A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels — Volume 12

Kerr, Robert, 1755-1813Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.5
Word count
1.2M words
Chapters
121

Tags

English Originals Historical GeographyWorld History Human GeographyHistorical ReappraisalCuriosityDocumentary NarrativeWorld OrderExotic CultureCross-Cultural View

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels — Volume 12 by Robert KerrAuthor: Kerr, Robert, 1755-1813,Language: English, Class: G: Geography, Anthropology, Recreation, Release Date: Dec 22, 2004

Editor's review

This volume is the twelfth in Robert Kerr's general collection of voyages and travels, a representative product of the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century European tradition of compiling geographical knowledge and travel literature. Its value lies first in its source material: it brings together numerous voyage accounts, exploration reports and geographical observations, giving readers a first-hand textual脉络 of how Europeans understood the world, drew sea charts, and conducted trade and colonial activities. Its value lies second in its arrangement: the editor organizes scattered materials by volume, allowing readers to advance gradually along chronology and routes and to appreciate the purpose of the "collection" as a mode of organizing knowledge. It should be read as a source collection rather than a narrative work; there is no need to read it from cover to cover, and thematic consultation around particular seas, routes or persons is more suitable, with attention to the period biases and layers of translation and retelling in the text.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Not a good fit for

Reading tips

  1. Begin with the table of contents and the volume's preface, mark the seas or routes of interest, and then read selectively.
  2. Prepare a map or a place-name concordance and consult it while reading to reduce obstacles caused by unfamiliar place names.
  3. For the same event, read against other voyage accounts and note the editor's choices and differences in retelling.
  4. Read only one or two entries at a time and take notes, so as not to lose the thread in dense historical material.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. 11
  12. 12
  13. 13
  14. 14
  15. 15
  16. 16
  17. 17
  18. 18
  19. 19
  20. 20
  21. 21
  22. 22
  23. 23
  24. 24
  25. 25
  26. 26
  27. 27
  28. 28
  29. 29
  30. 30
  31. 31
  32. 32
  33. 33
  34. 34
  35. 35
  36. 36
  37. 37
  38. 38
  39. 39
  40. 40
  41. 41
  42. 42
  43. 43
  44. 44
  45. 45
  46. 46
  47. 47
  48. 48
  49. 49
  50. 50
  51. 51
  52. 52
  53. 53
  54. 54
  55. 55
  56. 56
  57. 57
  58. 58
  59. 59
  60. 60
  61. 61
  62. 62
  63. 63
  64. 64
  65. 65
  66. 66
  67. 67
  68. 68
  69. 69
  70. 70
  71. 71
  72. 72
  73. 73
  74. 74
  75. 75
  76. 76
  77. 77
  78. 78
  79. 79
  80. 80
  81. 81
  82. 82
  83. 83
  84. 84
  85. 85
  86. 86
  87. 87
  88. 88
  89. 89
  90. 90
  91. 91
  92. 92
  93. 93
  94. 94
  95. 95
  96. 96
  97. 97
  98. 98
  99. 99
  100. 100
  101. 101
  102. 102
  103. 103
  104. 104
  105. 105
  106. 106
  107. 107
  108. 108
  109. 109
  110. 110
  111. 111
  112. 112
  113. 113
  114. 114
  115. 115
  116. 116
  117. 117
  118. 118
  119. 119
  120. 120
  121. 121

FAQ

Does this book need to be read from the first page to the last? No. It is a collection of numerous voyage and travel records, and the entries are relatively independent, so it is better suited to selective reading by sea, route or person. Reading it straight through is tiring; consultative reading better brings out its value as historical source material.
How difficult is the English, and what background is needed? The text is in English and contains many old place names, nautical terms and personal names, with sentence patterns characteristic of the period. A good command of English reading is recommended, along with a map and a dictionary; beginners may start with shorter entries.
What limitations should readers keep in mind? This is a compilation of historical documents; the records carry the biases of the contemporary European perspective and layers of retelling, and the geographical information may not accord with modern conclusions. It should be used as historical source material rather than an authoritative geographical work, and read critically.

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

Kerr, Robert, 1755-1813 Author

Kerr, Robert (1755-1813) is an author included in the Chinese book database, whose biographical details remain limited in publicly available sources; what can be confirmed is that he left seventeen works. The representative works in the database center on the multi-volume series A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, covering several volumes from Volume 01 to Volume 15 and dealing with compilations of voyages, travel, and geographical exploration. Such works typically organize records of long-distance voyages and accounts of foreign lands across the ages, with narration leaning toward the retelling of historical sources and descriptions of journeys, and they bear a strong documentary and compilatory character. In the database's classification, his works fall under inspirational growth, which may relate to a reading orientation toward exploring the unknown and broadening one's horizons. Overall, he appears more a compiler than an original narrator, and his contribution lies in gathering scattered voyage and travel literature into collected volumes, making it easier for readers to understand early world transport and geographical knowledge.