Image of the Slavs inhabiting the Habsburg Monarchy in Voyage en Autriche by Marcel de Serres
Image of the Slavs inhabiting the Habsburg Monarchy in Voyage en Autriche by Marcel de Serres

Summary/Abstract: This paper focuses on the depiction of the Slavs in a work by a French naturalistMarcel de Serres, published in 1814 and entitled Voyage en Autriche. This work is an example of the analysis including a very detailed reflection on Slavdom, made in time of the increas-ing political engagement of Napoleonic France in Southeastern and Central Europe. Theauthor of the work deliberated on the character of the Slavs and their presumed nationalunity, simultaneously searching for the ways to explain very apparent differences between various Slavic populations. According to Marcel de Serres the Slavs of the Habsburg Monarchy formed two geographical branches (western and oriental) and were divided into sevenprincipal races, and twenty-seven “secondary branches”. Voyage en Autriche depicted regu-larities, which were supposed to characterize all of the Slavs, but Marcel de Serres devotedmuch attention to some details which were considered as exotic and later were described bythe writers of the Romantic period fascinated with the Slavic culture.

• Details
• Contents