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Among the voyages of exploration and surveying in the late 18th century, that of Alejandro Malaspina best represents the high ideals and scientific interests of the Enlightenment. Italian-born, Malaspina entered the Spanish navy in 1774. In September 1788 he and fellow-officer José Bustamante submitted a plan to the Ministry of Marine for a voyage of survey and inspection to Spanish territories in the Americas and Philippines. The expedition was to produce hydrographic charts for the use of Spanish merchantmen and warships and to report on the political, economic and defensive state of Spain's overseas possessions. The plan was approved and in July 1789 Malaspina and Bustamante sailed from Càdiz in the purpose-built corvettes, Descubierta and Atrevida. On board the vessels were scientists and artists and an array of the latest surveying and astronomical instruments. The voyage lasted more than five years. On his return Malaspina was promoted Brigadier de la Real Armada, and began work on an account of the voyage in seven volumes to dwarf the narratives of his predecessors in the Pacific such as Cook and Bougainville. Among much else, it would contain sweeping recommendations for reform in the governance of Spain's overseas empire. But Malaspina became involved in political intrigue. In November 1795 he was arrested, stripped of his rank and sentenced to life imprisonment. Although released in 1803, Malaspina spent the last seven years of his life in obscure retirement in Italy. He never resumed work on the great edition, and his journal was not published in Spain until 1885. Only in recent years has a multi-volume edition appeared under the auspices of the Museo Naval, Madrid, that does justice to the achievements of what for long was a forgotten voyage. This first volume of a series of three contains Malaspina's diario or journal from 31 July 1789 to 14 December 1790, newly translated into English, with substantial introduction and commentary. Among the places visited and described are Montevideo, Puerto Deseado, Port Egmont, Puerto San Carlos, ValparaÃ-so, Callao, Guayaquil and Panamà. Other texts include Malaspina's introduction to his intended edition, and his correspondence with the Minister of the Marine before and during the voyage.

This book, in two volumes, contains an annotated English translation of the História da Ethiópia by the Spanish Jesuit missionary priest Pedro Páez (Pêro Pais in Portuguese), 1564-1622, who worked in the Portuguese padroado missions, first in India and then in Ethiopia, long thought to be the kingdom of the legendary Prester John. His history of Ethiopia was written in Portuguese in the last ten years of his life and survives in only two manuscripts. The translation, by Christopher J. Tribe, is based on the new critical edition of the Portuguese text by Isabel Boavida, Hervé Pennec and Manuel João Ramos, which was published in Lisbon in 2008. They are also the editors of this English version. The History of Ethiopia is an essential source for several areas of study - from the history of the Catholic missions in that country and the relations between the European religious orders, to the history of art and religions; from the history of geographical exploration to the ideological contextualization of the Ethiopian kingdom; from material culture to Abyssinian political and territorial administration; and from an analysis of local circumstances to changes in human ecology in the Horn of Africa and the Indian Ocean. It is a repository of empirical knowledge on the political geography, religion, customs, flora and fauna of Ethiopia. It combines travel narrative with a historico-ethnographic monograph, and is a chronicle of the activities of Jesuit missionaries in their Ethiopian mission. It also reworks a wide variety of documents, including the first translations into a European language of a number of Ethiopian literary texts, from royal chronicles to hagiographies. It complements other early accounts of Ethiopia by Ludovico de Varthema, Francisco Alvares, Castanhoso, Bermudez, Arnold von Harff, Manoel de Almeida, Bahrey, Alessandro Zorzi, Jerónimo Lobo and Václav Prutky, all published by The Hakluyt Society.

In August 1844 a heavily-laden party led by Captain Charles Sturt set out from Adelaide to head into the unexplored vastness of central Australia. Amongst their equipment was a boat: as well as carrying out his mission of scientific investigation and mapping the topography, Sturt was convinced he would find the inland sea that was reputed to lie in the middle of the continent and so make his reputation. This is the first full publication of Sturt's original journals of the trip. They record the hardships of the journeying through the parched landscape, but also show how his efforts helped reveal the nature of much of the mysterious interior of Australia, and how, in a manner uncharacteristic of his times, he established respectful and co-operative relations with the Aborigines he encountered along the way.

The French entered the Pacific in the late 17th century, but the ocean remained largely a Spanish preserve until British navigators began to cross its vast expanse in the mid 1760s. France's concerns that Britain might establish its superiority in the area, meant they welcomed Louis de Bougainville's voyage of exploration undertaken in 1766-9. After handing over the colony he had established in the Falkland Islands to Spain, he sailed through the still relatively unknown Straits of Magellan into the poorly charted South Pacific. He made a number of discoveries in the south west, but was too late to discover Tahiti, where Samuel Wallis had preceded him by less than a year. Reports on Bougainville's reception there and on life in the island were to create wide interest and controversy in Europe. He then sailed to the Samoan Islands and on to Vanuatu, as far as the Great Barrier Reef, and north towards New Guinea and the Samoan Islands making a number of discoveries and all the while leaving his name to a number of features, the best known of which are the island of Bougainville and the Bougainvillea flower. He returned home by way of the Dutch East Indies and the Indian Ocean. Although Bougainville published an account of his voyage in 1771, his original journal was published only in 1977; the present volume makes the latter text available for the first time in English translation.