The differences between the Journal and the Voyage are which best

Transcription

Bougainville in the South Atlantic:
The Ethnographic Encounter and the Journal of Navigation
Rosario Hubert
1. Introduction
Voyage autour du monde, Louis-Antoine de Bougainville’s narrative about the
circumnavigation of the world, is one of the central eighteenth-century travel accounts of
the New World that establishes an open dialogue with the French philosophes of the
Enlightenment. Its publication in 1771 arouses arduous criticism due to its polemical
portrayal of Tahiti as an exotic and utopian society detached from any form of civilization.
Highly enthusiastic of the harmonious sensuality of the dwellers of the recently discovered
island in the Pacific Ocean, Bougainville depicts an exemplary social order in the fashion
of the emerging notions of noble savagery proposed by Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Denis
Diderot’s Supplément au voyage de Bougainville (1796) is the first of many retorts to
Bougainville’s seemingly naive theses on the mirage tahitien. One of the strongest
arguments against Bougainville’s text is that it serves to justify an ultimate European
colonization of the Pacific, a then unexplored region that could compensate the French
territorial losses in the Atlantic after the Seven Years’ War (1756-1763).
Yet, it could be argued that Bougainville’s ethnographic gaze is significantly more
problematic than a mere affirmation of Rousseau’s universalistic theories of savagery. In
this article, I propose to read Voyage autour du monde gazing away from the Tahitian
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descriptions that inform a vast body of scholarship on the ethnographic imagination of the
18th century. Instead, I propose to cast light on Bougainville’s depictions of the South
Atlantic, a disregarded segment of the circumnavigation that few scholars have considered
of special interest. I argue that this stage of the journey, usually read as a mere stopover in
the race to the Pacific, presents critical evidence that complicates Bougainville’s
ethnographic judgment and challenges his role of writer/ethnographer. These two points, I
argue, allow a more general reflection on the European imagination of Otherness and the
discursive self-fashioning of the philosophe, two crucial issues of the Enlightenment’s
agenda.
As opposed to the yet poorly explored Pacific Ocean, the Atlantic routes of the
circumnavigation had already been trodden by previous navigators and, thus, Bougainville
consults a vast bibliography on this field to conduct his expedition. This challenges him to
reflect upon his own writing and thus on the nature of authorship, travel writing, scientific
production and his complex position of enunciation both as a navigator and a man of letters.
The reading of the Journal de navigation, which contains the sailor’s notes and un-edited
voice of Bougainville help complement the narrative corpus of the journey. I argue that this
Journal operates as a “pre-text” that informs the rhetorical maneuvers implemented in the
self-fashioning of the French traveler as a voyager and philosophe in the edited version of
1771, Voyage autour du monde.
Also, if one focuses on the depictions of the encounter with natives in moments of
the journey other than Tahiti, in regions uninformed by geopolitical interests like the coasts
of the South Atlantic, a different tone can be perceived in the assessment of Otherness. The
crossing of the Strait of Magellan is eloquent in this respect. Firstly, Bougainville’s account
Cadernos de Letras (UFRJ) n.29 – nov. 2013
http://www.letras.ufrj.br/anglo_germanicas/cadernos/numeros/112013/textos/cl06112013hubert.pdf
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of the Patagonians and the Pecherais Indians evidences his utter skepticism of Rousseau’s
praise of the savage man. If we accept Bougainville’s paradisiacal vision of Tahiti, then the
portrayal of the South Atlantic natives reveals his hesitation towards Rousseau’s
universalistic approach to diversity, and in turn suggests an anthropological assessment
determined geographically. On the other hand, if we suspect the Arcadian vision of Tahiti
on the grounds that it conceals political interests, then the Magellan incident presents us a
more pragmatic vision of theories of Otherness.
2. The world map of the eighteenth century: circumnavigations
In Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation, Mary Louise Pratt reflects
upon the systematic surface mapping of the world that takes place during the eighteenth
century. She claims that the scientific impetus of European nations to accumulate and
categorize the natural world yields to a European “‘planetary consciousness”, a version
marked by an orientation toward interior exploration and the construction of global-scale
meaning through the descriptive apparatuses of natural history” (15). This urge for
empirical data encourages a large amount of scientific expeditions that set out to collect
plants, animals and astronomical references; and thus, to a vast corpus of narratives on the
results of these voyages. Pratt argues that the European knowledge-making apparatuses
construct the planet above navigational terms: “these terms gave rise to two totalizing
planetary projects. One was circumnavigation, a double deed that consists of sailing round
the world and then writing an account of it […] the second planetary project, equally
dependant on ink and paper, was the mapping of the world’s coastlines” (1992: 29).
