Allgemeine Historie der Reisen zu Wasser und Lande, oder Sammlung aller Reisebeschreibungen,..

Title

Allgemeine Historie der Reisen zu Wasser und Lande, oder Sammlung aller Reisebeschreibungen,..

Description

18th volume of the "Allgemeine Historie der Reisen zu Wasser und Lande..." Travel description of Asia on 584 pages with 27 folding views and folding maps as well as 4 views plus an index. Folding maps of Java, Amboina, Trinquemale (Sri Lanka), Arabia, the Coromandel coast, surroundings of Tharangambadi (India), Philippines, Caroline Islands, Cranganore Fort (India), Kollam Fort (India), Kingdom of Bengal and the ground plan of the city of Cochin (India). Folded views such as Chequetan or Seguetaneo (Zihuatanejo port city in Mexico) and entrance to the port of Acapulco; Tinian Island, the Thieves' Islands (Mariana Islands); Puerto San Julián (formerly Port St Julian) in Patagonia; Santa Catarina Island in Brazil; Indian cities such as, Dabhol (Dabul), Kannur (Cananor), Kampong-Cham in Kamocha; map of Jaffna in Sri Lanka; Ternate Island (Moluccas), etc.

c. 1764

Artist

Schwabe (1714-1784)

An edited by Johann Joachim Schwabe (1714-1784), the most extensive and important German-language collection of travel descriptions of the 18th century, published by Arkstee and Merkus in Leipzig in 21 volumes from 1747 to 1774. The collection was based on the English New general collection of voyages and travels (4 volumes, 1745-1747) and the French Histoire générale des voyages (20 volumes, 1746-1791), but complemented the works selected by the English and French editors Thomas Astley and Antoine-François Prévost and translated more faithfully than the French edition. Abbé Prevost had worked on it from 1746 to 1759 (volume 15). Immanuel Kant drew some ethnological knowledge from it. Johann Joachim Schwabe (1714 -1784) was a German scholar, librarian, philosopher and translator. Schwabe taught in Leipzig and was a member of the Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences. An enthusiastic pupil of Johann Christoph Gottsched, he translated Jonathan Swift to German conditions on Gottsched's advice (1734). He edited the Belustigungen des Verstandes und des Witzes, one of the important critical and fine arts journals of the Enlightenment, which appeared from 1741 to 1745. He published the second edition of Benjamin Hederich's book Gründliches mythologisches Lexicon in 1770. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Friedrich Schiller and Heinrich von Kleist still drew their mythological knowledge from it, and individual articles were included in Zedler's Universal-Lexicon (1732-1754).

Historical Description

A travelogue or travel description is the (literary) account of a traveller's observations and experiences. Such descriptions vary greatly in content and value, depending on the purpose of the particular journey. They are often richly illustrated. The oldest travel accounts are those of Scylax of Coryanda and Pytheas of Massilia. The travel literature of antiquity was sparse, and even from the early Middle Ages only a few works of this kind survive, such as the accounts of the Vikings' journeys to the Faroe Islands, Iceland, Greenland and Vinland (present-day North America). In contrast, there is a whole series of travel works in the Jewish and Arabic literature of the Middle Ages, such as those of the Arabs Ibn Battūta, Ibn Fadlan, al-Bīrūnī, Ibn Dschubair, the Jews Benjamin of Tudela, Meshullam da Volterra and others. They are important sources for knowledge of the conditions in these countries at that time. Since the invention of printing, travel literature soon experienced an enormous boom after the discovery of America and the expeditions of the Portuguese to the Indian Ocean, combined with the revival of science in general, opened up new and vast areas for research. Collections of travel works, such as those by Johannes Huttich and Simon Grynaeus (1532), Giovan Battista Ramusio (1550 ) and Richard Hakluyt (1598), were therefore already published in the 16th century. In the middle of the 17th century, travel accounts received a new boost from the boom in trade, especially by the English. By the end of the 19th century, travelogues by scientifically educated travellers were available in the languages of almost all "civilised" peoples about almost all parts of the world. Some travelogues achieved "world literary significance and at the same time the highest source rank". Some of the reports written in foreign languages by non-German explorers were made accessible to the German public in translations. Among the Germans who stood out with their travel reports, Georg Forster and Alexander von Humboldt were of particular importance; for the knowledge of America, the works of Prince Maximilian zu Wied-Neuwied were significant. For Africa, the reports of Hornemann and Barth and many more. Especially for Egypt Lepsius and Klunzinger, for China the five-volume work by Richthofen, based on journeys in the years 1862-1872 to the inner provinces, which at that time hardly any Europeans had seen. In addition to scholarly travel literature, another type of travel literature developed towards the end of the 19th century with the improvement of means of transport, oriented towards the better-known countries of the world and preferably dealing with the beauties of nature, social and political conditions or focusing on the personal experiences, reflections and feelings of the traveller, and thus more or less belletristic nature. Fictional travelogues are a borderline case of travel description: the so-called Robinsonades and the scientifically influenced travel descriptions such as those by Jules Verne.