Europe and India : Collections, representations, projections, ^16th-18th centuries (5)

However, it is interesting to note that this attitude is also linked to a particular political context, in this case at a time when Europeans were not yet trying to dominate the subcontinent. The fifth lecture closely followed the vicissitudes of several Europeans - Charles de Bussy, António José de Noronha, Antoine Polier and Alexander Walker - during the second half of the ^eighteenth and early ^nineteenth centuries. Although some of these figures also emerged as major collectors of Indian materials - one of them, Polier, may well have brought the first complete version of the four Vedas back to Europe - their attitude towards Indian society and culture began to change, sometimes revealing a barely concealed mixture of distrust and contempt, and on other occasions a clear sense that what they were contemplating was both exotic and intrinsically inferior to their own culture. At the same time, the emergence of a shared sense of "European" identity can be observed more distinctly during this period, among those actors who have long been confronted with the experience of otherness.