Question

Which of the following is a reason that people of the 18th century wrote travel narratives? I. to help create business relationships with people from other cultures II. to set up military conquests III. to report on religious conversions of non-Christians

Answer 1

The answer is I. One of the reasons that people of the 18th century wrote travel narratives was to help create business relationships with other cultures.

Travel narratives were commonly writen by europeans, who wrote about distant lands and their population; this genre responded to the public's growing interest for knowledge of the world. It was this knowledge that made the creation of business relationships possible, travel narratives gave accounts of other people's culture, traditions and values, but they also gave an account of what other cultures, in terms of products, had to offer to a growing international market.

Answer 2

i think I. is the only correct answer here, based on the definition of travel narratives alone. these narratives usually describe another culture and take time recording their experiences with lots of reflection. this would help create a working relationship with other cultures, because once the narratives are released, businesspeople might read them and come to understand another culture and choose to partner with them. reflective narratives like that wouldn't really help in military conquests and their purpose wasn't to convert people to christianity--if it were, then the travel narratives wouldn't be based on the experience of the culture as a whole, it would be based on the culture's religion and state facts of conversion.

travel narratives worked on a broader scope than that. their aim was to detail the things the author observed in a different culture; perhaps, religion was included in that scope, but not for the sake of pushing conversion.