supplement to bougainville's voyage discussion questions

Open Book Publishers

• Language and Literature
• History and Culture
• Economics and Politics

51. Diderot, Supplement to Bougainville’s Voyage , 1772 1

Texte intégral.

• 1 Denis Diderot, ‘Le supplément au voyage de Bougainville’, in Correspondance Littéraire , ed. Friedri (...)

1 One year after the success of the explorer Bougainville’s Voyage Around the World , published in 1771, Diderot wrote a ‘supplement’ comprising various fictional episodes. Here, as the French are about to leave the tropics, a Tahitian elder delivers a speech to the two peoples. The stick of wood he refers to is presumably a crucifix.

2 An old man is speaking, the father of a large family. When the Europeans first arrived, he did not appear in any way frightened, curious, or surprised, but looked on them with disdain. When they approached him, he turned his back on them and retreated to his hut. But his troubled silence betrayed his thoughts only too well, and inwardly he mourned his native land and the passing of its golden years. Upon Bougainville’s departure, as the Tahitians thronged the shore, clinging to his garments and clasping his comrades in their arms, weeping, the old man solemnly stepped forward and said:

3 ‘Weep, unhappy Tahitians! Weep! Not, though, at the leaving of these cruel, ambitious men, but at their coming. For one day you will see them for who they are. One day they will return, brandishing in one hand that stick of wood which you see attached to this man’s belt and, in the other, the blade which hangs from that man’s side. They will come to put you in chains and to cut your throats; they will subject you to their every excess and vice. And one day you will serve under them, and you will be as base, corrupted, and as wretched as they. Yet – as my time draws near, I take comfort in the knowledge that I will not live to see the calamity I foretell. Oh Tahitians! Oh my friends! There is a way by which you might spare yourselves this grievous fate. But I would rather die than offer you this counsel. May they depart, and may they live’.

4 Then, turning to Bougainville, he continued: ‘And you, leader of these brigands who obey your every command, quickly remove your vessel from our shores. We are innocent and contented; our happiness you can but disturb. We are guided by nature’s purest instinct, and you have sought to erase its imprint from our souls. Here, all things are everyone’s, yet you have preached some or other distinction between ‘yours’ and ‘mine’. Our wives and daughters belong to us all equally, and you have shared this privilege with us; but in doing so you have roused in them an unknown fury. In your arms, they have become deranged, and you have become enraged in theirs. They have formed a hatred for one another, and you have butchered each other over them; they have returned to us stained with your blood. We are free, yet in our earth you have buried the title deeds to our future enslavement. You are neither god nor demon; who, then, are you to make us your slaves? Orou! Since you understand the language of these men, tell us all, as you have told me, what they have written on that strip of metal: ‘This land is ours’. Yours, you say? How so? Because you have set foot here? If one day a Tahitian were to arrive on your shores and carve into one of your stones or the bark of one of your trees: ‘This land belongs to the people of Tahiti’, what would you say then? So you are the stronger! What of it? When one of those worthless trinkets which are strewn about your vessel was taken, you cried out and wrought vengeance; and immediately you conceived a plan to plunder an entire Country. You are no slave, and would sooner die than become one; yet you wish to enslave us. You think then that Tahitians are incapable of dying in defence of their freedom? Well may you look to seize hold of him as you would a dumb beast – the Tahitian is your brother. You are both children of nature. What right do you have over him that he does not have over you? When you came, did we set upon you? Did we pillage your vessel? Did we make you our captive and leave you to the arrows of our enemies? Did we yoke you to our ploughs and put you to work in the fields like animals? No, we treated you in our own image. Let us alone with our ways; they are wiser and more honest than yours. We have no desire to trade what you call our ignorance for your useless enlightenment’.

Read the free original text online (facsimile), 1798 edition: https://books.google.fr/​books?id=-z8HAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA382

Download the free original text : http://www.gutenberg.org/​ebooks/​6501

1 Denis Diderot, ‘Le supplément au voyage de Bougainville’, in Correspondance Littéraire , ed. Friedrich-Melchior Grimm, issues of September 1773, October 1773, March 1774, April 1774; first published openly in Denis Diderot, Œuvres , ed. Naigeon, Paris: chez Desray et Déterville, 1798, III, pp. 382-384.

Le texte seul est utilisable sous licence CC BY 4.0 . Les autres éléments (illustrations, fichiers annexes importés) sont « Tous droits réservés », sauf mention contraire.

