[Travels & Voyages] Bourges, Jacques de (1634-1714) Relation du Voyage de Monseigneur l'Evesque de Beryte, Vicaire Apostolique du Royaume de la Cochinchine.
Paris: Charles Angot, 1683.
[Bound with] François Pallu's (1626-1684) Relation Abregée des Missions et des Voyages aux Royaumes de la Chine, Cochinchine, Tonquin & Siam, Paris: Angot, 1682; two octavo volumes bound as one, third edition of the first title (lacking the folding map), second edition of the second; ex libris Charles de Lorraine, with his signature on the first title; bound in full contemporary red morocco with gilt ruling to boards, spine richly gilt in compartments, all edges gilt, expertly recased, some wear to boards, corners very slightly bumped, 7 1/2 x 4 1/2 in.
De Bourges was a member of the first Catholic mission to Thailand, arriving with two other missionaries to Ayutthaya [Phra Nakhon Si Ayutthaya] in 1662. An ancient city on UNESCO's World Heritage list, and former capital of the Tai state, Ayutthaya was originally founded in 1350, flourished for more than 400 years and is often referred to as Krung Kao (ancient capital). In 1664 a second group led by Pallu joined Bourges and the other missionaries after a two-year journey overland.
"Jacques de Bourges produced the first published account of Siam by a Frenchman, and preceded by twenty years the great mass of texts that appeared from the return of the first French embassy to Siam, led by Chaumont and Choisy in 1686, to long after the collapse of the French ambitions in Siam as a consequence of the murder of Phaulkon, the death of King Narai and the assumption of power by the usurper Petrarch in 1688." (cf. Michael Smithies's "Jacques de Bourges and Siam," in his Seventeenth century Siamese Explorations: A collection of published articles.)
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