When one thinks of early French voyages in the southern hemisphere in terms of colonial expansion, what come to mind are the opportunities missed and the rivalries in which the French always seem to come off second best. One thinks first of Bougainville's circumnavigation and his Tahitian sojourn in 1768, arriving after Samuel Wallis, who had claimed possession of the islands for George III. Subsequently, two years before James Cook's exploration, Bougainville was prevented by the barrier of coral from exploring the northern coasts of New Holland.

One thinks also of the French eighteenth-century voyagers in search of the mythical Terra australis: Jean-Baptiste Charles Bouvet de Lozier in 1738–1739, Marc-Joseph Marion du Fresne, Yves-Joseph de Kerguelen de Trémarec and Louis François Marie Aleno de Saint Allouarn in the 1770s. Saint Allouarn claimed possession of the west coast of New Holland for France in 1772, 54 years before the first English settlement at King George Sound in 1826, but there was no follow-up on the part of the French Crown.

The above perspective on early French exploration of the southern hemisphere positions it in the context of English conquest and colonisation, the French story appearing as a series of failures, as regards both the obsessive search by the French for Terra australis and their lack of action when circumstances were propitious. It is clear that the French were interested in discovering new lands to conquer in the southern hemisphere but their efforts seem curiously dispersed and inconclusive.