Adventures in Abyssinia: The Relation of Charles Poncet, 1698 to 1700

Extract

‘One of the greatest advantages a traveller brings back from his journeys’, wrote the chevalier d'Arvieux in 1673, ‘is that he rejects the prejudices imbibed in his own country against strangers, something which those who never leave will never accomplish.’ For with direct exposure to foreign cultures, explained Simon de la Loubère two decades later, one learns ‘that there is not in any place anything marvellous or extravagant’. The seventeenth century in European history witnessed a great exodus of articulate globetrotters from every walk of life who sought adventure, wealth, and reputation. This was an age, indeed, when Europeans could be found in nearly every corner of the world. Moreover, many of these individuals wrote extensively of their experiences, reporting details of geography, climate, flora, fauna and the natural wealth of the lands they visited. Their accounts are also enriched by the close attention paid to the fullness and richness of the social, religious, and cultural aspects of the people who occupied these non-Christian, non-European societies. In short, the anthropological, even ethnographic elements of these travelogues constitute an extraordinarily rich source for modern historians that, until recently, has rarely been mined by scholars who have tended to limit themselves instead to the political and commercial contacts between Europe and the wider world during the Age of Discovery and Exploration.