Mannen schieten met pijlen op vastgebonden figuur 1677

This engraving from 1677, published in Amsterdam, depicts men shooting arrows at a bound figure. The image comes from a travelogue by Jan Jansen Struys, detailing his voyages through Muscovy, Tartary, the East Indies, and other parts of the world. These travelogues were commodities, produced by publishers like Jacob van Meurs, and Johannes van Someren for a European audience keen to know about faraway lands. But how reliable were they? This image frames the violence of foreign cultures for a Dutch audience, reinforcing ideas of European superiority, while simultaneously fueling fantasies of adventure and conquest. The ‘privilege’, or permission, granted to print such works was a form of early copyright, controlled by governing bodies keen to manage the flow of information. To fully understand this image, we can investigate the history of Dutch printmaking and global trade, examining archival records of the publishing houses involved, and comparing Struys’ account with other contemporary travel narratives. This reveals the complex interplay between exploration, representation, and the construction of cultural identity in the early modern period.