Page - 27 - in >mcs_lab> - Mobile Culture Studies, Volume 2/2020

Mobile Culture Studies. The Journal 6 2o20 (Travel) Sandra Vlasta | Enlightening report versus enlightened traveller 27 instructions read: ‘1.r Band, gegenüber Seite 98’ [1st volume, opposite page 98] (Forster 1778–80, vol. 1: plate III).9 Accordingly, the plant in question is described on page 98 of the text, a com- mon pattern that is repeated throughout the account. Elsewhere, the references are even more detailed, referring to particular objects on a plate, such as a fan that is described in detail in the text and referred to as object number five in the enclosed plate (see Forster 1778–80, vol. 2: 18). In the English version of the text, such references are of course missing. The German version, however, was carefully amended in order to incorporate the illustrations. These illustrations are the sketches and drawings made by Georg Forster himself, and they provide a record of what the Forsters saw and collected on their journey. The images are thus part of the work they were hired to undertake; they form part of the archive they established en route, which is a tangible expression of the enlightening and scientific character of their journey.10 Adding the images as illustrations to the travelogue is a way to convey this archive, at least in part, to the German reader. The plants and objects are presented as they would be in any botanical or ethnographic textbook or museum (although the latter discipline was only established in Forster’s time in Germany, not least based on his own studies). They are detailed 9 I refer to the first edition of Reise um die Welt when speaking of specific information that is found only there. For quotations from the text, I use the 1983 edition, which is based on the historical-critical edition edited by Gerhard Steiner for the Deutsche Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin, which uses modern spelling. 10 Today, the collected objects are dispersed in many different places, from Berlin, Florence, and Stockholm to locations in Russia, Australia, and New Zealand. Many of them are collected in the Cook-Forster-Sammlung in Göttingen (see Bredekamp 2020: 31). Image 2: ‘Proben Neu-Seeländischer Arbeit’ [sample of New Zealand handicraft] (Forster 1778: opposite p. 171) Image 3: ‘Handarbeit der Einwohner auf den Marquesas-Inseln’ [handicraft of the inhabitants of the Marquesas Islands] (Forster 1780–80: opposite p. 13)