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India: Goa as represented in Jan Huygen van Linschoten's Itinerario, Amsterdam, 1596.

India: Goa as represented in Jan Huygen van Linschoten's Itinerario, Amsterdam, 1596.

The Dutch traveler Jan Huygen van Linschoten (1562-1611) lived in Goa on the west coast of India between 1583 and 1588, where he acted as secretary to the Portuguese archbishop Dom Vicente da Fonseca.

After he returned to the Low Countries, in 1592 he collaborated with the Dutch scholar, Berent ten Broecke, to write a series of accounts of the Indies using his extensive first-hand experience as well as a number of Iberian maps, books, and manuscripts he had collected during his travels.

Linschoten’s works circulated widely and were repeatedly reissued and translated in Europe, but the most famous is the celebrated Itinerario, first published in 1596. It describes all of maritime Asia from Mozambique to Japan and is illustrated by three maps and thirty-six coloured engravings made from original drawings by Linschoten.

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