Within several months of each other in 1771 the French and British governments established voyages of exploration with very similar aims: to investigate the many speculations about the location of a southern continent, and to claim it for their respective countries if possible. The outcomes of these two voyages could not have been more different. James Cook made the first recorded crossing of the Antarctic Circle, proved that most of the claimed locations of the Great South Land were fallacious, discovered important sub-Antarctic islands while circumnavigating the continent and sailed onto the front cover of history as the initiator of Antarctic exploration. His French counterpart, Yves-Joseph Kerguelen, discovered the sub-Antarctic island group that was named after him, claimed falsely that it was the southern continent, and for his trouble ended up languishing in a French jail and the footnotes of Antarctic history.

Conventional Antarctic historiography tends to privilege explanations that trace the successes and failures of explorers back to their personal strengths and weakness as individuals. Part I develops an alternative view that sets Antarctic exploration in the context of the coevolution of capitalism and colonialism in the century from 1750. Chapter 1 examines the deeper origins of the divergent outcomes of Cook and Kerguelen, arguing that they expressed the key differences between aristocratic France, capitalistic Britain and the wider world of their colonies and empires.