Morson, Ian

Ian Morson was a Regular Officer in the British Army and has served with the Indian and Malaysian Armies. Having lived in India, Malaysia and Thailand, he has visited nearly all of the countries mentioned by Alexander Hamilton. He has received awards from the British and Malaysian Governments. A member of the Siam Society, he is the author of The Connection: Phuket, Penang and Adelaide (1993) and Four Hundred Years: Britain and Thailand (2000).

British Sea Captain Alexander Hamilton’s New Account of the East Indies (17th-18th Century)

2002 0-7734-7212-6
This is a new edition of one of the most important accounts of the Indian Ocean and Asia during the late 17th century. It is heavily annotated with hundreds of footnotes, and completely indexed. Since its first publication in Scotland and England ( in 1727 and 1744, respectively), it has only been republished once, in a limited edition in 1930. It is a fascinating insight into the life of a Scottish seafarer, and an extraordinary history of southeast Asia, the Indian Ocean, and other areas. Hamilton was an eye-witness to wars, pirate attacks, scheming English and Asian profiteers, and imprisonment. This edition is taken from the original text of the 1727 edition. Footnotes assist clarification of minor points of history and obsolete terms or names. A Glossary of place names updating Hamilton’s phonetic version to a current nomenclature is given at the end of the text.