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Books > Arts & Architecture > History of art / art & design styles > 1600 to 1800
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The Shogun's Silver Telescope - God, Art, and Money in the English Quest for Japan, 1600-1625 (Hardcover)
Loot Price: R1,288
Discovery Miles 12 880
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The Shogun's Silver Telescope - God, Art, and Money in the English Quest for Japan, 1600-1625 (Hardcover)
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The East India Company, founded in London in 1600, was the world's
biggest trading organization until the twentieth century. It was
originally a spice trading organization, and its existence was
precarious in its early years. But its governors soon began to
think bigger. A decade after its foundation, they started to plan
voyages to more adventurous places, notably Japan. Japan had
silver, was cold in winter, and had no sheep, so was a perfect
market for England's main export, woollen cloth. The Company
planned to add to its spice-runs, sailing back and forth to Japan,
exchanging wool for silver. This could be done quickly and easily,
over the top of Russia - or so the maps of the day suggested (these
same maps also showed Japan twenty times too large, about the size
of India). Knowing the Spanish and Portuguese had got there before
them, the Company prepared a special present to impress and win
over their Japanese hosts. They chose as their first gift a silver
telescope. The expedition carrying the telescope departed in 1611,
and the Shogun was finally presented with the telescope in the name
of King James I in 1613. It was the first telescope ever to leave
Europe, and the first made as a presentation item. Before this
voyage had even returned, the Company had dispatched another with
an equally stunning cargo: nearly a hundred oil paintings. This is
the story of these two extraordinary cargoes: what they meant for
the fortunes of the Company, what the choice of them says about the
seventeenth century England from which they came, and what effect
they had on the quizzical Asian rulers to whom they were given.
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