Explorer and naturalist François Péron intended his memoir to inform Napoleon Bonaparte how, with ease, a French military expedition could capture the British settlement at Port Jackson in New South Wales.
The early 19th-century report also looked further afield, offering a fascinating insight into British expansion into New Holland and Van Damien’s Land, as well as Britain’s designs on Peru and Chile. It is remarkable that it has been largely ignored by historians, especially given that it allows us to see Governor Macquarie’s colony from a unique perspective: that of a competing maritime power.
Now, at last, thanks to University of Adelaide professors Jean Fornasiero and John West-Sooby and the Friends of the State Library of South Australia, this remarkable memoir has been published for the first time in an English translation.
You might like
Péron sought to join Nicolas Baudin’s 1800 expedition to Australia as an anthropologist, but was instead selected as an apprentice zoologist. He soon rose in prominence and, due to Baudin’s death, it was Péron who began the official account of the expedition: Voyage de découvertes aux Terres Australes. However, Péron died before its completion, and it was finished by another expedition member. His memoir, a compelling picture of British settlement in New South Wales, also remained unpublished.
Fornasiero and West-Sooby’s readable translation, French Designs on Colonial New South Wales, places France’s interest in its political and historical context. Letters, diagrams and illustrations all add perspective to an interesting document that is must-read for anyone interested in the early settlement of Australia.
French Designs on Colonial New South Wales ($35 paperback; $65 standard edition) is published by the Friends of the State Library of South Australia and is part of a series of titles based on Nicolas Baudin’s voyage to the “Southern Lands” in 1800-1803.