Montaigne was a thinker who reinvented the essay more than 500 years ago. His thoughts on a variety of topics feel like they could be written today. A great example of this is his remarks about foreigners. The dominant description of people from distant lands in Montaigne’s day was to depict them as something less than a human, savages even capable of practicing cannibalism. In the 18th century, many writers went the other direction, describing primitive others as better than “civilized” people because they were not spoiled by the modern world.
In the Essays Montaigne takes a skeptical approach to the question, insisting that studying other cultures requires close attention to facts and details, not the opinions of others, however convincing. The tendency of European travelers of Montaigne’s time was to criticize the cultural practices of others as uncivilized and even dangerous. Montaigne maintains that the more carefully and dispassionately one considers an unknown person, the less likely one will apply his own prejudices to his analysis. It is important to understand Montaigne’s approach. Skepticism in his conception does not deny another person’s opinion but insists on verifiable proof (skepticism, for example, doesn’t refuse to believe in God, but doubts in his existence until reliable evidence). As a result, Montaigne is comfortable believing in the superiority or inferiority of another civilization if one or the other proves more convincing.
I agree with you that Montaigne was a great thinker for coming up with the idea through the book 500 years ago, with an illustration that in the current digital era, one would not believe somebody like Montaigne would gather his thoughts some years back and published the great inspiring book. Across the book, the author had predicted that the current era individual would consider the Montaigne era community to be less human, for instance, savages. Montaigne went ahead illustrating that for other authors to come up with cultural practices books, they have to dig deep into their facts and details.