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Voyages of circumnavigation of the world are of special interest to this type of
scientific enterprise, for they sail antipodal itineraries that cover as much scattered and
diverse information as possible. These are extensive in spatial terms, for they travel
unprecedented distances, but also extensive in terms of the epistemological arsenals
employed to collect the information. Geologists, botanists, artists, zoologists, religious
men, scientists, sailors and a wide variety of other skilled men take part in these discovery
voyages that pursue synthetic snap-shots of the world.
The confidence in the design of totalizing structures (e.g: the Encyclopedia, a
natural system, as Lynnaeus’ Systema Naturae of 1735, or all encompassing journeys, as
the many circumnavigations of the century) can be understood in the context of the
epistemological framework of the time. Foucault states in The Order of Things how in the
Classical episteme “the sciences carry within themselves the project, however remote it
may be, of an exhaustive ordering of the world, they are always directed, too, towards the
discovery of simple elements and their progressive combination: and at their centre they
form a table on which knowledge is displayed in a system contemporary with itself” (74).
Circumnavigations incarnate this desire for an exhaustive ordering of the world of
the Enlightenment. It is no wonder, then, that D’Alambert and Diderot choose the metaphor
of the “mappe monde” in the Discours Preliminaire of the Encyclopedie to illustrate the
display of arts and sciences in their project. The cartographical portrait of the world
suggests the utter importance of experience in the epistemological process. Robert Darnton
comments on Diderot and D’Alambert’s new ordering of knowledge: “True philosophy
taught modesty. It demonstrated that we can know nothing beyond what comes to us from
sensation or reflection” (1985: 195). Travel, in this respect, plays a key role, for it provides
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the instance of direct sensation of the knowable. Circumnavigating the world is then a way
of mapping out knowledge.
3. Bougainville’s circumnavigation
In 1766, Bougainville receives permission from King Louis XV to circumnavigate
the globe westwards, sailing to China by way of the Straits of Magellan. He commands the
French navy frigate Boudeuse, and the former merchant ship Étoile. The expedition visits
and surveys South America, Tahiti, Samoa, the New Hebrides; it avoids the Solomons but
finds unexplored islands in the South Pacific and names one “Bougainville Island” after its
commander.
Despite its high scientific aspirations, the publication of the Voyage provokes a
greater impression in the general public than in the world of science: “Since his return and
the publication of the Voyage autour du monde (1771), Bougainville did not lack censors
eager to reveal the half-success of the circumnavigation, and the superficiality of the
observations, and watch painfully how the text pleased social audiences rather than the
scientific community”.1 Part of this “half-success” is due to the scarcity and poverty of the
scientific material brought back:
In the scientific terrain, credit should be granted to Veron, for having adjusted the
calculations of the longitude by lunar distances. But because of Commerson stopover at the
1
“Dès son retour et la publication de son Voyage autour du monde (1771), Bougainville n’a pas manqué de
censeurs faisant valoir le demi-succès de la circumnavigation, la superficialité des observations, voire le souci
de plaire à des mondains beaucoup plus que de servir a la communauté scientifique” (BIDEAUX; FAESSEL,
2001: 5).
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Ile de France, almost nothing was been produced out of the herbs and the natural animals
that were collected during the trip. On the whole, the main interest of the trip was of
ethnographic nature.2
As the quote reads, rather than the scarce plants or animals brought back, what is
read with sheer interest in Europe is the description of the ethnographic encounters
discussed in the book. The travelogue overall is eclipsed by the controversial statements on
the Tahitian idyll on the latter section of the trip: “The narrative published by Bougainville
in 1771 was distorted simultaneously by the philosophes, who interpreted in their own way,
and by the revelation of Tahiti, of it friendly exoticism and the promises the first essays on
ethnologie declared later”.3 The men of letters read this depiction as an illustration of
Rousseau’s ideas on the myth of the noble savage, but at the same time called into question
the principles that organized societies: natural law, norms, God, morals, need; all this in
allegorical references to European despotic regimes. Diderot’s Supplément au voyage de
Bougainville (1796) is especially critical in this respect, for not only it satirizes
Bougainville’s naïveté but also brings to the forefront the different positions of the
Enlightenment regarding the moral assessment of Otherness (theories of universalism,
relativism, ethnocentrism, etc).
