English and Irish settlement on the river Amazon 1550-1646

The Hakluyt Society, second series n° 171, 1989, 499p, illustrated, with references and index, linnen hardcover met stofomslag, lichte slijtage van omslag, boek is in nieuwstaat

From as early as the middle of the 16th century Englishmen were interested in the possibility of exploring the fabled resources of the great river of the Amazons. During the first half of the 17th century English and Irish projectors made persistent efforts to maintain trading factories and plantation there. From at least 1612 to 1632 they inhabited settlements along the north channel of the estuary from Cabo do Norte to the Equator, making very considerable profits from tobacco, dyes and hardwoods. The profitability of their holdings was such that, when the Portuguese made the river too risky for foreign interlopers after 1630, former English and Irish planters sought to return there under licence of first the Spanish and then the Portuguese crown. The Irish may actually have been permitted to do so in the mid-1640s.