The Amboyna Massacre in English Politics, 1624–1632

1998 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
pp. 583-598 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karen Chancey
Keyword(s):  
The Netherlands ◽  
James I ◽  
East Indies ◽  
Spice Trade ◽  
English Politics

On March 9, 1623, ten English merchants were beheaded on Amboyna in Indonesia by order of Harman van Speult, the Dutch governor of the island. They died accused of plotting to seize control of Fort Victoria, the island's stronghold, in order to take over the local spice trade. Considering the number of lives lost in the centuries of conflict between Dutch and British merchants in the East Indies, the incident on Amboyna seems in hindsight to have been a rather insignificant affair. Yet the occurrence played an important role in English politics under the early Stuarts, and influenced English/Dutch relations for a century.News of the incident, which the English came to know as the Amboyna Massacre, reached England on May 29, 1624, and caused a diplomatic dilemma. James I, who was negotiating an alliance with the Netherlands against Spain, chose to deal with the situation through diplomacy rather than military reprisals, a position his son supported. It was a decision for which neither the Stuarts' contemporaries nor their modern chroniclers would forgive them. John Chamberlain, the friend and correspondent of many important court figures, wrote in July 1624 that he hoped James would “say lesse so he would do more” to make the Dutch pay for insulting English honor. By February of the next year, he was lamenting that he had “knowne the time when they [the Dutch] durst not have offered the least of those indignities we have lately swallowed and indured.” Chamberlain's belief that James's policy consisted primarily of inaction, and that it played into the hands of the Dutch, has been a popular theme in modern accounts.

Future of Export Agriculture in the Netherlands East Indies

1943 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 38-43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pieter Honig
Keyword(s):  
The Netherlands ◽  
East Indies ◽  
Export Agriculture ◽  
Netherlands East Indies

“Asia for the Asians,” Bushido, and Japanese War Crimes in the Netherlands East Indies, 1942 to 1946

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fred L. Borch
Keyword(s):  
The Netherlands ◽  
East Asian ◽  
War Crimes ◽  
Prisoners Of War ◽  
White Race ◽  
East Indies ◽  
Cultural Policies ◽  
Netherlands East Indies ◽  
Important Exception ◽  
Political Economic

The 300,000 Europeans and Eurasians residing in the Indies in March 1942 soon learned that the Japanese occupiers planned to implement political, economic, and cultural policies that would integrate the newly “liberated” colony into the “Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere.” This goal of “Japanization” was to transform everyone living in the Indies into loyal subjects of the Emperor, with one important exception: “Asia for the Asians” meant there was no place for the white race in the Netherlands East Indies (NEI). Additionally, the Japanese in the archipelago were true believers in the warrior code of Bushido, which led to widespread mistreatment of prisoners of war and spilled-over into the treatment of civilian internees. This chapter explains how the Japanese intended to eradicate Dutch civilization and how the “Asia for the Asians” philosophy and Bushido code of behavior resulted in the commission of horrific war crimes, especially against whites and Eurasians.

Private Trade and Elite Privilege. The Trial of Nicolaas Schaghen, Director of Bengal

Itinerario ◽  
1996 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 69-86 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pamela McVay
Keyword(s):  
The Netherlands ◽  
Board Of Directors ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Dutch East India Company ◽  
High Court ◽  
East Indies ◽  
Hands On ◽  
Dutch East Indies ◽  
At Home

It is common wisdom among the historians of the Dutch East Indies that everyone in the Dutch East India Company engaged in private trade. That is, ‘everyone’ traded in goods supposedly monopolized by the Company and ‘everyone’ abused his or her position to squeeze graft from the Company's trade. It was, supposedly, to get their hands on the private trade and graft that people joined the Dutch East India Company (VOC: Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie) in the first place. But back in the Netherlands the VOC's Board of Directors (the Heeren XVII) objected vociferously to private trade, which drained Company profits and shareholder revenue. To appease the Heeren XVII back at home, the various Governors-General and Councillors of the Indies (Raad van Indië), who represented the Heeren XVII in Asia, issued annual placards forbidding private trade while the High Court (Raad van Justitie) carried out infrequent desultory trials for private trade. But these prosecutions were inevitably doomed to failure, so the story goes, because everyone engaged in private trade would ‘cover’ for everyone else.

