Page 242 - Early English Adventurers in the Middle East_Neat

242 EARLY ENGLISH ADVENTURERS IN THE EAST

the produce of the East to the West. In the Middle Ages
the Venetians had obtained their supplies of spices from I
vessels which had made their way up to the head of the
Gulf and transferred them there either to caravans or to
other craft which navigated the Euphrates to a point far
in the interior easily accessible from the Mediterranean.
The Portuguese when they went to the East took prompt
measures to make themselves masters in a region which
had so many famous traditions as a commercial centre.
In the absence of effective rivalry at sea they were able to
get into their own hands the entire overseas trade and to
exercise a large control of the commerce of the whole of
Southern Persia. When th e English made their appear­
ance in the Indian Ocean, Portuguese supremacy was un­
challenged, and it seemed unchallengeable.
Fitch’s narrative had thrown a good deal of light upon
the position occupied by the Portuguese in the Persian
Gulf, and other information had been gleaned from repre­
sentatives of the Turkey Company who penetrated to
Persia from Constantinople, but the actual inspirer of the
East India Company’s earliest Persian venture was prob­
ably Sir Robert Shirley or Sherley, a gentleman adventurer
who for a good many years in the opening of the seven­
teenth century figured on the diplomatic stage in Europe
as ambassador to Shah Abbas, then ruler of Persia.
Robert Shirley’s career supplies a curious and interesting
page in the history of the early English adventurers in the
East. Like so many of his class, he was a scion of a noble
English family who had been driven abroad to seek his
fortune by a pure love of excitement and change. He had
originally gone to Persia in the train of his brother,
Anthony, who after a period of buccaneering in Portuguese

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