THE TRAVELER

The adventures of an enlightened man.

Award-winning historian Wulf draws on abundant archival sources to create a meticulously researched life of George Forster (1754-94)—Polish-born naturalist, ethnographer, explorer, and German revolutionary. She focuses in detail on Forster’s participation in Captain James Cook’s 1772 voyage, for which Forster and his cantankerous father, Reinhold, were engaged as naturalists. During the three years he spent traversing the world, Forster examined, recorded, and drew plants and wildlife, as well as observed societies and cultures that opened his eyes to the astonishing variety of human experience. His curiosity, tolerance, and humaneness contrasted sharply with the perspective of his Eurocentric contemporaries. Soon after they returned, Reinhold, eager to profit financially from their expedition—profligate, he was always in debt—directed Forster to write a narrative of their travels; A Voyage Round the World was published in 1777. With that publication, he became roundly celebrated by scientific and scholarly circles throughout Europe. As a public intellectual, he professed distinctly liberal ideas: He refused to ascribe certain traits to racial or ethnic groups; he attacked slavery; and he vigorously supported the French revolutionaries. Married—unhappily to a selfish and unfaithful wife—and a father, still, he yearned for another sea adventure. A more modest opportunity came when he traveled for four months, through the Netherlands and England, with Alexander von Humboldt, to whom he became a mentor. After the French Revolution, Forster took France’s side in its war against Prussia and Austria. He was president of the Society of the Friends of Liberty and Equality and a member of Parliament in the Mainz Republic—Germany’s first independent republic. After he died at the age of 39, seen as a traitor in Germany, his reputation waned. Wulf amply restores his stature as a brilliant mind.

A stirring, empathetic portrait.