Graecia capta ferum victorem cepit? Relations between Europe and China in the Travelogue "Tamo amo po istoku" of Milan Jovanović

The main focus of the paper is the image of European-Chinese relations in the travel prose Tamo amo po istoku (‘Here and there in the East’), written by the Serbian traveller Milan Jovanović. Jovanović worked as a doctor on a steamer belonging to the Lloyd company in the 1870’s and 1880’s, and travelled through the Mediterranean, the Middle East, India, and the Far East. In his prose, he made quite a few remarks about China and the Chinese. According to Jovanović, European presence in Asia is dominated by greed, violence and injustice, and because of that, the peoples of Asia have started to despise Europeans and perceived them as cruel barbarians. Chinese industriousness, perseverance, frugality and good manners are emphasized in the travelogue. In general, Jovanović’s view on the future of intercultural relations was an optimistic one. Contacts between civilisations were an opportunity for Europe to adopt Chinese values. It should be pointed out that Jovanović’s way of thinking would have been very interesting in the context of 19th century ideologies of racism and colonialism.This work was supported by the National Centre of Science (Project 2011/03/N/HS2/01724, Decision Number DEC-2011/03/N/HS2/01724) and by the START program implemented by the Foundation for Polish Science, and by a Scholarship of the Foundation of Adam Mickiewicz University