Ralph Fitch: An Elizabethan Merchant in 16th Century Chiang Mai

Part of Ancient Chiang Mai

'Her husband's to Aleppo gone, master o' the Tyger'

First Witch, Macbeth, William Shakespeare, 1605.

It seems unlikely, to say the least, that any association might exist between that most celebrated English playwright, William Shakespeare (1564-1616) and the Chiang Mai of King Nawrahtaminsaw (1578-1607). And yet, surprisingly, it does.

In 1581 a group of businessmen of the City of London received letters patent from Queen Elizabeth I establishing 'The Company of Merchants of the Levant', a forerunner of the Honourable East India Company, which sought to establish direct commercial links with the Near East effectively ending the monopoly over the immensely valuable Spice Trade at that time enjoyed by Spain, Portugal and Venice.

Initial clandestine explorations by John Eldred and John Newbery were successful, with the latter reaching the Persian port of Ormuz-gateway to India-and returning safely to London in 1582. The logical next step was a secret investigation of trade and conditions in India and beyond, a perilous enterprise sure to be vigorously opposed by the Portuguese if they got wind of what was afoot.

Accordingly, the founders of the Levant Company determined to finance an expedition to the Indies and beyond. A group of five trusted associates were selected, under the leadership of the Arabic-speaking John Newbery. His companions included John Eldred-who had already lived in Baghdad for two years-William Leedes, James Story, and Ralph Fitch. Little enough is known of Fitch, but he alone of the four men proceeding beyond Basra would return safely to England, and he would also become the first European known to have visited distant Chiang Mai.

On 12 February 1583, the travellers boarded the merchant ship Tyger and set out from the Pool of London, bound for Aleppo-the great Syrian emporium of Haleb-and all points east. In Fitch's own words:

In the yeere of our Lord 1583, I Ralph Fitch of London marchant being desirous to see the countreyes of the East India... did ship my selfe in a ship of London called the Tyger wherein we went for Tripolis in Syria and from thence we tooke the way for Aleppo which we went in seven dayes with the Carovan.

David Henley / CPA

The entrance and keep of the Citadel dominates the town of Aleppo.

The party stayed in Aleppo for 10 days before setting off for Baghdad and then Basra, where John Eldred elected to remain. The others turned east to the Portuguese enclave of Ormuz, where they were arrested and sent by ship to Goa. For a while it seemed as though the expedition was doomed, as Goa was in the grip of the Inquisition, and the fate of English protestant "heretics" would almost certainly be execution by burning alive at the barbarous auto-da-fé. Fortunately for Fitch and his companions, however, an English Jesuit, Father Thomas Stevens, took his fellow-countrymen under his protection and arranged bail for them. At this point James Story decided 'partly for fear and partly for want of a means to relieve himself' to become a Jesuit, and left the party. The three remaining travellers used a hunting expedition as a cover to break bail and slip away to the north, into the territories of the Great Moghul, Akbar.

David Henley / CPA

Buland Darwaza (Victory Gate), entrance to the Jama Masjid, Fatehpur Sikri.

Fitch, Newbery and Leedes arrived at the city of Fatehpur Sikri, Akbar's newly-constructed capital, some time in July 1585. They remained in the city for about two months, and were apparently well treated by the emperor-at that time perhaps the most powerful ruler in the world. In September, however, the fellowship of the travellers came to an end, with Leedes staying on in Fatehpur Sikri as a pensioner of Akbar, Newbery heading north-west towards home by way of Lahore and Constantinople, and Fitch turning east to Bengal.

Of Newbery nothing more was heard. Like his former companions, Story and Leedes, he disappears from the pages of history and nothing is known of his fate. Fitch, however, pressed on eastwards, proceeding via Varanasi to the port of Sripur in Bengal, where he took ship for Chittagong, Pathein and then Syriam. He arrived at Pegu, the Burmese capital, in the middle of December 1586.

Fitch was clearly impressed, albeit in a quiet way, with the wealth and splendour of Burma. Of the great Shwedagon he writes: 'It is the fairest place, as I suppose, that is in the world'. Pegu he found an impressive city, recently rebuilt by King Bayinnaung (1551-1581), the Burmese monarch who had conquered Chiang Mai in 1558. Bayinnaung had been succeeded by his son Nandabayin (1581-1599), and it was this ruler who sat on the Burmese throne, styled "Lord of the White Elephant", at the time Fitch entered Pegu. The Englishman records that there were two towns, the Old and the New. The former was surrounded by a high stone wall and a substantial moat, while the latter was also surrounded by a high wall and 'a great ditch... with many crocodiles in it'. Fitch continues:

Pegu is a citie very great... In the olde towne are all the marchants strangers, and very many marchants of the countrey. All the goods are sold in the olde towne which is very great, and hath many suburbs round about it, and all the houses are made of Canes which they call Bambos... In the newe towne is the King and all his Nobilitie and Gentrie. The streets are the fairest that I ever saw, as straight as a line from one gate to the other, and so broad that tenne or twelve men may ride abreast through them... The houses be made of wood, and covered with tiles. The king's house is in the middle of the city, and is walled and ditched round about: and the buildings within are made of wood very sumptuously gilded, and great workemanship is upon the forefront, which is likewise very costly gilded. And the house wherein his Pagode or idole standeth is covered with tiles of silver, and all the walles are gilded with golde.

