Flacourt, Étienne de (1607 - 1660)

Étienne de Flacourt (1607 – 1660) was a French governor of Madagascar, born at Orléans in 1607. He was French East India Company's governor of Madagascar in 1648. In 1658 he authored L'Histoire de le Grand île de Madagascar, the first detailed natural history of the island, for which he prepared a map which represented the first improvement on the geographical knowledge of the island since Linschoten. Flacourt was one of the few, if not the only, Westerner to have recorded knowledge of the elephant birds of Madagascar when they were possibly still extant.