Description
Following France’s defeat in the Seven Years' War (1756-63), Louis-Antoine de Bougainville (1729-1811), a soldier with a distinguished military record in Canada, received permission from King Louis XV to undertake France’s first major geographical exploration of the Pacific. In 1766-69 Bougainville became the first Frenchman to circumnavigate the globe. His voyage, meticulously recounted in this book, resulted in several significant scientific contributions, including establishing the precise location of a number of Pacific islands and determining the width of the Pacific Ocean. However, it was Bougainville’s observations of ...