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Forster’s work is characterised by an ambivalence towards European imperialism and cultural
authority, which is contrasted by relativism and a re-evaluation of the ‘civilising’ process, 22 and
therefore also by what Pratt labels as the rhetoric of the ‘anti-conquest’ discourse. 23 This leads
Forster to be at times critical towards his own arrogant culture for readily assuming superiority
over all savages through the belief that Europeans have the right to judge others with their
incomplete and often biased knowledge; whereas, in some cases, their supposedly ‘higher’ values
are in reality no more civilised than those of the former. Nevertheless, there is a clear
ambivalence in his view of the Maori during specific encounters which influence his thoughts, as
is the case with his impressions of New Zealand as a whole.
As the crew of the Resolution first approach New Zealand on 26 March 1773 after 122
days at sea, 24 consisting of a substantial sojourn into the extremely cold Antarctic waters, in
which they were faced with inhospitable storms, days of wind, rain and fog, bouts of seasickness
and scurvy, the shrinking supply of rations, the threat of sinking and the temporary loss of their
companion ship the Adventure, the sighting of Dusky Bay (Tamatea) 25 on the eastern coast of the
southern tip of New Zealand brings a sense of relief at the end of many hardships:
Das Wetter war indeßen schön und in Verhältniß zu demjenigen, das wir bisher hatten empfinden
müßen recht erquickend warm. Sanft wehende Winde führten uns nach und nach bey vielen
felsichten Inseln vorbei, die alle mit Bäumen und Buschwerk überwachsen waren, deren
auf das Werk Georg Forsters. Berlin: Reimer, 1982; Martin Braun, “Nichts Menschliches soll mir fremd sein” –
Georg Forster und die frühe deutsche Völkerkunde vor dem Hintergrund der klassischen Kulturwissenschaften.
Bonn: Holos, 1991; Astrid Schwarz, Georg Forster (1754-1794) – Zur Dialektik von Naturwissenschaft,
Anthropologie, Philosophie und Politik in der deutschen Spätaufklärung. Kontinuität und Radikalisierung seiner
Weltanschauung vor dem Hintergrund einer ganzheitlichen Werkinterpretation. Aachen: Mainz, 1998; John Gärber,
“‘So sind also die Hauptbestimmungen des Menschen […]’. Anmerkungen zum Verhältnis von Geographie und
Menschheitsgeschichte bei Georg Forster”, in: Wahrnehmung – Konstruktion – Text: Bilder des Wirklichen im Werk
Georg Forsters. Ed. John Garber. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 2000, 193-230.
22 See Joerg Esleben, Enlightenment Canvas: Cultures of Travel, Ethnographic Aesthetics, and Imperialist Discourse
in Georg Forster’s Writings. PhD Dissertation. University of Rochester, 1999.
23 This rhetoric of “anti-conquest” is defined by that “which I refer to [as] the strategies of representation whereby
European bourgeois subjects seek to secure their innocence in the same moment as they assert European hegemony.
The term ‘anti-conquest’ was chosen because, as I argue, in travel and exploration writings these strategies of
innocence are constituted in relation to older imperial rhetorics of conquest associated with the absolutist era. The
main protagonist of the anti-conquest is a figure I sometimes call the ‘seeing-man,’ an admittedly unfriendly label for
the European male subject of European landscape discourse – he whose imperial eyes passively look out and
possess” (Mary Louise Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation. London; New York: Routledge,
1992, 7).
24 By comparison, from start to finish (13 July 1772 – 30 July 1775) the crew of the Resolution spent a total of 147
days in New Zealand (26 March – 11 May 1773 at Dusky Sound, and 18 May – 7 June 1773, 3 November – 25
December 1773 and 16 October – 10 November 1774 at Queen Charlotte Sound), the longest stay in any one nation
by far.
25 See Salmond, Between Worlds, 45-48; A. Charles Begg and Neil. C. Begg, Dusky Bay: In the Steps of Captain
Cook. 3 rd Ed. Christchurch: Whitcombe & Tombs, 1975.
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