French Designs on Colonial New South Wales by François Péron, translated and edited by Jean Fornasiero & John West-Sooby The Friends of the State Library of South Australia, 2013, 416 pages, $35   Britain’s “thief colony” established at Sydney Cove in 1788 was a few years later such a start­ling success that France should take it over straight away, François Peron reported to his government. Peron was a scientist with the Nicolas Baudin scientific expedition that visited Sydney in 1802 during a break in the Napoleonic wars, and was one of its main chroniclers. He wrote a detailed plan for…