A Human Sacrifice, in a Morai, in Otaheite.

Title

A Human Sacrifice, in a Morai, in Otaheite.

Description

Captain Cook in Tahiti.

ca. 1775

Artist

Perousse,de La (1741-1788)

Jean-François de Galaup de La Pérouse was a French navigator, circumnavigator and geographer in the Age of Enlightenment. At the age of 15, La Pérouse went to Brest and started a career in the French Navy. The officers were divided into noble 'red' and bourgeois 'blue'. To make his career better, La Pérouse added a noble title to his family name de Galaup, which refers to a small family farm outside of Albi called La Peyrouse. The recent outbreak of the Seven Years' War led La Pérouse to Québec, among others. The return of the circumnavigator Louis Antoine de Bougainville to France in 1769 inspired La Pérouse to do similar things. From 1772 to 1776, La Pérouse sailed on behalf of the French governor in the Indian Ocean between the French-controlled colonies of Mauritius, Reunion, Pondicherry in southern India and Madagascar, where he completed his geographic knowledge. La Perouse took part in the American War of Independence on the American side for the French. He commanded a squadron and in August 1782 captured the Fort Prince of Wales without a fight and captured the English explorer Samuel Hearne there. La Pérouse was ennobled and promoted for special services on his return. Two ships - the Astrolabe and the Boussole - were equipped and a top-class team of scientists from the fields of astronomy, mathematics, geology, mineralogy and botany were assembled for the trip. Her mission was to study the geography of the Pacific and its trade opportunities there, from the far north to Australia, from Asia to America. On August 1, 1785, the two ships set sail from Brest. The first stop was Tenerife. Patagonia was reached in January 1786. Via Cape Horn and Easter Island we went to Hawaii and further to Alaska. La Pérouse, who was one of the enlighteners, was the first European to consciously refrain from taking possession of unexplored islands. In Alaska, he made important contacts with Indians before touring the California coast. Winter was used to cross the Pacific. In January 1787, the two ships landed in Macau. Now the so far little-known East Asian side seas, the Chinese Sea and the Japanese Sea, have been systematically researched and mapped, as well as the large Siberian Kamchatka Peninsula, which was interesting because of the wealth of fur. After Sakhalin and the Japanese Kuriles were explored, the South Pacific was headed for. On December 11, 1787, Samoa's second captain and close friend La Pérouses, the scientist Paul Fleuriot de Langle (1744–1787), was killed by locals.

Historical Description

Tahiti was settled - like the other Society Islands - around 200 BC from Tonga and Samoa. It is not conclusively clear which European can be considered the "discoverer" of Tahiti. The Portuguese Pedro Fernández de Quirós sighted an inhabited island in 1606, which he called Sagittaria and which, according to some chroniclers, could have been Tahiti. However, there is no confirmation of this. Today, the Englishman Samuel Wallis is considered the first European to set foot on Tahiti in 1767. The visits of James Cook have remained in the consciousness of Europeans. In April 1769 he anchored with his ship Endeavour in Matavai Bay, about 10 km north of today's Papeete. Traveling with Cook was botanist Joseph Banks, who conducted extensive botanical studies during his three-month stay. His findings led to the fateful 1787 voyage of the Bounty to Tahiti, which was commissioned by the British Admiralty to William Bligh.