During the period which is the subject of this essay, travel writing became increasingly identified with the interests and preoccupations of those in European societies who wished to bring the non-European world into a position where it could be influenced, exploited or, in some cases, directly controlled. In the case of Britain, the identification was particularly close. There was some political control but more significant were various kinds of relationships stopping short of direct administration which historians have struggled to characterise by terms such as 'informal empire' or 'unofficial imperialism'. Trade, diplomacy, missionary endeavour, and scientific exploration might all contribute to the British expansion and each produced its own travel writing. Increasing European technological expertise provided advantages which made it easier to influence or dominate non-Europeans. With technological superiority came presumed intellectual superiority: Europeans could claim to be able to understand and interpret not only the terrain they entered but the inhabitants as well.

Travel writing, then, has a complex relationship with the situations in which it arose. In this essay it is taken to mean a discourse designed to describe and interpret for its readers a geographical area together with its natural attributes and its human society and culture. Travel writing may embrace approaches ranging from an exposition of the results of scientific exploration claiming (but rarely managing) to be objective and value-free to the frankly subjective description of the impact of an area and its people on the writer’s own sensibilities. There was, in fact, a tension between supposedly scientific discourses on discoveries and travel writing of wider sympathies. ‘Exploration’ and ‘travel’ may indeed be distinguished even if there is a large grey area between them.