Step 3 of 5

Creating the Colonial Narrative

Related Images

  • Les Sauvages de la Mer Pacifique - detail
  • Les Sauvages de la Mer Pacifique - detail
  • Les Sauvages de la Mer Pacifique - detail
  • Les Sauvages de la Mer Pacifique - detail

Although the Europeans are barely depicted in the image – the only thing the viewer sees are two ships in the faraway distance, firing their cannons and thereby implying domination over the Indigenous people who are in the water in much smaller boats without any such weapons - their worldview is very present. The aforementioned idea of malleability manifests itself within Les Sauvages de la Mer Pacifique through the many depictions of the ‘noble savage’, an idea introduced by Rousseau. It refers to a wild human that has not yet been corrupted by industrialization and is still living in paradise, but who is therefore also seen as a pleasing, malleable body.

Voyeuristic is perhaps the best way to describe the depictions in the wallpaper, where we see women with bared breasts or dancing seductively. A close second would be inaccurate. Although the wallpaper was, just like the travel stories, intended to introduce the European public to Pacific landscapes and peoples, it shows an inaccurate mash-up of flora, fashions, and people from different times and places.