Peopling landscapes, ethnographic and otherwise: European images of Asians from the 15th to the 19th centuries

This article examines European depictions of Asians during the early modern period, arguing that images were determined by the conditions of the relationship between Europe and Asia. Europe's marginal position and limited access in the 16th and 17th century encouraged invention rather than observation. Increasing access and dominance in the 18th and 19th did not necessarily encourage greater accuracy. It remained rare for an Asian to escape landscape and history: for portraits to allow the individual to emerge from the type that he or she illustrated, or for Asia to escape the past to which it had by then been consigned