Jan Janszoon Struys was born in Amsterdam about 400 years ago and studied shipbuilding from childhood. Young Jan Struys escaped from his strict father, enlisting in Amsterdam as a sailing master on a ship in the great commercial voyage of the Genoese. In his travels, among other things, he:
In 1668, Struys was hired as a sailing master on the ship "Orel" in the Muscovy, a country little known in Europe, which was just creating the first large seagoing ships to sail under its own flag. When Razin turned from campaigns and theft to an uprising, then, having learned about the defeat of the tsarist troops, Struys with a group of comrades fled from the ship "Orel", but in the territory of Dagestan he was captured by the mountaineers, tortured and sold into slavery. With the help of Ludwig Fabricius, he was bought back in Persia, from where Struis reached Holland. In 1675, Jan Struys wrote a fascinating book about his adventures, in which, in a vivid and imaginative language, he outlined the details of the life, behavior, appearance of people in those parts where he happened to be.
"Three Remarkable and Calamitous Travels through Italy, Greece, Livonia, Muscovy, Tartary, Media, Persia, East India, Japan and various other Districts":
Title page of possibly the oldest publicly available German-language edition of Struys's book. The entire book is printed using a
Schwabacher Gothic font. But at the same time, everywhere there is an
Antiqua of
Garamond typeface or some similar Latin script (highlighted with a red frame). The very name of the author "Joh. Jansz." is typed in Antiqua, and the surname "Strauszens", as well as the main text - Schwabacher. Now his surname is spelled in Latin as "Struys" and his name is "Jan Janszoon".
Also printed in Antiqua type on the title page are the words "Author" and "Authore", which are not quite typical for German grammar; the city "Astracan"; initials "A.M." and a certain "David Butler". At the same time, the names "Jacob von Meurs" and "Johannes von Sommern" - on this page are written entirely in Gothic, like the main part of the text. In addition, Antiqua is used in dates, "Anno", and possibly all Arabic numerals.
Page 15, here, in addition to dates, Antiqua is most often used on toponyms: several times "Judia", as well as "Siam", "Bankok", "Canon Bankok", "Canon Bantenau", "Benzoin-lak". But not only toponyms, this font also used in the word "Monarchal", monarchical, in the description of the city of Judia, "Stadt Judia". And also the words "Pyramiden", pyramids, and "Aequinoctial-linie", equinox line. This page was used by
Gleb Nosovsky in his book "
The Last Path of the Holy Family" when describing the city of Judia in Siam.
Page 206, many names, toponyms and other words are written in Antiqua, and also highlighted with a purple frame words printed in two fonts at once, such as "Czaarischen", "Donischen" and others. Throughout the book, most of the words following the gothic "Stadt", city, are printed in Antiqua, for example, "Stadt Astracan". At the same time, there are cities without using Latin typeface, such as, for example, the "Stadt Moscaw" highlighted on this page in a green frame. Also on this page is mentioned "Stenko Radzin" written in Latin script.
There is no logical explanation for the utilitarian use of the Latin script: these are not only toponyms and names, but not all names and toponyms are written in Antiqua; it is not only Latin or English, but also German words;
these are not the words of the descriptions, there are many words written in both fonts. So, in my opinion, a simpler explanation of the use of the second font is logical: the printed forms of the original completely Gothic edition by J.J. Strauszens were preserved, after some time, when the publishers had new Latin typefaces, and Gothic were out of use, they released this revised edition by Joh. Jansz. Straus. If this is so, then it is possible to assume the reason, for example, the corrections of the places and times of the action in the text were intended to give to outdated description a modern understanding of rivers, reservoirs and trade empires hiding post-catastrophic changes in geography. But, perhaps, these were also ordinary consequences of the functioning of the Christian Inquisition, formally making the popular text available to a wide range of Christians. There may be more likely reasons for the unspoken reprint of a book originally printed Gothic in full, but since there is no explanation for the use of the second font in the text of the book, it looks more like a later heavily revised reprint, rather than what the title page claims.
A copy of the same edition from the library of the University of Halle-Wittenberg contains elaborate engravings, some of which are missing from other public digital versions of this book. In addition to the images of cities, some of the images, apparently, complement the vivid historical evidence narrated by the author with visual material:
It is worth noting that if you look at the contents of Struys's book, you can see the use of the Latin script on the toponyms of almost every chapter:
Only chapters 2 and 11 are printed in full Gothic without the use of Latin:
2. Das verbrennen und umbbringen Siammischer Edelleute. Burning and killing of Siamese nobles.
11. Neue gewisse Karte der Caspischen See. New specific map of the Caspian Sea.
If the Latin script is indeed evidence of a later edited version then the original travel history of a certain Strauszens has been significantly altered. The map of the Caspian Sea from this edition differs in that it also contains a certain "Mare de Zale":
To this it should be added that the
credibility of the book itself has been repeatedly questioned:
Doubts have been repeatedly expressed about the veracity of Struys's Travel. The reputation of this book was shaken during the life of the author. Erasmus commentator and translator Peter Rabus, who founded Boekzaal van Europe, published in it (1693, July and August) a summary of the book of the Jesuit Philippe Avril, which also appeared in Dutch translation.
According to modern research, a third of Struys's journey was borrowed from
Samuel Collins, and most likely the name of the real author of the work was
Olfert Dapper, as
I.A. Osipov referrs to
"The fiction and reality of Jan Struys: A seventeenth-century Dutch globetrotter" by K. Boterbloem:
Borrowing from Collins' book was carried out in a less frank manner. It has long been established that the main source of the "Third Journey" by the Dutchman Jan Jansen Struys was the composition of Adam Olearius. In addition to the indicated source, direct borrowings were also revealed from the "Messages regarding the details of the rebellion recently carried out in Muscovy by Stenka Razin" in 1671, placed in Chapter XIII of the "Third journey". A careful comparison of individual reports by Struys, the authorship of which was previously recognized as a reflection of his personal impressions, with the work of Collins, allows us to confidently speak of the presence of a third source of information for the Dutch traveler. It was from Collins's book "The Present State of Russia" in 1671 that borrowings were made, which, along with the descriptions of everyday life taken from Olearius, were the basis of the Moscow memoirs of a sailing master.
It should be noted right away that according to the latest research carried out by the Dutch historian, Professor K. Boterbloem, the true author of Three Voyages is not Jan Struys, but Olfert Dapper. However, Struys, or rather Dapper himself, admits this immediately in the preface to the reader - "Struys" honestly speaks about the lack of experience and skill in writing and about the attraction of a more skillful pen, with the help of which he brought his story in the form in which it was published. As it turned out, recognition had to be taken literally.
In order to disguise the use of someone else's material, Dapper was forced to insert remarks along the way to explain the source of the often very exclusive information. So, for example, "Struys" mentions the "courteous and amiable" bailiff who accompanied them, who answered in detail all his numerous questions.
The volume of Dapper's borrowings from Collins's book is incomparable with the amount of material involved in processing from the work of Olearius. The preference was clearly given to the Holstein envoy: Collins, for obvious reasons, is more stingy in presentation, his information is artless and, at times, very laconic. The book of Olearius has a complete character, is clearly structured, describes practically the same route and, moreover, has been tested by time and readers' demand; she is popular and has a reputation for being a successful literary project.
Further, Osipov cites more than ten pairs of quotations from the works of Collins and Struys, mainly related to the description of the trip to Muscovy, thereby confirming significant borrowings. It is highly probable that Struys's work was originally fiction, not documentary. But in spite of its doubtful reliability, the book of Struys still remains an authoritative historical evidence and source not only in the academic environment, but also among the ideologists of the "
New Chronology".
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