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James Lancaster
Sir James Lancaster (c. 1554 – 6 June 1618) was an English privateer and trader of the Elizabethan era. Life and work Lancaster came from Basingstoke in Hampshire. Lancaster was brought up in Portugal as a merchant and soldier, but returned to England in 1587. He thereafter became a trusted employee of the London merchant Thomas Cordell, commanding his merchant ship ‘Edward Bonaventure’ in the fleet against the Spanish Armada in 1588, serving under Sir Francis Drake. East India activities On 10 April 1591 Lancaster started from Torbay in Devon, with George Raymond and Samuel Foxcroft, on his major voyage to the East Indies; this fleet of three ships (''Penelope'', ''Marchant Royal'' and ''Edward Bonaventure'') was the earliest of the English overseas Indian expeditions. They reached Table Bay on 1 August 1591. Losing one ship off Cape Correntes on 12 September, the squadron rested and refitted at Zanzibar (February 1592), rounded Cape Comorin the following May, ...
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Ceylon
Sri Lanka, officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, also known historically as Ceylon, is an island country in South Asia. It lies in the Indian Ocean, southwest of the Bay of Bengal, separated from the Indian subcontinent, Indian peninsula by the Gulf of Mannar and the Palk Strait. It shares a maritime border with the Maldives in the southwest and India in the northwest. Sri Jayawardenepura Kotte is the legislative capital of Sri Lanka, while the largest city, Colombo, is the administrative and judicial capital which is the nation's political, financial and cultural centre. Kandy is the second-largest urban area and also the capital of the last native kingdom of Sri Lanka. The most spoken language Sinhala language, Sinhala, is spoken by the majority of the population (approximately 17 million). Tamil language, Tamil is also spoken by approximately five million people, making it the second most-spoken language in Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka has a population of appr ...
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Red Dragon (1595)
''Scourge of Malice'' or ''Malice Scourge'' or ''Mare Scourge'' was a 38-gun ship ordered by George Clifford, 3rd Earl of Cumberland. She was built and launched at Deptford Dockyard in 1595. The Earl used her as his flagship during raids on the Spanish Main, where she provided additional force to support his fleet. She was later renamed ''Red Dragon''; the East India Company used her for at least five voyages to the East Indies. The first recorded non-European performance of the play ''Hamlet'' took place on ''Red Dragon'' in 1607 while she was anchored off the coast of Sierra Leone. Construction In the 1590s, the Earl of Cumberland's passion for nautical adventure was at its peak. He lacked a vessel able to support his hired fleet; the only option he had to get a sufficiently well-armed vessel was to borrow from the Queen, something which would give her significant control over his actions. As a result, he declared that he would have his own ship built, 'the best and largest sh ...
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East India Company
The East India Company (EIC) was an English, and later British, joint-stock company that was founded in 1600 and dissolved in 1874. It was formed to Indian Ocean trade, trade in the Indian Ocean region, initially with the East Indies (South Asia and Southeast Asia), and later with East Asia. The company gained Company rule in India, control of large parts of the Indian subcontinent and British Hong Kong, Hong Kong. At its peak, the company was the largest corporation in the world by various measures and had its own armed forces in the form of the company's three presidency armies, totalling about 260,000 soldiers, twice the size of the British Army at certain times. Originally Chartered company, chartered as the "Governor and Company of Merchants of London Trading into the East-Indies," the company rose to account for half of the world's trade during the mid-1700s and early 1800s, particularly in basic commodities including cotton, silk, indigo dye, sugar, salt, spices, Potass ...
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Caesalpinia Echinata
''Paubrasilia echinata'' is a species of flowering plant in the legume family, Fabaceae, that is endemic to the Atlantic Forest of Brazil. It is a Brazilian timber tree commonly known as Pernambuco wood or brazilwood (, ; Tupi language, Tupi: ) and is the national tree of Brazil. This plant has a dense, orange-red heartwood that takes a high shine, and it is the premier wood used for making bow (music), bows for stringed instruments. The wood also yields a historically important red dye called brazilin, which oxidizes to brazilein. The name ''pau-brasil'' was applied to certain species of the genus ''Caesalpinia'' in the medieval period, and was given its original binomial name, scientific name ''Caesalpinia echinata'' in 1785 by Jean-Baptiste Lamarck. More recent taxonomic studies have suggested that it merits recognition as a separate genus, and it was thus renamed ''Paubrasilia echinata'' in 2016. The Latin binomial nomenclature, specific epithet of ''echinata'' refers to hedg ...
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Sir Henry Middleton
Sir Henry Middleton (died 1613) was an English sea captain and adventurer. He negotiated with the sultan of Ternate and the sultan of Tidore, competed against Dutch and Portuguese interests in the East Indies but still managed to buy cloves.Margaret Makepeace, 'Middleton, Sir Henry (d. 1613)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Jan 2008 He had two brothers, John Middleton (d. 1602 or 1603), the eldest who was captain of East India Company (EIC) galleon Hector and director of EIC and David Middleton, a mariner working for EIC. Henry was taken on at the Woolwich ship yards working first on the EIC's '' Red Dragon''. The company was organising its first expedition to "East India". The prominent Elizabethan trader and privateer, James Lancaster was to command the four ships. Second in command was Middleton's brother John, a company captain who secured Henry as a mercantile agent with a berth on the voyage. They set off in Apri ...
