Bücher von Henri Anatole Coudreau

In the first of three exploratory missions into the Amazon basin, the French explorer, geologist, and scholar Henri Coudreau spent nearly seven months on the Tapajoz river, from 28 July 1895 to 7 January 1896. Coudreau was working as a teacher and scientist in French Guyana when he was commissioned by the governor of Brazil's Para state to explore the Amazon's tributaries. His 1897 Voyage au Tapajoz carefully records the villages, towns, peoples, and environs encountered throughout his journey. Illustrations, meteorological tables, and vocabularies of indigenous languages demonstrate Coudreau's wide-ranging interests and observations and his rigorous approach to data collection. He also includes poetic detail, describing, for instance, 'un ciel du matin d'une douceur exquise'. This allows the reader to enter into Coudreau's sensory and affective experiences, and makes the book an enjoyable travelogue as well as a thorough scientific report.

First published in Paris in 1897, this book describes the expedition to the Xingu River in the Amazon region of Brazil by the French scientist and explorer Henri Coudreau. Coudreau spent five months from May to October 1896 travelling down the Xingu by boat, beginning at the river's southern origin at Vitoria and finishing in Para, where it joins the Amazon. He carried out the most detailed explorations of the region up to that time, and is deservedly regarded as one of the great early anthropologists of the Amazon. This book describes the region's distinct eco-system and its warrior-like indigenous peoples. The book, which Coudreau wrote in less than a month, is characteristic of his strongly opinionated writing. It contains 68 illustrations and a map of the Xingu River.

In 1897, building on his earlier scientific expedition reports, Henri Coudreau (1859-1899) published this account of his third mission on behalf of the governor of Brazil's Para state: Voyage au Tocantins-Araguaya. Coudreau continues his practice of including illustrations, statistical tables, indigenous vocabularies, and maps to complement the detailed account of his progress along this Amazonian tributary. His observations reveal his geological background and interests; however, Coudreau also assumes the role of anthropologist as he documents various aspects of indigenous groups, including their customs and beliefs. In addition to his remarks on villages, peoples, and the region's flora and fauna, Coudreau records his thoughts and concerns about increasing industrialization and the potential for urbanization and growth in Para. His opinion that the people of Para possess the same bold and enterprising spirit as their 'Yankee' neighbours is characteristic of Coudreau's personal interest in the subjects of his study.

Henri Coudreau (1859-1899) was one of the greatest explorers of the nineteenth century. Highly regarded in his own time as a thoroughly modern expedition leader, he did much of his work on behalf of the French colonial authorities in South America. However, towards the end of his life he undertook several expeditions for the Brazilian government of the state of Para. This book describes his fourth such journey, during the summer of 1897. Coudreau's objective was to study the Cachoeiras de Itaboca (waterfalls) and the river Itacayuna to find out whether they could be made navigable to steamships in order to connect this region with Para and other parts of Brazil. With 76 illustrations and 40 maps, this 1898 publication was the most extensive description of the region then available. It includes weather records and lists the altitudes of key locations and the distances between them.

Resulting from the great explorer Henri Coudreau's travels in French Guyana during the 1880s, this first of two volumes is an informative survey of the region, enlivened by personal experience and opinion. It provided the French government with an up to date account of the state of the colony.

Henri Coudreau (1859-1899) was one of the greatest explorers of the nineteenth century. This 1892 book, containing vocabulary lists for four Amazonian indigenous languages, derives from his three expeditions to French Guyana described in La France Equinoxale (1887, also reissued in this series) and Chez nos Indiens (1892). Three of the languages belong to the Carib family, while the fourth, Emerillon is a Guarani-Tupi language. Coudreau's word lists, each organised by topics and grammatical categories, and subdivided partly alphabetically and partly by semantic field, represented a huge advance on previous publications on these languages, both in terms of quantity and in terms of syntactic data (examples of different persons and tenses). Dialect variation is also recorded in the case of Ouayana (Wayana) and Oyampi, which Coudreau encountered in two different areas. Coudreau's record remains a valuable resource for scholars of Native American languages and their history.