It could be claimed too that there are political reasons that explain the preeminent
celebration of the latter section of the journey, since the Pacific Ocean operates as the final
2
“Sur le plan scientifique, il faut inscrire au crédit de Véron la mise au point du calcul de la longitude par les
distances lunaires. Mais par la faut de Commerson resté d’ailleurs à la escale de l’ile de France, il nous est
pratiquement rien parvenu des herbiers et des animaux naturalisés qui’ il avait réunis pendant le voyage […]
tout compte fait, l’intérêt principal du voyage était d’ordre ethnographique” (PROUST, 1982: 12).
3
“Le récit publié par Bougainville en 1771 s’est trouvé faussé à la fois par les philosophes qui l’interprètent à
leur manière – et par la révélation de Tahiti, de son exotisme aimable et des promesses livreés aux premiers
essais de l’ethnologie” (BROSSARD, 1982: 51).
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destination of the circumnavigation. After the signature of the Treaty of Paris, which
acknowledges the losses of possessions in Canada and India, France is left behind England
in the colonial race and needs to chart yet unexplored territories in its incipient imperial
network. In the second half of this century, a large number of other French and British
circumnavigations head to the Pacific, amongst them those led by John Byron (1764–
1766), Wallis and Carteret (1766–1768), James Cook (1768–1771), and La Pérouse (17851788).
Therefore, in the judgment of the ethnographic encounter, Bougainville’s
circumnavigation deserves a wider look in order to be appreciated fully. The stopovers in
the Atlantic Coast and the crossing to the Pacific evidence a more complicated assessment
in this respect. I propose to read Bougainville’s journey in the spirit of the
circumnavigation, where each stopover implies equal validity in terms of ethnographic
experience. In diverse places, Bougainville expresses different anthropological judgments,
making his overall voyage, and therefore, his universalistic principles, more intricate.
Ambivalence and paradox are inescapable in this respect. Robert Darnton notes the same
risks in the totalizing project of the Encyclopedia: “D’Alambert set out to produce a ‘mappe
monde’ by circumnavigating the world of knowledge; but he wandered off course, ran into
contradictions and floundered in inconsistencies as he tried to find a way through
everything that had accumulated since Bacon’s time” (1985: 201).
This rich ambivalence I recognize in Bougainville can be understood too in terms of
the literary process of the account. Apart from looking at the published version of 1771, it
is useful to recur to the Journal de Navigation, which came to the public for the first time
only in 1977. The variation in the tone, the nature and the vehemence of the arguments
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regarding the ethnographic encounter are eloquent in the self-fashioning of the narrative
voice. According to the editor of the sailor’s diary, Etiene Taillemite,
The most interesting differences are evidently those that can tell us about the spirit of the
navigator and the ways in which the journey helped him develop his ideas. One should look
for them at those stopovers that confronted him with populations that were then called
savages.4
The editor of the journal notes that it is precisely in these stopovers where
Bougainville runs into savage populations that he finds significant differences between the
sailor’s diary and the published travel narrative. Here, I agree, one finds a detached and
uncompromised Bougainville casting a personal ethnographic gaze, and openly discussing
Rousseau.
4. Navigating the South Atlantic
The nine chapters that make up the first part of the Voyage account for the departure
from France to the crossing of the Strait of Magellan. In them, Bougainville describes the
stops in the Malouines islands, Rio de Janeiro, Montevideo and Buenos Aires. The sojourn
in Rio de Janeiro is unexpected, for Bougainville hopes to meet with the partner ship Etoile
at the Malouines, but has to sail back north to meet with her in order to cross to the Pacific
4
“les différences les plus intéressants sont évidemment celles qui peuvent nous éclairer sur l’état d’esprit du
navigateur et nous montrer dans quel sens le voyage a fait évoluer sa pensée. Il faut les chercher bien entendu
lors des escales qui l’ont mis en relations avec les populations que l’on appelait alors sauvages”
(TAILLEMITE, 1977: 62).
