Transport Revolution and Travels to Asia, 1860s-1920s

Tomasz Ewertowski, PhD, is a lecturer at the Shanghai International Studies University, China. He graduated from and worked as a researcher at the Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań, Poland. His research interests include travel writing studies, imagology, and comparative literature. He has served as a principal investigator on two Polish National Science Centre grants. His publications include a monograph, Images of China in Polish and Serbian Travel Writings (2020) and articles in journals like Studies in Travel Writing, Mobilities, Indonesia and the Malay World. Wacław Forajter is an Associate Professor at University of Silesia in Katowice. He is the author of five academic books, including Kolonizator skolonizowany. Przypadek Sygurda Wiśniowskiego (Colonized colonizer. Sygurd Wiśniowski’s case; University of Silesia 2014); Dyslokacja. Studia o literaturze i innych dyskursach XIX wieku (Dislocations. Studies in literature and other discourses of the 19th century; University of Silesia 2022) and several dozen articles in Polish scientific periodicals. He also translated from French a philosophical monograph Esthétique de la photographie of François Soulages and the essays of Paul Valéry and Jean-Luc Nancy. His research interest focus on 19th-century history, theory of literature, anthropology of culture, and postcolonial theory. Oliwia Gromadzka, PhD, is a student at the Doctoral School of Humanities at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan in the field of History. She works on issues of European colonialism, the history of intercultural contacts, space studies, and postcolonial discourse.

List of contributors

Introduction: Transport Revolution and Travels to Asia from the 1860s to the 1920s

Tomasz Ewertowski, Wacław Forajter,

I. Multiple mobilities



“‘Two Distant Points’: Serbian travels to Asia 1860s–1920s”

Vladimir Gvozden, Nataša Milivojević



“Two Journeys to Siberia: Carceral Mobility, Social Change, and Mechanised Transport in Wacław Sieroszewski’s Writings”

Kyunney Takasaeva, Marta Czerwieniec-Ivasyk, Tomasz Ewertowski



“How strange and out of place that motor seemed”: Automobile journeys in Mongolia, 1907–1930”

Tomasz Ewertowski

II. Landscape and senses



“Capturing Asia from a bird’s eye view: A computational analysis of language patterns in Polish travel writing (1870s–1920s)”

Anna Kołos, Agnieszka Karlińska



“Modernity as an element of the colonial landscape in Polish travel diaries from the latter half of the nineteenth century”

Oliwia Gromadzka



“The impact of the means of transport on Jelena J. Dimitrijević’s travel imagination”

Vladimir Đurić



“‘Bird’s Eye View of Unknown Countries’: Two Flight Expeditions to Asia”

Mikołaj Paczkowski

III. Cross-cultural encounters and representations



“Temporary and precarious alliances: Travelling among the others in Polish travelogues from Asia”

Wacław Forajter



“José Rizal on Ships and Trains: Dreams, Timetables, Nightmares”

Jan Mrázek



“Imperial Cloud: China and Its Inhabitants in Cycling Travel Books of Thomas Stevens, Thomas Allen & William Sachtleben and John Foster Fraser”

Grzegorz Moroz



“Journey to the West: Kang Youwei’s perception of modern transportation”

Peng Yuchao

Index