Abstract
On the Ides of March 1777, young German scholar Georg Forster paid a surprise visit to Spanish ambassador Masserano. He had returned from James Cook’s second circumnavigation (1772–1775), where he assisted his father, Johann Reinhold Forster, who joined the journey as Joseph Bank’s replacement. Barely nineteen years of age, young Forster embarked on the trip of a lifetime, collecting and recording the fauna and flora of the Pacific. His intellectual coming-of-age, however, emerged not from plants and animals but from his encounter with the region’s multitude of indigenous cultures. He quickly realized the downside to the voyage, as he witnessed rising hostility between his father and the illustrious British captain.
They must be considered as Discoveries, outcast and abandoned by Spain! And, by adoption, become English, in which Language only (or translation from It) They have been communicated to the world, and in Communication alone! the true Right of Discovery must be grounded.
Alexander Dalrymple,
“The Spanish Pretensions fairly discussed,” 17901
There must be a collection of several relations and original papers of the travels and discoveries made by Spanish captains and pilots. What a service for the public! What enlightenment for our intellectuals! What a just credit to our nation, to lift these honest and precious monuments from the dust and abandon where they currently repose as testaments to the industry, courage, consistency, and expertise of our navigators!
Bernardo de Iriarte, 1768
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Notes
Charles W. J. Withers, “Where was the Atlantic Enlightenment? Questions of Geography,” in Susan Manning and Francis Cogliano, eds, The Atlantic Enlightenment (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2008), 37–60.
Bruno Latour, Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers through Society (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987); and Pandora’s Hope: Essays on the Reality of Science Studies (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999).
For an interesting work that pursues the Enlightenment foundations of the twenty-first century, consult Louis Dupré, The Enlightenment and the Intellectual Foundations of Modern Culture (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004).
Lynn Withey, Voyages of Discovery: Captain Cook and the Exploration of the Pacific (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), 35–36.
Peter C. Mancall, Hakluyt’s Promise: An Elizabethan Obsession for an English America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007).
Withey, Voyages, 35–36; Marshall and Williams, The Great Map, 48–49; and J. C. Beaglehole, The Life of Captain James Cook (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1974), 118–119.
Dorinda Outram, “On Being Perseus: New Knowledge, Dislocation, and Enlightenment Exploration,” in David N. Livingstone and Charles W. J. Withers, eds, Geography and Enlightenment (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), 281–294.
See for instance, José García Oro Martín and Maria José Portela Silva, La Monarquía y los libros en el Siglo de Oro (Alcalá: Universidad de Alcalá, 1999), 79–81.
Marcelin Defourneaux, Jnquisicíon y censura de libros en la España del Siglo XVIII trans. Ignacio Tellachea Indigaras (Madrid: Taurus, 1973).
Horacio Capel, “Geographia y Arte Apodémica en el siglo de los Viajes,” Cuadernos Crìticos de Geografía Humana 9 (1985). Available at: http://www.ub.edu/geocrit/geo56.htm. Capel relates how Spanish readers became increasingly suspicious of Prevost’s writings, especially in connection with the Spanish Americas.
Much has been published on these expeditions. See, for instance, Jorge Ortiz Sotelo, “Expediciones Peruanas a Tahití, siglo XVIII,” Derroteros del Mar del Sur 13 (2005): 95–103; and Mercedes Maroto Camino, Exploring the Explorers, 123–180. These Spanish expeditions feature prominently in the next chapters.
An interesting rendition of Sarmiento’s life can be found in Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa, The History of the Incas. Brian S. Bauer and Vania Smith, eds and trans. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2007).
Bernardo de Iriarte, Viage al estrecho de Magallanes por el Capitan Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa en los años 1579 y 1580 (Madrid: Imprenta Real de la Gazeta, 1768). This Spanish west-to-east survey of the region came as a consequence of Francis Drake’s incursion into the Pacific following 1578.
The French version was translated by J. B. A. Suard, Voyage autour du monde fait en 1764 & 1765 sur le vasseau anglois le Dauphin.. (Paris, Molini, 1767).
Ortega became the first tenured university professor associated with the Royal Botanical Garden in 1774 [Gazeta de Madrid August 24, 1774 (34): 304], later that decade he spent considerable time in Paris and London furthering his knowledge. In 1776, he became a corresponding member of the French Academy of the Sciences [Gazeta de Madrid July 30, 1776 (31): 264]. The next year he became an honorary member of London’s Royal Society [Gazeta de Madrid July 8, 1777 (27): 268]. For a quick overview on Ortega’s life, consult John H. Harvey, “Casimiro Gomez de Ortega (1740–1818): A Link between Spain and Britain,” Garden History 2 (1974), 22–26.
The more detailed monograph of Francisco Javier Puerto Sarmiento, Ciencia de camera, Casimiro Gómez Ortega (1745–1818): El científico cortesano (Madrid: CSIC, 1992).
Celsus Kelly, Calendar of Documents: Spanish Voyages in the South Pacific from Alvaro de Mendaña to Alejandro Malaspina, 1567–1794 (Madrid: Archivo Ibero Americano, 1965), 337–340.
