Alejandro Malaspina: Portrait of a Visionary

In this tale, John Kendrick takes us on a voyage across the Pacific via the Philippines, New Zealand, the infant British colony at Sydney Cove, and the Tonga Islands, chronicling the life of Alejandro Malaspina, an 18th-century Italian navigator in the service of Spain. Malaspina arrived in Spain with a scientific background and an ardent interest in the philosophy of the Enlightenment. A skilled navigator, the Pacific voyage on which he sailed in 1789 was the last and perhaps, the most important of his career; a five year scientific and political examination of the Spanish colonies in the Americas and the Philippines. He appraised the British colony at Sydney Cove and Tonga, allowing him to compare life at a place almost untouched by European contact with the situation in the colonies.