Portuguese and Spanish chapters of the “General history of travels” by Antoine Francois Prevost

The article reviews the chapters of the “General History of Travel” (1746-1754) by Antoine Francois Prevost which are devoted to the geographical discoveries made by the Portuguese and Spaniards over the previous three centuries. As a compositional basis for his work, Prevost often uses the routes of Portuguese sailors. The article highlights the following innovative features of the “General Travel History”: the study of the features of colonial practice on the basis of empirical data, the development of a method for critical analysis of sources (later used not only by encyclopedists, but also by travelers of the 1770s-1780s), the desire to a comprehensive depiction of social and scientific progress. The article examines in detail Prevost’s analysis of the relationship between representatives of different races in the Portuguese and Spanish colonies, as well as the spiritual impact of Europeans on the indigenous people of the conquered territories. The significance of the chapters of the “General History of Travel” devoted to the Spanish and Portuguese discoveries and conquests lies primarily in the fact that Prevost changed the very principle of posing the problem of exoticism, which is important for educational aesthetics.