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Richard Hakluyt
Richard Hakluyt (; 1553 – 23 November 1616) was an English writer. He is known for promoting the British colonization of the Americas, English colonization of North America through his works, notably ''Divers Voyages Touching the Discoverie of America'' (1582) and ''The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation'' (1589–1600). Hakluyt was educated at Westminster School and Christ Church, Oxford. Between 1583 and 1588 he was chaplain and secretary#Origin, secretary to Sir Edward Stafford (diplomat), Edward Stafford, English ambassador at the French court. An ordination, ordained priest#Anglican or Episcopalian, priest, Hakluyt held important positions at Bristol Cathedral and Westminster Abbey and was personal chaplain to Robert Cecil, 1st Earl of Salisbury, principal Secretary of State (England), Secretary of State to Elizabeth I of England, Elizabeth I and James VI and I, James I. He was the chief promoter of a petition to James ...
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Carrack
A carrack (; ; ) is a three- or four- masted ocean-going sailing ship that was developed in the 14th to 15th centuries in Europe, most notably in Portugal and Spain. Evolving from the single-masted cog, the carrack was first used for European trade from the Mediterranean to the Baltic and quickly found use with the newly found wealth of the trade between Europe and Africa and then the trans-Atlantic trade with the Americas. In their most advanced forms, they were used by the Portuguese and Spaniards for trade between Europe, Africa and Asia starting in the late 15th century, before being gradually superseded in the late 16th and early 17th centuries by the galleon. In its most developed form, the carrack was a carvel-built ocean-going ship: large enough to be stable in heavy seas, and capacious enough to carry a large cargo and the provisions needed for very long voyages. The later carracks were square-rigged on the foremast and mainmast and lateen- rigged on the mizzenma ...
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Colonial Brazil
Colonial Brazil (), sometimes referred to as Portuguese America, comprises the period from 1500, with the Discovery of Brazil, arrival of the Portuguese, until 1815, when Brazil was elevated to a United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil and the Algarves, kingdom in union with Portugal. During the 300 years of Brazilian colonial history, the main economic activities of the territory were based first on Paubrasilia, brazilwood extraction (brazilwood cycle), which gave the territory its name; sugar production (Brazilian sugar cycle, sugar cycle); and finally on gold and diamond mining (Brazilian Gold Rush, gold cycle). Slaves, especially those Atlantic slave trade to Brazil, brought from Africa, provided most of the workforce of the Brazilian export economy after a brief initial period of Indigenous slavery to cut brazilwood. In contrast to the neighboring Spanish America, Spanish possessions, which had several Viceroy, viceroyalties with jurisdiction initially over New Spain (Mexico) and V ...
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Recife
Recife ( , ) is the Federative units of Brazil, state capital of Pernambuco, Brazil, on the northeastern Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic coast of South America. It is the largest urban area within both the North Region, Brazil, North and the Northeast Region, Brazil, Northeast Region of Brazil. It is the largest city in Pernambuco state, and the fourth-largest urban area in all of Brazil; the Metropolitan area, metro population of the city of Recife was 3,726,974 in 2022. Recife was founded in 1537, serving as the main harbor of the Captaincy of Pernambuco—known for its Brazilian sugar cycle, large-scale production of sugar cane. At one point, it was known as Mauritsstad, when it served as the capital city of the 17th century colony of New Holland (Brazil), New Holland of Dutch Brazil (founded by the Dutch West India Company). Situated at the confluence of the Beberibe River, Beberibe and Capibaribe River, Capibaribe rivers, before they drain into the South Atlantic Ocean, Recife is a m ...
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Pernambuco
Pernambuco ( , , ) is a States of Brazil, state of Brazil located in the Northeast Region, Brazil, Northeast region of the country. With an estimated population of 9.5 million people as of 2024, it is the List of Brazilian states by population, seventh-most populous state of Brazil and with around 98,067.877 km2, it is the List of Brazilian states by area, 19th-largest in area among federative units of the country. It is also the sixth-most densely populated with around 92.37 people per km2. Its capital and largest city, Recife, is one of the most important economic and urban hubs in the country. Based on 2019 estimates, the Recife metropolitan area, Recife Metropolitan Region is seventh-most populous in the country, and the second-largest in Northeast Region, Brazil, northeastern Brazil. In 2015, the state had 4.4% of the national population and produced 2.8% of the national gross domestic product (GDP). The contemporary state inherits its name from the Captaincy of Pernambuco, ...
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Capture Of Recife (1595)
The Capture of Recife also known as James Lancaster's 1595 Expedition or Lancaster's Pernambucan expedition was an English military expedition during the Anglo–Spanish War in which the primary objective was the capture of the town and port of Recife in the Captaincy of Pernambuco in the Portuguese colony of Brazil (then within the Iberian Union with Spain) in April 1595. An English expedition of ships led by James Lancaster sailed via the Atlantic capturing numerous prizes before he captured Recife. He held the place for nearly a month and then proceeded to defeat a number of Portuguese counterattacks before leaving. The booty captured was substantial, Lancaster chartered Dutch and French ships that were also present there thus making the expedition a military and financial success.Foster pg 35-54 Background By virtue of the Iberian Union, the Anglo-Portuguese Treaty of 1373 was in abeyance, and as the Anglo–Spanish War was still ongoing, attacks on Portuguese shipping and ...
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