[Contemporary Docs] "Histoire de la Grande Isle Madagascar"
The contribution of Etienne Flacourt, both via imperial efforts to settle the island and more enlightened efforts to study its unique beauty, is discussion in Madagascar (Part III). Flacourt himself would remain entranced with the island, even attempting to return after the fall of the French Fort Dauphin. As James Kay notes, "Madagascar was rife with pirate ships, keen to exploit the company vessels that clung to its coast, and it was one such ship of corsairs that attacked Flacourt’s transport. The vessel was destroyed taking most of the crew and Etienne himself to the bottom of the sea" leaving his text "an almost incidental product of 30 years of failed attempts by the French to colonise Madagascar [that] remains an irreplaceable record of the island’s painful introduction to Western society" (257).
The text is available here in its entirety in French, complete with its unique illustrations and corresponding descriptions of its inhabitants, plants and animals.