LINSCHOTEN, Jan Huygen van.

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His Discours of Voyages into ye Easte & West Indies. First edition in English, a foundational work in the European apprehension of India and the East. This handsome copy is extra-illustrated with 30 plates from the first edition of 1596. Linschoten's book, for half a century the foremost guide for ships sailing to the East, was a spur to the formation of the English and Dutch East India companies.Jan Huyghen van Linschoten (1563-1611) initially served as bookkeeper to the Portuguese archbishop of Goa, spending six years (1583-89) in India, travelling throughout the Malabar and Coromandel coastal regions, "and in his spare time compiled a secret dossier on the eastern sea routes that he subsequently smuggled back to Europe" (Howgego).After his return to the Netherlands, he published the Itinerario, as he titled his book, and it became an immediate best-seller: many reprints and translations into German (1598), Latin (1599), and French (1610) followed. It describes in comprehensive detail the author's journey from Goa to his home in the Netherlands and "created a sensation" (Oaten, p. 120), as Linschoten revealed Portuguese sea routes to the East - "highly specific nautical information that for more than a century had been a well-kept secret" - and blackened the name of Portuguese and Spanish regional overlords, creating an "extremely inflammatory and influential piece of propaganda" (Wojciehowski, p. 195).The translator was William Phillip, often employed by John Wolfe, "the f

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