Before Orientalism: Asian Peoples and Cultures in European Travel Writing, 1245-151A distinct European perspective on Asia emerged in the late Middle Ages. Early reports of a homogeneous India of marvels and monsters gave way to accounts written by medieval travelers that indulged readers' curiosity about far flung landscapes and cultures without exhibiting the attitudes evident in the later writings of aspiring imperialists. Mining the accounts of more than twenty Europeans who made or claimed to have made journeys to Mongolia,