The Shogun's Silver Telescope: God, Art, and Money in the English Quest for Japan, 1600-1625 (Screech Timon)(Pevná vazba)

The East India Company, founded in London in 1600, was a spice trading organisation. But its governors soon began to think bigger. After a decade, they started to plan voyages to more fabulous places, notably India and Japan. India had cotton cloth, while Japan had silver, and crucially wascold in winter. England's main export was woollen cloth (which will not sell in hot places), so the Company envisaged adding to its spice-runs, sailings back and forth to Japan, exchanging wool for silver. This could be done quickly, over the top of Russia, as maps suggested. Maps also made Japantwenty times too large, the size of India in fact. Knowing the Spanish and Portuguese had preceded them, the Company prepared a special present for its first extended sailing. In the end this missed India, but got to Japan, in 1613. The Shogun was presented with a silver telescope in the name of