Expeditions for Discovering and Monopolising the East in the Pre-colonial, Colonial and Post-colonial Periods

This study examines the development of the genre of travel in the pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial periods. Apart from the colonial hegemony, journeys in the pre-colonial times started from periphery to periphery. The journey of Ibn-Battuta to the east has given a lot of attention in this study. However, in the colonial period journeys had been directed from the Metropolis to the other parts of the world and travellers voyaged for the sake of exploration, curiosity, missionary, diplomacy, and trade activity. With the passage of time, European travellers changed their interest from trade activity to colonialism and that was clearly depicted in the mission of the East India Company as it turned its operation from trade activity to colonisation. Whereas in the post-colonial period, novel got international recognition and the settings of many novels include not only a particular country, but the entire world. Many novelists make their cosmopolitan characters to travel from one country to another and from one continent to another without recognition of the political boarders that separate people of the world from mixing with each other and that is due to the modern conception of globalisation as the world becomes a small village.