The Traveler. George Forster’s Revolutionary Life and his Search for Humanity

Step into the extraordinary life of George Forster, a remarkable young naturalist, writer, and revolutionary whose ideas about humanity, equality, and freedom challenged the dominant worldviews of eighteenth-century Europe. In 1772, at the age of seventeen, he accompanied Captain Cook on his second circumnavigation of the globe and travelled deep into the Antarctic Circle and across the South Pacific. A gifted observer, linguist, and artist, Forster studied people and cultures without prejudice, returning with a deep-seated belief in the equality of all humans. By his early twenties he was celebrated across Europe, using his fame to advocate for freedom and human rights and against empire, racism, and slavery. Pulled into the vortex of the French Revolution, he became a leader of the short-lived Republic of Mainz but was forced into exile in Paris during the Reign of Terror. In this talk, based on her forthcoming book, Andrea Wulf will paint a portrait of a remarkable, passionate figure unbound by place, people or establishment, illustrating his extraordinary quest to find what connects us rather than what sets us apart.