Administering Empire. Business Diplomacy in Early Modern Sweden: The Cases of Abraham Cabiljau and the Gothenburg Company

The article illustrates the importance of business diplomacy practised by free agents, who navigated and negotiated between northern European empires for widespread commercial, legal and administrative developments. Abraham Cabiljau’s career is an example from the early modern Swedish empire, which stands on the threshold of a new era. In the Swedish empire, Cabiljau was involved in several different sectors, from military recruitment to the development of state accounting and administration of international trade. He represents the Swedish empire’s vast economic relationships with international merchant networks operating in a broad spectrum of military and commercial arenas. The Swedish empire was economically dependent on the financial resources of the merchants in Amsterdam, and economic prosperity was not the sole contribution of these merchants. The education, knowledge and connections provided by Cabiljau greatly enhanced the administration and organisation of Sweden’s international trade by importing a new legal mindset and organisational culture. In return, northern mining resources and Baltic commerce were alluring for Dutch merchants. We argue that the modelling of international organisations was an essential part of Swedish economic development. However, the first Swedish trading companies remained an experimental attempt to transplant the Dutch East India Company (VOC) model to Sweden. Individuals like Cabiljau represent key actors who ignited, taught and promoted commercial law development in Sweden, on which international commerce was later built upon, with long-lasting impacts.

Knowledge-making Endeavours of the Dutch East India Company in Malabar, 1663-1795

<p>The Malabar Coast of south-western India, presently comprising the modern state of Kerala, played a unique role in the history of Indian Ocean trade in the early modern period. Of the spices involved in expanding trade networks, the most important was pepper (Piper nigrum), indigenous to the region. Malabar’s fame as a garden of spices (prompting European authors to call it the Pepper Coast) attracted ships from Europe, Africa, Arabia and East Asia. The Portuguese trading company, Estado da India, was the sole European enterprise that traded in Malabar in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. However, in the seventeenth century, the Dutch challenged Portugal’s monopoly on trade. In 1663, the Dutch successfully captured the Portuguese settlements in Malabar including their major fort in Cochin. The Dutch remained in Malabar for the next hundred and thirty-two years after which the settlements passed to the English East India Company. The primary motive behind European territorial expansion to Asia was not the production of knowledge; rather, trading networks required a detailed understanding of the natural world, especially its land, flora and fauna. By the late seventeenth century, the pursuit of knowledge, commerce and colonies, and a nascent patriotism were bound together. In this context, the present thesis examines the Dutch East India Company (Verenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie in Dutch) trade in Malabar. The thesis is set in the period between 1663 (when it first took over the territory from the Portuguese) and 1795 (when the Dutch possessions were usurped by the English East India Company). Two significant themes pursued in this context are how the VOC produced knowledge of the region, and how that knowledge-production relied heavily on patronage from the Dutch Republic as well as inputs from a variety of local actors in Malabar itself, as well as the Company’s other territories. Nowhere can these themes be better explained than in the synergistic relationship of the sciences of botany and cartography. The study analyses a variety of works produced about Malabar. This includes the Hortus Malabaricus, a seventeenth-century botanical work, which is analysed in the context of the development of botany in the Dutch Republic and early modern European trade in medicinal plants. Alongside natural history works, the study examines the VOC maps, topographical plans, and surveys of forts and gardens in Malabar to understand why the Dutch enterprise in Malabar failed in the eighteenth century. While scientific botany reflected the European need to master the natural world, the science of cartography reflected the need to govern it. In contrast to the Golden image of the Republic (in the seventeenth century), arts and science were not effectively promoted by the Company administration. By re-examining and contextualising official and unofficial records of Dutch trading settlements in Asia, this thesis argues that contrary to dominant historiography, ‘science’ was not used as an effective tool by the Company in Malabar. Using Susan Leigh Star and James R. Griesemer’s theory of ‘boundary objects’, the chapters in the thesis address the heterogeneity in Company knowledge-production. The first half of the thesis focuses on botanical knowledge-production and the many actors involved in the making of early modern natural history works. The second half of the thesis examines geographical and bureaucratic knowledge-production and a significant shift in the Company policies from trade to land revenue in the second half of the eighteenth century. By historicising how knowledge was produced, the thesis attempts to understand if ‘knowledge-making’ was crucial for ‘profit-making’ in Malabar. This thesis thereby explores the intersectional character of early modern knowledge-production.</p>

