The Great BY DAVID HANNAY AUTHOR OF THE NAVY AND SEA POWER" END-PAPER CHARTS LONDON WILLIAMS AND NORGATE, LTD. 14 HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN, W.C. 2 PREFACE My modest purpose in this book has been to direct the attention of the friendly reader to a phase in the history of the growth of nations and the spread of European civilisation too often ignored or told with uncritical brevity. It is, for instance, quite usual to find a writer dealing with the growth of our power on the sea, who dismisses the whole reign of James I as a time of mere decadence and torpor. And yet, it was precisely between 1603 and 1625 that English merchants and seafaring men, gathered into or employed by Chartered Companies, founded a colonial Dominion in America and an Empire in the East. But for their labours in preparing the way, the Royal Navy might never have had occasion to cross the Atlantic or to round the Cape of Good Hope. I do not pretend to have provided an exhaustive account of all that these merchants and their skippers did. A complete narrative of the East India Company's Sixth Voyage, of all that was intimately connected with it, with necessary explanations and elucidations, would fill a volume of this size. But we have, perhaps, a quite sufficient load of books, swollen to enormous proportions by the inclusion of superfluities, and by merciless repetitions. I have desired to |