The Boundless Sea

by David Abulafia

  29. McCall, ibid., p. xix; H. Mattiesen, ‘Jakob Kettler’, Neue deutsche Biographie, vol. 10 (Berlin, 1974), p. 314.

  30. Westergaard, Danish West Indies, pp. 256–62.

  31. Ibid., pp. 31–8.

  32. Ibid., pp. 41–2.

  33. Gøbel, ‘Danish Trade to the West Indies’, pp. 24, 28–30.

  34. Ibid., pp. 33–7.

  35. Nørregård, Danish Settlements, pp. 143, 176.

  36. Hodacs, Silk and Tea in the North, pp. 29–32; Furber, Rival Empires of Trade, pp. 217–21.

  37. G. M. Young, ed., Macaulay: Prose and Poetry (London, 1952), pp. 213, 217.

  38. G. Insh, The Company of Scotland Trading to Africa and the Indies (London and New York, 1932); Furber, Rival Empires of Trade, p. 217.

  39. K. Söderpalm, ‘SOIC – ett skotskt företag?’, in K. Söderpalm et al., Ostindiska Compagniet: Affärer och föremål (Gothenburg, 2000), pp. 36–61, and English summary, pp. 281–2; R. Hermansson, The Great East India Adventure: The Story of the Swedish East India Company (Gothenburg, 2004), pp. 31–2.

  40. Hodacs, Silk and Tea in the North, pp. 29, 31.

  41. P. Forsberg, Ostindiska Kompaniet: Några studier (Gothenburg, 2015), pp. 90–94; Hermansson, Great East India Adventure, pp. 40–45.

  42. Hermansson, Great East India Adventure, pp. 49–57.

  43. Forsberg, Ostindiska Kompaniet, pp. 87–90.

  44. Hodacs, Silk and Tea in the North, pp. 58–61, 64–6, 79–80.

  45. K. Söderpalm, ‘Beställningsporslin från Kina’, in Söderpalm et al., Ostindiska Compagniet, pp. 168–83, 291–2.

  46. Hermansson, Great East India Adventure, pp. 42–3.

  47. Hodacs, Silk and Tea in the North, pp. 10–14.

  48. Ibid., p. 153.

  49. K. Söderpalm, ‘Svenska Ostindiska Kompaniet 1731–1813: en översikt’, in Söderpalm et al., Ostindiska Compagniet, pp. 9, 277; Hermansson, Great East India Adventure, pp. 11, 63, 67–71.

  41. Austrialia or Australia?

  1. M. Edmond, Zone of the Marvellous: in Search of the Antipodes (Auckland, 2009), p. 85; A. Stallard, Antipodes: in Search of the Southern Continent (Clayton, Vic., 2016).

  2. M. Estensen, Terra Australis Incognita: the Spanish Quest for the Mysterious Great South Land (Crows Nest, NSW, 2006), pp. 8–12, 14 (whence the two quotations); N. Crane, Mercator: the Man Who Mapped the Planet (London, 2002), p. 97, fig. 12; M. Camino, Exploring the Explorers: Spaniards in Oceania, 1519–1794 (Manchester, 2008), p. 83, fig. 2:3; Edmond, Zone of the Marvellous, pp. 32–4; H. Kelsey, The First Circumnavigators: Unsung Heroes of the Age of Discovery (New Haven, 2016), pp. 134–5; Stallard, Antipodes, pp. 86–111.

  3. Camino, Exploring the Explorers, p. 36.

  4. Ibid., p. 38; Stallard, Antipodes, pp. 120–24.

  5. Mendaña’s report, cited by Estensen, Terra Australis Incognita, p. 27; Camino, Exploring the Explorers, pp. 48–9.

  6. D. Abulafia, The Discovery of Mankind: Atlantic Encounters in the Age of Columbus (New Haven, 2008), pp. 267–8.

  7. Edmond, Zone of the Marvellous, p. 86.

  8. Estensen, Terra Australis Incognita, pp. 19–56; Camino, Exploring the Explorers, pp. 39–61; Kelsey, First Circumnavigators, pp. 70–74.

  9. Estensen, Terra Australis Incognita, pp. 57–8.

  10. Camino, Exploring the Explorers, p. 19.

  11. Ibid., pp. 75–8, 80, 101; M. Estensen, Discovery: The Quest for the Great South Land (London, 1999), p. 101.

  12. Estensen, Terra Australis Incognita, pp. 129–33.

  13. Ibid., pp. 159–60; Camino, Exploring the Explorers, pp. 84, 95; Stallard, Antipodes, p. 130.

  14. Estensen, Terra Australis Incognita, pp. 182–3.

  15. Ibid., pp. 197–204.

  16. G. Seal, The Savage Shore: Extraordinary Stories of Survival and Tragedy from the Early Voyages of Discovery (New Haven, 2016), p. ix.

