French Travelers Research Articles

Will the Olympic flame spark dengue outbreaks during the Paris 2024 summer Olympic and Paralympic games?

The risk of dengue emergence in France this summer is likely and must be considered in preparedness planning. The risk could arise from international visitors but also French travellers returning from epidemic areas. The French preparedness and response plan and the importance of international surveillance after the Olympics are highlighted.

Montaigne's eyes: the traveler as interpreter of cultures

In the wake of French travelers, such as Thévet and Léry, for Montaigne, the contact with the New World would not exclude a certain (re)discovery of oneself and one’s own limits. Recognizing human eyes bigger than the stomach, or human curiosity larger than its capacity for understanding, Montaigne perspicaciously points to the problem that makes the desire to discover of the colonial voyages insufficient events for an effective problematization of the new spaces and of the newly contacted peoples.

The Pen and the Scythe: The Peasant Question in the 18th-Century Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the Writings of Contemporary French Littérateurs

In the 18th century, people in Western Europe knew very little about the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, which was perceived as an odd and anarchic regime, where not only did serfdom make agriculture inefficient, it was also a pretext for neighbouring powers to interfere in its domestic affairs. Nevertheless, Enlightenment ideas, spreading little by little, raised the question of the status of the peasants in the Commonwealth. Displaying observations made by French travellers or residents (Chappe d’Auteroche, Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, Linguet, Jaucourt, Dubois de Jancigny, Caraccioli, Vautrin, Gilibert) on the Commonwealth’s peasantry, and reflections by thinkers (Mably, Rousseau, Baudeau, Le Mercier de la Rivière), the article intends to show how these authors contributed to raising the issue of serfdom in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the public sphere, and evaluates their influence on readers both in the Commonwealth and abroad. Although the social and political conditions were not yet there for the complete liberation of the serfs, the littérateurs’ reflections were food for thought for the Polish-Lithuanian elite. Had the Commonwealth not been partitioned, progressive ideas would have taken root, little by little, and the peasants would have gained personal and civic rights, becoming full citizens of their country. Our survey aims to set forth little-known authors, expanding the knowledge of French literature devoted to the 18th-century Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and broadening the historiography on the peasant question in the Commonwealth. The article encompasses: I. French travellers and residents’ accounts of the peasantry of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth; II. French educators’ intervention in the debate on serfdom in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth; III. The reflections of Philosophes and Physiocrats on serfdom in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth; IV. The reception of French littérateurs’ writings on serfdom in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.

Nordic Travels

Nordic Travels

Molecular characterization of dengue virus serotype 1 infections in French travelers from Africa between 2013 and 2019

Laboratory-confirmed dengue virus (DENV) infections in Africa are rarely reported. In this study, we report 18 DENV serotype 1 (DENV-1) infections, diagnosed by the French National Reference Center for Arboviruses, in patients who had histories of recent travel in Africa. Our analyses revealed two cases, one from Niger in 2018 and one from the Republic of the Congo in 2016, where dengue fever had not been previously reported, and one case from Mauritania in 2015, where DENV-1 had not been previously reported. These cases support the reported spread of DENV outside its well-established tropical and subtropical environment toward the arid deserts of the Sahel. Phylogenetic analyses suggest that a single monophyletic DENV-1 lineage is currently in circulation in West Africa, having spread from East Africa after its original importation from Asia. Our study provides an improved understanding of DENV dynamics in Africa and underlines the importance of surveillance of travel-acquired infections.

Writing the Self: Interior Voyage in 19th Century French Travel Writing

Travel is a momentum to look inside that influences the travelers' existence, along with meeting and interacting with others. The self as a traveler experiences internal dynamics reflected in the travel writings. This paper analyzes five French travel writings to reveal the self-construction of travelers who explored the East in the 19th century. The analysis results show that travelers’ self-construction is divided into Enlightenment or Romantic subjects and true travelers or travelers as tourists. The Enlightenment subject prioritizes facts and empirical knowledge outside of the self for the broader interest. In contrast, the Romantic subject puts forward subjective and emotional attitudes in dealing with and narrating others used for personal gain. True travelers look for difficulties in other places to prove themselves in conquering the challenges. Travelers as tourists try to avoid the obstacles by seeking safety and comfort during the trip. The East as a travel destination is a space that offers difficulties in constructing and legitimizing the traveler's self-image with the attributes that society expects, such as courage and persistence. The five French travelers, both Enlightenment or Romantic subjects and true travelers or tourists, had various knowledge of the others due to factors such as the purpose of the trip, profession, social status, and duration of the trip. Knowledge of the others and self-disclosure narrated in travel writings manifest the French travelers’ power to control and manage themselves and represent the Other.

