[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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