Exploring our archives

Robert Knox was a close correspondent of the Royal Society, and a particularly close friend of Robert Hooke. His ‘Historical Relation of Ceylon’, published under the auspices of the Royal Society and the East India Company in 1681 provides an in-depth commentary on the social and political life of the Kingdom of Kandy in the period. Looking at a manuscript in the British Library, I discovered that in the same year his ‘Relation’ was published, Knox had begun another account of a journey to Tonqueen (Vietnam), where the East India Company were attempting to establish a factory (trading post) at the time. Unfortunately, the narrative breaks off before Knox reached his destination. Nevertheless, he does give some interesting descriptions of two islands in Cape Verde, an archipelago in the North Atlantic Ocean off the West coast of Africa. The archipelago was unpopulated until its discovery by Portuguese sailors in the late fifteenth century, after which it became a sugar cane plantation and transit point in the Atlantic slave trade, remaining a colony until 1975, when it became the current Republic of Cape Verde. I’ve marked the location of the islands Knox mentions on a map here. Knox arrived in the ‘Isle of May’, Maio, on the 28 October 1681. His description concentrates on the plants that he recognises from Sri Lanka, which he details, speculating that the difference in longitude makes less difference to the climate, and hence the types of plant species that flourish, than the latitude. On leaving Maio, Knox sailed to the neighbouring island of ‘St Iago’, Santiagu, where he gives a description of the city and villages, also noting that although they referred to themselves as Portuguese and followed the religion and accepted the monarch of that country, the majority of inhabitants seemed to have come from Guinea. Again, Knox makes comparisons between the flora of the island and that of Ceylon, perhaps scouting for potential sites for the East India Company, he also comments on the scarcity of wood and the growing of cotton on the island and the possibilities affored by the iron stone he observes. He records that the journey to ‘Bantam’, Banten, took around six months, noting with approval that a watermelon he had acquired in Santiagu retained its freshness all the way. Banten, a province of Java where the East India Company had a factory, was a natural transit point for Knox’s final destination, ‘Tonqueen’, Vietnam, but it is at this point that the manuscript breaks off.

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