Cornelis Matelief, Hugo Grotius, and the King of Siam (1605–1616): Agency, initiative, and diplomacy

2019 ◽  
Vol 54 (1) ◽  
pp. 123-156 ◽  
Author(s):  
PETER BORSCHBERG
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Southeast Asia ◽  
International Law ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Dutch Government ◽  
Dutch East India Company ◽  
Chinese Market ◽  
Hugo Grotius ◽  
Unpublished Manuscripts ◽  
Supreme Commander

AbstractThis article addresses the proactive agency of the Siamese kings in cementing commercial and diplomatic ties with the Dutch in the first two decades of the seventeenth century. The focus will be on two interrelated developments: one, the first diplomatic mission to the Dutch Republic in 1608–1610 and, two, a scheme hatched by Siamese officials to assist the Dutch in obtaining access to the Chinese market. This was deemed necessary after the Dutch, supported by some overseas Chinese businessmen from Southeast Asia, failed to gain trading access in 1604. On the Dutch side, two men stand in the limelight: Admiral Cornelis Matelief de Jonge, a director of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) and supreme commander of its second fleet to Asia, and Hugo Grotius, who at the time was a rising star in the Dutch government and would later be celebrated as one of the pathfinders of modern international law. Both their published and unpublished manuscripts will be examined to ascertain how Matelief and the VOC directors reacted to these Siamese initiatives and how, in turn, the admiral sought to mobilize and co-opt the Siamese into his own commercial and military agenda, with the help of Grotius.

Freitas Versus Grotius (1959)

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. H. Alexandrowicz
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Legal Status ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Dutch East India Company ◽  
Hugo Grotius ◽  
Straits Of Malacca ◽  
State Relations ◽  
The University ◽  
Inter State

This chapter considers the work of Franciscus Seraphin de Freitas, a professor at the University of Valadolid, in particular his treatise entitled De Justo Imperio Lusitanorum Asiatico, and compares his influence to that of Hugo Grotius. Freitas and Grotius were participants in a case that arose from the seizure of a Portuguese vessel in the Straits of Malacca by a Dutch Admiral employed by the Dutch East India Company. Its capture was questioned by some Company members who opposed the adjudication of the prize by the Dutch Admiralty Court. Grotius defended the case and Freitas was chosen to state a case for the King of Spain who was also then the sovereign of Portugal. The chapter argues that Freitas deserves his due place among the writers of the seventeenth century who contributed to the clarification of problems relating to the legal status of the sea and to European–Asian inter-state relations.

Vietnamese Ceramic Trade to the Philippines in the Seventeenth Century

1999 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-21 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kerry Nguyen-Long
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Contemporary Literature ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Archaeological Sites ◽  
Dutch East India Company ◽  
Island Southeast Asia ◽  
The Face ◽  
New Evidence

This paper examines the trade in ceramics from northern Vietnam into island Southeast Asia in the third quarter of the seventeenth century. It focuses on two issues: the question of typology of Vietnamese ceramics and the feasibility of these wares entering the southern Philippines during the years 1663–82. The compilation of an accurate typology has been inhibited by exceedingly brief descriptions in trade records, and the difficulty has been further compounded by the fact that although the Dutch East India Company (VOC) records show Vietnamese ceramics were imported into Batavia and dispersed to regional godowns, no material has yet been reported from either archaeological excavations or accidental finds in island Southeast Asia that can with certainty be ascribed to this era. Furthermore, items proposed in the ceramic literature as wares exported to Southeast Asia in the seventeenth century are, in the face of new evidence, no longer convincing. The typology put forward in this paper is based on VOC trade records and the contemporary literature. It broadly matches material from archaeological sites in Vietnam and in Japan that are from co-eval contexts. Previously untapped archaeological findings from Vietnam contribute a new dimension to this issue.

scholarly journals The value of Admiral Matelieff's writings for studying the history of Southeast Asia,c.1600–1620

