company dined on what is now the first record of a Papuasian marsupial) and afterwards sailing along the south coast and traversing the strait now named after him.
The first Dutch voyage to the East Indies set sail in 1597 and soon afterwards contacts by Dutchmen with New Guinea began in earnest. Willem Jansz on the Duyfken in 1606 may have been the first; but more important was the voyage of Willem Schouten and Jacob Le Maire in 1616, who viewed much of the north coast along with Manus Island and present-day New Ireland. Both voyages suffered massacres. In 1623 Jan Carstensz sailed along the southwestern coast and was the first to see—in disbelief—the snow-and ice-capped highest peaks of the mainland which for long bore his name (but now collectively are Mt Jaya). Two decades later, in 1643, Abel Tasman touched upon New Ireland and, for the first time, sailed by the north coast of what is now New Britain, but yet thought them continuous with New Guinea (and New Holland, as Australia was then known). But this would be the last such effort on their part: Jan Compagnie was a commercial enterprise, and of potential profit little was to be seen. Contacts with New Guinea became largely restricted to its western fringes, with which an active trade would be carried on and whence G. E. Rumphius, from 1653 at Ambon in the Jan Compagnie’s service for half a century, received much valuable information, in time incorporated into his famous Thesaurus amboinensis (1705) and Herbarium amboinense (1741–1750, 1755).
In 1700 came the epoch-making visit by the Englishman William Dampier—the region’s first "enlightened" explorer. In his ancient ship Roebuck he visited the north coast and discovered Mussau and Emira north of New Ireland, sailed along the north coast of New Ireland and then past his "St George’s Bay" along the south coast of what was still thought to be a large peninsula. After discovering the deep strait between it and New Guinea, he bestowed on what was now an island the name "Nova Britannia" (New Britain) by which it has been known ever since (save as "Neu-Pommern" during German rule). But the ex-buccaneer and explorer was also a natural historian and collector, so he brought back "curiosa" for appreciation and study: the earliest scientific specimens from the region (apart from those from Rumphius surviving in Florence).
Publication of Dampier’s A Voyage to New-Holland (1703) stimulated further coastal exploration over the subsequent three decades, particularly in the west (with Dampier himself returning in 1705), and in 1714 the Sultan of Tidore ceded his territories in New Guinea (with the southern Moluccas) to the Dutch. But it was the now-ascendant French and English who were to set an entirely new trend. Taking a cue from Dampier, most voyages from the 1750s onwards involved serious scientific work as well as exploration and contact, and carried naturalists or physician-naturalists.
1760–1815
The first of the "new" expeditions was British. In 1767 Philip Carteret in the Swallow visited parts of the southwestern Pacific, the northwestern Solomons and "greater" New Britain—and found that "St George’s Bay" was a channel. He thus gave the northern island its name of "Nova Hibernia" (New Ireland), so-called ever since (save as "Neu-Mecklenberg" during German rule). Significantly, Cart-eret discovered some safe anchorages at its southwestern end (including Gower Harbor—soon afterwards named "Port Praslin" by Bougainville and visited by many later expeditions, and in the late nineteenth century the scene of the tragic "Nouvelle France" settlement scheme). Carteret was followed in 1768 by the Frenchman Louis Antoine de Bougainville who, in two ships (La Boudeuse and L’Étoile) and with Philibert Commerson as naturalist, visited among other places parts of the southeastern coast, the Louisiade Archipelago, the northern Solomon Islands (notably those now known as Choiseul, Bougainville, and Buka), and southwestern New Ireland before hastening westwards to Java to relieve his crews. In 1770 James Cook, with J. Banks and D. Solander, definitively verified New Guinea’s distinctness from New Holland (now known as Australia) by sailing through Torres Strait. Beyond that treacherous passage, the Endeavour only landed on the southwest coast for one day, where Banks made some thirty plant collections—of which a list survives—under protection of the ship’s guns and marines.
