Books by Tomasz Ewertowski
Dwie twarze latinitas. Recepcja kultury łacińskiej w dziełach Adama Mickiewicza i Lazy Kosticia
Papers by Tomasz Ewertowski
“How strange and out of place that motor seemed” Automobile journeys in Mongolia, 1907–1930
Transport Revolution and Travels to Asia, 1860s-1920s, 2025
This chapter looks into the impact of technological change on travel experience by examining trav... more This chapter looks into the impact of technological change on travel experience by examining travelogues describing car journeys in Mongolia during the period 1907–1930. In remote regions of Inner Asia, the impact of railways and steamships was limited, so in the first decades of the 20th century, travelling by horse or camel remained the primary form of transportation. Therefore, an interesting contrast existed between modernity epitomised by an automobile and an environment perceived in Orientalist categories. This field will be explored by comparing experiences associated with mechanised mobility as described in travelogues by Roy Chapman Andrews, Luigi Barzini, Kamil Giżycki, Pyotr Kozlov, Nicholas Roerich, and Milutin Velimirović. This comparison will shed light on how new means of locomotion changed various aspects of the travel experience, including the function of a car as a symbol of modernity, the coexistence and interdependence of various means of transportation, and the impact of a car on interactions with the Mongols.
Two journeys to Siberia Carceral mobility, social change, and mechanised transport in Wacław Sieroszewski's writings
Transport Revolution and Travels to Asia, 1860s-1920s, 2025
Wacław Sieroszewski (1858–1945) was a Polish political activist whose exile to Siberia led to him... more Wacław Sieroszewski (1858–1945) was a Polish political activist whose exile to Siberia led to him becoming a writer and an ethnographer. This chapter examines two very different journeys in which he took part – the first as an exile transported to East Siberia in 1879, and the second as an ethnographer conducting an involuntary research expedition for the Imperial Russian Geographical Society in 1903–1904. During the first journey, Sieroszewski, as a prisoner, covered large distances on foot and was transported on barges, sledges, and trains. Throughout his exile, he experienced traditional modes of mobility typical for Siberia such as using horses, dogs, and reindeers. During the second journey, he was entitled to travel in the first class of the newly built Trans-Siberian and Chinese Eastern Railway. Therefore, his memoirs provide rich material for reflecting on different kinds of mobilities and the impact of changes in transportation on the fabric of society in Northeast Asia at the turn of the 20th century.
Introduction: Transport Revolution and Travels to Asia from the 1860s to the 1920s
Transport Revolution and Travels to Asia from the 1860s to the 1920s, 2025
During the “long” 19th century, a technological revolution occurred, leading to the emergence of ... more During the “long” 19th century, a technological revolution occurred, leading to the emergence of new means of transport such as steamships, railways, cars, aeroplanes, bicycles, and rickshaws. This transport revolution not only fundamentally transformed modes of travel and made distant lands more accessible, but it also significantly impacted how travellers experienced the world. The authors of this volume aim to deepen the understanding of the influence of these new modes of transportation and their coexistence with older ones by incorporating a comprehensive range of sources written by both European and Asian travellers. The approach presented in this volume is inspired by the anthropology of the senses, the sociology of travel, and the cultural history of transport. These methodological frameworks are applied to accounts of travels to, from, and within Asia. This perspective enables a focus on various contexts not visible in Europe, including imperialism, Eurocentric approaches to modernisation, and the reactions of colonised peoples to these developments.
Integration and Collaborative Imperialism in Modern Europe: At the Margins of Empire, 1800-1950, 2024
In Schär, Bernhard C. , and Mikko Toivanen , ed. Integration and Collaborative Imperialism in Mod... more In Schär, Bernhard C. , and Mikko Toivanen , ed. Integration and Collaborative Imperialism in Modern Europe: At the Margins of Empire, 1800-1950. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2024. Bloomsbury Collections. Web. 24 Nov. 2024. <http:// dx.doi.org/10.5040/9781350377370>.
Wacana, Journal of the Humanities of Indonesia, 2024
This article explores cross-cultural encounters and identities discourses in selected Polish and ... more This article explores cross-cultural encounters and identities discourses in selected Polish and Russian travelogues about the Netherlands East Indies. Poles and Russians could travel to the Netherlands East Indies thanks to advantages afforded Europeans by the colonial system. Their occupations (for example, a privileged tourist, colonial scientist, diplomat) often made them suitable imperial agents. They defined themselves as Europeans but, as Eastern Europeans, they occupied an ambiguous position: Russians came from a land-based, economically backward “empire of the periphery“ (Boris Kagarlitsky 2008); Poles came from a semi-peripheral European nation subjected to foreign rule and, from their common experience of subjugation, some Polish authors were able to sympathize with the colonized peoples. Hence, a comparative approach leads to various insights into representations of colonial Indonesia.
