Francisco de Herrera Maldonado and the Orientalist Bookshelf in Early Modern Europe

Abstract

The European view of the East is built upon a literary tradition that began to take form after the first Portuguese travels to other continents. Some of the works written in the first decades of the seventeenth century would shape for centuries the Western outlook of China and Japan. This article studies this textual tradition and its relevance for Early Modern European educated circles by examining a compilation of works devoted to Eastern lands and peoples made by Francisco de Herrera Maldonado. Herrera published this catalogue
of books in the prologue of the Spanish translation of Mendes Pinto’s Peregrinaçam, one of the most important contemporary Portuguese historical accounts of discoveries. Herrera’s orientalist library reveals, among other things, the crucial role played by religious orders in the making of the Western images of the others and especially of others from the East.