Willem Ysbrantsz Bontekoe Memorable Description of the East Indian Voyage

Annotation

First published in 1929. 'Fire and shipwreck, fights ashore and afloat, the pitting of ceaseless patience and resource against fate, these things make one understand why the book, famous in its original tongue, has but to be savoured in translation to gain an equal popularity.' Manchester Guardian Bontekoe's East Indian Voyage was one of the most popular books in which the Dutch seventeenth century public delighted and it continued to be reprinted throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. As well as providing an illuminating insight into the machinations of the Merchants and Directors of the East India Company and the often troubled waters of international trade and diplomacy, the account is a very personal one: of a human being battling against elemental forces, at tremendous odds, tenaciously holding on to life and coming through in the end.