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Thomas Bowrey's Madagascar Manuscript of 1708

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 May 2014

Arne Bialuschewski
Arne Bialuschewski*
Affiliation:
Trent University
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Extract

In 1913 an old chest was discovered in a manor house in Worcestershire in the west of England. Packed with bundles of manuscripts, it contained several hundred letters and business papers written in a crabbed italic hand. These documents belonged to Thomas Bowrey, an English overseas merchant, who was born in 1662 and died in 1713. The collection of papers was later purchased by Colonel Henry Howard, and in 1931 part of it was presented to the Guildhall Library in London. These documents include an incomplete manuscript titled “Discription of the Coast of Affrica from the Cape of Good Hope, to the Red Sea” dated 1708. The notes indicate that Bowrey intended to write a book that encompassed descriptions of all the major ports of the region.

Only fragments of the draft survive. Most of the manuscript contains amendments, crossed-out sections, and blank spaces. The text consists of different versions of a preface, brief accounts of the Dutch Cape Colony and Delagoa Bay in Mosambique, as well as a draft portion which has the title “Islands of ye Coast of Africa on ye East Side of ye Cape of Good Hope: Places of Trade on Madagascar.” The densely written and in part hardly legible text is on sixteen folio pages. It gives information about Assada, Old Masselege, Manangara, New Masselege, Terra Delgada, Morondava, Crab Island, St. Vincent, St. Iago, Tulear, St. Augustin Bay, St. John's, Port Dauphin, Matatana, Bonavola, St. Mary's Island, and Antongil Bay. This document also includes descriptions of Mauritius and Bourbon, nowadays called Réunion. Most of these places were visited by English, Dutch, and French seafarers in the last decades of the seventeenth century.

Type
Research Article
Information
History in Africa , Volume 34 , 2007 , pp. 31 - 42
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 2007

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References

1 The Guildhall Library (hereafter GL), Ms. 3041/3 (i). This document is mentioned in Thurston, Anne, Guide to Archives and Manuscripts Relating to Kenya and East Africa in the United Kingdom (London, 1991), 654Google Scholar; and Pearson, James D. and Matthews, Noel, A Guide to Manuscripts and Documents in the British Isles Relating to Africa (London, 1993), 89–90Google Scholar. Until 1988 Bowrey's correspondence was deposited in Lloyd's Library in London. Most of Bowrey's papers relating to his activities in India are preserved in the Oriental and India Office Collections of the British Library (hereafter OIOC).

2 Dewar, Robert E. and Wright, Henry T., “The Culture History of Madagascar,” Journal of World Prehistory 7(1993), 450–61CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 This part of Bowrey's biography derives from transcripts of two privately-owned autograph journals, which were auctioned by Bonhams in London on 28 March 2006. The expedition of 1695 is particularly remarkable, as it precedes all other documented attempts to discover the Northwest Passage.

4 For the phenomenon of projecting see Defoe, Daniel, An Essay upon Projects (London, 1697), 31–35Google Scholar. Economic historians explain the surge of innovative schemes after 1689 with the disruption of long-established trading connections in several parts of the world due to the outbreak of war on an unprecedented scale, which led to the emergence of a large amount of risk capital in England. At the same time a few exceptionally lucrative ventures set the example for numerous other projects. It is perhaps worth noting that Defoe and Bowrey personally knew each other.

5 Hunt, Margaret R., The Middling Sort: Commerce, Gender, and the Family in England, 1680-1780 (Berkeley, 1996), 181Google Scholar.

6 Bialuschewski, Arne, “Pirates, Slavers, and the Indigenous Population in Madagascar, c. 1690-1715,” IJAHS 38(2005), 401–25Google Scholar.

7 The literature on piracy is vast, but rarely meets academic standards. For notable exceptions see Ritchie, Robert C., Captain Kidd and the War against the Pirates (Cambridge, Mass., 1986), 206–27Google Scholar; and Earle, Peter, The Pirate Wars (London, 2003), 119–22Google Scholar. For some interesting aspects of Kidd's trial see Benton, Lauren, “Legal Spaces of Empire: Piracy and the Origins of Ocean Regionalism,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 47(2005), 706–16CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 OIOC, G/36/8, ff. 708-09, Surat Factory records, 20 March 1703.

9 The Case of the Owners and Freighters of the Ship Worcester in Relation to the Seizing and Condemning of the said Ship and Cargoe (London, 1705), 89–127Google Scholar.

10 The National Archives, London (hereafter NA), SP 34/8, f. 42, memorandum of Thomas Bowrey, 16 August 1706.

11 A few years earlier the authorities in England had received detailed intelligence of the pirates who stayed in Madagascar. See, for example, the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, New Haven, Conn., Osborn Ms. 2, ser. 2, box 10, f. 206, Robert Yard to William Blathwayt, 12 August 1698.

12 National Archives of Scotland, Edinburgh, GD 305/1/170, no. 287, Earl of Cromarty to Earl of Mar, 21 August 1707; The British Library, London (hereafter BL), Add. Ms. 61620, ff. 167-68, Martin Laycock to Thomas Hopkins, 15 November 1707; NA, CO 323/6, f. 195, undated memorandum of the Earl of Morton, Egerton, Charles, Master, Streynsham, Tolson, Richard, Jodrell, Paul, and Wallis, William; The Review of the State of the British Nation, 18 10 1707Google Scholar.

13 Reasons for Reducing the Pyrates at Madagascar (London, [1707]), 1–4Google Scholar. Bowrey's transcript of this pamphlet, dated 14 July 1707, contains various amendments indicating that he also intended to attack Muscat. See GL, Ms. 3041/2.

