One thing that was going on in England during Swift's lifetime (1667-1745) was the Age of Exploration. Europeans in general, and Englishmen in particular, were sailing all over the globe and discovering new lands and cultures.
When Swift writes of the outlandish cultures that Gulliver discovers, he is, partly, engaging in political allegory. On a simpler level, he is satirizing a whole genre of gee-whiz exploration-discovery literature that was widespread in his time.
People were ready to believe almost anything that an explorer might claim about a far-off people, even some things that are almost as outrageous as Swift's Lilliputians and Brobdingians.
It is interesting that in each land that he visits, Gulliver is taken as a prisoner. Perhaps Swift is hinting that Europeans cannot be merely spectators to the cultures that they were quickly discovering, even if they may have preferred to be so. Cultural diffusion is inevitable.
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