  17. Australian Electoral Commission, History of the Indigenous Vote (Canberra, 2006).

  18. P. Whitfield, Charting of the Oceans: Ten Centuries of Maritime Maps (London, 1996), pp. 55, 57–8.

  19. K. McIntyre, The Secret Discovery of Australia: Portuguese Ventures 200 Years before Captain Cook (Medindie and London, 1977); A. Sharp, The Discovery of Australia (Oxford, 1963), pp. 2, 4–15, and plate 3.

  20. Estensen, Discovery, pp. 53–8; Seal, Savage Shore, p. 15.

  21. Estensen, Discovery, pp. 56–8; Seal, Savage Shore, pp. 16–18.

  22. Seal, Savage Shore, p. 27.

  23. Ibid., pp. 22–5, 265 n. 8; Estensen, Discovery, pp. 119–22.

  24. Seal, Savage Shore, p. 28; Estensen, Discovery, pp. 128–9; Sharp, Discovery of Australia, p. 32.

  25. François Pelsaert, supercargo of the Batavia, cited by Estensen, Discovery, p. 158.

  26. Seal, Savage Shore, pp. 30–34; Estensen, Discovery, pp. 140–41; Sharp, Discovery of Australia, pp. 42–5.

  27. M. Dash, Batavia’s Graveyard (London, 2002), pp. 53–7, 62–5.

  28. ‘The Journals of Francisco Pelsaert’, transl. E. Drok, in H. Drake-Brockman, Voyage to Disaster: the Life of Francisco Pelsaert (London, 1964), p. 122.

  29. Pelsaert’s log, in Sharp, Discovery of Australia, p. 61; ‘Journals of Francisco Pelsaert’, p. 130.

  30. Text in Seal, Savage Shore, p. 65; also ‘Journals of Francisco Pelsaert’, p. 128.

  31. Seal, Savage Shore, p. 70; Dash, Batavia’s Graveyard, pp. 30–35, 277–81; ‘Journals of Francisco Pelsaert’, pp. 158–77.

  32. Seal, Savage Shore, pp. 67–73; ‘Journals of Francisco Pelsaert’, pp. 142–4; Dash, Batavia’s Graveyard, pp. 205–11.

  33. Seal, Savage Shore, pp. 78–80; Estensen, Discovery, pp. 160–61.

  34. Dash, Batavia’s Graveyard, pp. 264–75, suggesting on p. 273 a slightly different scenario; Seal, Savage Shore, pp. 82–4.

  35. Seal, Savage Shore, p. 85; Estensen, Discovery, pp. 154–5; Sharp, Discovery of Australia, pp. 55–6.

  36. Estensen, Discovery, pp. 9, 87, 131, 148, 230; Sharp, Discovery of Australia, p. 39.

  37. Seal, Savage Shore, p. 97.

  38. Sharp, Discovery of Australia, pp. 70–79.

  39. A. Salmond, ‘Two Worlds’, in K. R. Howe, ed., Vaka Moana – Voyages of the Ancestors: the Discovery and Settlement of the Pacific (Auckland, 2006), pp. 251–2.

  40. Estensen, Discovery, pp. 179–81.

  41. Sharp, Discovery of Australia, pp. 87–8; Seal, Savage Shore, p. 96.

  42. P. Edwards, ‘The First Voyage 1768–1771: Introduction’, in James Cook, The Journals (2nd edn, London, 2003), p. 11.

  42. Knots in the Network

  1. C. Ebert, Between Empires: Brazilian Sugar in the Early Atlantic Economy 1550–1630 (Leiden, 2008), pp. 140–41; G. Scammell, ‘The English in the Atlantic Islands c.1450–1650’, Mariner’s Mirror, vol. 72 (1986), pp. 295–317.

  2. T. B. Duncan, Atlantic Islands: Madeira, the Azores and the Cape Verdes in Seventeenth-Century Commerce and Navigation (Chicago, 1972), p. 5.

  3. Ebert, Between Empires, pp. 104–5; F. Mauro, Le Portugal, le Brésil et l’Atlantique au XVIIe siècle (1570–1670) (Paris and Lisbon, 1983; revised edition of Le Portugal et l’Atlantique au XVIIe siècle: Étude Économique (Paris, 1960)), pp. 209–12.

