Cross-Cultural Contact
TRAVELERS: CROSS-CULTURAL CONTACT
Orienting Ourselves
- Geography: objective or subjective?
- maps
Crossing Boundaries
- communication is cultural
- contact
- economic
- political
- social
- religious
- motives?
- examples 1300-1500
- civilizations versus "uncivilizations"
- Eurasian connections
- Mongol Empire
- Ottoman Turks
- European expansion
Travelers
A European in China: Marco Polo (1254-1324)
- merchant at court
- Kublai Khan
- government
- religion
- culture
- different without being worse
A Muslim Globetrotter: ibn Battuta (1304-68)
- cosmopolitan Islamic world
- India
- China
- Mali
- culture shock
A Spaniard in the "New World:" Bernal Diaz
- gold and freedom
- wonder at the marvellous
- "New Spain"
- Yucatan
- translators: Doña Marina
Conclusions and Comparisons
- stranger in a strange land?
- otherness and the self
- What kind of traveler are you?
Links
Return to Lecture Outline
kjolly@hawaii.edu 06/23/00