Terre Napoleón; a History of French Explorations and Projects in Australia

In 1800, Napoleon's France dispatched a fleet to the unexplored southern continent, sparking a covert struggle over Australia's future while Britain fought wars across the globe. Sir Ernest Scott reconstructs Captain Nicolas Baudin's scientific expedition with forensic precision, asking what really drove this mission: genuine Enlightenment curiosity or thinly veiled colonial ambition during Britain's moment of imperial vulnerability? The narrative traces Baudin's two-year voyage along Australia's coast, his interactions with the continent's Indigenous peoples, and the extraordinary cartographic treasure he carried home. At the heart of the book lies a provocative question: did Matthew Flinders' celebrated charts of Australia's coastline owe their accuracy to French surveys? Scott systematically dismantles the nationalist narratives that have obscured this episode, revealing how both empires carefully constructed histories that served their imperial pretensions. The result is a revisionist work that exposes the fiction behind claims of heroic solitary discovery, showing exploration as it truly was: a ruthless contest between rival powers where science served sovereignty.