The Indian Ocean - Michael Pearson [115]
Competition from other Europeans was slowly overcome. The English held on in Bantam until 1682, and after this in Benkulen in southwest Sumatra, thereby retaining some access to pepper. The Spanish left Tidore only in 1663, while the end of the Portuguese was symbolised by their loss of Melaka in 1641. The end of any competition for cloves, nutmeg and mace was achieved in 1669 when Makassar was conquered, and from then on the Dutch made vast monopolistic profits from these spices: several hundred per cent, and even up to 4,000 per cent. Their control of the clove trade is shown by the way they were able to charge one fixed price for this product in Europe from 1677 to 1744. Better still, the Dutch were able to overcome the common problem faced by Europeans trading in Asia. Few European products found any market in the Indian Ocean area, yet in a bullionist age the export of precious metals was seen as undesirable. But the Dutch were lucky, for their sales of spices in Asia produced profits which then could be used to buy goods to send back to Europe.
Yet this rosy picture, for the Dutch, contained its own problems. There were difficulties both in Asia and Europe, and these combined to reduce profits in the eighteenth century, as most dramatically shown by the bankruptcy of the VOC in the 1790s. First, we need to remember that pepper was always the main product. In Europe demand for pepper in the seventeenth century was some 7 million lbs a year, while for the 'famous four' together it was only 1,000,000. But the Dutch never completely controlled pepper. The reason was that pepper was produced in several different areas, not all of them controlled by the Dutch. For example, in the very large producing area on India's southwest coast Dutch power was restricted to the seashore; much pepper escaped their control inland. A Dutch commander in 1664 set out the aim in a letter to his subordinates:
Considering that the pepper trade is the bride around which everything dances, we recommend Your Honours to bend your best efforts to bring great quantities of Malabar pepper into Company hands every year... while at the same time you should prevent the indigenes from transporting it elsewhere by sea or land in secret.
At least in Malabar the Dutch were faced with the same problem which had hindered Portuguese efforts in the region, namely that the production areas were inland, and European power was effective only on the coast and at sea.57 Even VOC control over the Malukus was achieved only at an ultimately too high price. One problem was that about one-third of the production of these fine spices was sold in Asia, as also was pepper, and so the VOC had to make delicate calculations of prices in Asian markets: if their prices were too high then Asian purchases declined, but if they were too low then other Europeans would buy in India and ship to Europe.
There was also the cost of enforcement, and of preventing new production areas. As early as 1663 a Dutch official noted ominously that 'Out of these [pepper trade], the heavy expenses which the Company has borne for such a long time, and which it is still forced to carry, have to be paid.' Smuggling was a particular problem and even some of the VOC's own servants indulged in this, just as had the Portuguese a century earlier. Slaves on the Banda islands and their Dutch masters, the perkeniers (concessionaires licensed by VOC who had local mothers), were adroit smugglers, so the cost of enforcing the monopoly was huge, especially as slightly inferior long nutmeg grew on other islands and could be substituted. The VOC became a bloated and overly rigid body, with a vast and expensive military and civil establishment. The number of employees in the east rose geometrically: in 1625 there were 2,500, around 1700 the number had risen to 13,000, and by mid century there were 20,000 civil servants and troops.58 More generally, Dutch success, at its height from about 1680 to 1720, meant that they did not get into ultimately more profitable trades in cotton piece goods, tea