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together. In these stops, Bougainville witnesses the unstable dynamics of the Spanish and
Portuguese administrations and the hostilities between them. He is at the port of Buenos
Aires at the very moment the Jesuits are expelled from the continent and expresses strong
opinions towards the religious order. In “Bougainville et l’Amerique du Sud (1767)”,
Fréderic Mauro compares the Journal and the Voyage in the treatment of the subject and
concludes that “The Voyage is less anti-Jesuit than the Journal, because the latter was
written on the spot by somebody who shared the view of Spanish administrators and
officers, strongly against the Jesuits”.5 He recognizes later that Bougainville could have
exaggerated the vehement anticlericalism of the Journal in order to please Madame de
Pompadour, of whom he was a protégée.
Bougainville pays close attention to the colonial administrations in each of the ports
he visits and recognizes their control over the territories. In the letter to the king that opens
the Voyage, he compliments the two Iberian nations for their role in the discovery and
conquest of these lands: “America’s discovery and conquest, and the maritime route opened
to the Indies and the Moluccas, are the product of the undisputed courage and success of
the Spanish and Portuguese”.6
Bougainville is subtle in this remark, by acknowledging Spain and Portugal’s
legitimate dominium over America, and their assistance in the opening of the road to the
Pacific. One could speculate that Bougainville incorporates this quote to openly underline
his political disinterest in the occupation of territories in the South Atlantic. It must be
5
“Le Voyage est moins anti jésuite que le Journal parce que celui-ci a été écrit sur le vif par un homme qui
partageait la vie des administrateurs et officiers espagnols, très montés contre les Jésuites” (MAURO, 1982:
88).
6
“L’Amérique, il est vrai, découverte et conquise, la route par mer frayée aux Indes et aux Moluques, sont
des prodiges de courage et de succès qui appartiennent sans constatation aux Espagnols et aux Portugais”
(BOUGAINVILLE, 2001: 45).
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taken into account that Bougainville’s name is at this moment associated with the French
colonial enterprise. He had served in the defense of the capital of New France, the fortified
Quebec City, during the Seven Years’ Wars, where France lost its North American
possessions. Also, he had attempted to establish a French colony in the Malouines
(Falkland) Islands in 1763. An account on an earlier expedition to the South Atlantic had
been published by Don Pernetty, a Benedectine monk and naturalist who had sailed with
Bougainville as a chaplain in 1763. Journal historique d’un voyage fait aux Iles Malouïnes
en 1763 et 1764 pour les reconnoître et y former un établissement; et de deux Voyages au
Détroit de Magellan, avec une Rélation sur les Patagons was first published in 1763 in
Berlin, but a revised edition came out in Paris in 1770, one year before the Voyage. The
project of a French settlement in the Malouines had not succeeded because of the Spanish
crown’s complaints, and Bougainville was forced by the king to dismantle the colony. This
being the purpose of the stay in Malouines in the circumnavigation, Bougainville tries to
distance himself from the colonial aspirations in that region and constructs a different point
of enunciation in the narrative. With colonial intentions in the South Atlantic already
dispelled, Bougainville’s relation with the region is not mediated by interest, or desire of
possession.
5. The traveler, the writer and the philosopher
It takes longer than expected to cross the Strait of Magellan. The inclement weather
conditions and the lack of accurate guidance delay the expedition. A substantial
bibliography had been written on the topography of this region and Bougainville uses it as a
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guide. He praises Sir Narborough’s journal, An Account of Several Late Voyages and
Discoveries to the South and North (1640) but expresses his dissatisfaction with the
majority of the texts he carries onboard, for the poverty of naval recommendations:
Frankly, the way in which fine style writers render sailor’s journal is pitiful. They would
blush at the stupidities and absurdities they make them say, if they had the slightest
knowledge of naval terminology. These authors take great care to cut back every detail that
has to do with navigation; they want to make a book that appeals to silly women of both
sexes and end up writing a book that every reader finds boring and no one finds of any use
(BOUGAINVILLE, 2003: 24).
Bougainville complains about a literary practice inherent to travel writing, which he
will inevitably perform later: the original navigation journal of his circumnavigation will be
trimmed, edited and fashioned to please a larger audience, alien to the sea jargon. This
passage is eloquent of Bougainville’s ambivalent self-identification as narrative voice in the
two texts. We should wonder if he does not render too his sailor journal as a fine style
writer in the Voyage in 1771. Does he not cut out many critical episodes to the navigation
(like the mutiny in the Straight of Magellan), and instead fill the pages with more lyrical
and descriptive passages that serve to entertain a larger audience (like the nostalgia for
Parisian streets amid the snowstorm in Tierra del Fuego)? We can agree with Bidaux and
Faessel on the multiple aims of these writings, which points to an author that oscillates
between a navigator and a writer:
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By transforming the journal aide-mémoire that collects all (all nearly so) in a book where
the author composes an image of navigator-writer, he inscribes himself in the scientific
movement of his time; intending to serve the politics of his sponsors and seek the
appreciation of the audience, the printed version highlights the contradictory nature of its
multiple aims.7
Two issues regarding the complementary reading of Bougainville’s Journal and
Voyage can be pointed out here: the scope of the genre travel literature and the ambivalent
self-identification of Bougainville as a sailor-writer-philosopher.