Escaping Kakania: Eastern European Travels in Colonial Southeast Asia (edited by Jan Mrázek), 2024
The paper examines ethnic comparisons in narratives about Southeast Asia written by Polish and Se... more The paper examines ethnic comparisons in narratives about Southeast Asia written by Polish and Serbian travellers of Austro-Hungarian background in the period from the opening of the Suez Canal until the outbreak of the First World War. One of features of travel writing is to compare inhabitants of a visited country with the traveller’s own country. However, travelogues about Southeast Asia presented a more complex image than a mere binary opposition. Travellers often compared local populations with the Chinese and with Europeans. Polish and Serbian travellers from the then Austro-Hungarian empire identified themselves as members of a national group, as subject of Austro-Hungarian empire, as Europeans. A conventional opposition between “us” and “them” can be transformed into a multifarious discourse in which European “us” and Asian “them” are not monolithic structures. Therefore, this article presents a variety of voices on Southeast Asians, moving beyond binary thinking in categories of “East” and “West”. The corpus used in my research includes works by the following authors: the Serbs Milan Jovanović, Vlado Ivelić, the Poles Julian Fałat, Karol Lanckoroński, Marian Raciborski, Paweł Sapieha, Czesław Petelenz, Michał Siedlecki, and Hugo Zapałowicz.
Colloquia Humanistica, 2023 (12), 2023
The paper focuses on various dimensions of European identity in Polish and Serbian travel writing... more The paper focuses on various dimensions of European identity in Polish and Serbian travel writings about Asia in the period from the 1850s to the 1920s, examining several case studies that show how travellers often identified themselves as Europeans, but sometimes discussed various aspects of European identity and had many issues with this self-description. The analysis is based on a large corpus of Polish and Serbian travelogues, but works by Gustaw
Mobilities, 2023
The main aim of this article is to analyse experiences associated with steamship mobilities in th... more The main aim of this article is to analyse experiences associated with steamship mobilities in the years 1869–1891, with a focus on voyages to and from Asia via the Suez Canal. The source base includes lesser-known texts written by Polish, Russian, Serbian, and Indian authors that are examined using a twofold approach. The first is focused on the macroscale, scrutinising the networks in which travellers functioned, including other communication technologies and imperial webs. The second is focused on the microscale, on bodily experiences of travellers: how did they characterize their bodily position on board of the ship and factors which influenced it, as well as how did they describe their sensuous impressions.
Crossroads. A Journal of English Studies, 2023
The article explores the haptic aesthetic of selected Polish and Anglophone travelogues about the... more The article explores the haptic aesthetic of selected Polish and Anglophone travelogues about the island of Java: "Jawa – przyroda i sztuka" (1913) by a Polish biologist named Michał Siedlecki, and "Java, the Garden of the East" (1897) by the American writer Eliza Ruhamah Scidmore. A comparison of texts coming from different literary traditions should yield a deeper insight into the various aspects of conceptualising the haptic in travel writing. Java’s tropical environment provided travellers with new sensory experiences, consequently scrutinising how writers represented what they touched and felt, along with how descriptions of haptic sensations were associated with the ideological and aesthetic dimension of travel writing, can shed new light on how travel writing works and how multi-layered it is.
