The Honourable Company: History of the English East India Company
William Hawkins,
John Keay • The Honourable Company: History of the English East India Company
Additionally there was a problem of communication. The natives ‘spoke through the throat’ and ‘clocked with their tongues in such sort that in…seven weeks…the sharpest wit amongst us could not learn one word of their language’.
John Keay • The Honourable Company: History of the English East India Company
a factory with adequate trading capital had been left at Bantam while in London nearly 500 tons of peppercorns were soon being laboriously transferred from the Red Dragon to the Company’s warehouse.
John Keay • The Honourable Company: History of the English East India Company
it was reliably reported that the king was holding his merchandise pending the arrival of a claimant.
John Keay • The Honourable Company: History of the English East India Company
the latest advances in marine technology
John Keay • The Honourable Company: History of the English East India Company
Almost immediately they trapped and overpowered an enormous Portuguese carrack. She was so laden with Indian piece goods, mostly white calicoes and the famous batiks or ‘pintadoes’ of southern India, that it took six days to unload her.
John Keay • The Honourable Company: History of the English East India Company
he had acquired some much prized goldfish.
John Keay • The Honourable Company: History of the English East India Company
the twin north-coast ports of Bantam and Jakarta attracted maritime trade from all over the archipelago. They were also visited by an annual fleet of magnificent junks, laden with silks and porcelain, from China, and they were home for thriving communities of Chinese financiers and middlemen.