Jean-Baptiste Du Tertre

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Engraving by Jean-Baptiste Du Tertre about an indigoterie from his work l'Histoire générale des Antilles habitées par les Français from 1667

Jean-Baptiste Du Tertre (born Jacques Du Tertre , * 1610 in Calais , † 1687 in Paris ) was a Dominican and botanist .

In 1633 he worked at the headquarters of the Dutch army in Maastricht . He then entered the Dominican Order, where he took the name of the order Jean-Baptiste . In 1640 he was sent as a missionary to the Antilles , from where he returned to France in 1658 .

Du Tertre is the author of several works on the Antilles, in which he described the indigenous peoples, the fauna and the flora. These include the Histoire générale des îles Saint-Christophe, de la Guadeloupe, de la Martinique et autres de l'Amérique (Paris, 1654), dke 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). In his last work, Du Tertre designed the myth of the “noble savage”, in which he placed the “virtue of the pagan Caribs ” over the “moral decline of the Europeans”.

Du Tertre was the first to describe yellow fever when multiple epidemics broke out in Guadeloupe and Saint Christopher in 1635, 1640, 1648 and 1667 . In his work Histoire Generale des Antilles (1667) he describes a genocide that French and English settlers allegedly committed against the Kalinago people in 1626 on the islands of St. Kitts and Nevis .

Works (selection)

  • 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: Histoire générale des Antilles habitées par les François (four volumes)

Literature on Jean-Baptiste Du Tertre

  • Maurice Boubier (1925). L'Évolution de l'ornithologie. Librairie Félix Alcan (Paris), coll.Nouvelle collection scientifique  : ii + 308 p. (French)

Web links

personal data
SURNAME You Tertre, Jean-Baptiste
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Dominican missionary and botanist
DATE OF BIRTH 1610
PLACE OF BIRTH Calais
DATE OF DEATH 1687
Place of death Paris