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National Maritime Museum

Bougainville, Louis Antoine De (1729-1811)


IDENTITY STATEMENT

Reference code(s): GB 0064 BOG

Held at: National Maritime Museum

Title: Bougainville, Louis Antoine De (1729-1811)

Date(s): [1729-1811]

Level of description: Collection

Extent: 1 box

Name of creator(s): Bougainville | Louis Antoine | De | 1729-1811 | Admiral, French Navy

CONTEXT

Administrative/Biographical history:

Bougainville served in the French army in Canada, where he was aide-de-camp to Montcalm (1712-1759). In 1763 he sailed on a private enterprise to colonise the Falkland Islands with French Canadian refugees but when France sold her interest in the islands to Spain in 1766, he sailed to the South Seas and in the next three years circumnavigated the world. He subsequently proposed undertaking a voyage towards the North Pole hut his scheme was dropped when the Duc de Choiseul (1719-1785) was dismissed in 1770. In 1775 Bougainville was granted naval rank and was second-in-command to de Grasse (1722-1788) in the West Indies during the American War of Independence. In 1791 he was offered the post of Ministre de la Marine but refused it. He narrowly escaped the guillotine and he later enjoyed the patronage of Napoleon. In 1796 he was elected to the Institut National. He was also a member of the Bureau des Longitudes and a Fellow of the Royal Society of London. See Jean Etienne Martin-Allanic, Bougainville, navigateur et les decouvertes de son temps (Paris, 1964).

CONTENT

Scope and content/abstract:

Papers of Louis Antoine De Bougainville including a personal memoir on navigation between Europe and Canada by an unknown seaman, a draft by Bougainville concerning the Duc de Choiseul and the proposed voyage to the North Pole and a collection of notes made during Bougainville's completion of his 'Essai historique sur les navigations anciennes et modernes dans les hautes latitudes septentrionales', Memoires de l'Lnstitut National des Sciences et Arts: Sciences morales at politiques, Tome 3, An 9.

ACCESS AND USE

Language/scripts of material: French

System of arrangement:

Conditions governing access:

Please contact the Archive for further information.

Conditions governing reproduction:

Please contact the Archive for further information.

Finding aids:

Detailed catalogue online at the: National Maritime Museum website .

ARCHIVAL INFORMATION

Archival history:

Immediate source of acquisition:

The papers were purchased through the Caird Fund from the sale of the Bougainville collection at Sotheby's in 1957.

ALLIED MATERIALS

DESCRIPTION NOTES

Archivist's note: Edited by Sarah Drewery, Jun 2011.

Rules or conventions: Compiled in compliance with General International Standard Archival Description, ISAD(G), second edition, 2000; National Council on Archives Rules for the Construction of Personal, Place and Corporate Names, 1997.

Date(s) of descriptions: 2010-08-26


INDEX ENTRIES
Subjects
Navigation
Travel

Personal names
Bougainville | Louis Antoine | De | 1729-1811 | Admiral, French Navy

Corporate names

Places
Canada | North America
Arctic