STRUYS Jean.
Les Voyages de Jean Struys, en Moscovie, en Tartarie, en Perse, aux Indes, & en plusieurs autres païs étrangers.
Accompagnés de remarques particuliéres sur la qualité, la Religion, le gouvernement, les coutumes & le négoce des lieux qu'il a vus ; avec quantité de figures en taille douce dessinées par lui-même ; & deux lettres qui traitent à fond des malheurs d'Astracan.
A quoi l'on a ajouté comme une chose digne d'être suë, la Rélation d'un Naufrage; dont les suites ont produit des effets extraordinaires.
A AMSTREDAM, Chés la Veuve de JACOB van MEURS.
M. DC. LXXXI. [1681]
4to, 250 x 194 mm. [4] ff. (frontispiece, title, preface), 1 folding map, [4] ff. (table of chapters), 360 pp., 19 folding plates, 8 ff. (zz4–aa4), [1] blank f., 80 pp. with 9 engravings (in and out of text). Complete. Contemporary speckled brown calf, spine with four raised bands, compartments decorated with floral tooling, red morocco title label.
This French edition of 1681 is Glanius's translation of the original Dutch text, printed in Amsterdam in 1676. It recounts the wanderings of Jean Struys (Jan Janszoon Struys, 1629–1694), a Dutch sailor and adventurer, through Muscovy, Tartary, Persia and the Indies.
In these adventures you will travel, among other places, to Venice, Madagascar, Siam, Formosa, Japan, Florence, Bologna, Troy, Turkey, Greece, Muscovy, Moscow, Armenia…
After this, Glanius adds a second book, the Relation d'un Naufrage, dont les suites ont produit des effets extraordinaires (Account of a Shipwreck, the consequences of which produced extraordinary effects).
The narrative, enriched with vocabularies of the Yukaghir, Yakut and Tungus languages, combines ethnographic observations, geographical descriptions and personal anecdotes. It is thus of historical interest both for the places and cultures encountered and for the life of an "ordinary" 17th-century European who wished to travel and discover the world.
Murders, wars, rapes, disease, slavery: all the harshness of the age is set down without superlatives, in a plain and at times disconcerting style, which in turn gives great force to the moments in the lives of the protagonists. Struys was a direct eyewitness of the bloody Cossack revolt led by Stenka Razin in Russia, which he describes in Les malheurs d'Astracan in chapter XV. His account depicts societies in the midst of upheaval (the fall of the khanates, the rise of tsarist Russia), as well as local customs (marriages, funerals, trade) that would disappear with modernisation.
The format of the book, its typography, its layout and its engravings (said to be by Struys's own hand) make it a particularly readable travel narrative, one that allows us to immerse ourselves easily in the world of the 17th century. This is a book with a dual purpose, which explains its long publishing life: it is at once an adventure story and a valuable ethnographic source.
(Source: "The Image of Armenia in European Travel Accounts", Internet Archive).
Brunet V, col. 569.
Condition: Covers restored and reinforced; rust spot on p. 89; pages 345–346–347 are misnumbered 245–246–247. Last three leaves and endpapers browned.
