Travelogues as Source of History: An Overview of Francis Bernier’s Travel Writings

Abstract

Travelogues may be claimed as records of history since they are written about and refer to some historical contexts, but to what extent and in what degree they truly reflect history and historical facts, has been a matter of research. History, as seen from the eye of a historian, may be found in a travelogue, and sometimes the latter could go across history since a travel writer simply records his experiences and impressions of that particular domain which he travels. Travelogues cannot be considered history since a traveller comes as an explorer not as a historian. He is mainly fascinated by excitement, pleasure and expedition to know the foreign lands. So when he records his experiences he writes a distinct genre of literature, travel writing and not history. And this genre has its own literary value in terms of entertainment and arousing the interest of readers for further travels and knowledge. Secondly, such travel narrations are highly affected by viewpoint and perceptions of the traveller. That is why they always sway between imagination and reality. Chandalia points out,” Though in all travel writing one thing that is common is that the focus lies on account of real or imaginary places. It may range from documentary to the evocative, from literary to journalistic and from humorous to serious.”(149) In this way it becomes a matter of discussion on the part of the readers to filter facts and factual from travel writing. On this behalf Francis Bernier’s travel writings offer a good number of queries from the point of finding history hidden behind his own creative, descriptive and informative records of his impressions of India he visited during the 17th century. The period when the great Mughal Empire was fluctuating among some power centers headed by Dara, Aurangzeb, Murad and Sultan Suza , the sons of Shah Jahan. Discussing Amitav Ghosh’s travel writing mainly his novels Bhattacharji comments about this perspective of travel writings. She writes,” Promontory descriptions of landscape are rarely found in his travel writing, but there is a sturdy promontory metaphor at the start of In the Antique Land, as Ghosh surveys a swathe of history from Alexander the Great to the crusades to more recent Asian and European events, the textual territory he will visit and conquer. Almost inevitably, he pairs books and travel, archaeology and history, for how else can we know the past but through books.”(61)