The Third Voyage Journals: Writing and Performance in the London East India Company, 1607-10 [Hardcover]

This volume publishes for the first time the collected journals of the East India Company's Third Voyage (1607-10), England's first to reach India, which proved pivotal to England's emergence as a global player.Introduction The Hector Journal of an Unidentified Merchant The Hector Journal of Anthony Marlowe The Red Dragon Journal of John Hearne and William Finch The Principall Notes of the Third Voyage to the East Indies by William Keeling Gouernor Sir James Lancaster's Directions for the Voyage to the Indies, February 1607 (Birdwood, 136-8) Letters from Francis Bucke (19 June 1608) and Anthony Marlowe (22 June 1608) to the Company from Socotra Selected Minutes from the Court Book of the East India Company, 31 Dec 1606  26 Jan 1610

Barbour s volume makes available essential documentation for the history of the East India Company in the critical opening years of its existence. The journals of the first English voyage to reach the Indian subcontinent are here fully edited and described for the first time; they are essential for an understanding of the beginnings of the British colonial enterprise, but they also relate in surprising ways to the mercantile enterprise that constituted the Shakespearean stage. Barbour is a gifted expositor and an excellent editor. This is an exciting and important book. - Stephen Orgel, J. E. Reynolds Professor in the Humanities, Stanford University

Barbour s extensive and thorough introduction shows some of the riches here: ethnography, commerce, literacy, sailing, grievous danger, performance in a variety of forms, including, it seems, Shakespeare s Hamlet and Richard II performed aboard General Keeling s Dragon. Combined, the journals mesmerize and surprise as English merchants and sailors risk unknown seas and interact with the skilled sailors and sophisticated merchants of East and Southeast Asia. - A. R. Braunmuller, Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature, UCLA

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