Focussing on descriptions of the land, this article examines the production
of space in "Les Voyages aux Isles de l’Amérique (1693-1705)" by J. B
Labat, a Dominican missionary. In Labat’s travel writing the narrated journey
offers a double construction of a colonial space and of the self as master
of the world. By privileging the traveling missionary’s direct experience
through various spatial representations and practices, Labat organizes
the Caribbean landscape according to a European model and domesticates
nature. However, whereas such spatial construction allows for the
self to emerge, it is based on the exclusion of the Other. In Labat’s travel
account the Caribbean is constructed as a utopian space for experimentation,
resembling a French garden where the colonial engineer-hero may
bloom.
