True title of this first volume of work now popularly known as "Gulliver's Travels" is: "Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World: Part 1, A Voyage to Lilliput."
Lilliput situated by Gulliver and by map in first edition as near Tasmania (Van Diemen's Land).
Gulliver a common man brought into Court. The "foreigness" of his Lilliputian sojurn as much a matter of contact with Princes and ministers as experience of the 1/10th scale world.
Indication of gulf in manners between the sailor Gulliver and his noble patrons in his act of successfully extinguishing an uncontrollable blaze in the royal palace by urinating on it.
Gulliver's name among the Lilliputians is Quinbus Flestrin (the Man Mountain).
Lilliput on first glance seems harmonious, but is soon revealed as riven by faction -- the high-heeled Tramecksans vs. the low-heeled Slamecksans -- and, more bitterly still, by the heresy of those who eat soft-boiled eggs from the larger end (Big-endians) rather than the small-end.
Lillupitians and Blefuscuans separated by language and by sect (Small-endian Lilliputians vs. Big-endian Blefuscuans). As with Europeans prior to Age of Discovery, scepticism among learned men that other lands and peoples can exist despite overwhelming evidence, in Gulliver's testimony that they must.
Though Gulliver rises to nobility by aiding the Lillupitian Emperor in foiling the invasion plans of the Blefuscuans -- in gratitude, he is made a "Nardac" -- he earns the enmity of that monarch by not participating in the proposed eradication of the Big-endian heretics. From which, Gulliver draws lesson that: "Of so little weight are the greatest services to princes, when put into balance with a refusal to gratify their passions."
Matter of factness of ministerial accusations and factional plots against Gulliver, from secret poisonings to legal sentences of blinding or starvation. Ministerial denunciations of Gulliver are military (threat of his strength), economic (burden of his feeding), political (suspicion he is a crypto- Big-endian) and moral (his act of urinating on the Royal residence, even if to save it from the flames).
Gulliver's experience as a courtier in Lilliput of the vagaries of princely favor causes him to resolve "never more to put any confidence in Princes or Ministers, where I could possibly avoid it."
Gulliver takes refuge in Blefuscu and arranges for his departure in the salvaged longboat. He nurtures a small herd of Lillupitian livestock as testmony of his adventure, though one of the sheep is eaten by a rat on the English ship that rescues him.
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