Jean-Baptiste Du Tertre

Jean-Baptiste Du Tertre (born as "Jacques Du Tertre", 1610 in Calais, died 1687 in Paris) [cite book
last = Hughes
first = Derek
authorlink =
coauthors =
title = Versions of Blackness: Key Texts on Slavery from the Seventeenth Century
publisher = Cambridge University Press
date = 2007
pages = pp. 327-30
isbn = 978-0-521-68956-4] was a French blackfriar and botanist.

In 1633 he joined the Dutch army where he worked in the headquarters in Maastricht. Subsequently he joined the Dominican Order where he adapted his first name Jean-Baptiste.

In 1640 he was sent as missionary to the Antilles from where he returned to France in 1658.

He is the author of several works about the Antilles where he described the indigenous peoples, the animals, and the plant world, including "Histoire générale des îles Saint-Christophe, de la Guadeloupe, de la Martinique et autres de l'Amérique" (Paris, 1654), "Histoire naturelle et morale des îles Antilles de l'Amérique avec un vocabulaire caraïbe" (1658), "La Vie de Sainte Austreberte" (1659) and "l’Histoire générale des Antilles habitées par les Français" (four volumes, 1667 – 1671). Particularly in has last work Du Tertre created the myth of the "Bon Sauvage" where he placed "the virtuousness of the heathen caribs above the immoral life of the Europeans"

Du Tertre was the first who described the yellow fever when several epidemics burst over Guadeloupe and Saint Christopher in 1635, 1640, 1648 and 1667.

Biography (selected)

*1654: "Histoire générale des îles Saint-Christophe, de la Guadeloupe, de la Martinique et autres de l'Amérique"
*1658: "Histoire naturelle et morale des îles Antilles de l'Amérique avec un vocabulaire caraïbe"
*1659: "La Vie de Sainte Austreberte"
*1667 – 1671: "l’Histoire générale des Antilles habitées par les Français" (vier Bände)

Notes

Reference about Jean-Baptiste Du Tertre

*Maurice Boubier (1925). "L’Évolution de l’ornithologie." Librairie Félix Alcan (Paris), coll. "Nouvelle collection scientifique" : ii + 308 p. fr

External links

* [http://perso.orange.fr/case.pilote/BIOGRAPHIE/Tertre.htm Short biography] fr