Bougainville receives permission from Louis XV in 1766 to circumnavigate the globe.

He will become the fourteenth navigator, and the first Frenchman, to sail around the world.

Completion of his mission will bolster the prestige of France following its defeats during the Seven Years' War.

This is the first expedition to circumnavigate the globe with professional naturalists and geographers aboard.

The expedition receives the support of such prominent figures of the time as Charles de Brosses (1709–1777), Comte de Buffon (1707–1788), and Jérôme Lalande (1732–1807).

The purpose of the expedition is to discover new territories available for settlement, to open a new route to reach China, to found new outlets for the French East India Company and, finally, discover acclimatable spices for the Isle de France (now Mauritius).

Bougainville leaves Nantes on November 15, 1766, with two ships: Boudeuse (captain: Nicolas Pierre Duclos-Guyot) and the Étoile (commanded by François Chenard de la Giraudais).

This is a large expedition, with a crew of two hundred and fourteen aboard Boudeuse and one hundred and sixteen aboard Étoile.

Included in the party is the botanist Philibert Commerçon, who will name the flower Bougainvillea, and his valet.

The ship's surgeon will later reveal this person as Jeanne Baré, possibly Commerçon's mistress; she will become the first woman known to circumnavigate the globe.

Other notable people on this expedition are Count Jean-François de Galaup de la Pérouse (member of the crew); the astronomer Pierre-Antoine Veron; the surgeon of Boudeuse Dr. Louis-Claude Laporte; the surgeon of the Étoile Dr. François Vives; the engineer and cartographer aboard the Étoile Charles Routier de Romainville; and the writer and historian Louis-Antoine Starot de Saint-Germain.

The discovery and description of Tahiti by Bougainville in his trip will have a very significant impact on the philosophers of the Enlightenment, including Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778).

Bougainville sees islands of the Tuamotu group on the following March 22, and ...

...on April 2 sees the peak of Mehetia and visits the island of Otaheite shortly after.

He has narrowly missed becoming their discoverer; a previous visit and claim had been made by British explorer Samuel Wallis in HMS Dolphin less than a year previously.

Bougainville claims the island for France and names it New Cythera.

Bougainville's expedition had left Tahiti and sailed westward to southern Samoa and the New Hebrides, then on sighting Espiritu Santo had turned west, still looking for the Southern Continent.

Almost running into heavy breakers on June 4, Bougainville had had  to change course to the north and east.

He had almost found the Great Barrier Reef.

He had sailed through what is now known as the Solomon Islands but, because of the hostility of the people there, avoids landing.

The expedition is attacked by people from New Ireland so the French expedition makes for the Moluccas.

The Bougainville expedition receives news at Batavia of Wallis and Carteret, who had preceded Bougainville in discovering Tahiti.