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Dans ce Nouveau Voyage aux Indes orientales, commencé en 1786 et terminé en 1813, Sonnerat se propose d’offrir au public les renseignements qu’il a glanés pendant ses années de pérégrinations et de recherches à l’intérieur de ce pays et ainsi de rassembler les connaissances des Européens sur l’Inde de son temps. Éveilleur d’idées, il apporte sa contribution à l'histoire naturelle et ouvre les voies à la géographie physique (morphologie, climatologie, étude des sols, hydrographie) et à la géographie humaine. De cette façon il montre les rapports de l’homme indien avec les conditions du milieu dans lesquelles il se trouve et en étudiant les ressources agricoles, industrielles et commerciales des régions qu’il habite et du parti qu’il en a tiré. Le manuscrit de ce texte, dont on avait perdu la trace depuis 1816, a été retrouvé récemment en Australie à la bibliothèque Mitchell de Sydney. In this New Journey to East India, begun in 1786 and completed in 1813, Sonnerat sets out tofurnish his readers with the information that he has gleaned through years of travel and research in that country and at the same time to gather together Contemporary European knowledge about India. A Stimulator of ideas, he makes a contribution of his own to knowledge about natural history, and opens the way for the study of physical geography (morphology, climatology, soil survey, hydrography) and human geography. In doing so, he describes the relationship of Indian people with their surroundings by studying the agricultural, industrial and commercial resources of the areas they inhabit and the benefits that they draw from them. The manuscript of this text, which has been untraceable since 1816, was found recently at the Mitchell Library in Sydney, Australia.

SUMMARYThe recent extensive literature on exploration and the resulting scientific advances has failed to highlight the contribution of Austrian enterprise to the study of natural history. The leading role of Joseph II among the neutral powers which assumed the carrying trade of the belligerents during the American War of Independence, furthered the development of collections for the Schönbrunn Park and Gardens which had been set up on scientific principles by his parents. On the conclusion of peace, Joseph entrusted to Professor Maerter a world-encompassing mission in the course of which the Chief Gardener Franz Boos and his assistant Georg Scholl travelled to South Africa to collect plants and animals. Boos pursued the mission to Isle de France and Bourbon (Mauritius and Reunion), conveyed by the then unknown Nicolas Baudin. He worked at the Jardin du Roi, Pamplemousses, with Nicolas Cere, or at Palma with Joseph Francois Charpentier de Cossigny. The linkage of Austrian and French horticultural expertise created a situation fraught with opportunities which were to lead Baudin to the forefront of exploration and scientific research as the century closed in the upheaval of the Revolutionary Wars.

Ly-Tio-Fane Madeleine. Pierre Poivre et l'expansion française dans l'Indo-Pacifique. In: Bulletin de l'Ecole française d'Extrême-Orient. Tome 53 N°2, 1967. pp. 453-512.