The French now used the new knowledge of the region, particularly that gained by Bougainville and Commerson, for economic gain—their governor in Mauritius, Pierre Poivre, was determined to break the Dutch spice monopoly. With advice from Commerson (who had joined Poivre’s service), Simon Provost in 1769–1770 (as part of an expedition on two ships, L’Étoile du Matin and Vigilant) and then Pierre Sonnerat in 1771–1772 (under Provost), as part of extensive missions in the Moluccas and Philippines, reached Gebé (near Gag) in the extreme west of Papuasia; but they touched neither on other New Guinean islands nor the mainland (in spite of the title of Sonnerat’s popular 1776 book, Voyage à la Nouvelle-Guinée). Economically, however, the French voyagers were successful; the principal spices came to be established in the Mascarenes and elsewhere, in time contributing to the demise of the Dutch East India Company. Sonnerat’s natural history collections (Paris) are primarily zoological; he also lives on in the epithet for one of that museum’s collections databases.
In 1781 a Spaniard, Francisco Antonio Maurelle, discovered more isles of the Bismarcks including the Los Negros near Manus; but still the north coast of New Britain remained poorly known. This would be partially remedied in the next decade. In 1792 and 1793 another French world voyage—charged by Louis XVI with searching for the lost expedition of La Pérouse and under the command of A. R. J. de Bruny d’Entrecasteaux—was in New Guinea waters with La Recherche and L’Espérance. The two ships called at several points, including for the first time Huon Gulf (named after the Espérance’s commander, Huon de Kermadec); other important work was done in the Milne Bay region, southwestern New Ireland, around the Bismarck Sea, and on tiny Rawak off Waigeo. Many well-known and still-current geographical names were at this time introduced. D’Entrecasteaux’s naturalists were J. J. Houtou de La Billiardière, Louis Ventenat, L. A. Deschamps, and Claude Riche, with Félix de Lahaie accompanying them as a "gardener-botanist." Sadly, the commander died at sea west of Manus on 20 July 1793 and later, in Java, the expedition broke up in confusion over the consequences of the French Revolution (A. Hesmivy d’Auribeau, second in command, was a staunch royalist—but died in 1794 just before capture, while La Billiardière led the republican faction). La Billiardière’s collections (and those of others) were confiscated by the Dutch and sent to England, but through Banks’s good offices restored to him a few years later (his plants are now in Florence). Unfortunately for Papuasia, he published only on his Australian and New Caledonian plants (the former in 1804– 1807 as Novae Hollandiae plantarum specimen, the latter in 1824–1825 as Sertum austro-caledonicum). Lahaie’s own collections are in Paris (and Geneva).
REALITY, DISAPPOINTMENT, AND RENEWAL (1815-1875)
1815–1850
The wars and disruptions of the French Republican and Napoleonic eras were to restrict exploration for the next 20 years or so, but after 1815 a new flowering took place, associated with the growth of mercantile trade and the related development of detailed marine charts—the latter first undertaken on a large scale by Flinders in the Investigator.
In New Guinea and its islands the quarter-century from 1815 was dominated by several great French voyages—all with naturalists—which collectively added substantially to natural history knowledge and amassed considerable collections (now in the Natural History Museum in Paris, though many perhaps remain little-known or even undocumented). The voyages were part of a diplomatic and mercantile initiative, intended to show that after all its humiliations France still mattered—but, save for French Polynesia (and, somewhat later, New Caledonia), they did not lead much to new overseas territories (although the French claim to "Adélie Land" in Antarctica dates from the visit there by the last of these expeditions). Inspired by the example of von Humboldt, the collections, elaborated by professional naturalists, formed a basis for many sumptuous publications—these in turn inspiring the undertakings of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
First into New Guinea waters were the Uranie and Physicienne under Louis de Freycinet in 1818–1819. His naturalists were Jean R. C. Quoy and Joseph Gaimard with Charles Gaudichaud-Beaupré. They called, however, only at Rawak (off Waigeo—earlier