Knowledge-making Endeavours of the Dutch East India Company in Malabar, 1663-1795

<p>The Malabar Coast of south-western India, presently comprising the modern state of Kerala, played a unique role in the history of Indian Ocean trade in the early modern period. Of the spices involved in expanding trade networks, the most important was pepper (Piper nigrum), indigenous to the region. Malabar’s fame as a garden of spices (prompting European authors to call it the Pepper Coast) attracted ships from Europe, Africa, Arabia and East Asia. The Portuguese trading company, Estado da India, was the sole European enterprise that traded in Malabar in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. However, in the seventeenth century, the Dutch challenged Portugal’s monopoly on trade. In 1663, the Dutch successfully captured the Portuguese settlements in Malabar including their major fort in Cochin. The Dutch remained in Malabar for the next hundred and thirty-two years after which the settlements passed to the English East India Company. The primary motive behind European territorial expansion to Asia was not the production of knowledge; rather, trading networks required a detailed understanding of the natural world, especially its land, flora and fauna. By the late seventeenth century, the pursuit of knowledge, commerce and colonies, and a nascent patriotism were bound together. In this context, the present thesis examines the Dutch East India Company (Verenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie in Dutch) trade in Malabar. The thesis is set in the period between 1663 (when it first took over the territory from the Portuguese) and 1795 (when the Dutch possessions were usurped by the English East India Company). Two significant themes pursued in this context are how the VOC produced knowledge of the region, and how that knowledge-production relied heavily on patronage from the Dutch Republic as well as inputs from a variety of local actors in Malabar itself, as well as the Company’s other territories. Nowhere can these themes be better explained than in the synergistic relationship of the sciences of botany and cartography. The study analyses a variety of works produced about Malabar. This includes the Hortus Malabaricus, a seventeenth-century botanical work, which is analysed in the context of the development of botany in the Dutch Republic and early modern European trade in medicinal plants. Alongside natural history works, the study examines the VOC maps, topographical plans, and surveys of forts and gardens in Malabar to understand why the Dutch enterprise in Malabar failed in the eighteenth century. While scientific botany reflected the European need to master the natural world, the science of cartography reflected the need to govern it. In contrast to the Golden image of the Republic (in the seventeenth century), arts and science were not effectively promoted by the Company administration. By re-examining and contextualising official and unofficial records of Dutch trading settlements in Asia, this thesis argues that contrary to dominant historiography, ‘science’ was not used as an effective tool by the Company in Malabar. Using Susan Leigh Star and James R. Griesemer’s theory of ‘boundary objects’, the chapters in the thesis address the heterogeneity in Company knowledge-production. The first half of the thesis focuses on botanical knowledge-production and the many actors involved in the making of early modern natural history works. The second half of the thesis examines geographical and bureaucratic knowledge-production and a significant shift in the Company policies from trade to land revenue in the second half of the eighteenth century. By historicising how knowledge was produced, the thesis attempts to understand if ‘knowledge-making’ was crucial for ‘profit-making’ in Malabar. This thesis thereby explores the intersectional character of early modern knowledge-production.</p>

Het gebruik van “Oud en Nieuw Oost-Indiën” van François Valentyn door bewindhebbers van de VOC in de achttiende eeuw

