VOYAGE ET MISSION. STANISLAS BELLANGER ET SON DEUXIÈME VOYAGE DANS LES PROVINCES DE L’EMPIRE OTTOMAN EN 1846-1847
Études balkaniques (Sofia) 2023, N 4
Nicu DIACONIUC
University of Bucharest, Romania
Travel and Mission. Stanislas Bellanger and His Second Journey throughout the Provinces of Ottoman Empire in 1846-1847
Abstract: Mostly known for his travelogue entitled singularly Le Kéroutza, French author Stanislas Bellanger has left us a huge body of work of over a thousand pages dedicated to his travels and sojourns, mainly to and throughout the Romanian Principalities, but also collaterally throughout Bulgaria and to Constantinople. During his second journey to the Orient (1846-1847), sponsored by the French Ministry of Education, Bellanger wrote five reports to his patron, the count Salvandy, which are consistent with his ambition of becoming a historian of the East and producing a History of the Ottoman Empire. But while he ultimately failed to achieve all of that, Bellanger succeeded in outlining an image of the Oriental Other and sketching interesting landscapes from the provinces of the great empire, which he ends up appropriating and mapping in his own unique way.
Keywords: Europeanisation, missionarism, orientalism, travel literature, 19th century studies