  4. A. Simon, ed., The Bolton Letters: the Letters of an English Merchant in Madeira 1695–1714, vol. 1: 1695–1700 (London, 1928), pp. 17–19, and p. 56, letter 16; Duncan, Atlantic Islands, pp. 38–9.

  5. Simon, ed., Bolton Letters, p. 20; Duncan, Atlantic Islands, p. 42; Mauro, Le Portugal, le Brésil, pp. 411–21.

  6. Duncan, Atlantic Islands, pp. 38–9, 46, 52, 54–60.

  7. Simon, ed., Bolton Letters, p. 14.

  8. Biographies ibid., pp. 6–7, footnote.

  9. East Indies: Simon, ed., Bolton Letters, p. 132, letter 62.

  10. Ibid., p. 8; Azorean wheat: ibid., p. 29, letter 4, p. 76, letter 27, p. 87, letter 34, p. 119, letter 55; Dutch wheat: ibid., p. 49, letter 12; Scottish beef, butter and herrings: ibid
., p. 65, letter 21; sugar unloaded in Madeira: ibid., p. 82, letter 31; Mauro, Le Portugal, le Brésil, p. 352; A. Vieira, O comércio inter-insular nos séculos XV e XVI: Madeira, Açores e Canárias (Funchal, 1987).

  11. Simon, ed., Bolton Letters, pp. 24–5, letter 2.

  12. Ibid., pp. 41–4, letter 10.

  13. Ibid., p. 172, letter 88, p. 174, letter 90.

  14. Ibid., p. 124, letter 58.

  15. Duncan, Atlantic Islands, pp. 88–9, 108–10, tables 16–18.

  16. Ibid., pp. 111, 124, 140, 147, 151–3, 156.

  17. Ibid., pp. 125–7.

  18. Ibid., pp. 135–6; Angra, a Terceira e os Açores nas Rotas da Índia e das Américas (Angra do Heroísmo, 1999).

  19. Duncan, Atlantic Islands, pp. 168–71.

  20. A. Crosby, Ecological Imperialism: the Biological Expansion of Europe, 900–1900 (Cambridge, 1986).

  21. Duncan, Atlantic Islands, pp. 167, 176, 188.

  22. A. J. d’Oliveira Bouças, Apelo em pró das ruínas da antiga cidade da Ribeira Grande em Santiago – C. Verde 1533–1933 (Praia, 1933; new edn as Cidade velha: Ribeira Grande de Santiago, Praia, 2013).

  23. T. Green, The Rise of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade in Western Africa, 1300–1589 (Cambridge, 2012); A. Carreira, Cabo Verde: Formação e Extinção de uma Sociedade escravocrata (1460–1878) (3rd edn, Praia de Santiago, 2000).

  24. Mauro, Le Portugal, le Brésil, pp. 188–9; Duncan, Atlantic Islands, pp. 199–200; M. L. Stig Sørensen, C. Evans and K. Richter, ‘A Place of History: Archaeology and Heritage at Cidade Velha, Cape Verde’, in P. Lane and K. McDonald, eds., Slavery in Africa: Archaeology and Memory (Proceedings of the British Academy, vol. 168, 2011), pp. 421–42.

  25. Duncan, Atlantic Islands, pp. 230–31; baptism: Carreira, Cabo Verde, pp. 259–80.

  26. P. Mark and J. da Silva Horta, The Forgotten Diaspora Jewish Communities in West Africa and the Making of the Atlantic World (Cambridge, 2011); Green, Rise of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade; Carreira, Cabo Verde, pp. 55–78, 146.

  27. Duncan, Atlantic Islands, p. 215.

  28. Ibid., pp. 219–24.

  29. Ibid., pp. 207, 210.

  30. S. Royle, The Company’s Island: St Helena, Company Colonies and the Colonial Endeavour (London, 2007), pp. 9, 11 (whence the seventeenth-century quotation).

  31. A. R. Azzam, The Other Exile: the Remarkable Story of Fernão Lopes, the Island of Saint Helena, and a Paradise Lost (London, 2017); Royle, Company’s Island, p. 12; chapel: ibid., p. 19, fig. 2:7.

  32. Royle, Company’s Island, p. 14, fig. 2:3.

  33. ‘Prosperous voyage of the worshipful Thomas Candish’, in J. Beeching, ed., Hakluyt: Voyages and Discoveries (Harmondsworth, 1972) pp. 276–97.

  34. Royle, Company’s Island, pp. 11–19; P. Stern, The Company-State: Corporate Sovereignty and the Early Modern Foundations of the British Empire in India (New York and Oxford, 2011), p. 21; J. McAleer, Britain’s Maritime Empire: Southern Africa, the South Atlantic and the Indian Ocean, 1763–1820 (Cambridge, 2017), p. 74.

