This chapter discusses the changes in the attitude to India at the turn of the eighteenth century through discussion of the reception of the publications of the Hanoverian officers and of the work of Sprengel and Herder. It aims to show several major trends: the growing sense of European superiority over and difference from India, the weakening of the critique of colonialism, the growing importance of British sources and the growing interest in Hinduism and Sanskrit texts at the expense of interest in contemporary India. These tendencies were accompanied by a decline in the importance of travel accounts.

The reviews of the travel books of the Hanoverians were as diversified as the books themselves but they had at least one thing in common: with one minor exception, they never reproached the authors for being uncritical towards British colonialism in India. As was the case with other travel books, they judged the books above all by their ability to add to existing knowledge, and secondly by their style. Scharnhorst's Briefe auf einer Reise von Stade nach Madras received the worst reviews. The reviewer for the Allgemeine deutsche Bibliothek argued that the book may be of interest to Hanoverians, but not for the general reader due to its bad style and lack of interesting new information.