Poznańskie Studia Slawistyczne, 23, pp. 19-43, 2022
This article examines diverse travel narratives about steamship voyages to Asia in the first two ... more This article examines diverse travel narratives about steamship voyages to Asia in the first two decades after the opening of the Suez Canal, with special focus on journeys through the Suez Canal, Red Sea, and Indian Ocean. Sources include Polish, Serbian and Russian authors: Julian Fałat, Vlado Ivelić, Lucjan Jurkiewicz, Milan Jovanović, Vsevolod Krestovskiy, Karol Lanckoroński, Bronisław Piłsudski, Paweł Sapieha, Henryk Sienkiewicz, Ivan Yuvachev, Hugo Zapałowicz, and Ivan Zarubin. Given this variety of sources, consisting of 12 accounts in 3 languages, written by different types of travellers with dissimilar social backgrounds, it is possible to demonstrate avariety of phenomena that may be associated with steamship voyages. The two main issues examined here are: 1) the coexistence of multiple mobilities in the era of steam power, 2) different experiences of time while voyaging
How travellers related stories about China: A typology of narrative voices in Polish and Serbian travel writings
Multilateral Relations, Many Perspectives: China and Central-Eastern Europe, 2022
Abstract: On the basis of a corpus comprising more than 80 authors, this article proposes a typol... more Abstract: On the basis of a corpus comprising more than 80 authors, this article proposes a typology of narrative voices in Polish and Serbian travelogues about China from the 18th to mid-20th century. The proposed types are the following: a man of letters, an ethnographer, a reporter, a scholar-interpreter, a believer, and a lover of the exotics. Each type is briefly discussed with reference to a few characteristic travelogues. Keywords: Travel writing; travel literature; Polish travel writing; Serbian travel writing; image of China; narrative voice
Wacana. Journal of the Humanities of Indonesia, 2022
The article analyses representations of the natural world in Indonesia and mainland Southeast Asi... more The article analyses representations of the natural world in Indonesia and mainland Southeast Asia in a corpus of Polish and Serbian travel writings for the period between the opening of the Suez Canal (1869) and the outbreak of the First World War (1914). The research is based on travel writings by twenty Polish and Serbian authors, who visited Southeast Asia during the period 1869-1914. Scrutinizing a corpus of such narratives should contribute to the study of perceptions of Southeast Asia, especially among travellers from very diverse backgrounds. The theoretical and conceptual framework of the article draws on works by other scholars who have analysed travel writings, imaginative geography, representations of Southeast Asia, and tropicality. The study focuses on four areas: 1) images of the luxuriant tropics, 2) images of the perilous tropics, 3) exploitation of its natural resources, and 4) nature and identity.
Indonesia and the Malay World, Mar 2022
This article attempts to analyse some images of Java in Polish travel writings from the second ha... more This article attempts to analyse some images of Java in Polish travel writings from the second half of the 19th century in a comparative framework, and linking the various aspects of representations of the island with the respective travellers’ background, social and intellectual trends of the epoch, and literary conventions. This approach is based on concepts of imagology, habitus and comparative reading. The travelogues by three Polish authors are analysed here: aristocrat, lawyer and politician Adam Sierakowski (1846–1912), soldier Henryk Sienkiewicz (1852–1936, a relative of a famous writer by the same name), and an apostolic delegate for the East Indies Władysław Michał Zaleski (1852–1925). Polish travel accounts are juxtaposed with texts written by English, American, Russian, and Javanese travellers: Charles Kinloch (1810–1893), Eliza Ruhamah Scidmore (1856–1928), V. Tatarinov (c.1860), Nikolai Miklouho-Maclay (1846–1888), and Radèn Mas Arya Candranegara V alias Purwalelana (1837–1885). The examples show that although some descriptive aspects of Java may be linked to national identity, far more fruitful would be a detailed examination of texts and contexts through a comparative analysis
Studies in Travel Writing, 2021
The railway is often characterised as one of the crucial innovations of the nineteenth century wh... more The railway is often characterised as one of the crucial innovations of the nineteenth century which transformed patterns of space and time, exposed people to the mechanical power of the industrial revolution, led to the formation of a panoramic perception of the world, and changed the economic circulation. In China, the new technology was adopted later than in Europe and America, and its development took place in a semi-colonial context. As such, the railway experience took on a different dimension there. Based on a corpus of Polish and Serbian travel writings about China, this article examines how travellers represented railways in the Middle Kingdom. Five main topics are discussed: (1) the railway as an icon of modernity; (2) the railway as a “purely European invention”; (3) Polish and Serbian patriotism as linked to the Chinese Eastern Railway; (4) the train as a space of interactions; (5) panoramic visions of China.
Voyages and Travel Accounts in Historiography and Literature, vol. 2, 2020
Starting from a semiotic definition of sight (MacCannell, Urry and Larsen, Culler), this article ... more Starting from a semiotic definition of sight (MacCannell, Urry and Larsen, Culler), this article analyses descriptions of common sights – rickshaws, braids, characters, dragons – from Polish and Serbian travelogues about China against their socio-cultural background. This perspective can help analyse how particular objects are seen by travellers as representative of China and how descriptions of sights may acquire multifarious dimensions. The article refers to previous research on Serbian and Polish travel writings, so the corpus includes a vast array of texts, written by authors who travelled to China in the second half of the 19th and the first half of the 20th century.
Przegląd Humanistyczny, 2018
The main goal of the paper is to show how a discourse on the so-called ‘yellow race’ functioned i... more The main goal of the paper is to show how a discourse on the so-called ‘yellow race’ functioned in the Polish and Serbian travel writing from the second half of the 19th century and first half of the 20th century. An analysis of the semantics of the term ‘yellow race’ is also proffered.
