10 Non-British European expeditions to the Australian continent
10 Non-British European expeditions to the Australian continent
In the end, colonisation and exploration of the Australian continent was largely a British project. Large parts of the coastline had been mapped by Dutch voyagers in service of Dutch East India Company interests in Asia, some land expeditions (most notably those of Ludwig Leichhardt) included Europeans of non-British origin, but the history of Australian exploration and increasing European knowledge of the continent is a largely British one. That was not a foregone conclusion: other European powers were involved in Pacific exploration, and French explorers surveyed the Australian coastline and were seen as threatening British colonial projects on the continent.
Britain was not the only European state interested in the potential of colonisation. The Dutch had partially mapped the northern, western, and southern fringes of the Australian continent before Cook’s charting of the east coast. The knowledge obtained by the Dutch-led them to avoid the continent, rather than seek to set up trading posts or colonies. Within the Pacific, Britain was only one of several European states to engage in exploration and annexation. In particular, the frequency of French expeditions increased from the late-eighteenth century onwards, and France sought to claim places judged to be of ongoing value. For French explorers, interest in the Pacific led them to explore portions of the Australian coast.
Two French expeditions to the Pacific around the time of Cook’s Endeavour voyage skirted the Australian continent. During his 1766-9 circumnavigation of the world, French navigator Louis-Antoine de Bougainville saw sections of what is now known as the Great Barrier Reef. Despite sighting, naming, and mapping several reefs in roughly the region where the Endeavour soon after experienced severe difficulty, Bougainville did not chart or claim the east coast of the Australian continent. While some of Bougainville’s sailors claimed they sighted land, Bougainville protected his ships by declining to explore further. French navigator Jean-François de Surville’s 1769-70 voyage to the Pacific overlapped with Cook’s Endeavour voyage. De Surville and Cook narrowly missed encountering each other in Aotearoa (New Zealand). Before reaching Aotearoa, de Surville had passed between New Caledonia and the Australian coast: de Surville remained further from the continent than Bougainville but his was another French voyage that skirted Australia’s east coast before Cook mapped it.
Australia was also visited by a Spanish expedition shortly after the establishment of the colony at Sydney. Alejandro Malaspina (himself Italian) sailed from Spain in 1789. He explored the coasts of North and South America, followed the traditional Spanish route across the Pacific to Manila, but took a more southerly route on his return. He visited the new British colony in New South Wales, then called at islands in central Polynesia, before returning to