  35. McAleer, Britain’s Maritime Empire, pp. 73–7.

  36. Ibid., pp. 34–5; Royle, Company’s Island, pp. 85–7.

  37. Royle, Company’s Island, pp. 23–4, 27–8, 46, 51 (fig. 3:1), 175–7 (tables 3:2, 3:3, 3:4 – adjusting Royle’s figures to accommodate ‘free blacks’ as non-slaves).

  38. Ibid., pp. 39–41.

  39. Ibid., pp. 101–2.

  40. McAleer, Britain’s Maritime Empire, pp. 78–9; Royle, The Company’s Island, pp. 53–4.

  41. McAleer, Britain’s Maritime Empire, pp. 78–80.

  42. Ibid., pp. 2, 9–10, 17, 24–7.

  43. W. Hamond, Madagascar, the Richest and most Fruitfull Island in the world (London, 1643; title-page reproduced in K. McDonald, Pirates, Merchants, Settlers, and Slaves: Colonial America and the Indo-Atlantic World (Oakland, 2015), p. 73, fig. 8); W. Hamond, A Paradox Prooving that the Inhabitants of the Isle called Madagascar or St Laurence (in Temporall things) are the happiest People in the World (London, 1640).

  44. S. Randrianja and S. Ellis, Madagascar: a Short History (London, 2009), pp. 54–66.

  45. Ibid., pp. 110–11.

  46. Ibid., pp. 4, 102, 226.

  47. R. Allen, European Slave Trading in the Indian Ocean, 1500–1850 (Athens, Oh., 2014), p. 59; D. Eltis and D. Richardson, Atlas of the Transatlantic Slave Trade (New Haven, 2010), pp. 4–5, map 1; pp. 18–19, map 11; pp. 154–5, maps 107–9.

  48. Allen, European Slave Trading, pp. 37, 49.

  49. McDonald, Pirates, Merchants, pp. 82–3.

  50. Ibid., pp. 84–92; Allen, European Slave Trading, pp. 72–8.

  51. Allen, European Slave Trading, pp. 36, 48; also p. 58, table 8..

  52. McDonald, Pirates, Merchants, pp. 116–21; Randrianja and Ellis, Madagascar, p. 106.

  53. Allen, European Slave Trading, pp. 47–56, and p. 54, table 7.

  54. Ibid., pp. 50, 75–6; and p. 75, table 10, calculating average cargoes out of Madagascar, 1718–1809.

  43. The Wickedest Place on Earth

  1. N. Zahedieh, ‘“A Frugal, Prudential and Hopeful Trade”: Privateering in Jamaica, 1655–89’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, vol. 18 (1990), p. 149.

  2. S. Talty, Empire of Blue Water: Henry Morgan and the Pirates Who Ruled the Caribbean Waves (London, 2007), pp. 39–40; David Abulafia, The Great Sea: a Human History of the Mediterranean (London, 2011), pp. 415–20; cattle in Hispaniola: J. del Rio Moreno, Ganadería, plantaciones y comercio azucarero antillano, siglos XVI y XVII (Santo Domingo, 2012).

  3. Talty, Empire of Blue Water, pp. 131–2.

  4. P. Neher, ‘The Pure Theory of the Muggery’, American Economic Review, vol. 68 (1978), pp. 437–45; I owe my knowledge of this work and my awareness of its use in discussing piracy to Peter Earle. See also Zahedieh, ‘“Frugal, Prudential and Hopeful Trade”’, p. 145.

  5. J. Rogoziński, A Brief History of the Caribbean from the Arawak and the Carib to the Present Day (New York, 1992), pp. 101–2.

  6. K. O. Kuperman, Roanoke, the Abandoned Colony (2nd edn, Lanham, 2007).

  7. K. O. Kupperman, The Jamestown Project (Cambridge, Mass., 2007); J. Evans, Emigrants: Why the English Sailed to the New World (London, 2017), p. 4; J. Butman and S. Targett, New World, Inc.: How England’ Merchants Founded America and Launched the British Empire (London, 2018), pp. 260–74.

  8. M. Jarvis, In the Eye of All Trade: Bermuda, Bermudians, and the Maritime Atlantic World, 1680–1783 (Chapel Hill and Williamsburg, Va., 2010), pp. 11–18, 26–32, 37–50, 105, 111, 113, and table 3, p. 114.

