Amazons, Savages, and Machiavels Travel and Colonial Writing in English, 1550-1630: An Anthology

by Dimmock, Matthew; Hadfield, Andrew

• ISBN13: 9780198871552
• ISBN10: 0198871554
• Edition: 2nd
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2022-10-31
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

A broad-based and accessible anthology of travel and colonial writing in the English Renaissance, selected to represent the world-picture of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century readers in England. It includes not just the narratives of discovery of the New World but also accounts of cultures already well known through trade links, such as Turkey and the Moluccan islands, and of places that featured just as significantly in the early modern English imagination: from Ireland to Russia and the Far East, from Calais to India and Africa, from France and Italy to the West Indies. The writings reveal painstaking attempts to understand the 'other' as well as ignorance and prejudice, surprising connections alongside phobic reactions to difference, the desire to co-operate alongside the desire to extinguish and exploit.

The second edition of Amazons, Savages, and Machiavels is significantly revised and expanded, twenty years after the first edition helped to establish the field of travel and colonial writing in English. The anthology includes substantial new chapters of extracts on 'The North', detailing the important Arctic voyages and search for the elusive North-West Passage; 'Islamic West Asia and the Eastern Mediterranean', includes new material on Persia, Russia, and Jerusalem; 'England from Elsewhere' includes observations of England and the English from European travellers; and the epilogue on women travellers, explores the importance in particular of Lady Catherine Whetenhall's journey to Italy, recorded after her early death. The chapter on Africa includes new material on the Congo, Gambia, and Sierra Leone, and the chapter on East Asia and the South Seas contains new material on China and Japan. There are new images of West African figures and Sir Anthony and Lady Shirley in Persian courtly attire. The introduction has been carefully revised to take into account the wealth of scholarship on English perceptions of Asia and the Mediterranean, and the analysis of race and racial identity has been expanded in line with contemporary concerns. Headnotes and notes have been revised and expanded throughout the text.

The anthology is the most comprehensive single-volume available in English, and, with its newly modernized text and reader-friendly apparatus, is designed to appeal to the general as well as the specialist reader. It is essential reading for anyone interested in the history of travel, colonial writing, and racial politics at the time of the first British Empire.

Author Biography

Andrew Hadfield

Matthew Dimmock is Professor of Early Modern Studies at the University of Sussex. He has published widely on Tudor English engagements with the wider world and was recently Visiting Fellow at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington DC. He was an editor for the Norton 3 Collected Works of
Shakespeare and is currently an editor on the Oxford Hakluyt and Thomas Nashe projects.


Andrew Hadfield is Professor of English at the University of Sussex. He has worked at the Universities of Leeds and Aberystwyth and Columbia University, New York and held visiting positions at The University of Granada, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, University College, Dublin, and All
Souls College, Oxford. He was chair of the Society for Renaissance Studies (2016-9), and edited the journals, Reformation (2000-06) and Renaissance Studies (2006-11), and currently edits The Spenser Review with Jane Grogan. He is a regular reviewer for The Times Literary Supplement and is editing
The Works of Thomas Nashe with Joseph Black, Jennifer Richards and Cathy Shrank.

