ABSTRACT
If geopolitical relationships took shape often through the movement of individuals in and out of states, intellectual exchange in the early modern period was also inextricably linked to mobility and displacement. Ambassadors wrote letters detailing the niceties of diplomacy and political debates. Travellers recorded narrative accounts of their journeys and experiences of foreign cultures. Humanist scholars exchanged thousands of letters which crossed Europe with details of their experiments, discoveries, and discussions. Writers and translators facilitated the textual dissemination of everything from eye-witness accounts of voyages and foreign cultures, to emergent ethnographic ideas about racial and cultural difference.
