Swedish East India Company Research Articles

The First and Second Charters of the Swedish East India Company (1731–1766). A Contribution to the Maritime, Economic and Social History of North- Western Europe in its Relationships with the Far East. By Christian Koninckx. Kortrijk, Belgium: Van Ghemmert Publishing Company, 1980. Pp. 560.

The First and Second Charters of the Swedish East India Company (1731–1766). A Contribution to the Maritime, Economic and Social History of North- Western Europe in its Relationships with the Far East. By Christian Koninckx. Kortrijk, Belgium: Van Ghemmert Publishing Company, 1980. Pp. 560.

The maritime routes of the Swedish East India company during its first and second charter (1731–1766)

Abstract Any study of the East India Company should incorporate an analysis of its maritime expeditions as they formed an integral part of the general economic activities of those shipping companies specialising in trade with the Far East. Such expeditions have unfortunately often been neglected by historians, perhaps because their assessment

Sir William Chambers and the Chinese Garden

On the south side of the Strand, just where it widens to encompass the church of St. Mary-le-Strand, is the rather sombre entrance to Somerset House, whose much more extensive south front looks out imposingly on to the Thames. Originally intended to house the Royal Society, the Royal Academy, and various government offices, the vast building is now partly occupied by King's College, while the rest of it is the repository of all the records which fall within the department of the Registrar-General. The building was erected between 1776 and 1788; it is the chief work of its architect, Sir William Chambers, then Surveyor-General of His Majesty's Works. But eight miles to the west of the solid magnificence of Somerset House, along the trees and lawns of the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew, rises the exotic shape of a ten-storeyed Chinese pagoda. It stands there as a memorial to an alien streak in the mind of Chambers. This friend of Dr. Johnson, this exponent of mid-eighteenth century classicism,' had in him a strain of romantic fancy that had been nurtured in far-distant lands. William Chambers was born in 1726, and, since his family had Swedish connections, at the age of sixteen he sailed for the Far East as a supercargo on one of the ships of the Swedish East India Company. After his second voyage, at about the age of twenty, he abandoned a mercantile career to spend several years studying architecture in Italy and France, though his brother John, who had started life similarly, remained in the East India trade and amassed a large fortune. Before devoting himself permanently to architecture Chambers had spent some months in Canton, the city through which all trade between China and the outside world had to pass. The young man had been fascinated by this glimpse of a civilization so completely different from his own, and had spent a considerable part of his time ashore with his sketch-

Sir William Chambers

THE July issue of the Anglo-Swedish Review contains an interesting editorial on the life and work of the architect Sir William Chambers, who was born at Gothenburg in 1723, and died in 1796 in London, when he was buried in Westminster Abbey. In 1739 he entered the service of the Swedish East India Company, and the next year sailed to China as a cadet, and in 1743–45 as an assistant. During his stay in China he devoted himself to the study of Chinese architecture, which exercised a considerable influence on his future. The importance of Chambers is due to the fact that he was the first to furnish accurate information on Chinese architectural interior decoration and garden planning based on personal observations in the East. He made his reputation by the grounds which he designed at Kew, including the pagoda in the gardens, between 1757 and 1762. In 1775 he was appointed the architect to Somerset House. He also designed mansions for Earl Gower at Whitehall and Lord Melbourne in Piccadilly. His principal publications were “Designs of Chinese Buildings, Furniture, Dresses, Machines and Utensils” (1757) and “Plans, Elevations, Sections and Perspective Views of the Gardens and Building at Kew in Surrey” (1763).