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Liebersohn examined several high-profile European naturalists and explorers in The Traveler’s World. He argues for the significance of networks of global travelers and European scholars who influenced state policy and informed conceptions of empire and race. He profiles the experiences of: Philbert Commerson, on the 1766-1769 voyage to Tahiti with Louis de Bougainville; George Forster, on the 1772-1775 voyage with Captain Cook, also to Tahiti; and, finally, Adelbert von Chamisso on the 1815-1818 voyage to the Hawaiian Islands aboard the Russian vessel the “Rurik”. Liebersohn discusses the accounts written by these men, integrating their stories into a well developed historical interpretation of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars, the philosophy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Immanual Kant and others, and the far-flung implications of the cultural exchange intrinsic to colonialism. Liebersohn paid serious attention to the networks of relationships between the naturalists, the political intentions and conditions of the states that sponsor their expeditions, the Pacific Islanders that they encounter, and the community of philosophers and scholars who used their travel accounts to construct and support their theories on human nature.
Liebersohn argued that the eighteenth-century concepts of “Natural Man” had both “revolutionary and conservative implications”[2]implications, ” <ref>Liebersohn, Harry, <I>A Traveler’s World</I>, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, 2006, pg 4</ref> and that the age of Enlightenment paradoxically provided “both tools for global domination and ideas of human dignity”[3]dignity.”<ref>Liebersohn, 4. </ref> Armed with both curiosity and technology, European expeditions exposed native cultures to a wide reading public curious about human difference, and a community of scholars eager for evidence of people living in a natural state. Rousseau, arguably the most influential philosopher in pre-Revolutionary Europe, looked to the uncorrupted “savage” as natural egalitarians, as a critique of the detrimental effects of society and artificiality. Other scholars looked for evidence of human difference in order to justify ideas of racial hierarchy and inferiority. Information gathered by naturalists was ultimately applied to state-building projects during this time of colonial expansion.
Liebersohn emphasized the interactive and reciprocal relationships between travelers and philosophers in Europe at this time. Rousseau used travel accounts of naturalists to show how “savages” lived close to nature in an original state[4] , and demanded more data from travelers such as Commerson and Forster. <ref>Liebersohn, pg. 16.</ref> Denis Diderot was also closely involved with Bougainville’s Tahitian expedition, and relied on the descriptions of Tahitian people and customs to demonstrate his theories of utopian utilitarianism. The Pacific Islands were home to unfamiliar people, unlike the indigenous of North and South America, and surprising in their customs and social structures. Tahiti and Hawaii became theoretical laboratories for philosophers’ debates over human nature, and cites of interrogation and construction for self-conscience and expanding nation-states.
A central issue of philosophical debate was the definition of humanity. Kant’s Definition of the Concept of the Human Race[5], <ref>Liebersohn, pg. 203.</ref> articulated a monogenist philosophy, a belief that there was only one single human species, and he sought to “reconcile the visible diversity of human appearance with the underlying unity of human nature”[6nature.”<ref>Liebersohn, pg. 203.</ref>]. The counter position was polygenism, the belief that there were several human species or races, each with innate abilities and limitations.
The debate over the singularity or plurality of humans species informed travelers as they compiled their evidence and accounts differently at different times, interacting with political trends of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Language of “noble savages” and “natural egalitarians” complemented language of equality and fraternity prevalent during the time of the French Revolution. These Rousseauian terms are evident in Commerson’s account of Tahiti, in which he described the “ideal republic” constructed by a race of people separate from and superior to Europeans.
During his expedition, Forster investigated Tahitian social divisions and discovered hierarchies that do not fit his ideal of equality and virtue. Influenced by Diderot and Rousseau, Forster wrote of the inevitability of republican virtue being subsumed by the concentration of power and moral decay.[7] <ref>Liebersohn, pg. 50</ref> His accounts of the island reflect a personal transition from idealization to disdain, and reflect a larger change in the perception of non-European people and their societies by European states.
Chamisso, the third naturalist Liebersohn profiles, moved in the post-Revolutionary Parisian circles of Romantics and salons. Seasoned by the danger of popular mobilization of the Terror and the repression of the Napoleonic Wars, Chamisso focuses less on ideas of equality and more on manifestations of liberty. Conscious of the naturalists’ tendency to imprint their accounts with their own personal and philosophical bias, Chamisso sought to only “present the strange land and the strange people.”[8] <ref>Liebersohn, pg 71</ref> Chamisso’s voyage aboard the Rurik also had more explicitly nationalistic intentions, as it was pursuing both economic and imperial goals for the Russian Empire, as well as providing passage and support for scientific research. This intersection of the interests of science and state during expeditions was to become more prominent during the Nineteenth Century.
Chamisso’s European social circles of republicans and travelers during the early 1800s included a young Joel Poinsett. Both men were known to associate with writer and republican, Germaine de Stael in Coppet, during her exile from France, and to attend her controversial salons during Napoleon’s reign[9]. <ref> Liebersohn, Harry, <I>The Traveler’s World</I>, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, 2006. pg 60 and Rippy, Fred, <i>Joel Poinsett: Versatile American</I>, pg 16</ref> Poinsett traveled across Europe and Asia during the first decade of the Nineteenth Century, and spent time with many Europeans advocating intellectual and geographical exploration, like Goethe and Tsar Alexander,[10] <ref>Rippy, pg 25-26Krumpelmann, John T., <I>The South Central Bulletin</I>, “Duke Berhnhard of Save-Weimer”</ref> during a time when new ideas about government and citizenship interacted with accounts of contact with distant native populations. Although there is a lack of available material written by Poinsett during this time, his subsequent actions and interactions illustrate a practical combination of abstract and concrete aspects of travel and politics.
After returning to the United State and serving in the South Carolina state government, Poinsett traveled again. During the 1810s, Poinsett spent several years in South America, exploring, spreading republican ideology and attempting to foment revolution against Spain.[11] His story illustrates the transition from idealized depictions of foreign lands to official reports of imperialistic concern in 1822, as he wrote a traveler’s account of Mexico, while acting as an investigative agent of the United States government[12].<ref>Rippy, Fred, <I>Joel Poinsett: Versatile American<i>, pg 39-41.</ref>
===Mexico===
