Article ID: CBB001451624

Georg Forster in Tahiti: Enlightenment, Sentiment and the Intrusion of the South Seas (2013)

unapi

Leading German world traveller Georg Forster's influential A Voyage Round the World (1777), this essay discusses the typical conflict between Enlightenment ideology of progress and civilisation, which assigns Oceanian culture to a lower development stage, and the sentimental praise of the island Tahiti as the earthly paradise. Challenging the interpretive method of controlling coloniser and passive colonised, this essay stresses the real-world significance of Oceania in the transformation of Forster's cultural identity as it is manifested in his travel narrative. Hence Forster's travel account is less a distortion of Pacific history than a pivotal documentation of cultural transformation around 1800.

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Authors & Contributors
David, Andrew
Despoix, Philippe
Ette, Ottmar
Fernández-Armesto, Felipe
Ferreiro, Larrie David
Gascoigne, John
Journals
Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies
História, Ciências, Saúde---Manguinhos
History of Science
Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage
Journal of Historical Geography
Publishers
Cambridge University Press
Ashgate
Basic Books
Kluwer
Librairie Droz
Olschki
Concepts
Travel; exploration
Geography
Cross-cultural interaction; cultural influence
Earth sciences
Natural history
Naturalists
People
Cook, James
Forster, Georg
Forster, Johann Reinhold
Malaspina, Alessandro
Camara, Manoel Ferreira da
Chamisso, Adelbert Von
Time Periods
18th century
Enlightenment
19th century
Modern
Places
Tahiti
Europe
France
Pacific Ocean
Great Britain
Spain
Institutions
Great Britain. Royal Navy
Royal Society of London
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