The fifteenth and sixteenth centuries ushered in a new era of
discovery as explorers traversed the globe, returning home with
vivid tales of distant lands and exotic peoples. Aided by the
invention of the printing press in Europe, travelers were able to
spread their accounts to wider audiences than ever before. In
Travel Narratives from the Age of Discovery, historian Peter C.
Mancall has compiled some of the most important travel accounts of
this era. Written by authors from Spain, France, Italy, England,
China, and North Africa describing locations that range from Brazil
to Canada, China to Virginia, and Angola to Vietnam, these accounts
provided crucial insight into unfamiliar cultures and environments,
and also betrayed the prejudices of their own societies, revealing
as much about the observers themselves as they did about faraway
lands.
From Christopher Columbus to lesser-known figures such as the
Huguenot missionary Jean de Lery, this anthology brings together
first-hand accounts of places connected by the Atlantic, Pacific,
and Indian oceans. Unlike other collections, Travel Narratives from
the Age of Discovery offers a global view of travel at a crucial
stage in world, and human, history, with accounts written by
non-European authors, including two new translations. Included here
are the Mughal Emperor Babur's first thoughts of India upon
establishing his empire there, the Chinese chronicler Ma Huan's
report detailing Chinese travel to the Middle East during the
fifteenth century, and an account of Africa written by the man
known as Leo Africanus. In addition to these travel narratives,
this anthology features rare pictures from sixteenth-century
printed books, includingimages of Brazil, Roanoke, Guiana, and
India, which, together with the accounts themselves, provide a
detailed understanding of the many ways in which fifteenth and
sixteenth century travelers and readers imagined other worlds.
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