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Journal ou suite de voyage de Siam. En forme des lettres familieres fait en M.DC.LXXXV et M.DC.LXXXVI par Mr L. D.

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First edition recounting a voyage to Siam by the prolific French writer, former cross-dresser, and Jesuit priest, the Abbé de Choisy. The French mission to Buddhist Siam, modern-day Thailand, was organised in response to a request by the Greek adventurer turned Siamese prime minister, Constantine Phaulkon, who suggested that Siam and its king were ‘ripe for conversion’ (Howgego). Choisy, who was appointed escort and interpreter for the Siamese emissaries, left Brest in March 1685, arriving in September and returning home in June 1686. His account of the journey, written in the form of a diary, ‘an intimate, facile, and lively book’ (Lach), was published the following year.

Like many of Choisy’s works it proved popular: Hume was known to have a copy in his library (along with Choisy’s best-selling memoir of his time cross-dressing), and John Locke, who frequently cited travel accounts when arguing for the existence of atheism and consequently the nonexistence of innate ideas, cited it approvingly in his An Essay concerning Human Understanding (Locke ch. 3, § 15). A second French embassy under Simon La Loubère reached Siam in 1687, although La Loubère was similarly unsuccessful in turning the Siamese into Christians. The work was reissued the following year. It is often compared, and occasionally printed, with the published narratives of two other Jesuits on the voyage, the Relation of Chevalier Alexandre de Chaumont and the Voyage of Guy Tachard.

Cordier, Indosinica col. 947; Cordier, Sinica 941, 953; Howgego C121; Lach and Van Kley III, pp. 1190–1194.

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