Abstract
Czechoslovakia enjoyed a particular position within the post-war colonial discourse, which Sarah Lemmen describes as "non-colonial orientalism", and which differentiates the situation in Czechoslovakia from the "classic" conceptual framework of Said's orientalism. The Czech lands do not namely fit into any category of colonial powers, for they never had any colonies, were not a colony, nor do they define themselves as a part of the western world. All this put Czechoslovakia in a unique, albeit ambivalent position. Even so, the colonial imagination was more than prevalent in Czechoslovakia. My paper wants to show how exactly the concept of European imperialism was constructed in Czechoslovak travelogues, and what influence had the representations of the authors on the power relations within this country.
The aim of this talk will be on two different interpretations based on travelogues written from the 1950s to the 1970s - the view of Jiří Hanzelka and Miroslav Zikmund, who have built a reputation as the most renowned Czechoslovak travelers of their time, and whose travelogues consist largely of a critique of the colonial establishment. In the next step, I will focus on the view of Jaroslav Putík, Ivan Frič and Vojtěch Zamarovský. Jaroslav Putík and Ivan Frič visited Egypt together, publishing a travelogue "Pod egyptským půlměsícem" as a result of that visit. Vojtěch Zamarovský, as a great enthusiast for ancient history, is the author of several publications on the verge of scholarly and travel literature, of which the "Jeho veličenstva pyramidy", written about Egypt, shall be of the greatest importance for my purposes.