Book Reviews G. S. Rousseau and R oy Porter, eds. E x o tic is m in t h e E n lig h te n m e n t. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1990. Pp. x + 230. The vogue of exoticism is traditionally associated with the eighteenth century, and con sidered a consequence of increased travel throughout the world at that time, and missionary and commercial contact with cultures beyond Europe. It also testifies to the philosophes’ fascination with other ways of being human, and serves as well as a foil for discreetly critiquing European governments and customs. A requisite nod is made to earlier expres sions of interest in the “ other,” to Montaigne’s “ Des Cannibales,” for example. But for the most part, exoticism is considered almost an invention of the enlightenment. While this fact can be disputed, the book Exoticism in the Enlightenment offers a brilliant coverage of the phenomenon in the eighteenth century. This collection of essays constitutes a highly illuminating and eminently readable survey of the category “ exoticism” during the period. The essays are erudite studies that speak to the more general reader as well as to the initiated. They open up the channels between history, literature and theory, with particular attention to the constructed nature of the nar ratives that serve as the sources both of knowledge about the period and about the in dividuals who penned them, thus performing important acts o f cultural criticism. In the preface, the editors point to Foucault’s and Said’s seminal works on sexuality and orien talism as organizing principles for these studies, providing the framework for the inter section of eroticism and orientalism that gets labeled here “ exoticism.” Rather than focus on one area of the world, or on one European nation’s experience of the other, the collec tion brings together for consideration essays on regions as diverse as Islam, China, India, North America, Tahiti, Persia, the “ Orient,” Formosa, and focuses primarily on the British and French contacts with those civilizations. While some of the essays read as relatively conservative ethnographic investigations, others of them go right to the core of central questions of historiography at issue today, and are sensitive to the structuring role o f narrative in the shaping and disseminating of knowledge about the other, and the biases (class, gender, profession) of the individuals from whose writings the authors glean their material. The only way to do justice to the richness o f this book is to briefly summarize each of the essays. I. R. Netton offers four vantages on Islam: that of Pococke, a Christian minister and arabic scholar, of Sale, a lawyer and translator of the Q ur’an, of Voltaire, the French polemicist, and Pitts, a memorialist who recounts his ordeal of having been taken captive by Algerians and sold into slavery. Each o f these perspectives on Islam is fascinating; my only reservation here is that there was no logic binding the selection of these particular testimonies together, not even that of nationality. In his study of the British in India, P. J. Marshall demonstrates how, given the British self-appointed mission o f map ping, describing, dominating, and exploiting the sub-continent, the English in India saw the culture only from the narrow confines of the barracks, cantonments, port and trading cities, and thus had very little contact with the culture. Their initial wonderment at the opulence and foreignness was quickly transformed into simple analysis that saw instead mainly poverty and corruption, and thus justified their presence as a source of stability. Basil Guy offers an essay on the Jesuits in China that argues that the Jesuits were prepared to learn as much about China as necessary to be effective missionaries in that country, and points out some of the aspects of Chinese civilization with which they had the most difficul ty. V. G. Kiernan’s essay on the Amerindians comes closest to an ethnographic study. His 78 W in t e r 1991 B o o k R ev iew s vantage is through the observations of the British and the French; he takes into account their reactions to what they saw and learned about...