Toleration in China and Siam in Late-Seventeenth-Century European Travel Literature

European debate on toleration in XVII-XVIIIth centuries offers a variety of attitudes which must be perceived for a correct analysis of one of the main issues in pre-Enlightenment and Enlightenment European culture. The essay focuses the attention on the role played in this debate by representations of Far-Eastern practices of toleration which could be perceived in European travel literature, and on the diversity of attitudes, judgments and reactions which these sources present, showing the difference of their goals and interests. Representations of toleration practices in China, Siam or Japan, was at the same time an important stimulation for comparative analysis on religion and politics, alongside with the uses of “asiatic toleration” in philosophical polemical writings denouncing European intolerance or proposing models of compatibility of different religious belongings.