Description

xii + 408pp., hardbound in blue cloth cover, decorated and lettered in gilt, with 17 black & white illustrations including portrait frontispiece of Pedro Cubero Sebastian. RARE REFERENCE. Vol. no. XIX (19). Travel accounts of: Tomé Pires (1513), Pedro Ordóñez de Cevallos (1595), Francois Pyrard (1605), Joris van Spielbergen (1616), Pedro Cubero Sebastian (1668), William Dampier (1686), Alexander Dalrymple (1762), Pierre de Pagés (1768), Captain Crozet (1772), Guillaume Raynal (1772), Thomas Forrest (1774), De la Perouse (1787). Pires, based on his Malay-Indonesia travels, wrote a book in Malacca and India between 1512 and 1515 on Asian trade, the ‘Suma Oriental que trata do Mar Roxo até aos Chins’ (An Account of the East, from the Red Sea to China). It was the first comprehensive and reliable account of Asia to the east of India, with the first European descriptions of the Malay Archipelago and the Spice Islands and the first to use the name Japan, spelling it as ‘Jampon’.