2017 ◽  
Vol 48 (3) ◽  
pp. 414-435
Author(s):  
Peter Borschberg
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Political Power ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
Dutch Republic ◽  
Malay Peninsula ◽  
Dutch East India Company ◽  
East Indies ◽  
History Of

Cornelis Matelieff de Jonge (also Cornelis Cornelisz. Matelief) was a director of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) and fleet commander of a voyage to the East Indies in 1605–08. On his return to the Dutch Republic in September 1608, he wrote a series of epistolary memorials, or ‘discourses’, in which he recommended sweeping reforms in the way in which the VOC conducted business in Asia. Not only did these recommendations serve as a blueprint for subsequent developments of the VOC during the early seventeenth century, the documents also made astute observations about the dynamics of trade, geopolitics, agency of the Asian rulers as well as political power on the Malay Peninsula, Java, Maluku and Borneo. This article problematises these primary sources and demonstrates how they can be profitably mined for the history of trade and diplomacy of early seventeenth century Southeast Asia.

Preparing Mare liberum for the Press: Hugo Grotius' Rewriting of Chapter 12 of De iure praedae in November-December 1608

Grotiana ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 246-280 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martine Julia van Ittersum
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Driving Forces ◽  
East India Company ◽  
The Political ◽  
Dutch East India Company ◽  
Hugo Grotius ◽  
The Press ◽  
History Of ◽  
The One ◽  
The Impact

AbstractThis article reconstructs the printing history of Hugo Grotius's Mare liberum (The Free Sea, 1609). It examines the political circumstances which prompted the pamphlet's publication, but then seemed to conspire against it, and relates these to Grotius's revision of chapter 12 of Ms. BPL 917 in Leiden University Library, the one surviving copy of De iure praedae (The Commentary on the Law of Prize and Booty, 1604-1608). While preparing chapter 12 for the press, he made a serious effort to tone down its bellicose rhetoric, erasing, for example, all references to the Spanish claims to the Americas. His aim was to placate the French envoy Pierre Jeannin and his own political patron Johan van Oldenbarnevelt, the driving forces behind the negotiations for the Twelve Years' Truce (1609-1621). In the context of these negotiations, Grotius was at pains to downplay his radical rights theories. The subjective right of punishment only received a mention in the conclusion of Mare liberum, for example. Yet a discarded outline for the pamphlet's preface shows that the argument of De iure praedae remained uppermost in his mind, witness the outline's denunciation of the 'poisonings, perfidy and crimes of the Portuguese'. Both De iure praedae and Mare liberum had been commissioned by the Dutch East India Company (VOC) for the express purpose of influencing political developments in its favour. Yet neither treatise had the impact originally intended by Grotius and the VOC directors. Ironically, these occasional writings became classics of international law instead.

Slaves and Tyrants: Dutch Tribulations in Seventeenth-Century Mrauk-U

1997 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 201-253 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sanjay Subrahmanyam
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Dutch East India Company ◽  
Rural Settlements ◽  
Bad Faith ◽  
South And Southeast Asia ◽  
History Of

AbstractThis paper is concerned with the travails of the factors of the Dutch East India Company (or VOC) in the northern Burmese kingdom of Mrauk-U (or Arakan). The Dutch entered into trade in this rather obscure region, at the frontier of South and Southeast Asia, primarily owing to their interest in slaves, to be used in urban and rural settlements under their control in Indonesia. Dutch demand fed into the logic by which the Mrauk-U state from the latter half of the sixteenth century developed a formidable war-fleet, through which raids on the peasantry in eastern Bengal were conducted by Magh captains and Luso-Asian mercenaries, who collaborated with them. However, the whole commercial relationship was underwritten by a moral and cultural tension. The Dutch factors in their writings analysed here, insisted that the Mrauk-U kings were "tyrants," citing their slave trade as a key sign; a particular target for their attacks was the ruler Thado Mintara (r. 1645-52). Yet the Dutch too were complicit in the very same slave trade, and were perhaps even aware of their own "bad faith." For their part, the rulers of Mrauk-U regarded the Dutch with suspicion, while criticising their hypocrisy and double-dealing. Such tensions, negotiated through the 1630s and a part of the 1640s, eventually led the Dutch to withdraw from the trade, and then to re-establish tenuous contacts with some difficulty in the 1650s. The paper thus explores both the history of a form of hostile trade, and the process of the creation of mutual stereotypes, that went with the nature of commercial relations.