14 House of Lords Record Office, London, HC/CC/JO/1, no. 114, journal of the House of Commons, 8 April 1707.

15 Thornton, John, The English Pilot: The Third Book, Describing the Sea-Coasts, Capes, Head Lands, Straits, Islands, Bays (London, 1703), 22–25Google Scholar. The book contains brief descriptions of St. Augustin, Tulear, Antongil Bay, St. Mary's, the “North West part,” New Masselege, and Old Masselege. Thornton's principal sources were probably Dutch and Portuguese publications, such as Joan Blaeu's map of 1662 and Luíz Serrao Pimentel's description of 1681.

16 GL, Ms. 3041/9 (iii), catalog of Bowrey's books, 8 December 1711. In the early eighteenth century most books cost more than an average weekly income.

17 Hatton, Edward, A New View of London: or, An Ample Account of that City (London, 1708), 87Google Scholar.

18 Brown, Antony, Hazard Unlimited: the Story of Lloyd's of London (London, 1987), 14–21Google Scholar. Bowrey used Lloyd's Coffee House as his mailing address.

19 Bodleian Library, Oxford, Ms. Rawlinson A. 334, ff. 61-62.

20 BL, Sloane Ms. 3392, ff. 85-87, “A Fragment of a Book of Travels in Africa, Treating the Manners and Habits of the Island of Madagascar,” c. 1709.

21 For some examples see NA, HCA 1/98, ff. 22-23, deposition of George Revelly, 18 December 1699; NA, HCA 1/53, ff. 101-02, examination of Stephen Smith, 28 August 1701; NA, HCA 1/16, f. 41, deposition of John Onely, 20 August 1702. Most pirates benefited from a general amnesty proclaimed in 1698 and were not brought to trial after they had made their way to London.

22 NA, ADM 3/18, f. 76, orders to Captain Richards, 25 March 1703; NA, ADM 2/30, f. 84, orders to Captain Foulis, 27 March 1703. The commanders only learned at St. Helena that they were bound for Madagascar.

23 BL, Sloane Ms. 3674, ff. 16-18, log of HMS Scarborough, 15 to 23 November 1703; NA, ADM 52/280, pt. 7, journal of George Shelvocke, 15 to 27 November 1703. Between 1718 and 1722 Shelvocke undertook the last of the famous British privateering circumnavigations. His account, A Voyage Round the World, was published in 1726.

24 National Maritime Museum, London, ADM/L/S/164, log of HMS Scarborough, 20 November 1703.

25 Armstrong, James C., “Madagascar and the Slave Trade in the Seventeenth Century,” Omaly sy Anio 17-20(1983/1984), 211–33Google Scholar. In addition to the documented voyages, there were probably many illegal slaving ventures from England and North America to Madagascar. See, for example, the John D. Rockefeller Library, Colonial Williamsburg, William Blathwayt Papers 25, f. 4, Hender Molesworth to William Blathwayt, 28 September 1686.

26 Bodleian Library, Oxford, Ms. Rawl. Q. c. 15, f. 10, “Severall Remarkeable passages of my life that hath hapned since my Deliverance out of my Captivity,” 1696. A few years later, when the High Court of Admiralty requested information about the activities of pirates in northwestern Madagascar, Knox was ready to provide an account of the region. See the transcript of his deposition of 19 January 1702 in NA, HCA 13/82, f. 347.

27 Vérin, Pierre, The History of Civilisation in North Madagascar (Boston, 1986), 67–104Google Scholar; Wright, Henry T.et al., “The Evolution of Settlement Systems in the Bay of Boeny and the Mahavavy River Valley,” Azania 31(1996), 55–66CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

28 Bodleian Library, Ms. Rawl. A. 334, ff. 54-57, “A Voyage in ye Ship Frances from Mossambique for St. Lawrence, with a description of ye natives of the Island,” 1640.

29 Pearson, Mike Parker, “Close Encounters of the Worst Kind: Malagasy Resistance and Colonial Disasters in Southern Madagascar,” World Archaeology 28(1997), 405CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

30 Campbell, Gwyn, “The Structure of Trade in Madagascar, 1750-1810,” IJAHS 26(1993), 135–40Google Scholar; idem, An Economic History of Imperial Madagascar, 1750-1895 (Cambridge, 2004), 50-55.

31 NA, CO 324/9, ff. 200-01, resolution of the Board of Trade, 2 June 1709; NA, PC 2/82, f. 165, register of the Privy Council, 2 June 1709; NA, CO 323/6, f. 223, deposition of Lawrence Waldron and John Clough, 16 June 1709; NA, 323/6, f. 225, deposition Penelope Aubin, 20 June 1709.

32 GL, Ms. 3041/3 (iii), Jacob Mears to Thomas Bowrey, 23 September 1712. For another failed venture, proposed in 1714, see Dawson, Charles, “The Madagascar Affair: A Little-Known Swedish Project of Colonisation,” Mariner's Mirror 81(1995), 210–12Google Scholar.

33 OIOC, B/53, ff. 513, 588, 595-99, 600-08, minutes of the Court of Directors, 7 December 1715, 29 February, 9 and 14 March 1716.

34 Drury, Robert, Madagascar: or, Robert Drury's Journal during Fifteen Years Captivity of that Island (London, 1729), 403–40Google Scholar. Some literary scholars have dismissed this lengthy account as a semi-fictional narrative written by Defoe, but no historian of Madagascar seriously disputes its authenticity. For the latest view of this matter see Pearson, Mike Parker, “Reassessing Robert Drury's Journal as a Historical Source for Southern Madagascar,” HA 23(1996), 233–56Google Scholar.