Jean-Baptiste Tavernier

Tavernier was born in Paris of a French or Flemish Huguenot family that had emigrated to Antwerp to escape persecution; they subsequently returned to Paris after the publication of the Edict of Nantes, which promised protection for French Protestants. Both his father Gabriel and his brother Melchior Tavernier were cartographers, and it is clear from the accuracy of his drawings that Tavernier received some instruction in the art of cartography and engraving. The conversations he heard in his father's house inspired Tavernier with an early desire to travel, and by his sixteenth year he had already visited England, the Low Countries and Germany. In 1624, at eighteen, Tavernier took service with the Viceroy of Hungary. By 1629, after four and a half years, he had grown restless. At the invitation of the young Duke of Rethel, to whom he had previously been briefly attached as a guide and translator, Tavernier traveled to Mantua and took service as an ensign of artillery under the duke's father, the Duke of Nevers, who was besieging the city. In the following year Tavernier traveled, as a translator, with an Irish mercenary in the service of the emperor, Colonel Walter Butler (afterwards notorious for killing Albrecht von Wallenstein). In the Six Voyages, Tavernier states that he departed from Butler's company, in 1630, with the intention of traveling to Ratisbon (Regensburg), to attend the investiture of the son of Emperor Ferdinand II as King of the Romans. However, as the investiture did not take place until 1636, it is probable that he attended the ceremony between his first and second voyages. By his own account, he had seen Italy, Switzerland, Germany, Poland, and Hungary, as well as France, England and the Low Countries, and spoke the principal languages of these countries.

Tavernier was now eager to visit the East. At Ratisbon – with the help of Père Joseph, Cardinal Richelieu's agent and éminence grise –Tavernier was able to join the retinue of a pair of French travellers, M. de Chapes and M. de St. Liebau, who had received a mission to go to the Levant. In their company he reached Constantinople early in 1631, where he spent eleven months, and then proceeded by Tokat, Erzerum, and Erivan to Safavid Persia. His farthest point in this first journey was the Persian city of Isfahan. He returned by Baghdad, Aleppo, Alexandretta, Malta, and Italy, and was again in Paris in 1633. Of the next five years of Tavernier's life, nothing is known with certainty. However, Joret, his French biographer, claims that during this period he may have become controller of the household of Gaston, Duke of Orléans. We do know that twice during his Six Voyages he claimed the Duke's patronage.

In September 1638, Tavernier began a second journey. This journey lasted until 1643; during this expedition, he traveled via Aleppo to Persia, thence to India as far as Agra, and from there to the Kingdom of Golconda. He visited the court of the Mughal—Emperor Shah Jahan—and made his first trip to the Kollur diamond mines.

• Illustration — An illustration by Tavernier of Indians performing Yoga under a Banyan tree • Illustration — Church and castle with its minaret-style tower, built in 1680 for Tavernier, at Aubonne, Switzerland The second journey was followed by four others. In these later voyages, Tavernier traveled as a merchant of the highest rank, trading in costly jewels and other precious wares, and finding his chief customers among the greatest princes of the East. On his third journey (1643–49), he went as far as Java, and returned by the Cape. His relations with the Dutch proved not wholly satisfactory, and a long lawsuit on his return yielded but imperfect redress. A fourth voyage (1651–55) took Tavernier to Alexandretta, Aleppo, Basra (where he reported on the Mandaeans, which he referred to as the "Christians of St. John"), Persian Bandar Abbas, Masulipatam, Gandikot, Golkonda, Surat, Ahmedabad, Pegu, Dagon, Ava, Mogok, back to Bandar Abbas and Isfahan, thence back to Paris. During his last two voyages, his fifth and sixth (1657–1662, 1664–1668), he did not proceed beyond India. The details of these voyages are often obscure; they nevertheless added to an extraordinary knowledge of overland Eastern trade routes and brought the now famous merchant into close and friendly communication with the greatest Oriental potentates. These last voyages also secured for him a large fortune and great reputation at home. He was presented to Louis XIV, in whose service he had travelled sixty thousand leagues by land. In 1662, Tavernier married Madeleine Goisse, daughter of a Parisian jeweller. He received patents of nobility on 16 February 1669; in the following year purchased, for 60,000 livres, the Seigneury of Aubonne, located in the Duchy of Savoy, near Geneva.