The Beacon of the Enlightenment

Vérifiez si votre institution a déjà acquis ce livre : authentifiez-vous à OpenEdition Freemium for Books. Vous pouvez suggérer à votre bibliothèque/établissement d’acquérir un ou plusieurs livres publié(s) sur OpenEdition Books. N'hésitez pas à lui indiquer nos coordonnées : OpenEdition - Service Freemium [email protected] 22 rue John Maynard Keynes Bat. C - 13013 Marseille France Vous pouvez également nous indiquer à l'aide du formulaire suivant les coordonnées de votre institution ou de votre bibliothèque afin que nous les contactions pour leur suggérer l’achat de ce livre.

Merci, nous transmettrons rapidement votre demande à votre bibliothèque.

Volume papier

Référence électronique du chapitre, référence électronique du livre, 51. diderot, supplement to bougainville’s voyage , 1772, collez le code html suivant pour intégrer ce livre sur votre site..

OpenEdition est un portail de ressources électroniques en sciences humaines et sociales.

• OpenEdition Journals
• OpenEdition Books
• OpenEdition Freemium
• Mentions légales
• Politique de confidentialité
• Gestion des cookies
• Signaler un problème

Vous allez être redirigé vers OpenEdition Search

Academia.edu no longer supports Internet Explorer.

To browse Academia.edu and the wider internet faster and more securely, please take a few seconds to  upgrade your browser .

Enter the email address you signed up with and we'll email you a reset link.

• We're Hiring!
• Help Center

Unraveling Natural Utopia: Diderot's Supplement to the Voyage of Bougainville

Political Theory

Related Papers

Sunil Agnani

Andrew Curran

Diderot's 1772 text Supplément au Voyage de Bougainville (Supplement to Bougainville's 'Voyage around the World') is a 'riff', as Lynn Festa puts it, on the explorer Louis Antoine de Bougainville's memorable account of his landfall on Tahiti.1 The final text within a trilogy of moralising tales that includes Ceci n'est pas un conte (This is Not a Story) andMme de La Carlière, Diderot's Tahitian fable targets his era's constricting jealousies, petty passions and denatured conventions by juxtaposing Tahiti's 'natural society' with a series of European notions and customs.2 The overall structure of this clash of cultures is worth recalling. In the opening pages of the Supplément, Diderot stages a discussion between the witty and inquisitive interlocutors A and B, both of whom are enlightened relativists. In this initial part of the text, the two friends jump quickly from topic to topic, speculating on continental drift, the mores of ancient peoples on isolated lands and the seemingly contradictory psychology of Bougainville himself. In the ensuing section, A and B 'read' together the hidden manuscript ostensibly found within Bougainville's original text. This first Tahitian section begins, as it were, with a forceful, regressive view of history delivered by an old Tahitian man who enumerates the inevitable consequences of colonisation: contamination, enslavement and perhaps the eventual extermination of the Tahitians. The subsequent portion of the text shifts to a different era, where we witness more fruitful contacts between Tahitians and Europeans. In particular, we meet the very philosophically minded patriarch and chief, Orou, who begins a discussion with an aumônier (chaplain) regarding the backward and unnatural sexual restrictions imposed on the Catholic clergy. (This is also the section where B recounts the story of Polly Baker's incarceration for having had five children out of wedlock.) The suite (continuation) to this section relates Orou's later interactions with the aumônier after the clergyman has succumbed to the charms of Orou's daughter, Thia. At this point, the two men discuss the logic of the Tahitian sexual economy (where children have a greater value than any other 'commodity') at the same time as they deconstruct supposedly sinful notions such as adultery and fornication. The final section of the text brings back A and B, who speak about the 'denaturing' of humankind as well as the feasibility or non-feasibility of creating nature-based institutions in Europe, such as a more natural version of marriage. The final assessment of the text as supplied by A andB– that one should 'prendre le froc du pays où l'on va, et garder celui du pays où l'on est' ('wear the dress of the country to which one goes, but keep that of the country where one is')3 – seems to be a synthesis of cultural relativism and, on a certain level, pragmatic conservatism. Long considered something of an outlier among Diderot's major contributions to eighteenth-century thought, this short text is now among the philosophe's most taught and perhaps even most studied texts. While this

