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The Thornton expedition was a 1608 Tuscan expedition under Captain Robert Thornton, an Englishman, sent by Ferdinando I of Tuscany to explore northern Brazil and the Amazon River and prepare for the establishment of a settlement in northern coastal South America, which would serve as a base to export Brazilian wood to Renaissance Italy. The area that Thornton considered as a possible site of a Tuscan colony now lies in modern French Guyana, near Cayenne,〔Ridolfi, R. ''Pensieri medicei di colonizzare il Brasile'' p. 14〕 which would be colonised by France in 1630. The expedition was the only attempt by an Italian state to colonise the Americas.〔Ridolfi, R. ''Pensieri medicei di colonizzare il Brasile'', in «Il Veltro», Roma, luglio-agosto 1962, pp. 1-18〕 The Amazon region had been previously visited by numerous European explorers and traders over the course of the preceding century. Robert Harcourt sailed for Guiana in 1608, establishing an English base on the Wiapoco River which lasted a few years.〔(Hakluytus posthumus or Purchas His Pilgrimes ), Samuel Purchas, volume xvi, 1625, reprinted 1906〕 William Davies, a surgeon on the Thornton expedition noted that they expected to find the Amazon by sailing south from the West Indies until "...you shall see the Sea change to a ruddie colour, the water shall grow fresh, by these signes you may run boldly your course ."〔(Amazon Sweet Sea ), Nigel J. H. Smith, University of Texas Press, 2002〕 Sailing from Leghorn in September 1608, Thornton returned to the same port in the end of June 1609, reportedly completing the voyage without losing a man.〔John Temple Leader, (''Life of Sir Robert Dudley, Earl of Warwick and Duke of Northumberland : Illustrated with letters and documents from original sources, collected by the author, and hitherto inedited'' (1895) )〕 He brought back with him to Tuscany five or six natives, most of whom died of small-pox. Only one lived on at the Medici court for several years, and learned to speak Tuscan.〔 The natives often talked about the richness and fertility of their native land, speaking of a country rich in silver and gold.〔 Thornton himself corroborated these reports, and asserted that the country was rich in rosewood, wild sugar canes, white pepper, balsam, cotton and many other kinds of merchandise which would form an abundant commerce for the Tuscans.〔 However, once back in Tuscany, Thornton found that Ferdinando I had died, and that his successor Cosimo II was uninterested in the establishment of a colony. Thornton was ready to sail back to the area between the rivers Orinoco and Amazon in the summer of 1609 with Italian settlers from Livorno and Lucca, but the project was scrapped.〔Ridolfi, R. ''Pensieri medicei di colonizzare il Brasile'', in «Il Veltro», Roma, luglio-agosto 1962, p. 12〕 ==References== 〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Thornton expedition」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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