  9. Evans, Emigrants, pp. 5–6.

  10. R. Fraser, The Mayflower Generation: the Winslow Family and the Fight for the New World (London, 2017).

  11. Evans, Emigrants, pp. 84–91.

  12. S. White, A Cold Welcome: the Little Ice Age and Europe’s Encounter with North America (Cambridge, Mass., 2017); G. Parker, Global Crisis: War, Climate Change and Catastrophe in the Seventeenth Century (New Haven, 2013); Evans, Emigrants, pp. 246–58, 268.

  13. H. Beckles, A History of Barbados from Amerindian Settlement to Caribbean Single Market (Cambridge, 2006), pp. 8–9; P. Drewett, ed., Prehistoric Barbados (Bridgetown and London, 1991).

  14. Rogoziński, Brief History of the Caribbean, p. 67.

  15. Cited by T. Hunt, Ten Cities That Made an Empire (London, 2014), p. 72.

  16. Beckles, History of Barbados, pp. 18–20, 31, 36–8, 50–51, 53–8.

  17. B. Higman, A. Concise History of the Caribbean (Cambridge, 2011), pp. 87–8, 169–70.

  18. Rogoziński, Brief History of the Caribbean, p. 69; Higman, Concise History of the Caribbean, pp. 98–109; P. Jones, Satan’s Kingdom: Bristol and the Transatlantic Slave Trade (Bristol, 2007), pp. 12–13.

  19. C. G. Pestana, The English Conquest of Jamaica: Oliver Cromwell’s Bid for Empire (Cambridge, Mass., 2017); L. H. Roper, Advancing Empire: English Interests and Overseas Expansion, 1613–1688 (Cambridge, 2017), pp. 154
–6.

  20. F. Morales Padrón, Spanish Jamaica (Kingston, Jamaica, 2003), p. 183; E. Kritzler, Jewish Pirates of the Caribbean (New York, 2008), pp. 183–5; cf. L. Wolf, Jews in the Canary Islands, being a Calendar of Jewish Cases Extracted from the Records of the Canariote Inquisition in the Collection of the Marquess of Bute (London, 1926; new edn, Toronto, 2001), pp. xxxviii–xl.

  21. B. Vega, La derrota de los Ingleses en Santo Domingo, 1655 (Aranjuez, 2013), pp. 24, 27–9, 94–6; Pestana, English Conquest of Jamaica, pp. 66–92; passage about English position cited from Kritzler, Jewish Pirates, p. 191; see also M. Hanna, Pirate Nests and the Rise of the British Empire, 1570–1740 (Chapel Hill, 2015), pp. 98–101.

  22. Vega, Derrota de los Ingleses, pp. 37–102; Morales Padrón, Spanish Jamaica, p. 184.

  23. Roper, Advancing Empire, pp. 156–7.

  24. Pestana, English Conquest of Jamaica, pp. 98–105.

  25. Cited by Kritzler, Jewish Pirates, p. 189.

  26. Morales Padrón, Spanish Jamaica, pp. 51–121, 172; P. Hoffman, The Spanish Crown and the Defense of the Caribbean, 1535–1585: Precedent, Patrimonialism, and Royal Parsimony (Baton Rouge, 1980), p. 121.

  27. N. Zahedieh, ‘Trade, Plunder and Economic Development in Early English Jamaica, 1655–89’, Economic History Review, ser. 2, vol. 39 (1986), pp. 205–22.

  28. Pestana, English Conquest of Jamaica, p. 119.

  29. Ibid., pp. 119–21.

  30. Vega, Derrota de los Ingleses, p. 107; Pestana, English Conquest of Jamaica, p. 138; Kritzler, Jewish Pirates, p. 192.

  31. Roper, Advancing Empire, p. 159.

  32. W. Westergaard, The Danish West Indies under Company Rule (1671–1754) (New York, 1917), pp. 31–42; Higman, Concise History of the Caribbean, pp. 91–4; Rogoziński, Brief History of the Caribbean, pp. 57–82.

  33. Kritzler, Jewish Pirates, p. 194; S. Fortune, Merchants and Jews: the Struggle for British West Indian Commerce, 1650–1750 (Gainesville, 1984).

  34. Kritzler, Jewish Pirates, pp. 216–19, 233–4, 257–63; N. Zahedieh, ‘The Merchants of Port Royal, Jamaica, and the Spanish Contraband Trade, 1655–1692’, William and Mary Quarterly, vol. 43 (1986), pp. 579–80; treasure chest: R. Marx, Pirate Port: the Story of the Sunken City of Port Royal (London, 1968), pp. 177–80; Hanna, Pirate Nests, pp. 109–10.