| Authorship Notes |
This essay forms chapter VI (pp. 52-61) of career diplomat Pecquet's 'De l'esprit des maximes politiques', a work conceived as a continuation of Montesquieu's 'De l'esprit de lois'. Pecquet believes that, with the exception of the prince, no person in charge of governing the state can perform this task well if he has not travelled. Travel is a crucial opportunity to 'converse' with other nations, and learn from them. He believed travel to be essential to anyone considering a career in diplomacy, but also at the court: abroad, he can observe more neutrally the mechanisms of a court society. In chapter VII, on the necessity or reading works of history, Pecquet indicates that travel and reading history are complementary: you can learn of the past of a country from books, and of its present and future from careful observation.
This text was reproduced in Jean-Baptiste Robilant's 'Dictionnaire universel des sciences morale, économique, politique et diplomatique' (1778), a sort of continuation to the Encyclopédie of Diderot and d'Alembert: this text forms the major part of the entry 'Voyage'. |
