Travel and Ethnology in the Renaissance

This book, first published in 2000, offers a wide-ranging and ambitious analysis of how European travellers in India developed their perceptions of ethnic, political and religious diversity over three hundred years. It analyses the growth of novel historical and philosophical concerns, from the early and rare examples of medieval travellers such as Marco Polo, through to the more sophisticated narratives of seventeenth-century observers - religious writers such as Jesuit missionaries, or independent antiquarians such as Pietro della Valle. The book's approach combines the detailed contextual analysis of individual narratives with an original long-term interpretation of the role of cross-cultural encounters in the European Renaissance. An extremely wide range of European sources is discussed, including the often neglected but extremely important Iberian and Italian sources. However, the book also discusses a number of non-European sources, Muslim and Hindu, thereby challenging simplistic interpretations of western 'orientalism'.

'A startling new study of the transforming effects of Indian travel on European culture.' Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, The Independent Weekend Review (Book of the Year), '… [an] impressively erudite, well researched, and eloquently written book'. Peter Burke, University of Cambridge, '… a work of great erudition and high quality. It is impressive both in the range and closeness of its reading of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century European accounts of south India, and in the analytical power with which they are discussed. This really does seem to me an important and original contribution to our understanding of the development of European perceptions of the non-European world.' Sir John Elliott, University of Oxford, '… an accomplishment of stunning intellectual and scholarly proportions. It is unique in its effective conceptualisation of a vast cultural terrain, its breathtaking comprehensiveness, and the sensitivity with which the author reads texts … The range of materials studied, most unknown to the ordinary, intelligent reader, alone makes the work something that will long command the field.' John M. Headley, The University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, '… brilliant' Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, The Times Literary Supplement