“Her husband to Aleppo is gone, he’s Master of the Tyger.” It was 1582, and Shakespeare, an 18 year old, was still living, as far as we know, in Stratford.
But, when writing his great masterpiece, Macbeth, it is clear that the impression made on his youthful mind by the voyage of four London merchants to India, a voyage that took them first to Aleppo, aboard a ship called the Tyger, was fresh in his mind.
Shakespeare seldom failed to sustain the interest of his audience, and it seems that the voyage was not only fresh in his mind, but he was quite sure that the reference would, after even more than 30 years between the event, and his writing, have ready appeal to those who heard it delivered, as is seen by the first line spoken by the First Witch, to the “would be,” king.
It seems reasonable to suppose that the voyage, which eventuated in and around the lands that are now India, and those of Bangladesh, in his time, simply, “the lands of the Great Mughal” was, to late 16th century and early 17th century England as unforgettable as, perhaps, man’s first landing on the moon.
Clearly, Fitch was awestruck by what he found in this north east corner of India, and in the lands around, which he took time to explore with the kind of merchant’s eye for trade that resonates throughout his journal. Indeed, his social, environmental, political and cultural commentary might well serve, even today, as a model for a marketer’s consideration of a new market!
It may have taken him five months to cross the waters of north India, on the Yamuna and Ganges, to reach Bengal from Agra, but his writing lingers, unsurprisingly, on the gold mines around Patna.
It is, however, the cotton, and the woven cotton cloths which are most often mentioned, as he travelled towards Gaur, before heading to Cooch Behar, back to Hoogli, onward to Orissa, Tripura, and probably Bhutan, before reaching Barisal.
His constant mention of seeing, “many tigers,” may reveal a reasonable degree of apprehension, but wild buffalo, swine and deer, as well as a wide diversity of birdlife also took his eye. It was, however, clearly merchantable goods that most interested him, recording sugar, opium, pepper, silk, musk, rice, butter, and “a great store of cloth which is made of grass, which they call Yerua, it is like silk” which he observed in Orissa.
It was in Orissa that he records the, “many ships out of India, Negapatan, Sumatra, Malacca and diverse other places.”
Travelling on, to reach Tripura, it appears he became confused about the overlordship of territories, simply recording, when he reached Chittagong, that the port was “often-times under the king of Recon (Arakan) and Rame (Ramu).”
Of Bhutan, he writes, “which is called Bottander, and the city Bottia, the king is called Dermain; the people whereof are very tall and strong, and there are merchants which come out of China, and, they say, Muscovia and Tartarie. And they come to buy musk, cambals, agates, silk, pepper and saffron.”
It was from Chittagong that he finally entered the lands that are now Bangladesh, although his merchant’s eye of all that lay in the lands around would, no doubt, apply as much to these lands of the Delta.
Sailing across the deltaic waters, it appears he first came to Barisal; “the king whereof is a Gentile (Hindu), a man very well disposed and delighted much to shoot in a gun. His country is very great and fruitful, and has store of rice, much cotton cloth and cloth of silk.
As he notes, so often in his journal, “the people naked, except a little cloth about their waist,” and “the women wear a great store of silver hoops about their necks and arms, and their legs are ringed with silver and copper, and rings made of elephant’s tooth.”
It is clear from his writing that, unsurprisingly, his greatest attention was paid to the trade potential, but the eye for people is an ever present quality, like, I suppose, any good trader. In his writing there are vivid descriptions of Hindu marriage ceremonies, together with his regular comments on the height of people he probably noticed as a contrast to his homeland in London.
We do know that Tudor period English had an average height of about five feet three inches, and no doubt Fitch was no taller, and as like as not, shorter. Height, being determined, in large part, by diet as well as genetics, it is interesting to note that it appears as though the late sixteenth century north India offered a better dietary habit than England, creating a sufficient height difference for Fitch to comment.
In Cooch Behar, it was the long ears of the people that he commented on, a practice that seems to have ceased; “they draw out in lengths by devices when they be young,” producing, it seems a span long (about 9 inches)!
The people of Cooch Behar also surprised him, having, “hospitals for sheep, goats, dogs, cats, birds, and for all other living creatures,” and where, “they will kill nothing.”
In Patna, he noted, “I saw a dissembling prophet who sat upon a horse in the market place, and pretended to sleep, and many people came and touched his feet with their hands, and then kissed their hands. They took him for a great man, but sure he was a false person. The people of these countries are much given to such prating and dissembling hypocrites!”
For today’s Bangladeshis, most of such comments seem reserved for those beyond their borders; he has nothing but good to write of the people he found in Barisal, Sripur, and Sonargaon.
The latter two places he reached, it is safe to assume, along the waters of the delta, travelling up from Barisal. The Sripur he knew, which he reports as a base for the Portuguese, who he found much in evidence, with a thriving centre of trade and shipbuilding, seems to have disappeared, but was probably close to the Shitalokka River, north of Dhaka, of which, interestingly, he makes no mention.
“Sonargaon is a town six leagues from Sripur, where there is the best and finest cloth made of cotton that is in all India.” Being the opening sentence of his journal’s description of Sonargaon, we may deduce something of the excitement of this merchant on finding it.
Tigers still rate a mention, in the context of the small houses, “covered in straw,” with doors to “keep out the tigers,” as well as the foxes that, apparently, proliferated. The cotton cloth he so admired, we learn, was traded, together with “much” rice, to all India, Ceylon, Arakan, Malacca, Sumatra, and ‘many other places’.
From Sonargaon, we know he headed to Pegu, in Arakan, and then onwards to the Siamese Shan states, which are now Myanmar, followed by Malacca, to research the trade in the Spice Islands, as well as the gemstones from Myanmar and Thailand.
As he sailed home, he may have reflected on his adventure. He had departed with four companions, three of whom chose to remain at places they visited, and the fourth disappearing, never heard of again, when he decided to return, alone, to London.
Quite apart from the picture the journal gives us of late 16th century south and south east Asia, we know that Fitch’s return to London sparked renewed interest in the Court of Queen Elizabeth sufficiently for her to join the merchants who resolved to set up the East India Company as a result of his reports. And, in 1601, just before her death, issued a royal charter for the Company, fatefully, as it turned out, for Britain, the lands that are now Bangladesh, and indeed, for the entire world.
This then is a vivid picture of the lands and people around the Ganges Delta, the heart of today’s Bangladesh, nearly five hundred years ago. The lands that had once been a great centre of international trade, and one which, apparently, continued to be so, paints above all, more a picture of the people and their works, than of simply, the cities and the politics. The merchant of London is an epic adventure, perhaps belonging more to today’s Hollywood than Shakespearean.
