1365: The Discovery of Europe

From NSwiki, the NationStates encyclopedia.
Jump to: navigation, search

1365: The Discovery of Europe is a book by Cynthia Ashe (Ariddian historian and travel writer) and Paolo Benetti. It focuses on 14th century Indigenous Ariddian explorer Wa We's discovery of Europe, her long stays there in the late 1360s, and the impressions, observations and knowledge she brought back to Ariddia. However, the book also focuses extensively on the fragmentary European records of the time, attempting to piece together European people's impressions of the arrival of Wymgani explorers on European shores. What did it feel like for Europeans to be "discovered", and what were their thoughts on these dark-skinned, intrepid explorers from distant and unknown lands?

The book begins:

As we all know, Europe was discovered in or around 1365.
Before that date, the Wymgani knew that the world was filled with many strange and foreign societies, and had discovered a great number of them, but Europe remained, to them, quite literally inconceivable. Who could have imagined, without seeing them, the southern and south-eastern European societies, government institutions, legal systems, technologies, art, literature, architecture, customs and peoples of the mid-fourteenth century? Wa We's amazing expedition to these distant shores -undoubtedly one of the most impressive voyages of discovery in human history- would lead to first contact between very different peoples. The Wymgani discovered the Europeans, three hundred years before Europeans in turn found the location of the Wymgani homeland. In being thus "discovered", Europeans were faced with voyagers who brought with them ideas and practices as alien to them as European ways were alien to the Wymgani.

Originally written in English, it was almost immediately translated into Wymgani by Cynthia Ashe and Se I.