scholarly journals Kan et privat firma føre en retfærdig krig? - Hugo Grotius og det Hollandske Østasiatiske Kompagni

2018 ◽  
pp. 49-64
Author(s):  
Mathias Hein Jessen
Keyword(s):  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Free Trade ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Just War ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Dutch East India Company ◽  
Home State ◽  
Hugo Grotius ◽  
The Right ◽  
Commercial Expansion

Hugo Grotius wrote some of his earlier works—the De jure praedae and the Mare Liberum— on direct commission from the United Dutch East India Company (VOC) that sought to legitimize the attack on the Portuguese carrack Sta. Catarina and their continued (violent) expansion to the markets of Southeast-Asia. In the process, Grotius establishes the company as a distinct actor who can wage a just war in a state of nature, and as a subject of its home state. In this article, it is shown how Grotius thoughts on just war, sovereignty, natural law and property were developed while defending both the Dutch right to free trade and the right of United Netherland to wage a just war against their oppressor, the King of Spain and Portugal. But what was stated as the right of all to free trade and to the freedom of the seas also became a powerful argument for the continued violent commercial expansion of the Dutch and the Europeans.

The Economic Relationship between the Ottoman Empire and Southeast Asia in the Seventeenth Century

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. C. S. Peacock
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Southeast Asian ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Dutch East India Company ◽  
Economic Relationship ◽  
Spice Trade ◽  
Economic Ties

Southeast Asia was linked to the Ottoman Empire by economic ties, in particular the spice trade, but the nature of this relationship is poorly understood, especially for the seventeenth century. Its study is hampered by the lack of archival evidence, and this chapter draws on a variety of sources, both literary and archival, to investigate Southeast Asian exports to the Ottoman lands. It argues, in contrast to much existing scholarship, that direct commercial links remained important throughout the period, and that European traders such as the Dutch East India Company (VOC) remained largely excluded from this trade till the end of the seventeenth century. Ottoman exports to Southeast Asia, predominantly textiles and horses, are also examined. The chapter also considers the role of Ottoman subjects who sought to make their fortunes in Southeast Asia.

Inventing the English Massacre

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alison Games
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
British Empire ◽  
English Language ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Dutch East India Company ◽  
Violent Event ◽  
The Indian Ocean ◽  
English East India Company ◽  
British Culture

This book explains how a conspiracy trial featuring English, Japanese, and Indo-Portuguese co-conspirators who allegedly plotted against the Dutch East India Company in the Indian Ocean in 1623 produced a diplomatic crisis in Europe and became known for four centuries in British culture as the Amboyna Massacre. The story of the transformation of this conspiracy into a massacre is a story of Anglo-Dutch relations in the seventeenth century and of a new word in the English language, massacre. The English East India Company drew on this new word to craft an enduring story of cruelty, violence, and ingratitude. Printed works—both pamphlets and images—were central to the East India Company’s creation of the massacre and to the story’s tenacity over four centuries as the texts and images were reproduced during conflicts with the Dutch and internal political disputes in England. By the eighteenth century, the story emerged as a familiar and shared cultural touchstone. By the nineteenth century, the Amboyna Massacre became the linchpin of the British Empire, an event that historians argued well into the twentieth century had changed the course of history and explained why the British had a stronghold in India. The broad familiarity with the incident and the Amboyna Massacre’s position as an early and formative violent event turned the episode into the first English massacre. It shaped the meaning of subsequent acts of violence, and placed intimacy, treachery, and cruelty at the center of massacres in ways that endure to the present day.

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