Memoirs of A Hungarian Globe-Trotter - Finally, in Hungarian

(François Baron de Tott also about 18th-century Egypt)

Abstract

François Baron de Tott alias Ferenc Tóth (1733-1793) was born in France in a family with a Hungarian father (former varlet of Francis II Rákóczi) and French mother (daughter of a nobleman), and soon got military education, fighting battles and obtaining wounds at a young age. Having realized his talent, the French government sent him (together with his father) to Constantinople, where in a school for interpreters managed by the French he acquired a number of Eastern languages. Between 1766 and 1768 he had been assigned a ‚diplomatic task’ in the Principality of Neuchâtel, where he actually was spying for the French court (got expelled in two years). Working on a grand plan to occupy Egypt, which finally did not happen, de Tott resigned and began to write his memoirs, which immediately brought him fame and had been translated to almost twenty languages. From an African Studies point of view, his travelogue about his Egyptian trips have scientifically sound observations still today. The article analyses the first-ever Hungarian translation of the memoirs published in 2008.