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Tropicality, the unruly Atlantic and social utopias: the French explorer Henri Coudreau (1859 − 1899)
- Source :
- Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography. 38:332-349
- Publication Year :
- 2017
- Publisher :
- Wiley, 2017.
-
Abstract
- This paper addresses the works of Henri Coudreau, a little-known French explorer of Guiana and Amazonia who was later forgotten by the 'heroic' histories of exploration because of his unruliness and nonconformist attitudes. Drawing on the literature of postcolonialism and tropicality as well as on recent studies of anti-colonialist geographies, I address for the first time Coudreau's geography from the perspective of anarchist and critical thinking. My main argument is that Coudreau's work is a further example of the complexity and heterogeneity of the European intellectual field during the imperial age. Despite having come of age intellectually among all the European racist and ethnocentric prejudices of his day, Coudreau developed a different outlook thanks to two factors, viz., his personal experience in living for years with the indigenous communities of Amazonia, and his exposure to anarchist anti-colonialist ideas through his collaboration with Elisee Reclus. Coudreau's tropical utopia of an independent Amazonia, and his endorsement of the stateless nature of local communities, ran counter to French imperial politics, occasioning Coudreau's dismissal from the French administration and his professional exile in Brazil at the time of the Franco-Brazilian border dispute (1897−1900).
- Subjects :
- Postcolonialism
Ethnocentrism
Anthropology
Field (Bourdieu)
media_common.quotation_subject
05 social sciences
Geography, Planning and Development
0211 other engineering and technologies
0507 social and economic geography
021107 urban & regional planning
02 engineering and technology
Indigenous
Politics
Argument
Utopia
Sociology
050703 geography
Nonconformist
Earth-Surface Processes
media_common
Subjects
Details
- ISSN :
- 01297619
- Volume :
- 38
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi...........4e33dd47de66bf5d26c38559909bc384