This article discusses the circulation of information extracted from François Valentyn’s Oud en Nieuw Oost-Indiën (1724–1726) during the eighteenth century, both with regards to the central organs of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) in the Netherlands and the VOC establishments in the East Indies. First, three documents are analysed that were part of five VOC directors’ personal archives, with the aim to determine the way these directors made use of Valentyn’s book. It is concluded that for these directors Oud en Nieuw Oost-Indiën was probably the most important source of information about the VOC’s trading empire, while at the same time their epistemic interest was limited to matters of trade. Second, the usage of Valentyn’s book in various VOC establishments in the East Indies is assessed on the basis of correspondence between these establishments with the VOC central government in Batavia. Because of the fact that Oud en Nieuw Oost-Indiën was used simultaneously as a source of information by several actors, both in the Netherlands and in the East Indies, this might have resulted in standardising the operational knowledge of the East Indies within the VOC network.

Dutch trade and patronage networks as facilitators of transcontinental mobility in early modern Russia and the VOC Cape

The Swellengrebels were the most important family at the Cape under Dutch East India Company (VOC) rule to become members of the Netherlands governing elite. Hendrik Swellengrebel was the colony's only locally-born governor, while his father and other members of the family at the Cape were born in Russia. Their migration between Europe, Africa and Asia reflected the development and functioning of the Dutch trade and patrimonial networks. Even on the periphery, at the Cape and among Dutch expatriates in Russia, those networks provided opportunities for overseas employment and upward social mobility. The case of the Swellengrebels shows that not only goods but also people could make their way from Russia to the Cape and the VOC Asia. Patronage enabled both spatial and upward social mobility. Keeping mutually beneficial relations with influential patrons such as Nicolaes Witsen, members of the Swellengrebel family navigated their way within the Dutch trade networks and achieved prosperity and a high status in such culturally diverse societies as Russia and the Cape. The social advancement, identity transformations and transcontinental migrations of the Swellengrebel family demonstrate the materiality of transcontinental patrimonial networks in the early modern period.

The Bugis-Makassar Seafarers

The essay focuses on Bugis and Makassar seafarers of South Sulawesi through two cases. The first is Lombok and Sumbawa in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, where landless Makassarese aristocrats fought or allied with various groups to create a political platform. The second case is the seascape around Timor, further to the east, where a socially different type of maritime enterprise evolved, entailing both commercial activities and raiding of vulnerable small-scale island societies. While Dutch writers termed all these seafarers “pirates,” this fails to capture the range of their socio-political roles. Moreover, the study demonstrates how the Dutch East India Company contributed to the rise of piratical activity through colonial advances on Sulawesi in the 1660s.

In search of sepoys: Indian soldiers and the Dutch East India Company in India and Sri Lanka, 1760–1795

Unlike the French and English India, the Dutch East India Company did not shift to recruiting predominantly Indian soldier personnel for service in India, sepoys, from the 1740s onwards. Although Dutch Company (VOC) remained much more reliant on European recruitment, it did in fact also recruit sepoys in India. These soldiers remain little noted in the sources and the historical record. This article will explain why the VOC did not follow the French and English lead. The VOC’s late acceptance of sepoys as full-time soldiers meant it could not effectively compete with either French or English companies in India.

Corvée Capitalism: The Dutch East India Company, Colonial Expansion, and Labor Regimes in Early Modern Asia

This article revisits our understanding of corvée labor regimes and their role and impact in the early expansion of colonialism and capitalism. Rather than remnants of feudal pasts, or in-kind taxation or revenue instruments of weak colonial powers, corvée regimes should be viewed as refined methods of colonial exploitation that provided colonial actors with more direct access to and control over the production of commercially interesting global commodities. This article explores and compares the corvée labor regimes employed and shaped by the Dutch East India Company (VOC) in the Moluccas, Sri Lanka, and Java. The article first addresses how to understand corvée and tributary relations as labor, production, and (political-)social regimes. Second, it explores and compares the organization and development of corvée labor relations in the context of the VOC in South and Southeast Asia. These corvée labor regimes reappear as crucial instruments in the expansion of (early) modern colonialism and capitalism, which could explain their widespread recurrence across the globe in the last few centuries.