Exile, Mobility, and Re-territorialisation in Aceh and Colonial Indonesia

Itinerario ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-25
Author(s):  
Joshua Gedacht
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
The Netherlands ◽  
East Indies ◽  
Netherlands East Indies ◽  
Training Schools

For centuries, trading companies and colonial officials have sought to manipulate indigenous Asian kingdoms by banishing recalcitrant elites, thereby discouraging resistance and ensuring compliance. Less examined by scholars is how colonial officials adapted this tool in their efforts to manage mobility and achieve territorialisation at the turn of the twentieth century. Applying Josiah Heyman and Howard Campbell's framework of “re-territorialisation” to make sense of how states harness mobile flows for the purpose of redrawing boundaries and producing new political spaces, this article will examine Dutch strategies for incorporating the sultanate of Aceh into the Netherlands East Indies. Site of an infamous multi-decade war of insurgency and pacification between 1873 and the early 1900s, this Sumatran kingdom had long resisted imperial subjugation. Dutch authorities eventually moved to complete its elusive ambition of conquest by leveraging distance and forcibly sending Acehnese elites to “training schools” in Java. By fusing exile with pedagogy, colonial officials hoped to transform Acehnese elites into loyal servants of the colonial centre. Rancorous debates about the deposed Acehnese sultan, however, illustrated the limitations of such re-territorialisation schemes and the resiliency of alternative Asian geographies.

‘Behoed ons arme volk voor de vulkaan-poëten’

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 382-422
Author(s):  
Judith Bosnak ◽  
Rick Honings
Keyword(s):  
The Netherlands ◽  
The Other ◽  
Literary Studies ◽  
Poor People ◽  
Content Type ◽  
East Indies ◽  
Dutch East Indies ◽  
Literary Reception

Abstract ‘Save our poor people from the vulcano poets’. The literary reception of the Krakatoa disaster of 1883 in the Netherlands and Indonesi On August 27, 1883, the volcano Krakatau in the Dutch East Indies erupted and collapsed, causing the deaths of tens of thousands, mainly as a result of devastating tsunamis. The Krakatau eruption was one of the first disasters to take place beyond the Dutch boundaries that received so much attention in the Netherlands. Because the Indies were a Dutch colony, a response of the motherland was rather logical. In many places, charity activities were organized to raise money for the victims. This article focuses on the Dutch and Indonesian literary reactions on the Krakatau disaster. For this purpose, two scholars work together: one specialized in Dutch Literary Studies and the other one in Indonesian Languages and Cultures. In the first part of the article several Dutch charity publications are analysed; the second part focuses on Indonesian sources (in Javanese and Malay). How and to what extend did the reactions in the Netherlands and Indonesia differ?

scholarly journals Grammar of Difference. General Education in the Netherlands and Java, 1800-1940

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
pp. 119-123
Author(s):  
Elise Van Nederveen Meerkerk
Keyword(s):  
The Netherlands ◽  
General Education ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
School Attendance ◽  
Indigenous Education ◽  
Government Investment ◽  
Early 19Th Century ◽  
Primary Schooling ◽  
East Indies ◽  
Public Investments

This contribution compares developments in school enrolment and public investments in primary education in the Netherlands and its most important colony in the 19th century: the Netherlands East Indies, more specifically the island of Java. Despite being part of the same Empire, conditions in both regions were very different, with the metropole having already quite high enrolment rates from the beginning of the period studied (the early 19th century) compared to very low school attendance in the colony. For long, the colonial government left indigenous education in Java to religious and private initiatives, whereas primary schooling in the Netherlands was increasingly financed and regulated. Rising interest for public schooling in the colony, including some government investment in the first decades of the 20th century did lead to some changes, but these were insufficient to prevent Dutch and Javanese children from experiencing a fundamentally different educational upbringing.

Japan's Drive against the Netherlands East Indies

1942 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 37-40
Author(s):  
Karl J. Pelzer
Keyword(s):  
The Netherlands ◽  
East Indies ◽  
Netherlands East Indies
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