British Travellers and the Encounter with Britain 1450-1700

Encounters with a 'multicultural' Britain in the Tudor and Stuart periods written with an eye to debates about immigration and ethnicity in today's Britain. <p/>This book recovers the encounter with a multicultural Britain by British travellers in the Tudor and Stuart periods. When William Camden writing in the sixteenth century set out to write the history of Britannia he deliberately took to the roads to discover it first-hand and those diverse cultures guided and informed his journeys. Here John Cramsie offers original perspectives on Camden's multicultural Britain through the study of British travellersand their narratives. We meet characters such as the Tudor traveller John Leland who intended to tell the peoples of England and Wales about themselves; chronicle how they came to settle the towns villages valleys and mountaintops they called home; record the marks they left in the landscape; and celebrate the noble histories and cultures they created. Dozens - eventually hundreds - of Britons shared the same passion to meet their island neighbours and relate their experiences. The individuals studied in this book include actual as well as armchair travellers and those who blurred the boundaries between them. Their letters diaries journals and histories range from the epic poignant and matter of fact to the exotic preposterous and hateful; the sources include actual and imaginative narratives and those which combined both elements. Travellers painted Britain with in Leland's words native colours that were rich vibrant and above all complex. Their remarkable journeys are the story of how Britons over two centuries met interacted and attempted (or not) to understand one another. Written with an eye to debates aboutimmigration and ethnicity in today's Britain the book emphasizes the long history of making and remaking the island's cultural mosaic. The encounter with Britain's native colours has been a burden of history and opportunity formillennia not simply for our own times. <p/> JOHN CRAMSIE is Associate Professor Department of History Union College NY.