Sandhya Patel

The publication of key voyaging manuscripts has contributed to the flourishing of enduring and prolific worldwide scholarship across numerous fields. These navigators and their texts were instrumental in spurring on further exploration, annexation and ultimately colonisation of the pacific territories in the space of only a few decades. This series will present new sources and primary texts in English, paving the way for postcolonial critical approaches in which the reporting, writing, rewriting and translating of Empire and the ‘Other’ takes precedence over the safeguarding of master narratives. Each of the volumes contains an introduction that sets out the context in which these voyages took place and extensive annotations clarify and explain the original texts. The first volume makes available Samuel Wallis’ logs of the Dolphin’s voyage 1766-68 in their original form for the first time. Captain Samuel Wallis was the first Englishman to come across the Tuamotus and the Society Isles in the South Pacific, specifically Tahiti. His writings predate the available textual sources by Louis-Antoine de Bougainville, the logs of the Spanish voyages and James Cook — whose text Wallis’ prefigures. The three logs attest to the very first encounter between Europeans and Tahitians, but until now comparatively little research has been conducted on the more elaborate second volume and none on the first. The Polynesian archipelagos grew into objects of discourse over the years and Wallis' logs may very well be located at the heart of these evocative constructs.

Samuel Wallis’s Voyage Round the World in the Dolphin 1766-1768

Exploration of the South Seas in the Eighteenth Century: Rediscovered Accounts, Volume I

The publication of key voyaging manuscripts has contributed to the flourishing of enduring and prolific worldwide scholarship across numerous fields. These navigators and their texts were instrumental in spurring on further exploration, annexation and ultimately colonisation of the pacific territories in the space of only a few decades. This series will present new sources and primary texts in English, paving the way for postcolonial critical approaches in which the reporting, writing, rewriting and translating of Empire and the ‘Other’ takes precedence over the safeguarding of master narratives. Each of the volumes contains an introduction that sets out the context in which these voyages took place and extensive annotations clarify and explain the original texts. The translated accounts of voyages undertaken by foreign vessels abounded in an era when they encouraged not only competitive geopolitical initiatives but also commercial enterprises throughout Europe, resulting in a voluminous textual corpus. However, French merchant-seaman Etienne Marchand’s journal of his voyage round the world in 1790-1792, encompassing an important visit to the Marquesas Archipelago during his first crossing of the Pacific, remained unpublished until 2005 and has only now been made available in English. The second volume of this series comprises an annotated translation in English of this document.

Voyage Round the World Performed under the Direction of Captain Etienne Marchand in the Solide of Marseilles 1790-1792

Exploration of the South Seas in the Eighteenth Century: Rediscovered Accounts, Volume II

Sophie Chiari

This book explores reactions to and representations of natural disasters in early modern Europe. The contributors illustrate how the cultural production of the period - in manuals, treatises, sermons, travelogues and fiction - grappled with environmental catastrophe. Crucially, they interrogate how people in the early modern era rationalized and mediated the threat of events like plagues, great frosts, storms, floods and earthquakes. A vital contribution to environmental history, this book highlights the parallels between early modern responses to natural disaster and climate anxiety in our own era.

Sandhya Patel

About

Books

Join the club