The Traveller, an 18th century explorer far ahead of his time
Article excerpt
George Forster, an 18th-century naturalist and explorer who traveled across Russia, Siberia, and the Pacific with his father from age ten, emerges as a strikingly modern thinker in a new account of his life. Unlike his contemporaries, Forster explicitly rejected the racial hierarchies that dominated Enlightenment-era science, arguing against the prevailing view that humanity could be ranked by skin color or geography. His travels, and the meticulous observations he recorded, became the foundation for a radical philosophy: that human diversity arose from culture and environment, not innate difference. The book positions Forster as a man whose ideas about race, human rights, and interconnected ecosystems were decades ahead of the scientific consensus of his time.
A revelatory account of the life of George Forster, whose rejection of racial hierarchies stood out amongst his peers
George Forster was 10 when he left his home in present-day Poland and travelled to Russia with his naturalist father. During the expedition, which began in 1765, Forster collected plant specimens and helped with botanical research. Wide-eyed, he journeyed along the Volga river, encountering Muslim Tartar traders and Cossack warriors. There were also the emaciated figures of German settlers, who lived in poverty under the territory’s despotic governor, their campsites little more than holes burrowed into the riverbanks. The experience of cultures so distinct from his own stirred a lifelong enthusiasm for travel and exploration in Forster. It also awakened his compassion for others, irrespective of culture and, especially, race.
At a time when racism pervaded public opinion as well as the philosophical texts of luminaries such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Immanuel Kant, Forster moved brazenly to critique and correct them. How he was able to transcend the conventional beliefs of his day is the central question of Andrea Wulf’s new book, and the answer is in its title.
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