Abstract for the Japan and Britain, 1613. Parallels and Exchanges conference, 19-21 September 2013, London, England.
Samuli Kaislaniemi
University of Helsinki
The surviving records of the English East India Company venture to Japan (1613-1623) have long been recognized as a treasure trove of information on the encounter of Early Modern Japan and Europe. The most prominent voice in the records belongs to the head of the trading post, Richard Cocks. Cocks is primarily known for his journal, which contains detailed descriptions of Japan, from the lay of the land and its climate to the inhabitants and their strange customs. Such descriptions can also be found in Cocks’s letters – not so much in the letters he wrote from Japan to his employers, but in those he sent to his erstwhile patron Sir Thomas Wilson, and to the Secretary of State, Sir Robert Cecil.
The contents of these letters can be explained by Cocks’s earlier career. It is less well known that another collection of letters from Cocks survives, dating from before he joined the EIC. For some ten years, Cocks worked as a merchant in Bayonne in France, and a hundred-odd letters from him survive from 1603-1609. When placed in their context, these letters can be seen to form a part of the voluminous correspondence generated by the intelligence network under Cecil.
In this paper, I will describe Cocks’s role in the intelligence network of Sir Robert Cecil. I will then reflect on his EIC career and later writings in the light of his earlier activities. Cocks was employed in the intelligence network as a middleman, and his early letters give us new insights into the intertwining networks of commerce, diplomacy and intelligence. But they also show that his later letters to Wilson and Cecil from Japan can now be seen as a continuation of his services of providing intelligence from and on foreign states.