Francesco Carletti, merchant cultures and knowledge of the East at the end of the 16th century

Abstract

The Florentine merchant Francesco Carletti toured the world around 1600 : this article aims to take an overview of the information gathered and the "knowledge" developed during and after his stay in the East and South Asia. Three different sets of sources related to him have been analysed: anonymous memorials (at least one of which is said to be by him); the handwritten texts of Ragionamenti which was published posthumously in 1701 (Ragionamenti di Francesco Carletti fiorentino sopra le cose da lui vedute ne' suoi viaggi, sì dell'Indie Occidentali e Orientali come d'altri paesi); and the notes in Italian related to a Chinese atlas he brought back with him in Florence. A reading of these different texts reveals the portrait of a merchant who was informed about the navigations and the calendar of the ocean crossings, interested in exotic products and metrology, but also attentive to the culture of these Eastern countries, in particular to the Chinese written culture, whose "hieroglyphic characters" were also known in the other countries of East Asia.