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of this topic because they present us with the extremes between which Europeans
managedtheirencounterswiththelargerworld,whetherfromthedeckofaship,as
JohnSarisdid(hewassailingtoBantamwhen
The Tempest
wasbeingperformed),
orfromthepagesofamanuscript,asJohnSeldendid(hewaspreparingtopassthe
Bar examination that year).
The Tempest
understands the brave new world to be a
place of profound difference, a savage land demanding submission or exile.
News
from the New World
seeks familiarity in foreign places and accepts that the laws
and customs of other places can vary from ours without threatening us. Saris and
SeldentooktheJonsonianapproach.Thenationsandpeoplesoftheworlddiffered,
but not in essentials. Saris could go to them to trade without conquest, Selden to
delveintotheirdocumentsinsearchofthecommonwellspringsofenlightenedhu-
manity. It would be another century before this sense of equality gave way to con-
descension and the East India Company concentrated its efforts on stripping the
world of its assets and other peoples of their dignity.
Jonson and Shakespeare, either way, gave English audiences what they had a
taste for: visions of the new worlds that lay far from England's shores. In so doing
they were simply playing on the fad for travellers' tales, the genre that Richard
Hakluyt first exploited in the 1590s, that Samuel Purchas retailed through the
1610sand1620s,andforwhichJohnSpeedprovidedmapsandillustrations.Itwas
great entertainment and would continue to be so all the way down to Coleridge
dozing in his chair at the end of the eighteenth century. But news from new-found
lands had potent effects in other registers as well. Scholars such as John Selden
greedily scooped up whatever they could learn about other places and traditions as
that information arrived, mastering the languages and collecting the manuscripts
theywouldneedtoexcavatethedeeperrealitiesofhumanhistorythatlayobscured
from sight.
As this new knowledge arrived, nothing changed, at first. The world just got
fuller. But gradually, as evidence of other ways of being and thinking came more
insistently into view, some realised that the old ways were not the only ways, and
indeed might have to be revised or superseded. To be alive in John Selden's day
wastolivethroughthisshiftinparadigms.Some-Selden,conspicuously-moved
with the tide and employed the new insights to lay a stronger comparative found-
ation under European knowledge. Others were idled by the changes, uncertain of
how to respond to what the world was showing them. Yet others were entirely left
behind, stuck in old assumptions that they remained content to accept well after
these unexamined ideas had collapsed under the weight of their untenability.
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