Diary of Richard Cocks, Volume 1

Diary of Richard Cocks, Volume 1 - Cape-Merchant in the English Factory in Japan, 1615-1622, with Correspondence

The history of the English trading settlement in Japan in the first quarter of the seventeenth century is the history of a failure; and the causes of the failure are not far to seek. Choosing for their dept an insignificant island in the extreme west of the kingdom, without even good anchorage to recommend it, and at a far distance from the capital cities of Miako and Yedo, with the Dutch for their neighbours and, as it proved, their rivals, the English may be said to have courted disaster. It is true that Firando was a ready port for shipping coming from Europe; its ruler was friendly; and it lay in a convenient position from whence to open the much-desired trade with China. And the policy of making common cause with the Protestant Hollanders against the Spaniards and Portuguese, who had first secured a footing in Japan and were powerful in the neighbouring town of Nagasaki, would have been a sound one, had the latter remained supreme. But, when the English landed, the Dutch had already obtained privileges and had established their trade in the country; and what ought to have been foreseen inevitably came to pass. The Dutch were not allies; they were rivals, who undersold the English in the market and in the end starved them out of the [ii] country. Possibly, if our countrymen had been allowed to maintain the branch factories which they started in some of the principal towns, they might have held their own against their rivals, in spite of the limited trade which Japan afforded; but when their privileges were curtailed and they were restricted to Firando, their case became desperate. Purchas, in his Pilgrimes,[1] has told us the story of the first landing of the English and its causes. The present volumes give us the internal history of the factory. The original diary of Richard Cocks, the chief factor, once formed part of those papers of the East India Company, whose luckless fate it was to be destroyed or cast out of their home in Leadenhall-street to wander through the world. Happily the diary escaped many perils, and now rests in the British Museum, where, bound in two volumes, it bears the numbers, Additional MSS. 31,300, 31,301. Unfortunately it is not complete. It runs from 1st June, 1615, to 14th January, 1619, and from 5th December, 1620, to 24th March, 1622; but it has lost nothing since it left the Companys archives.[2] [iii] I have not thought it necessary to print the whole of it; but only those entries which have absolutely no interest, e.g. bare memoranda of sales and purchases, have been omitted. As a supplement, to illustrate the diary and to fill in the periods which are wanting therein, I have added in an Appendix a selection from the letters of Cocks and others, chiefly from the archives of the India Office. Our early connection with Japan forms perhaps one of the most interesting episodes in our mercantile history, and has a share of romance imparted to it by the story of the English sailor whose name is so intimately associated with it. William Adams, a Kentish man, born in a town called Gillingham, two English miles from Rochester, one mile from Chatham where the kings ships do lie,[3] a seafaring man who had served in the English navy, joined, as senior pilot, one of the Dutch trading fleets which sailed for the East in 1598. Weighing anchor in June, Adams and his companions encountered misfortune and delay on the coast of Africa, so that it was not till April of the next year that they reached the Straits of Magellan, where they were forced to pass the winter. Hence they made for Peru; and after sundry adventures, in which the fleet was dispersed and the Charity, the ship wherein Adams sailed, lost the greater part of her crew, the latter vessel in[iv] company with a single consort struck across for Japan. But bad fortune still waited on the unlucky voyagers. The consort foundered in a storm; and Adamss ship with difficulty reached the shores of the province of Bungo, in the island of Kiushiu, in Japan, where she let fall her anchor on the 19th of April, 1600. Her crew was reduced to four-and-twenty, all told; and of these only some half-dozen were able to stand on their feet. Of the latter Adams was one, and was selected to be sent up to the court of Iyyasu, the famous soldier who then ruled Japan. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 46803
Author: Cocks, Richard
Release Date: Sep 7, 2014
Format: eBook
Language: English

Contributors

Editor: Thompson, Edward Maunde, Sir, 1840-1929