Abstract
In 1686, Samuel Baron wrote from Fort St George, the Company headquarters in Madras, to Robert Hooke and Robert Hoskins of the Royal Society, enclosing a draft of his Description of the Kingdom of Tonqueen. The manuscript was not published immediately, but appeared in an early-eighteenth-century collection of voyages and is still considered a valuable source of information about early modern Vietnam.1 Baron informed his correspondents that he would shortly be embarking on a journey to China, from where he would send any ‘curiosities’ worthy of their notice.2 Shortly thereafter, Baron left Madras as head of a mission to establish a ‘factory’, or trading post, in Amoy (modern Xiamen). However, on hearing of his appointment, the London Directors wrote to the Governor and Council of Fort St George, ordering them to dismiss Baron, as ‘no servant of ours, but a deserter, the history whereof is too long to tell’.3
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Note on Transcription and Transliteration
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© 2016 Anna Winterbottom
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Winterbottom, A. (2016). Curious Collectors and Infamous Interlopers: Samuel Baron and the EIC Settlements in Southeast and East Asia. In: Hybrid Knowledge in the Early East India Company World. Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137380203_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137380203_2
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