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Trials and Travels of Willem Leyel: An Account of the Danish East India Company in Tranquebar, 1639-48 PDF

182 Pages·2009·4.152 MB·English
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Preview Trials and Travels of Willem Leyel: An Account of the Danish East India Company in Tranquebar, 1639-48

On November 8, 1639, Willem Leyel left Denmark as com- mander of the ship Christianshavn bound for the Danish TT colony of Tranquebar with its fortress Dansborg, where hh he was to take charge of all trading operations of the first ee TT Danish East India Company. The voyage, however, be- rr ii aa came a seemingly endless nightmare of difficulties and ll ss disasters. a a nn When Leyel finally reached Tranquebar almost four dd years later, he found the fortress in a state of complete T T rr disrepair – with the former governor having run off with aa vv everything of value. But despite having only a few men in ee ll ss his service, barely any capital and almost no possibility oo The Trials and Travels of communicating with the managers of the Company in ff WW Copenhagen, Leyel managed to turn things around – be- ii ll friending local princes and establishing a profitable trade ll ee mm of Willem Leyel with their kingdoms, at times even resorting to piracy in order to preserve Tranquebar on Danish hands. LL ee Drawing on Leyel’s own letters and papers located in yy ee The National Archives in Copenhagen, Asta Bredsdorff ll An Account of the Danish ingeniously weaves together the rich narrative strains in East India Company order to produce a moving and memorable account of Leyel’s exploits in the East Indies. The source material in Tranquebar, even allows for a reconstruction of several dramatic epi- sodes down to the last detail. 1639-48 The Trials and Travels of Willem Leyel offers a fascinating account of personal fortitude, courage and determination as well as a unique and fantastic glimpse of the condi- tions in Tranquebar at the time, of life at sea during the Asta Bredsdorff dangerous voyages and of Danish history in general. Asta Bredsdorff was born in southern India. She has written several books on English maritime history. ISISBBNN 997788--8877--66335533--002233--11 Museum Tusculanum Press 9 788763 530231 www.mtp.dk 78360_om_w leyel_UK_r1.indd 1 6/10/09 2:21:29 PM the trials and travels of Willem leyel 78360_willem_r1.indd 1 6/9/09 8:18 AM Asta Bredsdorff The Trials and Travels of Willem Leyel An Account of the Danish East India Company in Tranquebar, 1639-1648 museum tusculanum Press University of Copenhagen 2009 78360_willem_r1.indd 2 6/9/09 8:18 AM Asta Bredsdorff The Trials and Travels of Willem Leyel An Account of the Danish East India Company in Tranquebar, 1639-48 Museum Tusculanum Press University of Copenhagen 2009 78360_willem_r2.indd 3 6/9/09 11:11 AM Asta Bredsdorff: The Trials and Travels of Willem Leyel: An Account of the Danish East India Company in Tranqubar, 1639-48 © Museum Tusculanum Press and the author, 2009 Language revision by Roda Morrison Originally published in Danish as Willem Leyels liv og farefulde rejse til Indien (Museum Tusculanum Press, 1999) Set and printed by Narayana Press, www.narayanapress.dk ISBN 978 87 635 3023 1 Cover illustration: Ove Gjedde’s fortress Dansborg in Tranquebar. Courtesy of Skokloster, Sweden This book is published with financial support from Konsul George Jorck og hustru Emma Jorck’s Fond VELUX FONDEN Museum Tusculanum Press 126 Njalsgade DK-2300 Copenhagen S www.mtp.dk 78360_willem_r2.indd 4 6/9/09 11:11 AM ConTenTs Foreword 7 Chapter 1 The Beginning 9 Chapter 2 Willem leyel 17 Chapter 3 Preparations for the voyage 27 Chapter 4 The new voyage 34 Chapter 5 Obstacles 64 Chapter 6 Claus rytter and The Gilded Sun 71 Chapter 7 leyel arrives 86 Chapter 8 The Clergymen 106 Chapter 9 The Fate of Berent Pessart 120 Chapter 10 “laus deo in Tranquebar” 126 Chapter 11 The last voyages 152 Chapter 12 rebellion 167 Bibliography 178 Chronology of events in leyel’s life 180 78360_willem_.indd 5 26-05-2009 15:57:08 78360_willem_.indd 6 26-05-2009 15:57:08 ForeWord it is some time since i came across the unique material to be found in Willem leyel’s and Claus rytter’s papers in The danish state archives in Copenhagen, denmark. Here