Laure Durand-Fardel's Cross-Cultural Adventures in China and Japan: De Marseille à Shanghai et Yedo, récits d'une Parisienne (1879)

While numerous nineteenth-century French travelers penned accounts of their experiences in Asia, Laure Durand-Fardel (1817–87) stands out as the first middle-class French woman to publish her impressions of China and Japan. In letters written to family members during her seven-month trip, Durand-Fardel shared candid reactions to the people she encountered and the places she discovered. An inquisitive traveler, she ventured into seldomexplored settings and pushed past spatial and cultural boundaries to unveil new information about domestic life, gender roles, and social customs in China and Japan.

Bośniaccy muzułmanie w opinii Polaków i Czechów na przełomie XIX i XX wieku (do wybuchu I wojny światowej)

Bosnian Muslims as viewed by Poles and Czechs at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries (until the outbreak of World War I) The article presents Poles’ and Czechs’ opinions on Bosnian Muslims at the turn of the 19th and 20th century. Historians would often use the diaries of English, German, French, and Russian travellers while similar sources by the authors from different countries were rarely analyzed. The article focuses above all on the Austro-Hungarian period, its starting point, however, are the times under the weakening Ottoman rule. Under the Habsburg administration, the society of Bosnia and Herzegovina was being modernized, and the nationalistic processes were being initiated. Poles and Czechs were present in Bosnia as officials, traders, teachers, etc. The primary sources for this article are their travel diaries.

Do French ‘Nomads’ Have a War History? A Review of Seventy-five Years of Historiography

Through a study of the historiography of the persecution of “Nomads” in France from 1939 to 1946, this article offers a critical analysis of methodological and thematic biases present in much historical research on the topic. Historical studies on “Nomads” have significant practical implications today: this article examines how the history of French Roma and Travellers during the Second World War was written. It shows how French institutions have relied on historical work to deny the racial character of the persecution of the so-called“Nomads”. The paper emphasizes that internment and enforced residence were not so much an absolute break but rather part of a particularly virulent moment in the long history of persecution of “Nomads” in the twentieth century in France.

French Encounters Of François De La Boullaye-Le Gouz In India: Hindu Mythological Illustrations and Narratives

Seventeenth-century French travellers’ records ignited the curiosity of the Occidental world, especially the French imagination, because of their commercial and religious understanding of the Orient, mainly India. Among their authors, the most unresearched traveller is François de la Boullaye-le Gouz, who wrote a fabulous account about his voyage to India. His understanding of the Hindu religion ideologies and pictorial representations require analysis based on this hitherto unused manuscript. This article examines the distorted and under-researched facts about his biography, followed by scrutinizing Gouz’s perceptions of Hindu gods and goddesses and their significance in Hindu mythology. These observations, interpretations and misrepresentations of Hindu religious illustrations through Gouz’s perception are analyzed by examining printed French untranslated memoirs (printed in 1653) in comparison with Gouz’s abridged manuscript (codex). Varied approaches of scholars such as Subrahmanyam, Sapra, Beasley, Marsh, Dew and Teltscher have criticized Said’s Orientalism. Our research contributes fresh insight by undertaking an in-depth comparative study of this Oriental knowledge (Gouz’ Hindu mythology observations) with Oriental records, his narratives and codex. This ascertains the credibility of knowledge that formulated French’s Oriental image of India in early-modern Europe.

Mapping the Chicago Portage: Seventeenth-Century Explorations by Jolliet, Marquette, La Salle, and Joutel

On their return to Canada in 1673, Louis Jolliet’s group became the first Europeans documented to have passed from the Mississippi River watershed to the Great Lakes watershed via the Chicago Portage. This carrying place, between the Des Plaines and Chicago Rivers, would remain a politically and commercially important location during the fur trade era. A podcast by a group of Chicago historians, writers, and artists has promoted the assertion that a route south of Chicago, different from that recognized as one of only two National Historic Sites in Illinois, was actually the Chicago Portage Region used by such explorers as Louis Jolliet, Father Jacques Marquette, René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, and Henri Joutel. However, the accounts of the seventeenth-century French travelers confirm the 1928 work that established the location of the portage region and served as the foundation for its designation by the National Park Service in 1952.

