Far From the Truth

Michiel van Groesen is Professor of Maritime History at Leiden University. His work is interdisciplinary in nature, focusing on the culture of early modern Europe’s imperial expansion and the politics of global interactions. He is the author of two books, Representations of the Overseas World in the De Bry Collection of Voyages, 1590–1634(Brill, 2008) and Amsterdam’s Atlantic: Print Culture and the Making of Dutch Brazil (Penn, 2017). He is currently completing a monograph on the circulation of news and information in the Atlantic world, which is provisionally entitled An Ocean of Rumours, and will appear with Cambridge University Press. Johannes Müller is an assistant professor at the Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society. His research focuses on environmental history, memory studies, and the history of knowledge. Among his publications are the volumes Exile Memories and the Dutch Revolt: The Narrated Diaspora, 1550–1750 (Brill, 2016), Memory before Modernity. Practices of Memory in Early Modern Europe (Brill, 2013, co-edited with Judith Pollmann, Erika Kuijpers, and Jasper van der Steen), and he is currently preparing a book manuscript on the impact of climate on fish and fisheries with marine biologist Daniel Pauly.

Introduction - van Groesen and Müller / 1. Reports from the Edges of Iberian Empire – Blackmore / 2. Distance and Credibility in Sixteenth-Century Travel Writing: Discovery, Text, and Truth in Varthema, Vespucci, and Pigafetta – Rubiés / 3. Copies with Wings: Bridging Distances by Printing the Familiar – Leitch / 4. The Philippines: Islands of the Mind – Padrón / 5. Knowledge and Its Opposite: Antiquity, Parody, and Geographical Distance in Gabriel Rollenhagen’s Four Indian Voyages – Müller / 6. “I Am Giving You As Much As I Have”: Distance and Credibility in Théophraste Renaudot’s Gazette - van Groesen / 7. Contracting Trust? The Many Lives of Afro-European Treaties – Brauner / 8. Joseph Williamson and the Information Order of the Early English Empire – Popper / 9. Emotions as Guide to Untrustworthiness: John Lockman’s Struggle with What He Could Not Check – Dürr / Epilogue – Ogborn.