Overview

Travel Knowledge examines European travel writing from 1500-1800, with an emphasis on travel to the East Indies, Africa, and the Levant. The importance of travel literature has grown in the humanities as scholars plumb such texts for their insights on colonialism, the other, and the nation, but this is one of the first volumes on European travel in the early modern period. The essays further distinguish themselves by focusing not on the European discovery of the Americas, but on voyages to the east, and by allowing the voices of marginalized travelers to speak through history. This collection includes both critical essays and the primary texts to which they refer, a unique pairing. Travel Knowledge is essential reading in history, literature, and ethnography.