イングランド人によるギニア航海と船上遺言書1553 ~ 1565年

Personal Narratives of Seamen in the Guinea Trade 1553-1565: the Analysis of Shipboard Wills

井内 太郎

歴史的世界へのアプローチ

Approaches to history essays in honour of Hirokazu Tsurushima

NCID BC12336539

In the mid-sixteenth century, seamen and seafaring traders left London to trade with equatorial West Africa. It was the dawn of the deep-sea English merchant marine. The Guinea trade, especially gold in Mina (The Gold Coast), attracted many seamen and merchants in England. But it should be noted that it entailed great sacrifice and danger; of the estimated 1000 to 1500 seafarers who embarked on nine voyages between 1553 and 1565, approximately 300 to 500 died. Many of these seamen made their wills on board ship at the point of death.
Although the practice of will-making during the early modern period within diverse English communities has been studied, scant attention has been paid to wills of this kind. With the publication in 1992 of the surviving Guinea trade wills of 1553-1565, analysis is now possible. This article examines them for the first time.
Firstly, the collection casts light on the making of wills at sea. In the sixteenth century most common seamen were unlettered and so literate crewmates, such as quartermasters, boatswains or gunners (only exceptionally the ship's master or captain) took the testators' dictation. As a result, the wills are rich in diversity of form and often incomplete.
Secondly, the wills provide a personal narrative of the lives of the common seamen who made them and the journeys they made. Mostly about loan clearance and naming their crewmates as heirs, they reveal that the shipboard community was not only based on relationships of mutual and deep trust, but also that its economy was very active. The seamen were neither mere ciphers of the London promoters nor an indistinguishable proletariat. They had their own personalities, shipboard life-styles and culture.
Lastly, the wills cast light on the social history of maritime communities in early modern England. The development of deep-sea voyages and trade to West Africa, North America and East Indies had much greater social and cultural influence on the maritime communities than before

日本語

刀水書房

[ISBN] 9784887084612 ～の一部分である