Between 1872 and 1878 Luigi Maria D’Albertis undertook five expeditions to New Guinea: the most remote, wild and unexplored destination inhabited by men and women both innocent and brutal, according to the romantic ideal of the time.

Luigi Maria D’Albertis has gone down in history as the first Westerner to penetrate into New Guinea and for the remarkable natural and ethnological collections he accumulated; however, the charges against him, the controversy with the colonial establishment, and the bloodiest passages of his travel diary only undermined his reputation.

In New Guinea, his name is mostly remembered for his ruthlessness in dealing with the natives.