Voyage to the South Pole and Oceania, Volume VII: Batavia, Singapore, Borneo and Mindanao

June 1839. After the southern ice and the island groups of Oceania, the Astrolabe and the Zélée drop anchor in the roadstead of Batavia, capital of the Dutch East Indies.

Dumont d'Urville at last receives news from France and rides up to the palace of Buitenzorg, where dinner, whist and a ball await him, while his officers lose themselves in the Chinese quarter and its theatre. Through the Bangka and Dryon straits, the corvettes then reach Singapore, a young British free port where merchants of every nation cross paths.

Then the expedition leaves the beaten track. In Borneo, the boats ascend the Sambas River between forests and farmland, in a land of gold, diamonds and tin. In the Sulu Islands, a feared haunt of pirates, the French must negotiate with Datu Molou, obtain an audience with the sultan, take on fresh water under guard and share a feast where opium circulates. A coral bank still threatens the ships before the welcome of the Spanish fort of Zamboanga, on Mindanao.

Written from the journals of the admiral and his officers, this volume combines tales of port calls with broad panoramas of Asia's colonial empires. What remains of the worlds that two French corvettes crossed in a single summer?