you can get a first-hand impression of the old danish east india Company’s activities in the first half of the seventeenth century – a piece of danish history that suddenly comes to life when you can handle the letters and reports of the main characters and thus gain some insight into the enormous difficulties that confronted them during the long voyages to the east and the huge efforts neces- sary to carry on trade in foreign countries with insufficient capital and a chronic lack of men to replace the many who died or deserted. But perhaps the worst privation for the little colony at Tranquebar in south- ern india at this time was the lack of contact with home – the first ship from denmark after leyel’s own arrival in 1642 did not turn up until 1669. in the intervening years the men left to direct the enterprise must often have asked themselves whether there was any point in carrying on. in spite of the huge difficulties they faced they nevertheless elected to keep things going by whatever means came to hand – and these were not always for the squeamish. They had many problems: clashes with the local rulers, competition from other european nations, drunkenness and unruliness among the garrison, the shipwreck of several of the almost irreplaceable ships, doubts as to the best trading stations, famine result- ing in a dearth of the cotton goods that formed the main staple of trade with the east indies, from where one had to buy the spices demanded by the european nations. it is hardly to be wondered at that men could not cope under these conditions; but the will to hang on conquered, and thanks to Willem leyel and the new leaders who came after him, the fortress of dansborg survived on danish hands until the arrival of a new ship twenty-seven years later. 7 78360_willem_.indd 7 26-05-2009 15:57:08 78360_willem_.indd 8 26-05-2009 15:57:08 Chapter 1 The Beginning a wave of new enterprise and daring swept over europe in the first years of the seventeenth century. as early as 1498 the Portuguese had discovered the sea route to india around the southern tip of africa and had then been able to profit from their monopoly for a hundred years without interfer- ence from other european nations. But in 1600 the english formed their east india Company with a patent from Queen elizabeth i, and in 1602 the netherlands followed suit with a similar company, the vOC. From then on english and dutch ships brought their own rich cargoes home. at this time the east was still something of a fairytale land. it was here all the exotic new spices were to be found; here were pearls and diamonds, peculiar creatures such as elephants, tigers, crocodiles, monkeys, and peacocks. and possibly in some still unknown country – though the likelihood seemed to diminish with every passing year – the strange people spoken of in the middle ages: men with dog’s heads; men with one foot so large it could be used as a parasol to shield one from the sun; men with such long ears that one could lie on one of them and use the other as a coverlet. The spices, however, were real enough, although the old stories of how on some islands they lay on the ground in such heaps that they could easily be shovelled into sacks were somewhat exaggerated. in the beginning it had been the spices that had drawn the europeans out on the dangerous long voyages down the western coast of africa in the hope of finding a sea route to india, and now that the Portuguese, english, and dutch companies had established trading stations in the east a steady stream of the costly merchandise flowed around the Cape of Good Hope to europe. To be sure, the days were long past when pepper was weighed on special scales behind closed doors for fear that a breath of air might carry away even a grain of the precious condiment. The demand for the eastern spices had grown rapidly: by 1620 annual imports are said to have reached 7,000,000 pounds of pepper, 490,000 pounds of cloves, 450,000 pounds of nutmeg, and 180,000 pounds of mace. But even in leyel’s time, more than a hundred years after vasco da Gama, prices were still so high that even though ships were regularly lost on the long voyage around africa 9 78360_willem_.indd 9 26-05-2009 15:57:08

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