Firstly, Bougainville transforms a manual of navigation into a general-public
narrative. The tone of the quote on the genderization of each genre is striking: the journal is
thought of as a male-centered narrative (with precise geographical information, naval
terminology, climate information) as opposed to the light literature (full of stupidities and
absurdities) addressed to “silly women of both sexes”, i.e. women and effeminate men. The
opposition in the authorship of these texts is that of the sailor and the writer: he who aims at
informing about navigation as opposed to he who intends to please an audience with
entertaining stories.
Bougainville’s remarks on the Journal continue; he rebuffs Rousseau’s
overestimation of imagination in disregard of actual traveler’s accounts:
Jean Jacques Rousseau states positively (Traité de l’inegalité des conditions) that one can
ask sailors whether they are men or beasts: he judges them no doubt according to the way in
7
“En transformant le journal aide-mémoire qui recueille tout (ou peu s’en faut) en un livre ou l’auteur se
compose une image de navigateur-écrivan, s’inscrit dans le mouvement scientifique de son temps, veut servir
la politique de ses commanditaires et recherche la faveur du public, le passage à l’imprimé exacerbe la nature
contradictoire de ces multiples finalités” (BIDEAUX; FAESSEL, 2001: 34).
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which his colleagues misrepresent these sailors, who might in their turn ask Jean Jacques
how he would go about going around the world in 10 years on 60.000 livres, as a couple of
friends, one being rich and stupid, the other poor and a pretty wit (2003: 24).
Bougainville’s attack is towards Rousseau’s Discours sur les origins et les
fondements de l’inegalité (1755), where he openly discredits the accountability of sailors at
producing any knowledge whatsoever on other parts of the world. Rousseau writes in a
note: “During the three or four hundred years the inhabitants of Europe have been flooding
other parts of the world and constantly publishing new accounts of voyages and reports, I
am convinced that the only men we know are Europeans” (1993: 45). In the fragment
above, Bougainville reminds Rousseau of the discrepancy found in the constant
publications of voyages and reports he complains about, since the sailors’ voice has been
edited by writers, which happen to be Rousseau’s “colleagues”.
Bougainville’s defense of the sailor is less dramatic in the Voyage than in the
Journal, although he insists on his identification as a man of the sea. The prologue of the
Voyage is programmatic about this: he begins the narrative by enumerating the most
relevant circumnavigators since Magellan, thus assigning himself a historical role in the
genealogy of global navigation. But at the end, he paraphrases the abovementioned
reference to Rousseau in a defensive tone and incorporates yet another dichotomy:
traveler/philosopher:
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I am a traveler and a sailor, that is to say, a liar, an imbecile to the eyes of that class of lazy
magnificent writers who, from the shade of their desks, philosophize about the world and its
inhabitants and submit nature to their own imagination. 8
It is no longer the writers who paraphrase navigation journals with whom he is concerned
in this quote, but rather the intellectuals who do not travel at all, and yet insist on writing
about world diversity. The reference to Rousseau is veiled, and the straightforward critique
of the Journal becomes sarcasm. In the former text, he cites his name twice (one of them is
an ironically informal address using his first name, “Jean Jacques”); he mentions the title of
the work where Rousseau published that idea, and he uses the expression “states
positively”, which enhances the determination of his statement. Also, he refers to him in the
derogative form of “lazy writer”. In the Voyage, he interprets Rousseau sarcastically: he
starts by acknowledging that in his line of thought, he should be a liar and a fool due to the
fact that he is a sailor. The novelty of the Voyage is that it incorporates another type of
traveler to the dichotomy sailor/writer: the philosopher. He portrays him as a contemplative
man of letters who accounts for the world and its inhabitants merely with his imagination.
