Abstract
The sense of European societies and cultures held by her own literate, ruling elites was in the seventeenth century a constantly changing cluster of myths and facts, rumors and ancient prejudices. Largely as a result of increased literacy in Western Europe, an eagerness to visit and know about other European peoples stimulated travel, official reporting, and the publication of travel journals about all aspects of life on the subcontinent. Fascination with exotic habits, dress, food, religion, government, and sexual mores clearly increased in some parts of Europe more rapidly than in others. A study of this development on a European scale has never been made, but if the number of publications is at all a reliable indicator of this curiosity, the Dutch and English far outdistanced other Europeans in openness and curiosity about other societies. This did not mean, of course, that there were no Spaniards curious about the English or the Russians. But the higher rate of literacy, the maritime interests of the wealthy, and the relaxed or ineffective censorship of books probably developed a curiosity about other peoples more rapidly in Western Europe than in any other part of the Continent.
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Notes
John de Witt (really by P. de la Court), The True Interests and Maxims of the Republick of Holland and West Friesland (London, 1702), pp. 1–6.
Edward Chamberlayne, Angliae Notitia, or The Present State of England (8th ed., London, 1674), I, 3–5, 22–24, 35, 40–42, 44–49, 56, 71–73.
Edward Browne, M.D., An Account of Several Travels through a Great Part of Germany (London, 1677), pp. 8–18, 71–76, 79–82, 84–87, 112–116.
John Locke, Locke’s Travels in France, 1675–1679, ed. by John Lough (Cambridge University Press, 1953), pp. 18–19, 30–31, 254–255.
S. Pufendorf, The Compleat History of Sweden, Faithfully Translated from the Original High-Dutch and carefully continued down to this present year (London, 1702), pp. 610– 616, 618–624.
Baron Augustus von Mayerberg, Voyage en Moscovie d’un Ambassadeur, Conseiller de la Chambre Impériale (Leyden, 1688), pp. 56–57; 60; 124; 144–145.
Stephen Wren, Parentalia, or Memoirs of the Family of the Wrens (London, 1750), pp. 261–263. See Margaret Whinney, “Sir Christopher Wren’s Visit to Paris,” Gazette des Beaux Arts, LI (1958), 229–242, which explains background of and details in the letter.
Abbé Jean de Vayrac, État Présent de l’Espagne (Paris, 1718), I, pt. 1, 36–37, 39–40, 53–57, 62–63, 69–70, 77–78.
Dr. Martin Lister, A Journey to Paris in the Year 1698 (3d ed., London, 1699), pp. 6–19, 20–29, 148–155, 158–163, 166–172, 178, 206–209, 221–225.
Sir Peter Pett, A Discourse of the Growth of England in Populousness and Trade … (London, 1689), pp. 104–107, 119–120, 248–249.
Thomas Jones, The British Language in its Lustre, or a copious Dictionary of Welsh & English (London, 1688), Preface.
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© 1972 Orest and Patricia Ranum
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Ranum, O., Ranum, P. (1972). National Rivalries, Particularisms, and Prejudices. In: Ranum, O., Ranum, P. (eds) The Century of Louis XIV. The Documentary History of Western Civilization. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-00497-3_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-00497-3_3
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