, he was destined to spend the first decade of his career in the Mediterranean. Only a chance connection with the naval officer Charles Jacquinot finally got him an appointment to the Astrolabe in 1837.

On board the Astrolabe Dumont d'Urville and Rocquemaurel were well matched, not least because both were graduates of the École polytechnique with a taste for scientific research. There is clear evidence that Dumont d'Urville utilised his second officer's obvious ability to review and present material on subjects ranging from the transportation of convicts to the formal study of ethnography. His reports were good enough that a significant, albeit still unquantified amount was later printed in the official account.

The manuscript shows Rocquemaurel taking extensive notes from two works by the important writer Balbi (see catalogue no. 25), who was at the forefront of a more nuanced ethnographic approach to the study of human history and geography, being reliant on language rather than comparative anatomy. Balbi's work was not simply theoretical, his discussions being openly derived from his correspondence with voyagers including Freycinet, Gaimard, Lesson and Blosseville. In this sense, the manuscript also gives an intriguing insight into the extensive travelling library carried on board the Astrolabe, not least that Dumont d'Urville, who is believed to have personally known Balbi, certainly had both of his relevant books on the subject: the Atlas and Abrégé de géographie (1834 edition) were later recorded in his private library (Duyker). Rocquemaurel was also taking notes from a third work, by the Baudin voyage veteran Bory de St. Vincent, whose proposed division of the peoples of the world into no fewer than 15 different races was widely influential in contemporary France.

Without doubt the most significant aspect of the manuscript is that Rocquemaurel agreed with Balbi that language was indeed the key to ethnographic work, being the most enduring method of classification and the true characteristic that distinguishes one nation from another. ("La classification ethnographique, ou la division des habitants de la Terre d'après leur langue paraît être la classification la plus durable qu'on puisse faire du genre humain. La langue est le véritable trait caractéristique qui distingue une nation d'une autre"). This conclusion is of central importance because while ethnography was one of the fundamental projects undertaken by Dumont d'Urville, the commander, in his own writings on the voyage, hewed to a more anatomical – indeed phrenological – model (best seen in the plates of the scientific volumes of his account).

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During the later 1840s Rocquemaurel became ensnared in the diplomatic wrangling that marked France at a time of great political upheaval, his abilities as a writer actually proving to be something of a double-edged sword, as the reports he wrote for the French Ministry of the Marine were so accomplished that he found it hard to be seconded to actual vessels. He was finally given his own command in 1850, voyaging to Korea and Japan in command of La Capricieuse to follow up on the coastal explorations of La Pérouse, Broughton and Krusenstern. As his biographer Zanco has written, he was the last commander of any French scientific voyage in the age of sail, his ships looking wildly out-of-date when he finally returned to Brest in 1854, at a time when the harbour was full of steamships being sent to the Crimea.

Rocquemaurel's library, including both books and manuscripts, was known to be substantially intact until around 1970, when it was sold by a Parisian dealer. In recent years a handful of important manuscripts particularly relating to his life as a voyager have circulated, all of which appear to derive from this original sale. The present manuscript has been in a private collection in France for several decades and is now sold with a full export licence.

Contents

They begin with a division of Oceania according to Balbi: « 1. Océanie occidentale ou Malaisie, qui comprend tout l'archipel indien proprement dit. 2. Océanie centrale ou Australie, formée du continent austral avec ses dépendances. 3. Océanie orientale ou Polynésie qui comprend les archipels et les îles disséminées sur le vaste océan Pacifique » ("1. Western Oceania or Malaysia, which includes the entire Indian archipelago proper. 2. Central Oceania or Australia, formed by the southern continent with its dependencies. 3. Eastern Oceania or Polynesia which includes the archipelagos and the islands scattered over the vast Pacific Ocean "). There follow considerations on Malay towns, the dimensions of the terrestrial globe; land area, population and human races. On this last point, Rocquemaurel considers that the existence of man is « une et indivisible » "one and indivisible", and that the number of species that we wanted to attribute to him is unjustified, since races are in fact only simple varieties.. He then gives a classification of human races based on physical characteristics, quotes the naturalist Bory de Saint-Vincent who counted 15 races, mentions Balbi who thought these classifications incomplete, then considers another classification based on the distinction between civilized peoples and savage peoples ("barbares"), but finds this unsatisfactory… « La classification ethnographique, ou la division des habitants de la Terre d'après leur langue paraît être la classification la plus durable qu'on puisse faire du genre humain. La langue est le véritable trait caractéristique qui distingue une nation d'une autre » "The ethnographic classification, or the division of the inhabitants of the Earth according to their language appears to be the most durable classification which one can make of the human race. Language is the real characteristic trait that distinguishes one nation from another "… Rocquemaurel then lists the European and Oceanic languages, divided respectively into 6 and 2 families. Etc.

This manuscript is probably related to the Voyage au Pole Sud in which Rocquemaurel participated as second to Dumont d'Urville on the Astrolabe (1837-1840).

The notes begin with a division of Oceania according to Balbi: "1. Océanie occidentale ou Malaisie, qui comprend tout l'archipel indien proprement dit. 2. Océanie centrale ou Australie, formée du continent austral avec ses dépendances. 3. Océanie orientale ou Polynésie qui comprend les archipels et les îles disséminées sur le vaste océan Pacifique" ("1. Western Oceania or Malaysia, which includes the entire Indian archipelago proper. 2. Central Oceania or Australia, formed by the southern continent with its dependencies. 3. Eastern Oceania or Polynesia which includes the archipelagos and the islands scattered over the vast Pacific Ocean").

There follow considerations on Malay towns, the dimensions of the terrestrial globe; land area, population and human races. On this last point, Rocquemaurel considers that the existence of man is "une et indivisible " "one and indivisible", and that the number of species that we want to attribute to him is unjustified, since races are in fact only simple varieties.

He then gives a classification of human races based on physical characteristics, quotes the naturalist Bory de Saint-Vincent who counted 15 races, mentions Balbi who thought these classifications incomplete, then considers another classification based on the distinction between civilized peoples and savage peoples ("barbares"), but finds this unsatisfactory… "La classification ethnographique, ou la division des habitants de la Terre d'après leur langue paraît être la classification la plus durable qu'on puisse faire du genre humain. La langue est le véritable trait caractéristique qui distingue une nation d'une autre" "The ethnographic classification, or the division of the inhabitants of the Earth according to their language appears to be the most durable classification which one can make of the human race. Language is the real characteristic trait that distinguishes one nation from another"… Rocquemaurel then lists the European and Oceanic languages, divided respectively into 6 and 2 families etc.

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Edward Duyker, 'An Explorer's Books' (2016); Edward Duyker, Dumont d'Urville (2014); Jean­Philippe Zanco, L'héritage oublié de Dumont d'Urville et des explorateurs du Pacifique: les voyages de Gaston de Rocquemaurel, 1837-1854 (2008).

Condition Report: Browning on the edges of the first page, generally in good original state.

Ref: #5000587

Condition Report