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The topics that authors discuss offer insights into
their interests. Those whose principal interest is conquest or control
of a foreign land have often focused on the strengths and weaknesses of
the societies they visited: their political structure, military capacity,
social organization, economic productivity, and the like. Those with a
particular interest in commerce or business opportunities have often paid
special attention to the natural resources and manufactured products of
foreign lands, as well as social and cultural customs that would be useful
for merchants and businessmen to know about. Those seeking converts to
a new religious faith have often concentrated on native cultural traditions,
religious beliefs, educational institutions, and moral practices. Contrariwise,
authors of travel accounts have sometimes been blind to those aspects
of a foreign society that hold little interest for them. In hundreds of
pilgrims’ travel accounts recording the experiences of Christians
visiting Jerusalem or Muslims making a hajj to Mecca, the authors dwelled
almost exclusively on religious and spiritual issues, barely noticing
the material world that they traversed. Similarly, merchants doing business
in foreign lands often found it difficult or uninteresting to explore
local cultural values or family life. The Chinese merchant Zhou Daguan,
for example, visited Cambodia in the 13th-century. In a brief report on
his sojourn there, he pointed out that it was convenient and immensely
helpful for Chinese merchants to take a local wife who was familiar with
local business practices, but he manifested little interest in the private
life of Cambodian society itself.
 
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