Peter Mundy

Peter Mundy (fl. 1600 – 1667) was a seventeenth-century British merchant trader, traveller and writer. He was the first Briton to record, in his Itinerarium Mundi ('Itinerary of the World'), tasting Chaa (tea) in China and travelled extensively in Asia, Russia and Europe.

Mundy came from Penryn in south Cornwall. In 1609 he accompanied his father, a pilchard trader to Rouen aross the Channel in Normandy, and was then sent to Gascony to learn French. In May 1611 he went as a cabin-boy in a merchant ship, and gradually rose in life until he became of independent circumstances.

He visited Constantinople, returning to London overland, and afterwards made a journey to Spain. On 6 March 1628 he left Blackwall for Surat (India), where he arrived on 30 September 1628. In November 1630 he travelled to Agra while in the employ of the East India Company, and remained there until 17 December 1631, when he proceeded to Puttana on the borders of Bengal. He returned to Agra and Surat, and leaving the latter in February 1634, arrived off Dover on 9 September 1634. This portion of his travels is contained in the Harleian MS. 2286, and in the Addit. MSS. 19278-80.

He went on further voyages to India, China, and Japan, when he started from the Downs on 14 April 1636. His journals record his being served "Chaa" or tea by the Chinese and tasting chocolate aboard a Spanish merchant vessel. The fleet of four ships and two pinnaces were sent out by Sir William Courten, and Mundy seems to have been employed as a factor. His journals end somewhat abruptly, but a manuscript in the Rawlinson collection at the Bodleian Library continues the narrative of his life, including journeys to Denmark, Prussia, and Russia, which lasted from 1639 to 1648. Mundy himself made the drawings for the volume and traced his routes in red on the maps of Hondius. In 1663 he declared his travelling days over and retired to Falmouth, his journals record his own calculation of the distance he had travelled in his many voyages as 100,833 and 5/8th miles. His manuscripts were lost for nearly 300 years and then published by the Hakluyt Society.

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