Page 5 - Early English Adventurers in the Middle East_Neat

PREFACE

T HIS work covers the period which intervened be­
tween Drake’s circumnavigation of the world at
the close of the sixteenth century and the founding of
Calcutta at the end of the seventeenth century. Those
were the years in which the initial efforts were made by
the English to establish themselves in the East as traders.
It was, as far as this part of the world is concerned, pre­
eminently the age of the adventurer—the merchant ad­
venturer, if you will, but still of the true adventurer who
seeks fortune by his daring enterprise and his mother wit.
For varied interest and picturesqueness, there is no more
fascinating period than this in the whole of the Empire’s
past. Tragedy and comedy mingled their elements in
what was in essence one of the most romantic dramas of
the world’s history. Men started out to build up a com­
mercial connexion, and they ended in laying the founda­
tions of a dominion over alien peoples more wonderful
than that of Eome in her palmiest days. How this was
accomplished is told in the accompanying pages, but the
author’s aim has been not so much to write an exhaustive
history as to bring into prominence the personalities of
those who were engaged in this great work—to show what
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