Behind every successful scientist…. in colonial Indonesia, were local informants and assistants. They provided information the scientists needed or they collected plants or animals. In this project, the researchers focus on these Indonesian individuals. They show what role Indonesians have played in the making of (scientific) knowledge about nature and culture in colonial and postcolonial Indonesia. This includes their contribution to Western scientific knowledge but also, and more importantly, their influence on local knowledge communities.

Information and knowledge were essential tools of early modern Europe’s global ambitions. This volume addresses a key concern that emerged as the competition for geopolitical influence increased: How could information from beyond the horizon be trusted when there was no obvious strategy for verification? How did notions of doubt and error develop in relation to intercultural encounters? Who were in the position to use misinformation or censorship in their favour, and how did this affect trust? How, in other words, did distance affect credibility, and which intellectual, epistemological, and practical strategies did early modern Europe devise to cope with this problem? Far From The Truth addresses these questions in nine case studies, ranging from early modern travel writing, diplomacy, information management, and news communication to the problem of credibility in eyewitness reports, pamphlets, and geographical literature. The volume’s focus is on European perspectives on global encounter but its contributions pay close attention to processes of exchange and interaction between various cultural regions and spheres. The movement of information, and its transformations in the process of gathering, ordering, and disseminating, makes it necessary to employ both a global and a local perspective in order to fully understand its significance. From Portugal to England, France to Germany, and the Low Countries to Spain – all different imperial perspectives on distance and credibility are represented in this volume to seek both connections and local varieties. The rise of print, leading to various new forms of mediation, played a crucial role everywhere, inspiring theories of modernization in which media serve as agents of new connections and, eventually, of globalization. Paradoxically the demise of distance through various strategies of verification went hand in hand with medial constructions of otherness that relied on the cultural and geographical difference between Europe and the worlds it encountered.