[KS] Hermit Country?
Henny Savenije
webmaster at henny-savenije.pe.kr
Thu Aug 4 12:29:48 EDT 2005
At 18:58 04-08-05, Walraven, B.C.A. wrote:
>In my previous message I forgot to mention that during their
>negotiations both the Japanese and Koreans referred to Hamel's
>companions (who included a Scot, a German and a Scandinavian) as
>their own people.
It is indeed true that the Japanese referred to Hamel and his
companions as their own people, since they considered with the
necessary arrogance Holland as subordinate to Japan however it is not
proven that there were a Scot, a German and a Scandinavian among
their companions. It is likely that there were foreigners among the
crew since there were only about a million people living in the
Netherlands in the 16th century and in the 200 years of its existence
the VOC transported about a 2 million people, a lot of foreigners
were hired to do the dirty work the Dutch didn't want to do. However
it is hard to discover who were the foreigners and who not as their
names were more often than not translated (Le Brun became de Bruin
etc) or written beyond recognition in the land of origin.
There is a list with the cities the returned sailors came from (only
16) but Lith is not a Scottish city, maybe Oost A'pen or Oostvoorn
might be German but I wrote to cities which might be likely the ones
and they denied that they were meant by that.
Also in a book with names occurring on Dutch maps and their meaning,
none of the cities which couldn't be located in Holland and were
mentioned with regard to Hamel and his companions, are mentioned there.
Curious to know that the Japanese had hardly any idea how Holland
looked like but considered it subordinate to Japan.
Henny (Lee Hae Kang)
-----------------------------
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