This is the fourth and final volume of a work originally published in France during 1955-1956. (The first three volumes of the Spanish edition are reviewed in HAHR, August 1969, pp. 527-529.) The tomo under consideration consists of three libros, of which the first, Las exploraciones de los océanos y de los continentes desde 1815 a nuestra época, was written by the late Jules Rouch. It consists of two sections, the oceans and the continents. A fundamental question may be raised about the propriety of including material which should not be classified under the history of explorations, but more properly belongs in a scientific treatise, i.e., the chemical composition of water, the depths of oceans, and species of fish.
In a word, there is far too much oceanography and too little exploration. Furthermore, every topic is treated far too summarily, both here and in the second section. One would think that in the fewer than 200 pages allotted to the author for the entire libro, he would have had problem enough squeezing in events which occurred on earth without devoting space to the exploration of the atmosphere. This work does purport to be universal in its coverage, however, and the promise to the reader must be kept somehow.
The Gallic chauvinism of the author is too evident, especially when he entitles a chapter, “Expediciones francesas y otro paises (1873-1910),” as well as in his four-page bibliography, which consists overwhelmingly of works by French authors. Not a single journal reference is listed in the bibliography for this section—or, for that matter, in the others.
The second libro, Las exploraciones polares, is by Paul-Émile Victor. This section possesses more unity than the others and is the best written and most engrossing of the book, perhaps because of the special expertise and the singular experiences of the author, a polar explorer. I do question his organizational approach to the topic in certain chapters. Is it really necessary to devote separate sub-sections to British, Soviet, Norwegian, and Australian and German (odd combination) efforts, after a separate section on French polar explorations? Indeed, the polar regions and the planets are the two areas of the universe in which the flag is not planted to assert sovereignty!
The third section, Las profundidades, is the work of Haroun Tazieff, a Belgian. He was allotted the least amount of space (fewer than 50 pages), and perhaps the editor was prescient in this decision. The undersea explorations of Cousteau could not be described at the date of publication, and the discussion of Las profundidades del cielo seems totally inadequate and dated, especially to a reviewer who completed his assigned reading on the very day men landed on the moon.
Since this is the final volume of the work, the publishers have provided a cumulative index—the first three volumes lacked indices. No documentation is provided in any of the volumes. The bibliographies, unimpressive in the original French edition, are even more so in the Spanish edition, nothing having been added by the editor or the authors since 1955.