See Don Justo Zaragoza, Historia del descubrimiento de las regions Australes hecho por el general Pedro Fernandez de Quirós, vol. II (Madrid: Imprenta de Manuel G. Hernandez, 1880), 186. See also Martín Fernández de Navarrete’s note dated September 12, 1790 in AHN, Diversos-colleciones, 41, n. 8.
Helen Wallis, ed., Carteret’s Voyage Round the World, 1766–1769 Vol. I (Cambridge: Hakluyt Society, 1965), 54–55.
John Dunmore, ed., The Pacific Journal of Louis-Antoine de Bougainville, 17671768 (London: The Hakluyt Society, 2002), 101.
Fearful that Spanish authorities might take objection to such a harsh assertion, Bougainville softened his critique somewhat in the published version, Louis-Antoine de Bougainville, Voyage autour du monde, par la frégate La Boudeuse et la flûte L’Étoile (Paris: Editions Galimard, 1982 [1771]), 292–293.
James Cook and James King, A Voyage to the Pacific Ocean Undertaken by the Command of His Majesty, for Making Discoveries in the Northern Hemisphere, vol. 1 (London: W. & A. Strahan, 1784), xiii.
Glyndwr Williams, The Expansion of Europe in the Eighteenth Century: Overseas Rivalry, Discovery, and Exploration (New York: Walker and Company, 1966), 89–90.
Commerson’s report has been reprinted in Richard Lansdown, ed., Strangers in the South Seas: The Idea of the Pacific in Western Thought (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2006).
For an excellent summary of Commerson’s biography and his account on Tahiti, consult Harry Liebersohn, The Travelers’ World: Europe to the Pacific (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006), 20–32.
An article that explores the contradictions within Bougainville’s account of Tahiti is Andy Martin’s “The Enlightenment in Paradise: Bougainville, Tahiti, and the Duty of Desire,” Eighteenth-Century Studies 41 (2008): 203–216.
Citation from Glyndwr Williams, “‘To make Discoveries of Countries hitherto Unknown’: The Admiralty and Pacific Exploration in the Eighteenth Century” in Alan Frost and Jane Samson, eds, Pacific Empires: Essays in Honour of Glyndwr Williams (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1999), 23.
John Hawkesworth, An Account of the Voyages undertaken by the order of his present Majesty for making Discoveries in the Southern Hemisphere, and successively performed by Commodore Byron, Captain Wallis, Captain Carterert and Captain Cook … (London: W Strahan and T. Cadell, 1773), i.
J. C. Beaglehole, The Journals of Captain James Cook on His Voyage of Discovery, vol. 1 (Cambridge: Haklyut Society, 1968), ccxliii.
See, for instance, Robert Foulke, The Sea Voyage Narrative (New York: Routledge, 2002), 98–105.
Jonathan Lamb, “Minute Particulars and the Representation of South Pacific Discovery,” Eighteenth-Century Studies 28 (1995): 281–284.
The diary, however, was not published until almost two hundred years later, Wallis, Carteret’s Journal vol. I, 3–4. On a general account of Hawkesworth’s changes consult W. E. Pearson’s, “Hawkesworth’s Alterations,” Journal of Pacific History 7 (1972): 46–72.
Nicholas Thomas, Cook: The Extraordinary Voyages of Captain James Cook (New York: Walker & Co., 2003), 152–159.
Aranda to Grimaldi, April 20, 1774, AHN, Estado 4068. It took more than half a century before Cook’s first voyage appeared in the Spanish language as part of a series on discoveries for young adults in six volumes. Don Santiago de Alvaro de la Peña, Viaje al rededor del mundo hecho en los años de 1768, 69, 70 y 71 por el celebre Santiago Cook Commandante del Navio Real el Endeavour (Madrid: Don Thomas Jordan, 1832).
Georg Forster, A Voyage Round the World in His Britannic Majesty’s Sloop, Resolution, commanded by Capt. James Cook, during the Years 1772, 3, 4, and 5 (London: B White, J. Robson, and P. Elmsly, 1777), xii.
The annotated edition by Nicholas Thomas and Oliver Bierhof A Voyage Around the World (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1999) captures well the original intent of the German author.
Rainer F. Buschmann, “Oceanic Carvings and Germanic Cravings: German ethnographic frontiers and imperial visions in the Pacific, 1870–1914,” The Journal of Pacific History 42 (2007): 299–315.
Juan de Guzman Mendoza note to Masserano, February 15, 1776, and Grimaldi to Galvez March 20, 1776, reprinted in Rodrigue Lévesque, ed., History of Micronesia: A Collection of Source Documents vol. 16: The Malaspina Expedition (1773–1795) (Gatineau, Québec, Lévesque Publications, 2000), 121–124.
J ames Cook and James King, A Voyage to the Pacific Ocean undertaken by command of his Majesty For Making Discoveries in the Northern Hemisphere … (1784), vol. I, v-vi.
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© 2014 Rainer F. Buschmann
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Buschmann, R.F. (2014). On Narrating the Pacific. In: Iberian Visions of the Pacific Ocean, 1507–1899. Palgrave Studies in Pacific History. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137304711_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137304711_4
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