Andrea Wulf: The Traveller

A month before Cook was intending to embark on his second voyage, he took his ship, the Resolution, for a test run on the Thames. He had a particular reason for concern: Joseph Banks, the naturalist on the Endeavour, had grandly assembled a staff of fifteen and built a superstructure on the ship. Finding that it rendered the ship hopelessly top-heavy and unsuitable, Cook instructed that it be removed – whereupon Banks threw his toys out of the pram and said he wouldn’t come. His replacement, engaged at very short notice, was a German-born botanist called Reinhold Forster. His field experience came from a trip in Central Asia, on which he was accompanied by his 10-year-old son George. This magnificent book is about that son, who – aged 17 – accompanied his father on the Resolution. Where his father was a difficult man, detested by everyone, George delighted all who met him. Clever, a fine linguist, draughtsman, botanist and writer, he was also unusually interested in others. Time and again on the voyage, he noted that the contact between indigenous people and Europeans did not go well for the indigenous people, and he was dismayed. An observant man interested in connections rather than divisions, he was lionized on his return and spent his subsequent years engaging with contemporaries and arguing for what might later be held to fall within the phrase ‘universal human rights’ – including equal rights for women. (He believed that a society could be judged according to how it behaved towards the women.)   Wulf is a fine writer, immersed in the eighteenth century from previous books and also in what came to be called ecology, thanks to Alexander von Humboldt, the subject of one of her earlier books, The Invention of Nature. It is no surprise to learn that von Humboldt was himself deeply influenced by George Forster. He may not be so well known to history, but Wulf is moved by this man and – on this podcast as well as in the book itself– persuades us that we should know him better. Signed copies are available.