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First edition. Paris: Le Breton for Saillant & Nyon, 1771. Quarto (9 3/16" x 7 7/8", 250mm x 189mm). [Full collation available.] With 23 engravings: 20 maps, of which 19 are folding, and 3 plates. Bound in contemporary speckled calf (re-backed, with the original back-strip laid down) with a gilt roll border. On the spine, five raised bands. Title gilt to red morocco in the second panel. Gilt roll to the edges of the boards. Marbled end-papers. All edges of the text-block glazed yellow. Re-backed, with the original back-strip laid down. Corners strengthened. Wear at the lower-edge. Small passages of foxing, with a moderate tanning to the edge of the first folding map. An altogether fresh example. The author's name ("de Bougainville") manuscript to the title-page. Armorial bookplate of James Smith to the front paste-down, with his ownership signature ("James Smith/ Jordanhill") in ink to the verso of the title-leaf. Bookplate of Ted Benttinen laid in at the front. Louis-Antoine, comte de Bougainville (1729-1811) led the first French circumnavigation. A gifted mathematician (he published a treatise on calculus), he was consequently a gifted navigator who rose through the ranks of the French army in the course of the Seven Years' War. After helping to negotiate the Treaty of Paris, Bougainville was granted permission by Louis XV to circle the globe. His well-funded expedition beginning in late 1766 was staffed with natural scientists; Philibert Commerçon, the naturalist who named the bougainvillea, brought his mistress disguised as his valet, making Jean(ne) Baret the first woman circumnavigator. Of particular note is Bougainville's exploration of Tahiti, which by the mid-XIXc would become a protectorate as part of the larger French Polynesia. His account ends with a 14-page vocabulary of Tahitian. The "unspoiled" land and people informed Rousseau's notion of the "noble savage," and cemented the South Pacific in the French world-view as a place of exotic luxury. Bougainville would go on to fight with the Americans in the Revolutionary War, and was ennobled by Napoleon in 1808. James Smith of Jordanhill (1782-1867) was born into a Scottish mercantile family that had become wealthy from trade with the Caribbean; the house gives its name to the neighborhood in western Glasgow that was once its vast estate. A keen sailor, he published on the history of seafaring, whence, likely, his interest in Bougainville's exceptional navigational abilities. The volume eventually entered the collection of Theodore "Ted" Benttinen (1948-2023), an MIT-educated oceanographer and explorer who went to both poles on research missions. Benttinen amassed a formidable collection of books of exploration, particularly strong in Pacific voyages as well as in polar accounts. The present volume was lot 38 in the Sotheby's New York 9 December 2024 sale of his library. Hill, Pacific Voyages 163; Sabin 6864. N° de réf. du vendeur JLR0711
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