“Our People are very much unacquainted with those Seas.” A study of paratexts in the English translation of Frézier’s Relation du voyage de la mer du Sud (1717)
Abstract
This article examines the English translation of Amédée François Frézier’s Relation du voyage de la mer du Sud aux côtes du Chili, du Pérou, et du Brésil, fait pendant les années 1712, 1713 & 1714, printed by Jonah Bowyer in 1717. I argue that this English translation situated Frézier’s work at the centre of a vibrant and contentious mediation between Britain and France concerning knowledge of South America beyond Spain’s imperial borders. In order to address these debates, the article first examines Frézier’s intellectual background, his journey through Chile and Peru, and the origins of his Relation. It then focuses on how his work was initially received in France and Britain, particularly through the English translation printed in London in 1717. The analysis finally focuses on the paratextual pieces by Bowyer and the mathematician Edmond Halley (preface, postscript, and notes) in the 1717 and 1732 editions, to show how both reframed and contested Frézier’s contributions. Thus, the article shows how the paratextual material became the locus of geographical and political debate about the South Pacific between French and English geographers and mathematicians in the eighteenth century.