The visual metaphor in the expression “à perte de vue” strengthens the artificial empirical
experience of the philosopher, who in turn recurs to reason (imagination) in his description
of the world. This is Rousseau’s methodological approach in his thesis on natural man,
which should be taken “not as historical truth, but only as mere conditional and
hypothetical reasoning, rather calculated to explain the nature of things than to ascertain
their actual origin” (1993: 51). Regardless of the rational intentions of Rousseau to
8
“Je suis voyageur et marin, c’est-à-dire, un menteur, et un imbécile aux yeux de cette classe d’écrivains
paresseux et superbes qui, dans les ombres de leur cabinet, philosophent à perte de vue sur le monde et ses
habitants, et soumettent impérieusement la nature à leur imagination” (2001: 57).
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construct an imaginary state of nature, Bougainville points out the paradox in which
Rousseau’s project falls:
A singular procedure, inconceivable by those who, neither having observed anything by
themselves, nor having written, dogmatize after the observations of those travelers whom
they do not grant the faculties of seeing and thinking.
9
The empirical moment of voyage in the description of Otherness is necessary according to
Bougainville, or any reader of the Discours who finds clear references to previous voyages
mentioned by Rousseau. Therefore, Bougainville strives to legitimate his authority over his
empirical portrayal of the world by presenting himself as a philosopher-traveler. He sails,
but he also asserts his role as man of science, a producer of knowledge.
6. The not-so-noble savages of the South Atlantic
As it has been mentioned above, the American coastline of the South Atlantic had
been considerably explored since the early sixteenth century. Apart from a vast literary
work on its landscape and topography there were also several works on its environment and
inhabitants, the Percherais and the Patagonians in particular. The latter had gained
significant visibility in Europe due to the Magellan expedition that had forwarded the myth
of the giants of the South.
9
“Procédé bien singulier, bien inconceivable de la part de gens qui, n’ayant rien observé par eux-memes,
n’écrivent, ne dogmatisent que d’après des observations empruntèes de ces memes voyageurs auxquels ils
refusent la faculté de voir et de penser” (2001: 57).
197
Antonio Pigafetta’s account of Magellan’s expedition of 1519 says of the
inhabitants of what is today Tierra del Fuego: “Men so tall that our heads hardly came up to
their belt. They were well formed; their faces were broad and colored with red, excepting
that their eyes were surrounded with yellow” (2007: 162). This claim causes great sensation
in Europe. In fact, it creates far more commotion than the successful circumnavigation
itself, and thereafter every expedition to that part of the world makes a point of looking for
the Patagonian giants (Magellan called the giants patagones, meaning “big feet” in
Spanish).
Bougainville is no exception to this and sets out to test the legend himself. He
hastens to refute this myth both in the Voyage and the Journal: “I will finish this article
saying that we found later in the Pacific Ocean a nation of a bigger size than that of the
Patagons”10 / “So such are those Patagonians whom some travelers described to us as giants
[…] I am sorry for Dr. Mati who was displeased when I declared that I had not encountered
any giants” (2003: 11). It is significant that regardless of Bougainville’s assertion of the
inexistence of such a legend in these texts from 1771, the already mentioned narrative by
Don Pernetty about the Malouines expedition in which he took part the year before seems
to confirm the myth. This narrative includes a plate that reproduces the fantasy of oversize
just like it had been coined in the popular imagination.
10
“Je terminerai cet article en disant que nous avons depuis trouvé dans la mer Pacifique une nation d’une
taille plus élevée que ne l’est celle des Patagons” (2001: 57).
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Fig. 1: The Patagonians. Don Pernetty, The History of a Voyage to the Malouines (or Falkland) Islands, Made
in 1763 and 1764: Under the Command of M. de Bougainville,
in Order to Form a Settlement There, p. 273.
The plate (Fig 1.) conveys a narrative that rather places the ethnographic gaze in the
larger epistemological framework of the myth. The background situates the location as a
coastal one; the female figure behind holds a robust baby that outsizes the animals right
next to him, and the miniaturized European exchanges goods with the gigantic Patagonian
in the center of the illustration.
As opposed to the trip to the Malouines, which is an official mission to develop a
French settlement in the South Atlantic, the circumnavigation shows no political claims for
such territory, and instead presents itself in the name of science. Bougainville not only
deconstructs the legend but also defines a new episteme: a new look on Otherness based on
empirical experience. Very much in the enlightened spirit of his time, Bougainville, as a
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philosopher-traveler, is willing to reorganize knowledge by what can be experienced
through sensation and reflection rather than by interpreting the observed with a previous
hermeneutical apparatus.
