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By Root 332 0

—the island’s southern littoral was not under Dutch control, and the local people might be hostile—but next morning they replenished their barrels from a waterfall and sailed and rowed on toward Sunda Strait, where the trade routes and the monsoon winds converged and Dutch ships congregated on their way to and from Batavia. Remarkably, all 48 of those who had left the Abrolhos in the longboat had survived the journey; even the babe in arms was still alive. Light winds delayed them, but they reached the southwest tip of Java on 3 July and found, to their intense delight, four VOC ships waiting in the Strait; one of them was the Sardam, the little jacht that had sailed with them all the way from Texel to the Cape. Four days later they were in Batavia.

The VOC’s headquarters in the Indies had been a town of little moment until Cornelis de Houtman arrived there one day in November 1596. It was then a community of perhaps 2,000 or 3,000 people, situated at the mouth of the Tiliwung River and protected by nothing more than a bamboo wall. The Javanese inhabitants, who called their town Jacatra, were subjects of the Sultan of Bantam, 50 miles to the west. They made their living from fishing, agriculture, and trade, and their town also boasted a small Chinese community, which controlled the arak-brewing business and a good deal of the general commerce besides. De Houtman purchased some supplies, and thereafter Dutch ships began to call regularly at the port, which was marginally healthier and a good deal cheaper than Bantam itself.

Gradually Dutch influence grew. In 1610 the local ruler, or pangeran, gave the VOC some land in the Chinese quarter and permission to construct a stone warehouse and a walled compound on it; within a few years, this building became one of Jan Company’s largest factories, or warehouses, in the Far East. Relations between the Gentlemen XVII and the pangeran were generally excellent, so, in 1618, the Company built a new hospital and a little ship repair yard just outside the town. It was also decided to move most of the business traditionally transacted at Bantam along the coast to Jacatra.

At this point, to the great displeasure of the VOC, the English East India Company began to build its own warehouse outside the walls. If the Jacatran ruler’s intention was to play the rival Europeans off against one another, he succeeded all too well. The Dutch attacked the English factory and burned it to the ground; the English retaliated by assembling such a substantial fleet outside the town that the whole Dutch community was forced to flee east to the Moluccas. That was far from the end of the matter, however; a few months later the VOC counterattacked in force, unleashing 2,000 troops against Jacatra, burning it down, and leveling the few buildings left standing in the ruins. The pangeran, who had sided with the English, was overthrown, and the old settlement was rebuilt as the fortress of Batavia.

The new town, founded on 30 May 1619, was protected by a modern castle on the coast, nine times bigger than its predecessor and built of white coral slabs. The castle had four bastions, known as Diamond, Ruby, Sapphire, and Pearl, prompting the local Javanese to nickname the settlement kota-inten, “Diamond City.” The name stuck, not least because the trade that soon began to pour through the gates made it one of the wealthiest places in the Indies.

Old Jacatra disappeared; new Batavia looked Dutch. The houses were built of brick, much of it imported all the way from the Netherlands in the bilges of retourschepen sailing out in ballast, and they were tall and thin and roofed with tiles, just as they were in Amsterdam. The streets were lined with trees and ran in dead-straight lines, and there were churches, schools, and even canals built in the European style. The whole town, indeed, made few concessions to the tropics; most of the Dutch who lived there smoked and drank to excess, as they did at home*35; there was a tremendous preoccupation with rank and social status; and despite the humidity and heat, soldiers