Listening to difference: J.G. Herder’s aural theory of cultural diversity in the ‘Treatise on the Origin of Language’ (1772)

ABSTRACT In this article, I develop the concept and practice of ‘listening to difference,’ examining J.G. Herder’s aural theory of cultural diversity as primarily worked out in the ‘Treatise on the Origin of Language’ (1772). I examine the sources Herder critiqued to outline his aural theory of linguistic and cultural difference, which have thus far only been summarily mentioned if at all in scholarship despite the prominence of the ‘Treatise’ in intellectual history and philosophy. These sources comprise the travelogues of seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century French scientists, mathematicians, diplomats, and Jesuit missionaries who described the inadequacy of Romanized orthography to accurately transcribe the sounds and pronunciations of the indigenous peoples they encountered throughout the Americas, Thailand, and China. Herder’s critical readings of travelogues showcased the unintended failures and interruptions in European colonial practices of listening. I argue that it was the French travellers’ failure to erase difference, to transform it into identity or, in other words, into a universalist monolingualism, which produced a consciousness of cultural and linguistic difference, even if repressed. The sounds of the spoken indigenous languages exposed the limits of the paradigms of Catholic and European linguistic classification. Instead, the exemplary technologies for preserving difference in scriptural and listening practices were for Herder the Hebrew alphabet and the oral transmission of poetry in ancient and Indigenous cultures. Listening to difference, as I define it, involves an openness to listening to the voices and sounds of the othered by listeners who recognize their distinct situated, embodied positionalities. It offers alternate possibilities to conceive of human diversity as continually in formation and not as a static or progressive hierarchy.

Western Disorientations: The Vanishing East of South America and Eastern Europe

In this paper I utilise Edward Said’s framework of Orientalism in order to investigate how the regions that the European explorers have mistakenly or negligently identified in their imaginaries as “the East” are brought into the colonial order through an a priori assumption of their inferiority to the West. I turn to South America and Eastern Europe as the two frontiers which make these operations visible. Through the analysis of primary sources such as travel journals and letters from Spanish explorers and conquistadors during the age of encounters, as well as the writings the English and French travellers made during their visits to Eastern Europe during the Enlightenment, I demonstrate how the Western European Orientalist imaginaries remain persistent through the ages despite the geographical explorations and geopolitical changes, and instead of disappearing, migrate to create the new orients as the realms of European otherness.

« On s’accoutume à tout, même aux tremblements de terre. »

Earthquakes are an essential commonplace in travel narratives to South America. At the beginning of the 18th century, several French travellers experienced South American earthquakes during their stay along the Andes. Writing the earthquake turns it sometimes into a daily and uneventful event, sometimes on the contrary into a catastrophe which presents a moving and pathetic display. The religious explanation of the natural phenomenon is not central in these travel narratives, which highlight the social dimension of the catastrophe and to propose scientific explanations of it. The way earthquakes are integrated into the narrative often shows that they are much less the result of a direct experience than a compilation of historical events, drawn from books or other eyewitnesses. The subject of earthquakes allows to question the travel narrative’s value of testimony as well as its rhetoric of verisimilitude.

O ESTUÁRIO DO RIO POTENGI, PASSADO E PRESENTE: CARTA DE ZONEAMENTO ARQUEOLÓGICO SUBAQUÁTICO DO SÉCULO XVII

This article is the result of the final course work entitled “In the waters of the Potengi River: Underwater Archaeological Zoning Chart (17th century)” presented to the undergraduate course in History at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte. The Potengi River, also known in the 16th and 17th centuries as Pottiou, Rio Grande, Puttigi, Potiji, among others, was already known as a favorable space for navigation, as evidenced by cartographies, iconography and accounts of french, portuguese and dutch travelers from the century 16th and 17th. Using an interdisciplinary approach between History and Archaeology, this article aims to present the areas of underwater archaeological potential in the Potengi River estuary from the 17th century, taking into account the disturbances of the archaeological context over the years, finally presenting the archaeological zoning chart of the area, an important tool for the management of the municipal underwater archaeological heritage.

THE ESTUARY OF THE POTENGI RIVER, PAST AND PRESENT: LETTER OF ARCHAEOLOGICAL ZONING OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY

This article is the result of the final course work entitled “In the waters of the Potengi River: Underwater Archaeological Zoning Chart (17th century)” presented to the undergraduate course in History at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte. The Potengi River, also known in the 16th and 17th centuries as Pottiou, Rio Grande, Puttigi, Potiji, among others, was already known as a favorable space for navigation, as evidenced by cartographies, iconography and accounts of french, portuguese and dutch travelers from the century 16th and 17th. Using an interdisciplinary approach between History and Archaeology, this article aims to present the areas of underwater archaeological potential in the Potengi River estuary from the 17th century, taking into account the disturbances of the archaeological context over the years, finally presenting the archaeological zoning chart of the area, an important tool for the management of the municipal underwater archaeological heritage.

«Великая могила»: Мавзолей В.И. Ленина во французском травелоге 1920–1930-х гг.

