Early Dutch Travel Writing on Africa

Abstract

The unexpected stance of humility is explored in accounts written by Dutch travellers to Africa in the early modern period, showing that the emphasis is on trade, on a rational exchange of goods between equal partners, rather than on exploitation or conquest. This focus is considered to be the sign of a new identity the Dutch were creating for themselves as an honest, virtuous, Calvinist people trying to repel Roman-Catholic corruption and tyranny. The travel accounts of Pieter de Marees and Pieter van den Broecke are given as examples of this mix of biased and egalitarian attitudes, and their distinctive contribution to European Africanist writing is explored in order to show how early Dutch attitudes toward the other combined a sense of superiority with a discourse of openness, fairness and innocence.