Georg Forster (1754–94) was in many ways self-taught and rarely had two cents to rub together, but he became one of the most dynamic figures of the Enlightenment: a brilliant writer, naturalist, explorer, illustrator, translator—and a revolutionary. Granted the extraordinary opportunity to sail around the world as part of Captain James Cook’s fabled crew, Forster touched icebergs, walked the beaches of Tahiti, visited far-flung foreign nations, lived with purported cannibals, and crossed oceans and the equator. Forster recounted the journey in his 1777 book A Voyage Round the World, a work of travel and science that not only established Forster as one of the most accomplished stylists of the time—and led some to credit him as the inventor of the literary travel narrative—but also influenced other German trailblazers of scientific and literary writing, most notably Alexander von Humboldt. A superb essayist, Forster made lasting contributions to our scientific—and especially botanical and ornithological—knowledge of the South Seas.

Having witnessed more egalitarian societies in the southern hemisphere, Forster returned after more than three years at sea to a monarchist Europe entering the era of revolution. When, following the French Revolution of 1789, French forces occupied the German city of Mainz, Forster became a leading political actor in the founding of the Republic of Mainz—the first democratic state on German soil.

In an age of Kantian reason, Forster privileged experience. He claimed a deep connection between nature and reason, nature and politics, nature and revolution. His politics was radical in its understanding of revolution as a natural phenomenon, and in this often overlooked way his many facets—as voyager, naturalist, and revolutionary—were intertwined.

Yet, in the constellation of the Enlightenment’s trailblazing naturalists, scientists, political thinkers, and writers, Forster’s star remains relatively dim today: the Republic of Mainz was crushed, and Forster died in exile in Paris. This book is the source of illumination that Forster’s journey so greatly deserves. Tracing the arc of this unheralded polymath’s short life, Georg Forster explores both his contributions to literature and science and the enduring relationship between nature and politics that threaded through his extraordinary four decades.

Prologue: Nature, a Perilous Word

1. Beginnings: 1754–1772
Like a Blank Slate
First Impressions from Afar
The Right Place at the Right Time

2. View of Nature: The Voyage around the World, 1772–1775
Patterns of Perception
A Well-Told Tale
The Sea
Distances
Hardship
Perils in the Ice
Sunny Arcadia
First and Final Sightings
Noble Savage?
Among Maneaters
Bloodshed and Mayhem
A Community of Equals
The General Rights of Mankind

3. Interludes: 1776–1788
Blue Devils
Nature’s Balm
Physical Anthropology
A Debate about the Human Race
Political Sheet Lightning: Cook, the Statesman

4. Views of the Political: The Revolution, 1789–1793
Paris Unrest and the Political Public Sphere
Historical Signs of the New World: Revolution
Political Views of the Lower Rhine
Nature as Fate
The Principle of Political Change: Fermentation
The Liberty of French Mainz
The Mainz Republic
Experts on Subterranean Passages: Forster and Goethe

5. The End: The Great Perplexity, 1793–1794
The Monstrous Head of Revolution: Paris
The Cold Fever of Terror
Dancing on the Brink of Absurdity: Adam Lux
Back to Nature: Human Dignity
The Revolution Is the Revolution
Forsaken Like a Child
A Source of Strange Introspection

Epilogue: The Mahogany Trunk

Notes
English-Language Works
Bibliography of the German Edition
Index