RESERVED

The first Dutch edition of Jenkinson’s travel report describing the search for an overland trade route to Cathay through Central Asia, undertaken between 1557 and 1560 by order of the Muscovy Company. The work was published as part of a collection of 127 voyages and travel accounts spanning 1246 to 1696. Previously translated into French by Melchisédec Thevenot in his Relations de Divers Voyages Curieux, Jenkinson’s was one of the first European reports detailing trade in and around Central Asia and the regions bordering the Caspian Sea since the decline of the Mongol Empire.  

The report was written in 1560 whilst Jenkinson awaited his return voyage to England. He had departed Moscow for Kazan in April 1558 after obtaining letters of safe-conduct, then travelled to Astrakhan, sailed across the Caspian Sea, moved eastward to Urgench, and finally reached Bukhara in Bactria. The initial plan to travel further through Persia was abandoned after his group learned that the old overland trade routes had been ravaged by war. Jenkinson gives detailed geographical descriptions of the regions he passes through, making particular note of bodies of water. He describes the inhabitants both past and present of each place, their history, language, religion, and customs. There is a brief section devoted to describing the nomadic lifestyle of those living around the Caspian Sea, where Jenkinson notes that Tatars travel with great hordes of camels, horses, and sheep, and never ride without their bows, arrows, and hawks.  

Particularly enlightening are his descriptions of trade. In Astrakhan, he observes that chief commodities include skins, vessels, saddles, knives, brought by the Russians, and a variety of silks brought by the Tatars, some produced in Persia. In Bukhara, he describes the large caravans that travel from India, Persia and Russia to partake in the merchant fair, which in times past drew traders from as far as Cathay. Throughout his journey, he makes enquiries into Cathay’s current state of affairs, the Muscovy Company’s ultimate goal never far from his mind despite numerous threats to his life, such as the storm on the Caspian Sea and the bandits attacking his caravan of 600 camels.  

Anthony Jenkinson (1529-1611) was a merchant, captain, and the first recorded English traveller to Russia and Central Asia. Little is known of his personal life, but his professional exploits are well-documented in his travel accounts. He was appointed captain-general of the Muscovy Company, and between 1557 and 1571, he visited Russia four times, hoping to not only to solidify Anglo-Russian commercial relations, but also to obtain the tsar’s approval to ultimately find a trade route through his domain into Central Asia and Cathay. He is perhaps best known for his map of Muscovy and Tartary, included in Ortelius’ seminal Theatrum Orbis Terrarum in 1570. Jenkinson’s travelogues were later incorporated into Haklyut’s Principal Navigations, the first edition of which appeared in 1589.

Printer and publisher Pieter van der Aa established himself in 1683 after amassing a substantial number of maps and prints, many of which he reissued in his atlases and collections of voyages. After the death of Abraham Elzevier in 1712, van der Aa became an unofficial ‘heir’ to the Elzevier printing establishment. The firm was sold in 1713 and its typographical materials (including types from Thomas Erpenius, the Leiden orientalist) were auctioned off, with van der Aa acquiring more than half the material.