FILOSOFIJA. SOCIOLOGIJA. 2019. T. 30. Nr. 1, p. 62–69,

Roberto R. Aramayo

To whom do you pretend to make believe that a man can be the property of a sovereign, that a child can be the property of his father, that a woman can be the property of her husband, that a servant can be the property of his master, that a negro can be the property of the colonist? (Diderot, History of the Two Indies. OC III, 740). This paper addresses the issue how Diderot displays a free analysis thanks to anonymity in the History of Two Indies. I claim that the author criticizes without any roundabout style colonialism and slavery, focusing first on the fragments of this work attributed to Diderot. Second, I tackle the fact that Diderot argues in this work for the right to hospitality and breaks down the consequences stemming from trade under an inspiring view for contemporary analyses. I also attempt to cast light on Diderot’s view of other peoples and cultures traditionally considered ‘wild’, drawing a conclusion that they are useful to identify the boundaries of European bourgeois moral codes, usually considered ‘civilizised’. In this vein I also address in the paper the Addendum to the Journey of Bougainville, a key writing for appraising issues as anticolonialism and cosmopolitanism in Diderot’s thought.

Filosofija. Sociologija

To whom do you pretend to make believe that a man can be the property of a sovereign, that a child can be the property of his father, that a woman can be the property of her husband, that a servant can be the property of his master, that a negro can be the property of the colonist? (Diderot, History of the Two Indies. OC III, 740). This paper addresses the issue how Diderot displays a free analysis thanks to anonymity in the History of Two Indies. I claim that the author criticizes without any roundabout style colonialism and slavery, focusing first on the fragments of this work attributed to Diderot. Second, I tackle the fact that Diderot argues in this work for the right to hospitality and breaks down the consequences stemming from trade under an inspiring view for contemporary analyses. I also attempt to cast light on Diderot’s view of other peoples and cultures traditionally considered ‘wild’, drawing a conclusion that they are useful to identify the boundaries of European bourg...

History of European Ideas

girolamo Imbruglia

The Enlightened theory of civilisation was expressed through the formula of ‘doux commerce’, a form of commerce which acknowledged the need for the European conquest of non-European lands and nations, and the opportunity to bring European civilisation to other peoples without violence. Montesquieu was the first to express this idea, condemning the Spanish conquest and empire. In the Histoire des deux Indes, this idea was dramatically discussed: Raynal wanted to defend it; Diderot dismantled this project showing that civilisation was but the mask of violent conquest. In this way the latter offered an extraordinary refutation of both Enlightened ideology and its strategy of civilisation.

History Australia

M.W.A. Tilburg, van

Robert Markley

History and Theory

carlos jacques

RELATED PAPERS

EuroIntervention : journal of EuroPCR in collaboration with the Working Group on Interventional Cardiology of the European Society of Cardiology

Hitos de Ciencias Económico Administrativas

Noé Chávez Hernández

Journal of Applied Physics

Hiram Morales

Journal of Experimental Medicine

Ira Mellman

Revista De Medicina

Hilario Antonio Gonçalves

E-Jurnal Matematika

Ir. I Putu Eka Nila Kencana, M.TIE

University of Torbat Heydarieh

Parviz Rezvani

Devi Adelia

Gastroenterology

Frontiers in Neurology

Nasheed Jamal

Algerian Journal of Renewable Energy and Sustainable Development

ahmed bouraiou

Aneka Makanan Frozen Food

Journal of Urology

MARTIN mozes

Self and Identity

Jeffrey Stuewig

(Jurnal Ilmiah Mahasiswa Kesehatan Masyarakat)

NANI YUNIAR

Julio Sarmiento

East African Journal of Health and Science

Rosebella Onyango

João Santos

M. Bravermanová, H. Březinová and J. Malcolm-Davies (Hrsg.): Archaeological Textiles – Links Between Past and Present. NESAT XIII. Technical University of Liberec and Institute of Archaeology of the CAS, Prague. Liberece – Praha 2017

Karina Grömer

Springer eBooks

Vitor Schincariol

Revista Folios

PEDRO BERMUDEZ

Respiratory care

Rajiv Dhand

Biology of the Cell

Florence Pinet

Georgios Koutsis

RELATED TOPICS

•   We're Hiring!
•   Help Center
• Find new research papers in:
• Health Sciences
• Earth Sciences
• Cognitive Science
• Mathematics
• Computer Science
• Academia ©2024

• Project Gutenberg
• 73,352 free eBooks
• 14 by Denis Diderot

Supplément au Voyage de Bougainville by Denis Diderot

Read now or download (free!)

Similar books, about this ebook.

• Privacy policy
• About Project Gutenberg
• Terms of Use
• Contact Information

• Subscriber Services
• For Authors
• Publications
• Archaeology
• Art & Architecture
• Bilingual dictionaries
• Classical studies
• Encyclopedias
• English Dictionaries and Thesauri
• Language reference
• Linguistics
• Media studies
• Medicine and health
• Names studies
• Performing arts
• Science and technology
• Social sciences
• Society and culture
• Overview Pages
• Subject Reference
• English Dictionaries
• Bilingual Dictionaries

Recently viewed (0)

• Save Search
• Share This Facebook LinkedIn Twitter

Related Content

Related overviews.

