Visiting foreign regions strongly impacts people. In the early modern period, many travelers recorded their experiences. These travelogues have survived in large numbers and inspired countless research. Nature – animals, plants and landscapes – are often a central theme of these reports. Their role, the extent to which these representations reflect desires, expectations or needs, and figured as instruments to achieve cultural, military or political aims of the people involved in their production as well as their audience has, however, hardly been investigated. The project OttomanNature in Travelogues, 1501–1850: A Digital Analysis , funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF: FWF: P 35245), is dedicated to this question. The focus lies on printed travelogues on the Ottoman Empire. We hereby explore new computational methods, some of which use machine learning. The presentation summarizes the most important results of the first project phase on image analysis and outlines further plans. The following institutions collaborate in the project: the Institute for Habsburg and Balkan Studies of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, the Austrian Institute of Technology as well as the Austrian National Library.

Image source: Ett Meydan Square, Istanbul, Orientimpressionen der Österreichischen Nationalbibliothek.