The nineth meeting of research group: discussing the results and assignment of preprint-groups

On September 18, during the ninth session of the research seminar “Languages for Describing the Other in Early Modern Europe: Social Contexts and Repertoires of Interpretation” the participants presented their research reports and created three new groups which will be preparing the preprints. 

The “Balkan” group highlighted similarities and differences in the sources they examined. They managed to establish parallels between the work of Paul Rycot and that of Peter Mundy, who quoted contemporary works about Turks more frequently and unlike Pietro Coppo and Pietro della Valle did not appeal to the ancient past of the described territories. 
The report of the second group was dedicated to the oeuvre of Swedish educated travelers and politicians, Peter Petreius and Johan Gabriel Sparwenfeld. The group identified a conceptual innovation manifested in the transition from cosmography to empirical knowledge in European ethnography. The empirical part of Petreuis’s work implied that previous knowledge of Muscovy was outdated.  As far as Sparwenfeld is concerned, his text was permeated by empirical observations.  In contrast to Petreuis, he rarely quoted from Classical literature and preceding works about Muscovy. 
The third group presented a report concerning the image of the Irish in late Tudor and early Stuart sources. The English discourse of this period legitimized the necessity of incporporation of Ireland into British imperial space but authors of the examined sources suggested different projects of this incorporation. Fynes Moryson, a gentleman and a witness of suppression of Hugh O’Neill’s rebellion, promoted exclusively coercive solution of the Irish problem. John Davis, a Stuart jurist, insisted on inclusion of the Irish by means of expansion of the common law. Barnaby Rich, a Protestant soldier, was considering religious path of integration. All the examined texts represented the Irish as rebellious and treacherous barbarians and condemned their native lordships as tyranny.  
As a result of the session three preprint groups were created: 1) Cultural relativism in early modern ethnography; 2) Imperial discourse in early modern time: 3) Empiricism in in early modern ethnography