The Indian Ocean - Michael Pearson [114]
The English experience was a rather muted copy of the Dutch. They also had maritime experience, including the activities of semi-pirates like Drake and Hawkins. In 1600 the EIC (English East India Company) was set up, but with much less capital, and apparently much less commercial expertise, than the Dutch had. The EIC much more than the VOC was modest about trying to be warlike. One official noted that the 'worst of peace is better than the best of war'.
Portugal resisted the intrusion of the northern Europeans, but in most places was unable to hold out. The English played a secondary role, while the Dutch conquered a string of Portuguese forts: Melaka in 1641, Colombo and all of Sri Lanka in 1658, and all the Malabar ports in the 1660s. They also established trading posts in existing ports on both sides of the Indian coast, and in 1619 took the minor Javanese port of Jakarta. Renamed Batavia, this was considered to be well located to act as their capital in the area.
Like the Portuguese, the Dutch aimed to control the spice trade. Ironically, they had considerable success, but finally failed for many of the same reasons as the Portuguese. Their capital, determination, ruthlessness and force gave them early success, which led to the end not only of the Portuguese trade via the Cape but also of the overland trade to the Levant. It was a sign of the times when as early as 1600 the Portuguese unloaded six carracks in Lisbon carrying a large pepper cargo. They found them hard to sell, for their traditional markets in northern Europe were already well supplied by large Dutch shipments.53
On the face of it the Dutch achieved considerable success, but actually their achievement in controlling the pepper trade was less than that for the fine spices, where they finally achieved something close to a total monopoly. In large part this was because, unlike pepper, the fine spices grew in restricted areas. In Sri Lanka the Dutch obtained their first cargo of cinnamon in 1638, and the sale price in Amsterdam was nearly double the purchase price. After the Portuguese had been driven out of this island, by 1658, the Dutch, now having a complete monopoly, thought they could charge what they liked. They raised the price from 15 stuivers to 36 in 1658, and later to 50. Overall the profits were huge. Anthony Reid claims that by the mid seventeenth century the VOC could sell spices in Europe at about seventeen times, and in India about fourteen times, the price which they had paid in Maluku, and he notes that none of this profit went to any Asian.54
Cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg and mace made up the VOC 'famous four' spices. As a Frenchman wrote in 1697, 'No lover is as jealous of his mistress as the Dutch are of their trade in spices.' In the Maluku islands, home of the last three fine spices, the Dutch behaved with great ruthlessness. Under governor Jan Pieterszoon Coen (1619–23, 1627–29), pursuing his 'policy of frightfulness', they deported much of the population of the Bandas, and then moved in Dutch settlers supported by a vast slave population drawn from such scattered areas as East Africa, Persia, Bengal and Japan.55 In 1636 on one of these islands, as a result of Dutch severity, there were only 560 natives left, together with 539 Dutch and 834 free foreigners. To overcome the labour shortage they had to import 2,000 slaves from Arakan and Bengal. On other Banda islands all nutmeg trees were cut down so as to avoid the possibility of smuggling. Their policy in the clove producing areas was equally bloody, indeed was too successful, for so well did they limit production that in 1665 there was a shortage of cloves. Production was closely controlled. In 1710 the directors of the VOC noted 'with grief' that the most recent harvest of cloves on Amboyna was likely to be 1.85 million pounds. They did massive extirpations in order to get production down to an 'acceptable' level of about 500,000