The article deals with the image of the Lenin’s Mausoleum and the cult of the leader associated with it in the travelogues of French writers and journalists in the second half of the 1920s and early 1930s. The Mausoleum is the constant place of pilgrimage for both the Soviet people and foreign guests. For French travelers it is of interest as a Moscow sight reflecting the ideology of the Soviet system, a means of propaganda, a place for planting new cults and religions, which seemed strange in Moscow that proclaimed atheism. The authors note the Asian character of this cult, which demonstrates the impenetrability of the Western and Eastern mentalities. Arguing with Soviet propaganda, which is effective in a country where the vast majority of the population is illiterate, they come to the conclusion that it is impossible to create a myth about the leader’s immortality in civilized countries with a long democratic tradition. Based on the stereotypes that have entered in the minds of the French since the time of Marquis de Custine and creating new ones, the authors try to comprehend the Mausoleum as a cultural phenomenon. The detailed ekphrastic descriptions and sketches from crowd standing in line at the Mausoleum are overland with philosophical reflections and journalistic pathos. The counter arguments to Soviet propaganda is the metaphor of a dead man masqueraded in a living person, extended not only to the image of Lenin, but also to the dominant ideology of the state he has built. The Appendix contains Russian translations of excerpts from travelogues by French authors.

The Urban & Economic Characteristics of Major Arab Cities in the Nineteenth Century, through the French Travelers Observations - Cairo as a Model

The trip is considered as one of the most important historical sources that supports the researcher with an abundant scientific materials, especially since the travelers have recorded all the observations they saw in the areas they visited. The French travelersare ones of the pioneers of the traveler to the East, there are several factors that make them to be in this trip. In the forefront of which is the religious factor in the framework of what is known as the Christian pilgrimage in which it passes through several stations, including the Cairo station, which contains Christian sanctuaries. From there they continue their pilgrimage trip to the Levant .The nineteenth century witnessed a significant increase in French trips, especially that France got privileges fromThe Ottoman Empire to protect theorthodoxe as well as their holy places, and thus the abundance of French writings, through which we tried to find out the impressions that these travelers make for Arab Islamic cities, and we choose Cairo as one of the most prominent Arab cities at that time, as well as being one of the most prominent stations in French travel.We relied on the descriptive historical method while writing this reaserch paper

Showcasing Emptiness? Voicing Redemption Through ‘Saharomania’ in the French Literary Imaginary

The Napoleonic campaigns paved the way for French metropolitan travellers, military officers and literary authors to roam the barren stretches of North African deserts. Initially, imperial expansion was what brought French explorers to these lands. As devoted adventurers, they were quick to predict the literary opportunities of showcasing emptiness in military, scientific and literary projections. At once empty and loaded with spiritual charge, the desert embodies the essence of mystical connotations, for those who master decrypting its unsettling silence. This article argues that this seemingly empty space is in fact the cradle of spiritual pursuits, deployed in Sèbe’s ‘Saharomania’ concept as a redemptive locus. Showcasing emptiness thus represented a challenge to the spread of the cult of Western materialism. This is illustrated in two ways: the vision of French authors (Saint-Exupéry, Ernest Psichari, Charles de Foucauld, and Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt) who, taken together, amount to the establishment of a French desert genealogy of ‘Saharomania’, and the ways in which it offers a different reading of the accompanying Orientalist understanding of such works, through the prism of the redemptive wisdom of the desert. While taking part in Said’s Western canon on the Orient, redemptive ‘Saharomania’ also participates in the wider definition of the ways in which the imaginary of emptiness fuelled the fin-de-siècle cult of the void. It is in light of the alterity of the desert that the concept of ‘Saharomania’, specific to France, can be read: because showcasing emptiness meant empowerment, the success of the inscription of bareness in the imaginary of the French metropolitan public, and also its literary inheritance, was necessary to celebrate the French national sentiment. Taking the demanding crossing of the desert to heart, often for nationalist pursuits, was necessary to triumph over the physically and mentally exhausting desert. However, this article argues, authors incline when faced with the grandeur of the Sahara Desert, and its emblematic nomad dwellers, amidst the journey of the conventional fate of loss in the sands, ultimately changing the initial motives of the crossing. Thus, rather than condemning the present French literary productions within the confines of the orientalist and exotic tropes, this article offers different but no less significant interrogations about how ‘Saharomania’ valorises the desert as a locus of the higher forms of humankind, particularly defying the cult of Western hollowness through articulating spiritual resonance in the realm of the void.

D’une cage à l’autre : Enfermement(s) et doux entretiens au bord d’un harem flottant dans les voyages de l’abbé Carré

In the context of France’s increased interest towards Safavid Persia during the second half of the 17th century, Persian women draw the attention of the French travelers, despite their habitual seclusion. The present article aims at analyzing the story of an encounter of several Persian ladies on a ship, told by Barthélemy Carré, Colbert’s envoy to the East Indies; thus the traveler has the opportunity to speak directly to them on his way home thanks to an ingenious method. This floating harem proves to be an ambiguous place, a prison as well as a space of intriguing intercultural and intergender exchanges.