The Flemish merchant Jacques de Coutre (van de Cauteren?) from Bruges (1570-1640) spent thirty years between 1592 and 1623 as a gem trader and adventurer in Portuguese Asia. He was based in Goa, but travelled widely throughout the Indian Subcontinent and Southeast Asia; as far as the Philippine Islands and Siam in the eastern direction, and Persia and Mesopotamia to the west. Back in Europe, he settled down in Madrid and passed away in Zaragoza in 1640. During his retirement in Spain, he composed his memoirs about his Asian experiences. The first draft, written in Creole Portuguese, was thereupon translated in Spanish with the help of his son Esteban. Together with a series of political and economic appendices, this manuscript is nowadays kept in the Spanish National Library in Madrid, where it was discovered by the Belgian historian Eddy Stols of the University of Leuven in the late 1970s. Together with Johan Verberckmoes he published the text, without the appendices, in a Dutch translation, in 1988, under the title Aziatische Omzwervingen (Asian Peregrinations). In 1991 Eddy Stols, Johan Verberckmoes and the undersigned edited and published at Madrid the whole Spanish manuscript including all its appendices, under the title Andanzas Asiáticas (AA). On basis of this source publication Singapore University Press has published Roopanjali Roy’s exact English translation of the Southeast Asian chapter and appendices. The historical contents of the text have been edited and introduced by Peter Borschberg. The title of their book is The Memoirs and Memorials of Jacques de Coutre (MM).

Dr. Borschberg, teaching at the National University of Singapore, is primarily interested in Book I of De Coutre’s autobiography and the appendices that deal with Southeast Asia. He justifies his selection as follows: “It should be noted at the outset that the main target group is Southeast Asia-oriented historians and area studies specialists, and bearing this geographic focus in mind, only book I of the Vida de Jacques de Coutre is published in the present source edition … of the memorials to the Vida, four have been selected for translation. Omitted are memorials II and VII because they do not feature a sufficient focus on Southeast Asia”.

This selective approach implies that the reader actually has to do with a mutilated, incomplete version of the autobiography of a man who lived a highly dramatic life in exotic cultures and regions in a fascinating epoch. Nonetheless, Roopanjali Roy’s elegant English translation, the beautiful illustrations, the orientating introduction and the exemplary indexes make this book a useful tool for regional historians of Southeast Asia.

As the main responsible for the Spanish text edition of De Coutre’s Andanzas Asiáticas of 1991 (AA), on which Roopanjali Roy and Borschberg base the present English translation and their annotations, I gladly acknowledge that some slips of the pen in our edition have been corrected; and that five sentences which I, unfortunately, omitted in seemingly an absence of mind, have been restored. Allow me to say, however, that I do not see why Borschberg, who is actually standing on our shoulders, should so depreciatively remark that, “This Spanish edition itself is faulty. In one instance, a paragraph from book I, chapter IV, of the Vida has been omitted. In addition, the annotations reveal a generally poor command of Asian geography, languages, and occasionally, the conditions of trade” (MM 26).

The business of excavating and editing forgotten manuscripts for a wider academic readership is a risky one: the outcome can never be an immediate 100% success, and always asks for improvements. I gladly acknowledge Borschberg’s notes that Arisbaya is not Surabaya; that Daquăo is not Deccan but Dhaka (MM 27/28), but when he remarks that my identification of the Old Strait of Singapore was based on antiquated Dutch cartographical materials, and suggests that we should have consulted an article by him on the right location published in 2010, he fails to mention that his illuminating contribution on the subject was written some 19 years later. But enough of all this nit-picking! It is well known, after all, that all of De Coutre’s handwritten texts are overcrowded with garbled and corrupted terms, as is clearly demonstrated in the long and elaborate indexes of both our publications: pages 439/481 in AA and pages 300/385 in MM. I am happy to see that the definitions and interpretations in our Spanish edition have been consulted and corrected upon whenever necessary by the Singapore team. However, even they have not been able to discover and correct all the errors in the first book of the Spanish edition of De Coutre’s Vida, as their English edition of the text shows. As I do hope that in a not-too-far-away future a Portuguese colleague will pick up the dainty task of producing a Portuguese translation of De Coutre’s manuscript, I take this occasion to add a few further corrections and suggestions for future use.

First of all, it should be noted that in the name of Johan Verberckmoes, my co-editor (and also the translator of the Dutch edition of De Coutre’s Vida of 1988), is consistently being misspelled by Dr. Borschberg as “Verbeckmoes”, with the R missing. Christóvăo Luís van Unsdiston (MM 17-18) is evidently a misreading of Christóvăo Thin van Linschoten, probably a nephew of Jan Huygen van Linschoten and son of his brother Willem Tin van Linschoten (see: Jan Huygen van Linschoten, Itinerário, Viagem ou Navegaçāo para as Indias Orientais ou Portuguesas. Ediçăo preparada por Arie Pos e Rui Manuel Loureiro. Lisbon 1997: 11-13, 59.) Amoun (MM 116) is a misreading of Javanese manuk (déwata) or bird of paradise, preceded by the Portuguese definite article o.Primam (MM 169, 375) is a misreading of Rokan, an East-Sumatran river, as is explicitly stipulated by the context of the fragment in question. The Pariaman suggested by Borschberg is, on the contrary, a West-Sumatran river, which does not make sense here. Finally, a daring suggestion: After much pondering, I believe that Enchetangan (MM 47, 166, 175, 319) should be interpreted as a misreading of Hidio Raya or The Green Queen of Patani. The enigmatic presence of the three nnn in Enchetangan is surely due to percolated ink marks from the verso-side of this page in the rough draught of De Coutre’s text in Creole-Portuguese. In all, I should like to express my admiration to both the translator and the editor of the English edition of De Coutre’s writings on Southeast Asia. I can only hope that in the near future somebody else will take up the task of translating de Coutre’s memoirs about the other regions of Monsoon Asia that he visited.