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10
Travel and Experience in the
Mediterranean of Louis XV
Christopher Drew Armstrong
1. introduction
Travel in Enlightenment culture was seen as differing essentially
from travel in earlier periods. 1 Circumscribed by extensive
commercial and diplomatic networks, travel took place
within an administrative framework that facilitated the gathering
of knowledge around the world. 2 Transformed by the development
of new navigational technologies—specifically the
invention of the marine chronometer and mathematically rigorous
cartography—the relationship between the traveller and
the environment could be plotted with an unprecedented degree
of certainty. While knowledge of the world remained fragmentary,
it was possible nonetheless to fully apprehend the extent of
missing geographic information and to imagine a future state
when a complete understanding of the earth’s geography would
be realized through the efforts of scientific travellers. As
Georges-Louis Leclerc, comte de Buffon, noted with cautious
optimism in 1749: ‘L’astronomie & l’art de la navigation sont
portés àun si haut point de perfection, qu’on peut raisonnablement
espérer d’avoir un jour une connoissance exacte de la
surface entière du globe.’ 3 Throughout the eighteenth century,
1 See B. M. Stafford, Voyage into Substance. Art, Science, Nature, and the
Illustrated Travel Account, 1760–1840 (Cambridge, Mass., 1984); J. Stagl, A
History of Curiosity: The Theory of Travel 1550–1800 (Chur, 1995).
2 On the French consular network in the eighteenth century, see A. Mézin,
Les Consuls de France au siècle des Lumières (1715–1792) (Paris, 1997).
3 Georges-Louis Leclerc, comte de Buffon, Histoire naturelle, général et
particulière (Paris, 1749), i. 225.