At this time links between the Burmese capital, Pegu, and the Lan Na capital, Chiang Mai, were strong. Fitch may not have known it, but Nandabayin's palace, built by his father, Bayinnaung, was the great Kambawzathadi (now under reconstruction by the Burmese authorities) where King Mae Ku (1551-1564), the last independent ruler of Lan Na's Mangrai Dynasty, lived out his days as a prisoner in a gilded cage, a royal residence with a double-tiered roof provided as a courtesy by his conqueror, King Bayinnaung. Nor was Fitch likely to have known that a section of the New City wall, as well as one of the New City's twenty gates (the easternmost gate of the southern wall) had been built with funds subscribed by the City of Chiang Mai, and that as a consequence it was called Chiang Mai Gate.

Fitch did know, however, of Chiang Mai's existence, though he styles the city 'Jamahey'. At the time of his visit to Pegu, Chiang Mai was ruled by King Nawrahtaminsaw (1578-1607), son of the deceased King Bayinnaung and younger brother of King Nandabayin. The intrepid representative of London's Levant Company set out for Chiang Mai in late 1586. His report, albeit relatively short, is the earliest description we have in English of the Lan Na capital. As such, it bears recounting in full and comparison with what we know both of Chiang Mai in the time of Nawrahtaminsaw and the city as it is today [see Ancient Chiang Mai (6) in the next issue of Guidelines].

Fitch apparently stayed some days in Chiang Mai before returning, in January 1587, to Pegu. From here he sailed down the Tenasserim Coast to Melaka, a Malay port seized by the Portuguese in 1511. He arrived on 8 February, quite possibly the first Englishman to set foot in Malaya and to see the great entrepot through which the Portuguese channelled the rich spice trade of the Indonesian Archipelago and the fabulous luxuries of China. Fitch had reached his goal, and it was time for him to return home, as swiftly and as discreetly as possible, taking with him information which would, within a few short decades, help see the Portuguese displaced by the English and the Dutch as the dominant European trading powers in Asia.

Chaweewan Chuchuay / CPA

Kathakali performance, Kerala.

He first retraced his route to Pegu, then took ship from the Burmese port of Pathein to Bengal. From here he took another ship-and another risk, for the vessel was Portuguese-to Goa, via Colombo in Sri Lanka and Cochin in the present-day Indian state of Kerala. Next he sailed to the Persian Gulf, disembarking at Basra before proceeding, overland, to Tripoli in northern Lebanon. Here he 'found English shipping' and, safe from the Portuguese for the first time in years, 'came with a prosperous voyage to London, where by God's assistance I safely arrived the nine and twentieth of Aprill 1591, having beene eight yeares out of my native countrey'.

David Henley / CPA

Porta de Santiago, all that remains of the old Portugese Fort, Malacca.

The England Fitch returned to was different to, and more confident, than the one he had left. In 1588 the English had defeated the Spanish Armada and no longer needed to fear any power at sea. The route to the Indies lay open, and Fitch's hard-won information was of inestimable value. The Levant Company asked him to submit 'an ample relation of his wonderful travailes', from which our existing account of Fitch's travels, entitled 'The Voyage of Master Ralph Fitch, Merchant of London, to Ormus, and so to Goa in the East India, to Cambaia, Ganges, Bengala; to Bacola and Chonderi, to Pegu, to Jamahay in the Kingdome of Siam, and backe to Pegu, and thence to Malacca, Zeilan, Cochin, and all the coast of East India: Begun in the Yeere of our Lord 1583, and ended in 1591' (1598-1600), clearly originates.

As a consequence of his travels and subsequent report, Ralph Fitch became quite a celebrity. It is probable that William Shakespeare read of his travels and from this derived the reference to the Tyger in Macbeth.

In 1600 Queen Elizabeth I issued a Charter for the formation of the East India Company, and it was 'ordered that Master Eldred [safely returned from Basra] and Master Fitch shall... confer of the merchandise fit to be provided for the first voyage'. Later, in 1606, Fitch was again consulted by the company to provide the correct titles for letters of introduction to various eastern dignitaries, including the King of Cambay and the Governor of Aden. Records of wills lodged at Somerset House in London indicate that Fitch died between 3 October and 15 October 1616, apparently both celebrated and respected. His biographer, Michael Edwards, claims with some substance that 'largely as a result of his travels, the East India Company came into being'. In Chiang Mai, however, he will be better remembered as the first Westerner to leave an apparently authentic account of this ancient city.

Text by Andrew Forbes, images by David Henley. © CPA Media, 2005

Contributions

1.

For a full version of Fitch's travels in both Pegu and Chiang Mai go to The School of Oriental and African Studies Bulletin of Burma Research, Vol 2, No. 2 (Autumn 2004), pp. 167-79, readily accessible at: http://web.soas.ac.uk/burma/pdf/Fitch.pdf [AF]