Talk from James Braund - 250th anniversary of the Forsters' arrival in NZ (August 16th 2023)

This year marks the 250th anniversary of the arrival of the first Germans to visit New Zealand – Johann Reinhold Forster (1729-1798) and his son George (1754-1794), who served as the official naturalists on James Cook’s second Pacific voyage.

Between the autumn of 1773 and the summer of 1774, the Forsters spent some twenty months sailing the waters of the South Pacific, during which time they amassed a large body of information and impressions relating to the fauna, flora and indigenous peoples of the region. Widely regarded in their own lifetime as the Pacific experts of eighteenth-century Germany, the Forsters inspired scientists and dreamers alike, and a surprising amount of the material they gathered in the Pacific remains both relevant and in use today.

Focusing on New Zealand in particular, in which the Forsters spent a total of four months over three separate visits, this presentation will briefly survey the key legacies – historical, scientific, and artistic – of these two German polymaths, and will also consider how the observations they made in the Pacific could have informed the holistic view of nature later made famous by their countryman, Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859).

James Braund is currently an Honorary Research Fellow within the School of Cultures, Languages and Linguistics. He has lectured and published widely on the various German connections with New Zealand and the Pacific, and has been an active member of the University of Auckland’s Research Centre for Germanic Connections with New Zealand and the Pacific since its inception in 1999.