• Illustration — An Italian map (1682) gives credit to Tavernier's accounts among its sources The closing years of Tavernier's life are not well documented; the times were not favorable for a Protestant in France. In 1684, Tavernier traveled to Brandenburg at the request of Frederick William I, Elector of Brandenburg, to discuss the elector's scheme to charter his own East India Company. The elector wished Tavernier to become his ambassador to India. He awarded Tavernier the honorary posts of Chamberlain and Counselor of Marine. The scheme, unfortunately, came to nothing. In 1679, Louis XIV began to seriously undermine his Protestant subjects. He established the Bureau of Conversion to reward Catholic converts. In January 1685, Tavernier managed to sell his Château Aubonne to Marquis Henri du Quesne for 138,000 livres plus 3,000 livres for horses and carriages. Tavernier's timing was good: in October of the same year, Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes. Louis then instituted the Verification of Nobility which deprived those Protestant noblemen who refused to convert to Catholicism of their titles. Tavernier was technically a subject of the Duke of Savoy, but Louis threatened to invade the duchy, if the duke, his son-in-law, did not follow his lead. In 1687, despite an edict prohibiting Protestants from leaving France, Tavernier left Paris and traveled to Switzerland. In 1689, he passed through Berlin and Copenhagen and entered Russia on a passport issued by the king of Sweden, and a visa signed by the Czar's First Minister, Prince Andrea Gallatin, perhaps with the intent of traveling overland to India. It is not known if he met with Czar Peter who was just 17 years old at that time. What is known is that Tavernier, as with all foreigners resident in Moscow, would have been required, by imperial decree, to take up residence in the foreign quarter, known as the German Suburb (Nemetskaya Sloboda). Peter was very interested in all things foreign, had many friends in the suburb, and spent a great deal of time there, beginning in mid-March 1689. Tavernier arrived in Moscow in late February or early March of that year. Tavernier was a famous man. Given Peter's obsession with all things European, it would be surprising if they did not meet. Tavernier died in Moscow in 1689, at the age of eighty-four. Tavernier was the model of the inveterate traveler, as well as the most consequential diamond dealer of his age. His remarkable three-hundred-year-old book (Le Six Voyages...1677) tells the stories of many significant gems that remain in the public mind today. Tavernier's biographer Charles Joret, produced a fragment of an article published in a Danish journal by Frederick Rostgaard, who states that he interviewed the aging adventurer and was told of his intention to travel to Persia via Moscow. Tavernier was not, however, able to complete this last journey.

• Nouvelle Relation De l’intéreur Du Sérail Du Grand Seigneur Contenant Plusieurs Singularitex Qui Jusqu’icy N’ont Point esté mises En Lumiere. Chez Gervais Clouzier, 1st ed. Paris, 7 February 1675. • Les Six Voyages de Jean Baptiste Tavernier, Ecuyer, Baron d’Aubonne, en Turquie, en Perse, et aux Indes. Chez Olivier de Varennes, 1st ed. Paris 1675. • A New Relation Of The Inner-Part of The Grand Seignor’s Seraglio, Containing Several Remarkable Particulars, Never Before Expos’d To Public View bound with (p.99) A Short Description of all the Kingdoms Which Encompas the Euxine and Caspian Seas, Delivered by the author after Twenty Years Travel Together with a Preface Containing Several Remarkable Observations concerning divers of the forementioned countries. 1st English Edition, R. L. and Moses Pitt, 1677. • The Six Voyages of John Baptista Tavernier: Baron of Aubonne, by Jean-Baptiste Tavernier, tr. John Phillips. William Godbid, for Robert Littlebury at the King's Arms in Little Britain, and Moses Pitt at the Angel in St Paul's Church-yard., 1677. This early edition is at the United States Geological Survey Library, and was formerly owned by George Frederick Kunz and Victor Child Villiers, 7th Earl of Jersey. * • Tavernier, Jean-Baptiste, Travels in India, 2nd ed., edited by William Crooke. 2 vols. Oxford University Press, 1925. Online copy: Vol. II