Louis Antoine de Bougainville
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Louis-Antoine, Comte de Bougainville (12 November 1729 – 31 August 1811) was a French admiral and explorer. Describing Tahiti in his 1771 book Voyage autour du monde, Bougainville offered a vision of an earthly paradise where men and women live happily in innocence, away from the corruption of civilisation. His description powerfully illustrated the concept of the noble savage, and influenced the utopian thoughts of philosophers such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau before the advent of the French Revolution. Denis Diderot's book, Supplément au voyage de Bougainville, retells the story of Bougainville's landing on Tahiti, narrated by an anonymous reader to one of his friends: this fictional approach to Bougainville's expedition, along with the description of the Tahitians as noble savages, is meant to criticise Western ways of living and thinking.
Legacy
Bougainville's name is given to the largest eastern island of Papua New Guinea; and to the strait which divides it from the island of Choiseul. It is also applied to the strait between Mallicollo and Espiritu Santo islands of the New Hebrides group. In the Falklands, Port Louis, and "Isla Bougainville" (Lively Island's Spanish name) commemorate him.
The genus of South American climbing shrubs with colorful bracts, Bougainvillea, is named after him.
Thirteen ships of the French Navy have been named in his honour, see French ship Bougainville.
