Abstract
It was Ormuz that was to unite the English and Persian sovereigns for the first time. By the time of Robert’s first embassy in London and the appearance in print of Anthony’s Relation, all eyes were on the Persian Gulf, as a means of access to Persia and other markets. The most strategic site, self-evidently, was the island of Ormuz, located at the narrowest straits and a lucrative entrepôt under Portuguese control for a century. The strategic importance of Ormuz to Persia as well as to European trade was obvious. Anthony’s Relation itself presented Shah ‘Abbas’s Vizier describing the history, contexts and advantages of attacking the Portuguese settlement, and Anthony would later advise his new Spanish employers of the wisdom of redirecting the silk trade through Ormuz rather than Ottoman Aleppo.1 But ships would be crucial to any attempt on Ormuz and Shah ‘Abbas’s weak naval powers were also well known. ‘Gallies I haue none’, the Relation has him sanguinely observe.2
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Notes
On the place of Ormuz alongside Goa and Portugal’s East African settlements, see Nicola Melis, ‘The Importance of Hormuz for Luso-Ottoman Gulf-Centred Policies in the 16th Century: Some Observations Based on Contemporary Sources’, in Revisiting Hormuz: Portuguese Interactions in the Persian Gulf Region in the Early Modern Period, ed. Dejanirah Couto and Rui Manuel Loureiro (Wiesbaden: Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation/Harrassowitz Verlag, 2008), pp. 107–20 (especially pp. 113–14).
John Crouther, Richard Steel and later Edward Connock were the agents involved. The development was not without its critics: despite the promising early reports of Edward Connock and later EIC agents, and despite being granted access to ‘Gombroon’, the ambassador Sir Thomas Roe was unconvinced about its potential. See Rudolph P. Matthee, The Politics of Trade in Safavid Iran: Silk for Silver. 1600–1730 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1999). Chaoter 4.
For example, two notable plays, John Denham’s The Sophy (1642) and Robert Baron’s Mirza (1655), drew inspiration from Herbert’s text. See Matthew Birchwood, Staging Islam in England: Drama and Culture, 1640–1685 (Woodbridge: D. S. Brewer, 2007), pp. 70–8.
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© 2014 Jane Grogan
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Grogan, J. (2014). Epilogue: Ormuz. In: The Persian Empire in English Renaissance Writing, 1549–1622. Early Modern Literature in History. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137318800_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137318800_6
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