Traveler – 18th century explorer ahead of his time | Books

George Forster was 10 years old when he left his home in present-day Poland and went to Russia with his biological father. During the expedition, which began in 1765, Forster collected plant specimens and contributed to botanical research. Wide-eyed, he traveled along the Volga River, meeting Muslim Tartar merchants and Cossack warriors. There was also a weak population of German citizens, who lived in poverty under the tyrannical governor of the region, whose camps were almost torn apart on the banks of the rivers. Experiences in cultures so different from his own created a lifelong interest in travel and exploration in Forster. It also awakened his compassion for others – regardless of culture and, especially, race.

At a time when racism was pervasive in the public mind and in the philosophical writings of thinkers such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Immanuel Kant, Forster fearlessly pushed for their criticism and correction. How he managed to transcend the conventional beliefs of his day is the central question of Andrea Wulf’s new book – and the answer lies in its title.

It is not unusual to spend almost half of a person’s history in just three years of a person’s life. But the idea tells us something about the weight the author placed on Forster’s time around the world as a naturalist aboard Captain James Cook’s HMS Resolution., since he was only 17 years old. Unlike the ship’s crew, Forster was concerned about how the expedition would damage the local Pacific Islands and destroy the local economy. In his writings, he wrote that the people who received them had every right to “see our men as a group of rebels”. He resented the “vindictive” behavior of his fellow sailors and spent his time with the Native Americans he encountered, including Maori, Easter Islanders and Tahitians. He was very interested in the way the Tahitians thought about property and their disagreements. Towards the end of the trip a man from Bora Bora, named Hitihiti, joined the group of volunteers, and he and Forster became close friends, teaching each other words in their native languages.

The richness of Wulf’s research – drawn from Forster’s letters, essays and writings, as well as those of his contemporaries – infuses detail into the material he reproduces. It also allows the author to move to clearly describe the events of Forster’s life, as if they are on his shoulder, being in his inner voice when he meets the world in real time: the “sapphire blues” of the Antarctic glaciers, for example, which passed the ship “twice as high as the mast”.

Although he differed from popular opinion, Forster was admired for his wit and bravery, he was invited to speak to King George III and was frequently invited by foreign envoys and European royalty. In his famous account of the voyage, A Voyage Round the World (1777), condemned the atrocities committed by the laborers against the Indians and advocated what he called the “common liberties of the people”. The appeal to what we now call civil rights was unprecedented and greater in the inclusion of everyone, regardless of race.

In the following years Forster moved between European cities as a professor of natural philosophy. He continued to write decisively, strongly challenging Kant’s views on tribalism by looking at the people he met in his travels. He questioned how Kant could make such a statement without leaving his hometown, and dismissed his method as “armchair wisdom”. But in the end life became a punisher for Forster. He suffered from debt and lack of money; rejected for supporting the French Revolution; and he was left by his unfaithful wife. For all the good he gave to the world, Forster, in the end, did it with difficulty.