Table of Contents

GENERAL INTRODUCTION
1. MOTIVES FOR TRAVEL AND INSTRUCTIONS TO TRAVELLERS
Introduction
Roger Ascham, The Schoolmaster (1570)
Francis Bacon, 'Letter from Thomas Bodley' (c.1579) and 'Of Travel' (1612)
Thomas Coryat, Prefatory Material to Coryat's Crudities (1611)
Richard Eden, The Decades of the New World, or West India (1555), 'The Preface to The Reader'
Richard Hakluyt the younger, Prefatory material to The Principal Navigations (1589, 1598)
Samuel Purchas, Hakluytus Posthumus of Purchas His Pilgrimes (1625), 'Epistle to the Reader' and 'On Solomon's Navy'
2. EUROPE
Introduction
Sir Robert Dallington, The View of France (1604)
Thomas Coryat, Coryat's Crudities (1611), Observations of Venice, Germany, and Switzerland
The Return of Master William Harborne from Constantinople over land to London, 1588
Sir Charles Somerset, Travel Diary (1611-2), Observations of Paris and Florence
Fynes Moryson, An Itinerary (1617), Observations of Italy and Ireland
William Lithgow, The Total Discourse of His Rare Adventures (1632), Account of his Imprisonment in Spain
3. THE NORTH
Introduction
George Abbot, A Brief Description of the Whole World (1599)
Fynes Moryson, An Itinerary (1617), Observations of Denmark: Copenhagen and Elsinore
Giles Fletcher the elder, The history of Russia (1591), Description of Russia
George Best, A True Discourse of the Late Voyages of Discovery (1589), 'On the Discovery of Meta Incognita'
Sir George Peckham, 'A true report of the late discoveries . . . of the Newfound Lands' (1583)
John Davis, 'On the Inuit of Greenland' (1586)
4. AFRICA
Introduction
Sebastian Munster, A Treatise of New India, trans. Richard Eden (1553), The Islands of East Africa
'The Voyage made by M. John Hawkins EL to the coast of Guinea, and the Indies of Nova Hispania' (1564)
Richard Madox, Diary (1582), Observations of Sierra Leone
Duarte Lopez, A Report of the Kingdom of the Congo (1597), Description of the Congo and Southern Africa
Al-Hasan ibn Muhammad al-Wazzan, The History and Description of Africa, trans. John Pory (1600), Comments on North Africa
George Sandys, A Relation of a Journey Begun . . . 1610 (1615), Observations of the Egyptians
Richard Jobson, The Golden Trade: or the Discovery of the River Gambra (1623)
5. ISLAMIC WEST ASIA AND THE EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN
Introduction
Anthony Jenkinson, 'Kazan to the Caspian Sea and the Tartar Peoples' (1558)
Thomas Dallam, Diary (1599-1600), 'Journey Through the Eastern Mediterranean to Istanbul'
Anthony Sherley, Sir Anthony Sherley: his Relation of his Travels into Persia (1613), Persian Statecraft and Religion
Fynes Moryson, An Itinerary (1617), Observations of the Ottoman Empire
George Sandys, A Relation of a Journey Begun . . . 1610 (1615), Observations of the Jews of Ottoman Palestine
Henry Timberlake, A True and Strange Discourse on the Travels of Two English Pilgrims (1603), Description of Ottoman Jerusalem
William Lithgow, The Total Discourse of His Rare Adventures (1632), Comments on Jerusalem
6. EAST ASIA AND THE SOUTH SEAS
Introduction
Francis Petty, 'The admirable and prosperous voyage of . . . Thomas Cavendish . . . into The South Seas, and from thence round about the circumference of the whole earth' (1586-8), Observations of the South Sea Islanders
A letter of father Diego De Pantoia . . . written [from] the Court of the King of China' (9 March 1602)
Sir Henry Middleton, Two Accounts of his Voyage to the Moluccas (1604-6)
Two Accounts of Japan: Arthur Hatch (1623) and John Saris (1613)
Edward Terry, A Voyage to East India (1616-19), Account of the Mughal Court
William Adams, 'Logbook' (1614-19), Journey to Cochin China and Tonkin
Peter Mundy, The Travels of Peter Mundy in Asia (1628-34), Observations of India
7. THE AMERICAS
Introduction
Richard Eden, The Decades of the New World, or West India (1555), Three Descriptions of American Natives
Bartolomé de Las Casas, A brief narration of the destruction of the Indies by the Spaniards, trans. M. M. S. (1583)
Thomas Harriot, A Brief and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia (1588, 1590)
Walter Raleigh, The discovery of the Large, Rich and Beautiful Empire of Guiana (1596)
Michel Eyquem de Montaigne, 'Of the Cannibals' (1580), trans. John Florio (1603)
William Strachey, The History of Travel into Virginia Britania (1612)
Captain John Smith, The General History of Virginia, New-England, and the Summer Isles (1624), The Story of Pocahontas
8. ENGLAND FROM ELSEWHERE
Nicander Nucius, 'Travels' (1546), Relation of England, Scotland, and Ireland
Étienne Perlin, 'Description of England' (1553?)
Thomas Platter, Diary (1599), 'Journey from Calais to London'
Emmanuel van Meteren, 'Description of the English' (c.1612)
EPILOGUE: WOMEN TRAVELLERS
Introduction
'The Voyage of Lady Catherine Whetenhall from Brussels into Italy' (1649-50)
Guide to Further Reading