Dumont d'Urville: Explorer & Polymath - Couverture rigide

Duyker, Edward

Couverture rigide

ISBN 10 : 0824851390 ISBN 13 : 9780824851392

Editeur : University of Hawai'i Press, 2015

A propos du livre

Présentation de l'éditeur :

Explorer Jules-Sébastien-César Dumont dUrville (1790 1842) is sometimes called Frances Captain Cook. Born less than a year after the beginning of the French Revolution, he lived through turbulent times. He was an erudite polymath: a maritime explorer fascinated by botany, entomology, ethnography and the diverse languages of the world. As a young ensign he was decorated for his pivotal part in Frances acquisition of the famous Vénus de Milo. DUrvilles voyages and writings meshed with an emergent French colonial impulse in the Pacific. In this magnificent biography Edward Duyker reveals that DUrville had secret orders to search for the site for a potential French penal colony in Australia. He also effectively helped to precipitate pre-emptive British settlement on several parts of the Australian coast. DUrville visited New Zealand in 1824, 1827 and 1840. This wide-ranging survey examines his scientific contribution, including the plants and animals he collected, and his conceptualisation of the peoples of the Pacific: it was he who first coined the terms Melanesia and Micronesia. DUrville helped to confirm the fate of the missing French explorer Lapérouse, took Charles X into exile after the Revolution of 1830, and crowned his navigational achievements with two pioneering Antarctic descents. Edward Duyker has used primary documents that have long been overlooked by other historians. He dispels many myths and errors about this daring explorer of the age of sail and offers his readers grand adventure and surprising drama and pathos.

À propos de cette édition

• Éditeur: University of Hawai'i Press
• Date d'édition: 2015
• ISBN 10: 0824851390
• ISBN 13: 9780824851392
• Reliure: Relié
• Nombre de pages: 664