Apart from the legendary quality attributed to the Patagonians, this ethnic group
suffered a notorious reputation. In Anthropologie et Histoire au siècle des lumières, Michel
Duchet maps the images of each region of America in the eighteenth century and argues
that the Patagonians were labeled as “the most miserable of the human species, their
anatomical particularities, their singular customs and their bizarre language, all provoked
horror and disgust”.11 These natives were conceived as people in the most radical natural
state: “It was almost a commonplace in the voyages to distinguish between savages in a
‘truly’ state of nature (usually exemplified by the Pecherais in the Straits of Magellan, the
Terra del Fuegans, the New Zealanders, and the New Hollander) and the Tahitians, already
considerably advanced in civilization” (LESHER, 211-215).
What does Bougainville imply by these people being in the most natural state?
Rousseau had popularized the idea of the savage man as that in the true state of nature, a
hypothetical social condition which preexisted governments. Bougainville recurs to
sarcasm once more to question him in the Journal:
The Patagonians have a bronzed complexion like all the natives of both Americas. They piss
in a crouched position, would this be the most natural way of passing water? If so, JeanJacques Rousseau who is a very poor pisser in our style, should have adopted that way. He
is so prompt to refer us back to Savage Man (2003: 12).
11
“les plus misérables de l’espèce humaine; leurs particularités anatomiques, leur saleté repoussante, leurs
usages singuliers et leur langage bizarre suscitent l’horreur et le degout” (Duchet, 1971: 33).
200
Bougainville associates these two notions that prevail in the mind of the time: the
South Atlantic natives as the most “natural” peoples of the world and Rousseau’s own
definition of the natural. This is one of the few instances, both in the Journal and the
Voyage, where Bougainville formulates a question explicitly. The two texts are stated
mainly in the affirmative form; therefore the use of interrogation underlines not only the
importance of the passage, but especially Bougainville’s concern in discussing the
geographical determinism of the natural and the savage state of man.
In describing the Patagonians as a specific ethnic group, Bougainville does not see
them as the ultimate example of savagery or as an exceptionally poor group. Instead, he
places them in a spatial and temporal continuum of cultures where they blend seamlessly
with other “savages” and Europeans. Firstly, for Bougainville, the Patagonians seem to
resemble many other groups from the Americas; in terms of weaponry (“les armes,
semblables a ceux dont on se sert dans toute cette partie de l’Amerique”; 2001: 157), due to
their clothes and hairstyle (“l’habillement de ces Patagons est le meme a peu près que celui
des Indiens de la rivière de la Plata / leurs chevaux, petits et fort maigres, etaient sellés et
bridés a la manière des habitants de la rivière de la Plata”; 2001: 157) and because of their
complexion (“leur couleur est bronzée comme l’est sans exception celle de tous les
Americains, tant de ceux qui habitent la zone torride, que de ceux qui y naissent dans les
zones temperées”; 2001: 156). He takes the comparison beyond the continent, when he
reflects upon the similarities between the Patagonians and the Tartars (“Je crois que cette
nation mène la meme vie que les Tartares”; 2001: 157), reminding of an arcane moment of
connection in migratory history.
201
Also, the Patagonians appear to Bougainville in a historic network of exchange with
Europeans. He claims to recognize some of the natives from his previous trip, but also, he
evidences that they have been in contact with other travelers as the English circumnavigator
Byron: “ces couteaux de fabrique anglaise leur avait vraisiblemente été donné par Mr.
Byron”. Exchanges are by no means succinct and ad hoc, but remain in their culture. Such
is the case of language, and the familiarity Patagonians seem to show for Spanish words: “il
est très remarquable que plusiers nous ont dit les mots espagnols suivants: magnana,
muchacho, bueno chico, capitan” (2001: 157).
In sum, the reflection on the peoples of the South Atlantic adds to the complexity of
Bougainville’s ethnographic judgments. Firstly, he questions Rousseau’s idea of the noble
savage, which does not seem to populate these zones, but rather an Arcadian Tahiti. Also,
thanks to empirical observation, he is able to prove wrong ideas and legends about this
specific part of the world, laden with fictional imaginaries. This way, Bougainville’s
ethnographic imagination based on the observation of the South Atlantic is defined
dialectically vis a vis two fronts: on the one hand, he discusses with a rich cohort of
Enlightened thinkers, philosophers of alterity; on the other hand, he argues with a long list
of circumnavigators, actual travelers that experiment alterity first hand.
