Two Missionary Accounts of Southeast Asia in the Late Seventeenth Century: A Translation and Critical Edition of Guy Tachard’s Relation de Voyage aux … Histories in the Early Modern World)

Two Missionary Accounts of Southeast Asia in the Late Seventeenth Century: A Translation and Critical Edition of Guy Tachard’s Relation de Voyage aux … Histories in the Early Modern World)
by: Stefan Halikowski Smith (Translator)
Publisher:Arc Humanities Press
Publication Date: 30 Sept. 2019
Language:English
Print Length:264 pages
ISBN-10:1641893184
ISBN-13:9781641893183
Book Description
This volume presents critical editions of two previously unpublished missionary accounts of Ayutthaya and the East Indies scene after the “National” Revolution of 1688 in Thailand. The texts presented are Relation de Voyage aux Indes, 1690-99, by Guy Tachard, a French Jesuit; and Relatione Distinta delli Regni di Siam, China, Tunchino, e Cocincina (ca. 1707), by Nicola Cima, an Italian Augustinian. These interesting, substantial texts tell us a lot both about the Europeans who were writing them, and about Southeast Asia in a period when information was in much shorter supply than prior to 1688, and when kingdoms across Southeast Asia tended to retract from outward engagement and to become what historians have christened “hermit kingdoms.” They are coloured by delusional thinking: in Tachard’s case of an active French colonial presence in that part of the world irrespective of the lessons of 1688-89, or in Cima’s case, of a revived Venetian maritime trade to the East Indies in an unlikely partnership with the Danish East Indies Company. Including a substantial introduction to contextualize the accounts, this book makes available in English some primary source material addressing important and overlooked aspects of the European missionary mentality.
About the Author
Review [These] two travel accounts are … a rich canvas of events, places, actors, and curiosities encountered along the way. Both authors invent, lie, and misunderstand the situations, but the variety of details and their opinions are precious for understanding the European attitudes in the East and the strategies employed in intercultural encounters. The editor and translator, Halikowski Smith must be commended for [his] learned and polyglot commentaries and ample footnotes. They are a treasure trove for future research.–Ines G. Zupanov “Journal of Jesuit Studies 9 (2022): 459-82” (3/1/2022 12:00:00 AM) About the Author Stefan Halikowski Smith is Associate Professor, Department of History at Swansea University