Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-cfpbc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-24T14:22:13.662Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Voyages of the “Sea Adventure” to Ayutthaya, 1615–1618: The English East India Company and its Siam–Japan Trade

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 January 2014

Dhiravat na Pombejra
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The English East India Company (EIC) first arrived in Siam in 1612, when its traders were given a royal audience by King Songtham (r. 1610/11–28) in Ayutthaya. Peter Floris and Lucas Antheuniss, Dutchmen working for the EIC, came to Patani on the Globe and then branched out to other ports, exploring the possibilities of trade in mainland Southeast Asia. Armed with a letter from King James I, the EIC employees led by Antheuniss and Thomas Essington were able not only to approach the court, but also to observe for themselves the possibilities of trade in Siam. This first sojourn in Ayutthaya marked the start of over a decade of Anglo–Siamese contacts, through the establishment and maintenance of an EIC factory in Ayutthaya.

During this first phase, the EIC was to stay in Ayutthaya for only eleven years, closing its factory in 1623. It was not until the 1660s, after a gap of around thirty years, that the company returned to trade in Siam. After a troubled stay, the EIC once again left Siam in 1685, and was engaged in war with the court of King Narai (r. 1656–88) over several disputes. The only English merchants coming to Siam after 1688 were “country traders” mostly based in India.

Type
Managing Trade Flows
Information
Itinerario , Volume 37 , Issue 3: Special Issue: Canton and Nagasaki Compared , December 2013 , pp. 49 - 69
Copyright
Copyright © Research Institute for History, Leiden University 2013 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bibliography of Works Cited

Anderson, John. English Intercourse with Siam in the Seventeenth Century. London, 1890.Google Scholar
Bassett, D. K. “English Relations with Siam in the Seventeenth Century.” Journal of the Malayan Branch, Royal Asiatic Society 34:2 (1961): 90–105.Google Scholar
Coolhaas, W. Ph., ed. Generale missiven van gouverneurs-generaal en raden aan Heren XVII der Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie. Vol. 1, 1610–1638. 's-Gravenhage: Nijhoff, 1960.Google Scholar
Corr, William. Adams the Pilot. Folkestone: Curzon, 1995.Google Scholar
Farrington, Anthony, ed. The English Factory in Japan. 2 vols. London: The British Library, 1991.Google Scholar
Farrington, Anthony, and na Pombejra, Dhiravat, eds. The English Factory in Siam 1612–1685. 2 vols. London: The British Library, 2007.Google Scholar
Masashi, Haneda, ed. Asian Port Cities 1600–1800. Local and Foreign Cultural Interactions. Singapore: NUS Press and Kyoto University Press, 2009.Google Scholar
Heeck, Gijsbert. A Traveler in Siam in the Year 1655, translated by Terwiel, Barend Jan. Chiang Mai: Silkworm, 2008.Google Scholar
Massarella, Derek. A World Elsewhere: Europe's Encounter with Japan in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990.Google Scholar
Mulder, W. Z.Hollanders in Hirado 1597–1641. Haarlem: Fibula-Van Dishoeck, 1980.Google Scholar
Nagazumi, Yoko. “Ayutthaya and Japan: Embassies and Trade in the Seventeenth Century.” In From Japan to Arabia: Ayutthaya's Maritime Relations with Asia, edited by Breazeale, Kennon, 89–103. Bangkok: The Society for the Promotion of Social Sciences and Humanities Textbooks, 1999.Google Scholar
Polenghi, Cesare. Samurai in Ayutthaya. Yamada Nagamasa, Japanese Warrior and Merchant in Early Seventeenth-Century Siam. Bangkok: White Lotus, 2009.Google Scholar
Satow, E. M. “Notes on the Intercourse between Japan and Siam in the seventeenth century,” Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan, 13 (1885): 139–210.Google Scholar
Smith, George Vinal. The Dutch in Seventeenth-Century Thailand. De Kalb: University of Northern Illinois Center for Southeast Asian Studies, 1977.Google Scholar
Thompson, Edward Maunde, ed. Diary of Richard Cocks. Cape-Merchant in the English Factory in Japan 1615–1622. With notes by Murakami, N.. Tokyo: Sangkōsha, 1899.Google Scholar
Toby, Ronald P.State and Diplomacy in Early Modern Japan. Asia in the Development of the Tokugawa Bakufu. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984.CrossRefGoogle Scholar