Paying attention to Serbian and Polish authors can broaden our understanding of the imperial and racial dimension of representation of China. In the modern period, Poland and Serbia did not take part in exploitation of China; on the contrary, these countries themselves became objects of imperial domination. Nevertheless, when travellers from Poland or Serbia visited China, they often represented imperial institutions of foreign powers, e.g. as soldiers in the Russian army. Their outlook on the world was formed by intellectual trends born in Western Europe, like Darwinism. However, Poles and Serbs, being victims of imperialism themselves, were in a better position to understand the people of this East Asian nation. Therefore, we find an interesting ambivalence. Additionally, choosing Polish and Serbian travel writings also allows us to see whether representatives of a Catholic Slavic nation and an Orthodox Slavic nation had different attitude towards race issues
Borders and Beyond. Orient-Occident Crossings in Literature, 2018
This is a draft version of a chapter in the book Borders and Beyond. Orient-Occident Crossings in... more This is a draft version of a chapter in the book Borders and Beyond. Orient-Occident Crossings in Literature edited by Adam Bednarczyk, Magdalena Kubarek, Maciej Szatkowski, published in 2018 by Vernon Press, link: https://vernonpress.com/book/436
The topic of the paper is the image of the Great Wall of China in Polish and Serbian travel writing. This construction is recognized as a historical border of China proper, which made it also a border zone between sedentary, farming Chinese civilization and nomadic or semi-nomadic peoples from the steppes and forests. In the paper we will analyze how the Great Wall was presented by Polish and Serbian travelers, who wrote about China in the 18th, 19th and the first half of the 20th century. We will concentrate not only on narratives a physical construction, but mostly on cultural and axiological aspects of descriptions of the famous edifice. The methodology of research is based on Vladimir Gvozden’s concept of travel writing, imagology, Pratt’s idea of a contact zone, Edwards Said’s concept of creative geography and as well as on post-colonial theory.
The aim of this article is to disrupt the “optocentric” paradigm that dominates criticism on trav... more The aim of this article is to disrupt the “optocentric” paradigm that dominates criticism on travel writing. The main focal points are scent-based impressions and their formulation and function in the text. To this end, the article analyzes a sampling of Polish and Serbian travel writing on China from the turn of the twentieth century.
The main aim of the article is to examine the ideological background and socio-political framewor... more The main aim of the article is to examine the ideological background and socio-political framework of two different images of the Chinese communities in Southeast Asia as presented in two travelogues respectively written by the Polish clergyman Wadysaw Micha Zaleski and Serbian writer and doctor Milan Jovano-vi. Southeast Asia is treated as a " contact zone " whereby different communities are intertwined in a struggle for hegemony. The writers' trips to Asia were conditioned by European capitalistic expansion; however, being respectively Polish and Serbian, they came from countries which were also oppressed by great powers. Analysis of their travel writings shows how imperialist and orientalist discourse might have been influenced by various factors. Differences between the two writers issued mostly from their different outlooks on the world; Jovanovi being liberal, and Zaleski being conservative and Catholic.
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Books by Tomasz Ewertowski
Papers by Tomasz Ewertowski
Paying attention to Serbian and Polish authors can broaden our understanding of the imperial and racial dimension of representation of China. In the modern period, Poland and Serbia did not take part in exploitation of China; on the contrary, these countries themselves became objects of imperial domination. Nevertheless, when travellers from Poland or Serbia visited China, they often represented imperial institutions of foreign powers, e.g. as soldiers in the Russian army. Their outlook on the world was formed by intellectual trends born in Western Europe, like Darwinism. However, Poles and Serbs, being victims of imperialism themselves, were in a better position to understand the people of this East Asian nation. Therefore, we find an interesting ambivalence. Additionally, choosing Polish and Serbian travel writings also allows us to see whether representatives of a Catholic Slavic nation and an Orthodox Slavic nation had different attitude towards race issues
The topic of the paper is the image of the Great Wall of China in Polish and Serbian travel writing. This construction is recognized as a historical border of China proper, which made it also a border zone between sedentary, farming Chinese civilization and nomadic or semi-nomadic peoples from the steppes and forests. In the paper we will analyze how the Great Wall was presented by Polish and Serbian travelers, who wrote about China in the 18th, 19th and the first half of the 20th century. We will concentrate not only on narratives a physical construction, but mostly on cultural and axiological aspects of descriptions of the famous edifice. The methodology of research is based on Vladimir Gvozden’s concept of travel writing, imagology, Pratt’s idea of a contact zone, Edwards Said’s concept of creative geography and as well as on post-colonial theory.