EAST MEETS WEST

Original Records of Western Traders, Travellers, Missionaries and Diplomats to 1852
Part 2: The Papers of Englebert Kaempfer (1651-1716) and related sources from the British Library, London

"After more than thirty years of Kaempfer studies on an international scale one thing that has become clearer than ever...It has become indispensable to return to the source - and that means to The British Library, where the traveller’s unpublished papers, acquired in 1723 and 1725 by Sir Hans Sloane, are preserved."
Detlef Haberland writing in Englebert Kaempfer, 1651-1716: A Biography 
(English translation, The British Library, 1996)

This second part of East Meets West covers the vitally important records of Englebert Kaempfer, the German physician who worked for the Dutch East India Company in Nagasaki between 1690 and 1692, and who has been described as the ‘First Interpreter of Japan’. 

In addition to the material on Japan there is also much on his prolonged excursion to Russia, meeting Tsars Ivan and Peter; the journey down the Volga; his lengthy sojourn in Isfahan and travels around the Middle East; and his time in India, Batavia (Java) and Thailand.

Now, some three hundred years after Kaempfer’s visit, we publish in full the manuscript notebooks, which he filled with pictures and observations.