Louis Antoine de Bougainville (1729—1811) French explorer

Denis Diderot (1713—1784) French philosopher, writer, and critic

Eustache Deschamps (c. 1340—1404)

More Like This

Show all results sharing this subject:

Supplément au Voyage de Bougainville

Quick reference.

Dialogue by Diderot, begun c. 1772, published posthumously in 1798. The work takes the form of a fictitious supplement to the recent account of a visit to Tahiti by Bougainville. A ...

From:   Supplément au Voyage de Bougainville   in  The New Oxford Companion to Literature in French »

Subjects: Literature

Related content in Oxford Reference

Reference entries.

View all related items in Oxford Reference »

Search for: 'Supplément au Voyage de Bougainville' in Oxford Reference »

• Oxford University Press

PRINTED FROM OXFORD REFERENCE (www.oxfordreference.com). (c) Copyright Oxford University Press, 2023. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single entry from a reference work in OR for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice ).

date: 19 April 2024

• Cookie Policy
• Privacy Policy
• Legal Notice
• Accessibility
• [66.249.64.20|81.177.182.159]
• 81.177.182.159

Character limit 500 /500

Louis Antoine de Bougainville and his Voyage Around the World

Louis Antoine de Bougainville (1729 – 1811)

Probably on November 11 , 1729 , French   admiral and explorer   Louis Antoine de Bougainville was born. A contemporary of James Cook ,[5] he gained fame for his expeditions , the first recorded settlement  on the  Falkland Islands and his voyages into the Pacific Ocean . The largest of the Solomon Islands  is named after him, as is the colorful tropical climbing plant   bougainvillaea .

Louis Antoine de Bougainville – Early Years

Louis Antoine de Bougainville  was born in  Paris on Rue Barre-du-Bec. His parents were the notary Yves Pierre de Bougainville (1686-1754) and Marie Françoise, née Darboulin (ca. * 1700). He began to study law , which he abandoned shortly after. In 1752, Bougainville wrote a mathematical work on integral calculus. After becoming Secretary of the French Embassy in London, he was accepted into the scientific society, the Royal Society in London, in 1756. During the Seven Years’ War , Bougainville gained experience at sea . In the same year he went for several years as adjutant to General Louis-Joseph de Montcalm to French Canada (New France), where he fought against Great Britain during the French and Indian War.

The Defense of Quebec

In the battle on the Abraham Plain near Quebec on September 13, 1759, in which the French suffered a decisive defeat and his superior Montcalm was mortally wounded, Bougainville was unable to intervene in time with the soldiers he led, as Montcalm had not waited for his arrival. Bougainville’s absence may have been decisive for the battle and the war. As a colonel in the infantry, he returned to France from English captivity and joined the French Navy in 1763 with the equivalent rank of captain. He later became a diplomat taking part in negotiating the Treaty of Paris that eventually conceded most of New France to the British Empire .

The Falkland Islands

After the war , the French  decided to colonize the Falkland Islands , which were not well known at this time.  Bougainville decided to travel there on his own expense. He set out in 1763 with the Eagle and the Sphinx and they reached the French Bay in 1764 . Two years later the islands had to be ceded to Spain, the new lords kept the name in Spanish spelling and called the archipelago Malvinas.

Circumnavigation of the World

Louis Antoine de Bougainville reaching Tahiti [1]

Tahiti and the Pacific Ocean

In 1768 the ships reached the Pacific. Of particular note is the stay on Tahiti from April 6 to 15, 1768, which Bougainville formally took possession of as Île de la Nouvelle Cythère (New Kythira) for the French king.  He also explored numerous other Pacific islands, including the New Hebrides, the Louisiades and the Solomon Islands, which he rediscovered after nearly 200 years of oblivion, and whose northernmost island received his name, Bougainville.  Bougainville almost discovered the Great Barrier Reef and sailed towards Solomon Islands . However, the expedition  was attacked probably by people from New Ireland and they headed towards the Moluccas . The expedition  managed to complete the mission with the loss of seven men .

