Ralph Fitch
| Ralph Fitch | |
|---|---|
| Born | c. 1550 |
| Died | 1611 |
| Occupation | merchant, explorer |
| Known for | Traveled via the Levant and Mesopotamia to India then Burma and Malacca (in Malaysia) (1583–1591) |
Ralph Fitch (c. 1550 – 1611) was a gentleman merchant of London and one of the earliest English travellers and traders to visit Mesopotamia, the Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean, India and Southeast Asia. At first he was no chronicler but he did eventually write descriptions of the south-east Asia he saw in 1583–1591, and upon his return to England, in 1591, became a valuable consultant for the British East India Company
Fitch's place of birth has long been a mystery but recent research indicates that he was most likely born in All Saints' parish, Derby. The first known documentary reference to him is in the archives of the Worshipful Company of Leathersellers, of which he was a Freeman and from which Company he received a loan of £50 for two years, 1575–77. In February 1583 he embarked in the Tyger for Tripoli and Aleppo in Syria, together with merchants John Newberry and John Eldred, a jeweller named William Leedes and a painter, James Story, all financed by the Levant Company. This was the latest in a series of English attempts to penetrate the trade of the Indian Ocean and Far East, going back to Anthony Jenkinson's travels in Central Asia in the 1550s. From Aleppo they reached the Euphrates, descended the river from Bir to Fallujah, crossed southern Mesopotamia to Baghdad, and dropped down the Tigris to Basra (May to July 1583). Here Eldred stayed behind to trade, while Fitch and the others sailed down the Persian Gulf to the Portuguese fortress and trading station at Ormuz, where they were promptly arrested as spies (at Venetian instigation, they claimed, as these resented the 16th century Portuguese commercial monopoly in the Indian Ocean that called an end to centuries of Venetian, Genoese and Pisan -plus Catalan- dealings with Arab middlemen, down from the Middle Ages) and sent as prisoners to the Portuguese viceroy at Goa (September to October).
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