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
Schneider-Kempf, Barbara
Buchan, Bruce
Irving-Stonebraker, Sarah
Combe, Thomas
Drews, Julian
Emanuele Coco
Concepts
Travel; exploration
Geography
Indigenous peoples; indigeneity
Naturalists
Cross-cultural interaction; cultural influence
Natural history
Time Periods
18th century
Enlightenment
19th century
Modern
Places
Tahiti
Pacific Ocean
France
Europe
Spain
Polynesia
Institutions
Royal Society of London
Great Britain. Royal Navy
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