Abraham Navarro was a linguist for the East India Company who travelled to Siam, China and India.
29 – Trade, Embassies and Communication: The English in China, 1715-1842 – Part III
Dr Robert Morrison, Sir George Thomas Staunton and the Amherst Embassy of 1816 The failure of the 1816 Amherst embassy to the Chinese court can be seen as a step toward worsening relations between the United Kingdom and China. The tensions between the two nations were clear in the embassy’s dealings with the officials who accompanied them to the emperor’s …
28 – Trade, Embassies and Communication: The English in China, 1715-1842 – Part II
Li Zibiao, George Thomas Staunton and the Macartney Embassy In 1787, The British government decided to send an embassy to the Chinese imperial court to negotiate more favourable trading conditions than those afforded by the Canton system. Their goals included access to ports other than Canton (Guangzhou), an embassy in Beijing, and an island reserved for British traders’ use. While …
27 – Trade, Embassies and Communication: The English in China, 1715-1842 – Part I
Foreign traders in eighteenth-century Canton used interpreters – called linguists – in their dealings with Chinese officials.
26 – Artus de Lionne and Constantine Phaulkon
A number of diplomats travelled in embassies between Siam and France from 1680 to 1688. Six different groups of envoys attempted to bring about a rapprochement between the kingdoms of Phra Narai and Louis XIV. These negotiations varied in success and proved inconclusive but the stories of two of the most significant middlemen involved – the missionary Artus de Lionne …
23 – Chief Brokers and Heads of the Malabars in 18th-century Pondicherry
There are two buildings in Heritage Town in the former French colony of Pondicherry that are associated with men who were key to the success of French trade there: St Andrew’s Church, built in 1745 by Pedro Kanakaraya Mudaliar in memory of his son, and the 1735 house owned by Ananda Ranga Pillai, who succeeded Mudaliar as chief intermediary for …
22 – Sir Thomas Roe at the Mughal Court
English travellers to India on East India Company (EIC) business were well aware of the need to find ways to communicate with locals on their journey and at their destination. Sir James Lancaster, who led the first EIC fleet to explore trade prospects in 1601 had an original way of replenishing the ships’ stores while at the Cape of Good Hope. …
21 – The Schlagintweit Establishment
The Schlagintweit brothers’ account of their expedition to the Indian subcontinent in the 1850s acknowledged the crucial role of their interpreters. “During our travels in Tíbet and Turkistán, and also in some parts of Sikkim, we had to engage different men, who knew Hindostani as well as the languages of the countries we were traversing. Besides filling their office as …
20 – Karma Paul and the 1922 British Himalayan Expedition
Recent histories of exploration and colonisation have acknowledged that early accounts tended to privilege intrepid outsiders grappling single-handedly with the unknown; scholars now recognise that these were often complex undertakings involving different kinds of intermediaries. It is interesting to consider interpreters as one of several kinds of go-betweens as a way of understanding the role they played. The British Raj provides us …
7- Rodrigues tsuji – A Jesuit Interpreter in Japan
The Jesuit mission in Japan recognised that the Christian faith had to be less European if they were to make converts. The need to acknowledge the realities of life in Japan gave a worldly edge to the Society’s endeavours there: communication, transactions and negotiations with local governors, powerful barons, and the shogun himself – as well as traders from Macao …