Francis Bernier

Who loves to travel? Actually, that’s something I personally love and have a strong passion for. The main purpose I travel is to gain new information and experience new things, whether its people, food or the scenery. However, Francis Bernier who was born in 1620, traveled for a different reason. His interests in travel were rather peculiar. He traveled around the world on a 12 year journey to Egypt, India and Persia. His main interest was to observe the different physical characteristics of people’s origins in different regions. In my opinion, he judged very negatively towards many ethnicities and judged them quite harshly. He describes all ethnicities in their own, individual, unique way. This primary source is a book written by Francois

Then he rants about how Indians have a different facial structure and how their skin is very close to yellow. The second

However, they comprise of “broad shoulders, flat faces, small squab nose, little pigs-eyes long and deep set, and three hairs of beard.” The last race is the Lapps species. They are “little stunted creatures with thick legs, large shoulders and short necks, etc.” He believed they were ugly, compared them to bears, even though he has only seen two of them himself in Dantciz and calls them wretched animals. Then he labels the Americans as being “olive-coloured and have their faces modelled in a different way from ours.” He describes all these beautiful ethnicities as ugly and unpleasant. This is pretty disgusting of him because he is so opinionated and judgmental about these unique races and cultures. I understand that he wanted to travel the world to experience and see the different people that lived there so he could group the races into their specific regions. However, the way he describes them is shocking. There’s no reason to bash these people. Every race is beautiful and matchless. Nothing compares to our individuality in our cultures. You should be proud of your ethnicity and not care about what others