Bougainville’s Travelogue

In 1771, Bougainville’s detailed travelogue was published, Voyage autour du monde par la frégate du roi La Boudeuse et la flûte L’Étoile . As a well-known personality in the spirit of the Enlightenment, he helped the theses of Jean-Jacques Rousseau to further popularity with his idealized image of the South Sea islanders as noble savages.[ 6 ] The highlight of the report is his stay in Tahiti, whose interior he describes as a jardin d’Eden (Garden of Eden), which offered its inhabitants everything they needed to live. He describes the islanders as friendly, naive and happy people who have not yet been spoiled by civilization.

Later Years

In 1772, Bougainville was raised to the position of personal secretary to Louis XV. He fought from 1779 to 1782 as a rear admiral and commander of several liners against the British in the battles of the American Revolution. Among other things, he commanded the first squadron of the French fleet in the victorious naval battle off Chesapeake Bay (September 5, 1781) against the British fleet. However, he was held primarily responsible for the defeat in the naval battle of Les Saintes (April 12, 1782), but a court martial was limited to a public reprimand. After the French Revolution, he was offered the newly created Ministry of the Navy in 1791 and a vice admiral’s post in 1792, but Bougainville declined. He settled on a property in Normandy. He survived the bloody terror, La Terreur (imprisoned in 1794), despite his well-known royalist attitude, unscathed only by the fall of Robespierre. In 1794, he became a member of the French Academy of Sciences, the Egyptian expedition of 1798 he helped prepare. In 1799 he became head of the Parisian Bureau of Longitude. Louis Antoine de Bougainville died in 1811 in Paris at the age of 81.

References and Further Reading:

• [1] Rouargue frères – Les Navigateurs français: histoire des navigations, découvertes et colonisations françaises, Léon Guérin, Belin-Leprieur et Morizot, 1846.
• [2]  Biography of Louis Antoine de Bougainville
• [3] [In German] Matthias Glaubrecht: Louis Antoine de Bougainville Oder: Die Enthüllung der Welt. Teil II. Naturwissenschaftliche Rundschau 64. Jhrg. Heft 11 2011
• [4]  Jeanne Baret – An Intrepid Woman of Discovery , SciHi Blog
• [5]  James Cook and the Great Barrier Reef , SciHi Blog
• [6]  “Man was born free, and he is everywhere in chains” – Jean-Jacques Rousseau , SciHi Blog
• [7]  Works by or about Louis Antoine de Bougainville   at   Internet Archive
• [8]  Louis-Antoine de Bougainville: Eighteenth Century French Sailor, Soldier, Statesman, Mathematician and leader of a Voyage around the world
• [9]  Louis Antoine de Bougainville: “Voyage around the world 1766–1769”, London 1772 (A transcription of the translation of “Le voyage autour du monde, par la frégate La Boudeuse, et la flûte L’Étoile” into English by John Reinhold Forster)
• [10]  Sophie Muscianese,  Diderot, Supplément au Voyage de Bougainville (1772) – Vidéo N°1 , Cours de lettres Mme Muscianese œ youtube
• [11] Louis Antoine de Bougainville at Wikidata
• [12] Timeline of French Explorers , via Wikidata and DBpedia

Tabea Tietz

Related posts, pierre simon de laplace and his true love for astronomy and mathematics, cardinal richelieu and the académie francaise, pierre bouguer – child prodigy and ‘father of photometry’, around the world in 80 days, leave a reply cancel reply.

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Further Projects

• February (28)
• January (30)
• December (30)
• November (29)
• October (31)
• September (30)
• August (30)
• January (31)
• December (31)
• November (30)
• August (31)
• February (29)
• February (19)
• January (18)
• October (29)
• September (29)
• February (5)
• January (5)
• December (14)
• November (9)
• October (13)
• September (6)
• August (13)
• December (3)
• November (5)
• October (1)
• September (3)
• November (2)
• September (2)
• Entries RSS
• Comments RSS
• WordPress.org

Legal Notice

• Privacy Statement

Radical Translations

Supplément au voyage de Bougainville

• False: false attribution such as false place of imprint or false date
• Fictional place: false imprint contains a fictional, invented place of imprint or date
• Form: type or genre of writing.
• Noble: person was born noble.
• Role: the main role of a person or organization in relation to a resource.
• Subject: content, theme, or topic of a work.
• Uncertainty: information could not be verified.

French Paris

Contributions

Related resources, place, country.

• Project Gutenberg
• 72,944 free eBooks
• 14 by Denis Diderot

Supplément au Voyage de Bougainville by Denis Diderot

Reading now or download (free!)

Equivalent books, info this ebook.

• Privacy policies
• About Project Gutenberg
• Terminology of Use
• Contact Information
• Get Helping