Travel Books on North-America, Japan and China from the Maastricht Jesuit Library, 1500-1900
25 June 25 October 2014
Location: University Library groundfloor

This exposition is a result of a MaRBLe-project and an Honours programme. Thirteen motivated bachelor students of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences got the opportunity to study early travel books, selected from the ‘Jesuits Collection’ of the University Library. This collection comprises many lavishly illustrated travel books, most of which date from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The travel books testify to the broad interests and the highly international orientation of the Jesuits. These books do not only address Catholic missionary zeal, but also deal with trade missions and scientific expeditions. The international mindset of the Jesuits agrees well, it seems, with that of the international student population in Maastricht.
The hybrid genre of Western travel writing is extremely interesting because it potentially covers a multitude of subjects: (natural) history, religion, geography, economy, natural science, ethnography and so on. The books are full of stories of encounters with the ‘other’, thus touching on issues related to the interplay of ‘other’ and ‘own’ identity, of cultural differences and similarities. No wonder, that in this era of globalization, growing mobility and the ensuing cultural exchanges, the interest in travel books and travel accounts appears to be on the rise.
The illustrations stand the test of time, may be even better than the texts. The pictures create a ‘theatre of the world’: they tend to pay attention to the extraordinary. They are fanciful rather than factual. These visual sources – and that says something about the increasing power of the publishers - not only wanted to inform, but they wanted to entertain.