HOM.16
The Malaspina Expedition, 1773-1795, is the sixteenth volume of the History of Micronesia: A Collection of Source Documents (HOM), compiled and edited by Rodrique Levesque.
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The History of Micronesia: A Collection of Source Documents was complied, edited and published by Rod Levesque from 1992 to 2002. Copyrights were obtained by the Habele Outer Island Education Fund, a US nonprofit, in 2022, which digitized the content to facilitate noncommercial access to, and use of, the twenty-volume series. The PDF file for HOM.16 is roughly 65MB.
Levesque's Summary
Volume 16 contains all documents about the Malaspina Expedition that visited Guam in 1792. All in all, it contains 96 chapters, 205 documents, and 88 illustrations. The figure above is that of Commander Alexandro Malaspina. He was the leader of the first scientific expedition to the Pacific. His work and that of 12 of his officers appear in this volume.
There are the usual records of the administration of the Mariana Islands. Notable among those is the visit to Guam of Carolinian canoes from Lamotrek, and a vocabulary of the Carolinian language that was not made by missionaries. Other documents deal with the East India Company, the Royal Philippine Com¬pany, the fur trade on the Nortwest Coast, Captain McCluer’s life in Palau, the first U.S. ship to visit the Marianas, etc. There is a full set of charts of Palau produced by Captain McCluer and published by Alexander Dalrymple.
There is also a spy story, in French, one having to do with Captain James Cook —from a document that I found hidden in a file at Seville.
The Gilbert Islands were the last archipelago of Micronesia to be discovered by Eu-ropeans. Captain Marshall named them after his travelling companion. Their ships were the first convict ships to visit New South Wales and the first to discover a quick sailing route from there to China. Many other convict ships and those of the East India Company (EIC) would cross Micronesia in the years that followed.
The Royal Philippine Company (RPC) was created in this period also, for the same purpose of modernizing trade around the known world. The Manila galleons usually carried convicts also, as proven by the diary of Corporal Jose Gomez.
“If we were to compare the numberless sacrifices in men that overseas possessions ha ve cost Europe with the social benefits deri ved from trade and na vigation, either through a relative gentility ofcustoms, or through the multiplication of our species, surely most of the advantages expected from the discovery of America would dissipate rapidly and induce a stop to the massive projects regarding the limitless expansion in power and the thoughtless rivality among nations. ” -[Commander Malaspina, upon leaving Acapulco for Guam in 1792 (Doc. 1792B)].
The Spanish were the first Europeans to carry out a modern scientific expedition in the Pacific. This volume contains the work of the 12 senior members of this expedition while they were in Guam. The results of this expedition were not published until a cen¬tury later.
“It is nothing but my zeal for my country that prompts me to follow this resolution [i.e. to stay at Palau in 1793]; and I hope to succeed in the plan I ha ve formed, which may benefit my country and the world in general, by enlightening the minds of these noble islanders: should I fail in the attempt, it is only the Joss of an individual, who wished to do good to his fellow-creatures. ” -[Captain McCluer, writing to Lieut. Wedgeborough in 1793 (see Doc. 1793D)].
Soon after this statement was written, Captain McCluer disappeared at sea, and it was not until some 200 years later that Palau joined the United Nations as an independent country.
One of most interesting documents in this volume is a note written by a Spanish spy in London, announcing the third voyage of Captain Cook. Strange as it may seem, this famous explorer never visited Micronesia...
Publication Details
Lévesque Rodrigue. History of Micronesia : A Collection of Source Documents. Vol. 16 The Malaspina Expedition: 1773-1795. Gatineau Québec: Lévesque Publications; 2000.
ISBN-10: 0920201164
ISBN-13: 978-0920201169
LCC: DU500 .H58 2000
