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This is interesting, do you have any reading suggestions along these themes? It could be those travelogues, which I assume describe firsthand experiences, or maybe authors generalizing it from distance.

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I enjoy reading old travel books, too. Hundreds, maybe thousands, are available at the Internet Archive. A few years ago, I wrote a blog post about some of them:

https://blog.archive.org/2019/01/28/the-world-as-they-saw-it...

I think what I'm probably dimly remembering is Arthur Young's "Travels in France" (a Brit crossing the channel). There are various others out there, a lot focused on criticizing the cultures they're visiting; if you want the opposite check out Goethe's "Italian Journey" (a German going to Italy).

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