M
MA*R*CO
Guest
Robert Knox (Seefahrer)
Robert Knox (* 8. Februar 1641 in London; † 19. Juni 1720 ebenda) war ein englischer Seefahrer, der durch seine Schilderungen des Königreiches Kandy bekannt wurde.
1659 gelangte er an die Küste Ceylons und wurde von Gefolgsleuten des singhalesischen Königs Rajasinha II. nahe der Mündung des Mahaweli festgenommen und nach Kandy gebracht.
Knox blieb zwar Gefangener des Königs, ihm wurden aber einige Freiheiten gestattet: So durfte er sich innerhalb Kandys frei bewegen, er gründete ein Geschäft und verfasste ein Buch über die Zeit seiner Gefangenschaft (Historical Relation of Ceylon). Das bemerkenswerte an diesem Werk ist, dass Knox, anders als die zeitgenössischen buddhistischen Chroniken, nicht bloß das höfische Leben und die Großtaten der Könige beschrieb, sondern das einfache Leben. Knox' Werk ist somit als authentische Schilderung des Alltags im Königreich Kandy im 17. Jahrhundert von unschätzbarem Wert.
Nach 19 ½ Jahren in Gefangenschaft gelang Knox schließlich die Flucht in den niederländisch kontrollierten Norden der Insel. Die Flucht führte ihn auch nach Anuradhapura, das zuvor noch kein Europäer gesehen hatte.
Knox schrieb ein Buch über Ceylon. Es kam 1681 heraus.
Quelle: wikipedia
Robert Knox (sailor)
Robert Knox (8 February 1641 – 19 June 1720) was an English sea captain in the service of the British East India Company. He was the son of another sea captain, also named Robert Knox.
Born at Tower Hill in London, the young Knox spent most of his childhood in Surrey and was taught by James Fleetwood, later the Bishop of Winchester. He joined his father's crew on the ship Anne for his first voyage to India in 1655, at the age of 14, before returning to England in 1657. That year, Oliver Cromwell issued a charter granting the East India Company a monopoly of the Eastern trade, requiring the elder Knox and his crew to join the service of the Company.
The two Knoxes sailed for Persia in January 1658. They suffered the loss of the ship's mast in a storm on 19 November 1659, forcing them to put ashore on Ceylon, now Sri Lanka. The ship was impounded and sixteen of the crew, including the Knoxes, were taken captive by the troops of the Kandy king, Rajasinghe II. The elder Knox had inadvertently angered the king by not observing the expected formalities and had the misfortune to do so during a period of tension between the king and some of the European powers. Although the crew was forbidden from leaving the kingdom, they were treated fairly leniently; the younger Knox was able to establish himself as a farmer, moneylender and pedlar. Both men suffered severely from malaria and the elder Knox died in February 1661 after a long illness.
Robert Knox eventually escaped with one companion, Stephen Rutland, after nineteen years of captivity. The two men were able to reach Arippu, a Dutch fort on the north-west coast of the island. The Dutch treated Knox generously and transported him to Batavia (now Jakarta) in the Dutch East Indies, from where he was able to return home on an English vessel, the Caesar.[1] He arrived back in London in September 1680.
During the voyage Knox wrote the manuscript of An Historical Relation of the Island Ceylon, an account of his experiences on Ceylon, which was published in 1681.
Quelle: wikipedia
An Historical Relation of the Island Ceylon at Project Gutenberg
Read this book online: HTML 803 kB
EPUB (mit Bildern) 1.0 MB
EPUB (ohne Bilder) 309 kB
Kindle (mit Bildern) 2.7 MB
Kindle (ohne Bilder) 1.3 MB
UTF-8-Textdatei 700 kB
Link: www.gutenberg.org