References
BIDEAUX, Michel; FAESSEL, Sonia. “Introduction”. In: BOUGAINVILLE, Louis
Antoine de. Voyage autour du monde. Paris: Presses de l’Université de Paris-Sorbonne,
2001.
BOUGAINVILLE, Louis Antoine de. Voyage autour du monde. Paris: Presses de
l’Université de Paris-Sorbonne, 2001.
202
___. The Pacific Journal of Louis-Antoine de Bougainville, 1767-1768. Ed. and Trans. John
Dunmore. London: The Hakluyt Society, 2003.
BROSSARD, Maurice de. “Le voyage de Bougainville dans le contexte de la découverte.
De Byron a Cook”. In: Mollat, M.; Taillemite, E. (Eds.). L’Importance de l’exploration
maritime au Siècle des lumières: a propos du voyage de Bougainville. Paris: Editions du
Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 1982.
DARNTON, Robert. The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural
History. New York: Random House, 1985.
DON PERNETTY. The History of a Voyage to the Malouines (or Falkland) Islands, Made
in 1763 and 1764: Under the Command of M. de Bougainville, in Order to Form a
Settlement There.
DUCHET, Michel. Anthropologie et Histoire au siècle des lumières. Paris: François
Maspero, 1971.
FOUCAULT, Michel. The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences. New
York: Random House, 1970.
LESHER, Clara R. Rev. of “Diderot’s Supplément au voyage de Bougainville” by Gilbert
Chinard. In: Modern Philology, v. 34, n. 2, 211-215.
MAURO,Fréderic. “Bougainville et l’Amerique du Sud (1767)”. In: Mollat, M.; Taillemite,
E. (Eds.). L’Importance de l’exploration maritime au Siècle des lumières: a propos du
voyage de Bougainville. Paris: Editions du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique,
1982.
PIGAFETTA, Antonio. The First Voyage around the World, 1519-1522: An Account of
Magellan’s Expedition. Toronto : University of Toronto Press, 2007.
PRATT, Mary Louise. Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation. London:
Routledge, 1992.
PROUST, Jacques. “Preface”. In: BOUGAINVILLE,Louis Antoine de. Voyage autour du
monde. Paris: Gallimard, 1982.
ROUSSEAU, Jean Jacques. “A Dissertation on the Origin and Foundation of the Inequality
of Mankind”. In: The Social Contract and Discourses. London: Everyman, 1993.
TAILLEMITE, Etienne. Bougainville et ses compagnons autour du monde 1766-1769,
journaux de navigation établis et commentés. Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1977.
203
Resumo
Este artigo propõe uma leitura crítica do jornal da circunavegação do globo de 1771 do
francês Louis Antoine de Bouganville, salientando a seção do itinerário de viagem no
Atlântico (principalmente o estreito de Magalhães). A crítica tem lido este jornal por causa
das crônicas sobre o exotismo das ilhas do Pacifico, mas eu proponho que as “escalas” no
litoral do Atlântico, uma área sem interesse imediato para o projeto colonial francês,
complicam leituras sobre a imaginação etnográfica francesa do século dezoito. Ao
atravessar o estreito de Magalhães, Bougainville deve refletir sobre a literatura de viagem
escrita previamente e questiona seu papel de etnógrafo, navegante e homem de letras. Aliás,
o encontro com os nativos de Tierra del Fuego complica a idéia universalista do bom
selvagem divulgada principalmente por Rousseau.
Palavras-chave: circunavegação, etnografia, Iluminismo, Bougainville, Atlântico Sul.
Abstract
In this article I propose to read Bougainville's Voyage autour du monde (1771) gazing away
from the Tahitian descriptions that inform a vast body of scholarship on the ethnographic
imagination of the 18th century. Instead, I propose to cast light on Bougainville’s
depictions of the South Atlantic, a disregarded segment of the circumnavigation that few
scholars have considered of special interest. I argue that this stage of the journey, usually
read as a mere stopover in the race to the Pacific, presents critical evidence that complicates
Bougainville’s ethnographic judgment and challenges his role of writer / ethnographer.
These two points, I argue, allow a more general reflection on the European imagination of
Otherness and the discursive self-fashioning of the philosophe, two crucial issues of the
Enlightenment’s agenda.
Keywords: circumnavigation, ethnography, Enlightenment, Bougainville, South Atlantic.

The differences between the Journal and the Voyage are which best

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