Atlas des Voiliers et Pirogues du monde au début du XIXème siècle [Atlas of Sailboats and Pirogues of the World at the Beginning of the 19th Century]

Description

167pp, hardbound, coloured DJ, with French texts and numerous coloured illustrations, with 4 Images of Filipino ships, pp. 92-93, 94-95, 96-97, 98. ISBN: 2-911468-35-X. SCARCE.
A Dissertation on Admiral Paris’s famous publication of 1843. When the future Admiral Pâris published his “Essai sur la construction navale des peuples extra-européens…” [Essay on the naval construction of non-European peoples] in 1843, the notion of maritime heritage was far from being developed. The first, Pâris devotes himself in these two volumes, one of text, the other of plates, to safeguarding the trace of the exotic navies that he encountered in his travels around the world aboard the ‘Astrolabe’, then the ‘Favorite’. From the African coasts to Brazil, via India, China, the Philippines, and Oceania, he creates drawings and plans of all types of boats, from canoes to cabotage sailboats. 76 drawings are published, showing in their natural setting the curious “Canton boat used to raise ducks”, the solid pinnaces of the Ganges loaded with passengers or the snake-boat of the sultan of Travancore; 57 engraved plates add a technical dimension. The whole translated with the precision of the navigator, the technician and the theoretician of the sea that was Pâris, tireless observer of the buildings but also of the sites and the men; already regretting that this universe where ingenuity compensates for technological failures is gradually disappearing under the influence of Europeans. These images, reflection of a world that has today been profoundly modified, Eric Rieth brings them to life, supporting his commentary with large extracts from the text of Pâris, rightly considered the first ethnologist of the sea. Eric Rieth, research director at the CNRS (French National Centre for Scientific Research) and lecturer at the University of Paris I, is responsible for the naval archeology department at the National Museum of the Navy.