Such a priori racial differentiation of Oceanian people was unknown in 1792–93. D’Entrecasteaux referred in passing to the fluid, circumstantial classification of “two great varieties of people in the South Seas” that the German Johann Reinhold Forster (1729–98), senior naturalist on the second voyage of James Cook (1728–79), had initially mapped in 1778 (1996 [1778], 153). But for d’Entrecasteaux, it was a possibly useful hypothesis rather than fact – “if, as Mr Forster thinks, … [the Pacific Islands] are peopled only by two races of men …” The reference occurs in the context of a comparison between the Tongans, whom d’Entrecasteaux saw as the most “beautiful race of men” imaginable, and a single “native of Fiji,” who was less handsome but had “an equally fine stature” and “seemed endowed with more intelligence, and had more desire to educate himself” (1808, 1: 312–3). Like Forster, d’Entrecasteaux used race in the loose, mutable sense of “variety.”

Unlike Dumont d’Urville, the ethnological discriminations made by La Billardière and d’Entrecasteaux were flexible and contextual. They were shaped by cumulative particular experiences of indigenous reception and actions, which each author tried to correlate with his general values and preconceptions, desires and place-specific expectations derived from reading voyage literature. The terms of these overlapping equations were discourse and precedent on the one hand, experience and indigenous agency on the other; the products were representations infused with indigenous countersigns. The Admiralty Islands vignette suggests particular permutations of these relationships: here, perceived experience of indigenous actions redefined precedents but confirmed the discourse of primitivism to which d’Entrecasteaux, especially, was ambivalently attracted. Relieved and charmed by the behaviour of Admiralty Islanders, at the end of his stay d’Entrecasteaux remarked on the lessons of experience, reporting that the “ferocity” and “hostile attitudes” of these people had been “exaggerated” (1808, 1: 140). From this point on, the voyage added its own precedents to those learned from earlier literature.

After a break in Ambon, d’Entrecasteaux headed for Van Diemen’s Land, where in February 1793 the French found uncorrupted, natural man:^[11] “so good and so different from the idea that one forms of savages from the accounts of different voyagers” – specifically from accounts of the visit to Van Diemen’s Land in 1772 of his compatriot Marc-Joseph Marion du Fresne (1724–72), who had clashed violently with the inhabitants and thought them “wicked.” “On the contrary,” for d’Entrecasteaux, the “peaceable dispositions” of the Tasmanians with whom his crews enjoyed amicable relations over ten days in Recherche Bay and Bruny Island proved to him “that they are good and trusting” – indigenous actions and demeanour here determined the voyager’s evaluation of their character.^[12] He delighted in these “simple and good men,” “so close to nature, whose candour and goodness contrast so strongly with the vices of the state of civilisation,” and who seemed to him also to lack the “vices” – especially the “disposition to theft” – that he attributed to the more “advanced” but also often more “ferocious” Pacific Islanders (1808, 1: 230–6, 241–3, 287–8, 307).

The Van Diemen’s Land section of d’Entrecasteaux’s Voyage is almost irresistibly quotable for examples of the ethnocentric, infantilising universalism of Enlightenment primitivism, with tropes like “this first natural affection” and “this school of nature” (1808, 1: 234). There is little realism in his ecstatic, self-indulgent prose portraits – perhaps unsurprisingly since, by La Billardière’s report, the commander did not have “the pleasure of seeing” any Tasmanian until the final day of the stay in Recherche Bay (1800a, 2: 57). Yet, at least as much as its more empirical counterparts, d’Entrecasteaux’s narrative bears the imprint of Tasmanian actions and demeanour toward their visitors. Indigenous countersigns inflected the tone and content of the narrative from its opening scene of “the first meeting” which “established such confidence that it was followed by several others, all just as friendly, and giving the most favourable idea of the inhabitants of this country” (d’Entrecasteaux 1808, 1: 230). During this first meeting, a Tasmanian man made it clear “by unequivocal signs” (La Billardière 1800a, 2: 32) that he had inspected the four-man French party as they slept in the open the previous night, providing d’Entrecasteaux with further evidence that Tasmanians “are not evil-minded,” because they had not molested the Frenchmen (1808, 1: 232).^[13] His near-to-final passage on the Tasmanians of Recherche Bay paid tribute to “their open and cheerful countenance” but infantilised it as the “reflection of a happiness untroubled by upsetting thoughts or impotent desires” (243). I argue, by contrast, that indigenous demeanours toward newcomers, however they were experienced, were always strategic – even if I cannot begin to fathom the reasons – and that their textual inscription is yet another enigmatic countersign of indigenous agency.

At this stage of the rhetorical sequence, local conduct encouraged positive evaluations of indigenous appearance as well as character: a single man agreed to go to the ship where his “confidence” delighted d’Entrecasteaux and gave “the most favourable impression of this tribe, but especially of this man,” who was still more “remarkable” for his “fine physique and his intelligence” (1808, 1: 238, 243). The sequence is patent in the contemporary journal of the first officer of the Recherche, Alexandre d’Hesmivy d’Auribeau, who was usually more empirical and pragmatic than d’Entrecasteaux: the natives’ unaggressive behaviour toward the sleeping Frenchmen was “an infinitely interesting deed,” which at the outset established their “goodness and humanity”; their general lack of suspicion or fear of the French showed “a nature as good as it is trustful”; finally, he remarked, their “agreeable physiognomy” and “mild gaze” (Richard 1986b, 308, 312). D’Entrecasteaux’s largely vicarious experience of indigenous actions in Van Diemen’s Land confirmed the recent precedent set by Admiralty Islanders, further reinforced the discourse of primitivism, and refuelled his expectations for future encounters.