The Indian Ocean - Michael Pearson [123]
The Protestant Dutch and English also mingled and interacted. Often they learnt from Asian and African experience. After the VOC took over Mauritius they tried to introduce European-style agriculture, and failed. However, their slaves came from Madagascar, which shares with Mauritius many characteristics of soil and vegetation. The Dutch learnt more appropriate farming techniques from their Malagasy slaves. Similarly in Madagascar, where the French were forced to learn how to cultivate from local people.
Despite this, there was still very considerable racism in the Dutch and English settlements. Indians in most of them were forced to live in 'black towns', apart from the European rulers. The Dutch in Jakarta were greatly outnumbered. In 1673 the city had over 2,000 Dutch and 726 Eurasians, but nearly 3,000 Chinese, over 5,000 'black Portuguese', about 3,000 local people of Malay background, and a massive 13,278 slaves. These were mostly for domestic work, and for show, but some were used by Chinese owners as plantation labour.
Divisions in Jakarta were roughly similar to those in Goa. The population figures we have just quoted show a strict division according to race, and the VOC also laid down rigorous sumptuary laws, which regulated who could wear a hat, or carry a parasol. Only the governor was allowed to have a coach with six horses.
Who was really the important group in this Indian Ocean littoral port polity? It has been claimed that a particular group was essential to the running of the town. Blussé writes that women, hardly any of them Dutch, were the vital support for the functioning of the city, hence he describes them as caryatids. Equally important was a racial group, the Chinese. Just as local and Gujarati Hindus played a dominating role in the Goan economy, so also did the Chinese in Jakarta. Their work in feeding the town, and generally running the local economy, was essential. Despite this, there were massacres and expulsions from time to time, yet they always returned. These massacres were a part of the brutal, 'life is short' nature of Jakarta. Like Goa, the European city often felt threatened from within and without, so that society was rather like the classic frontier society well known in several newly established settlement societies in the Americas and elsewhere. Brawls and street fights were common, executions of the guilty were appallingly savage affairs, and people were publicly whipped not just for political offences but also for moral or social deviations from the strict Calvinist norm.74
Short life expectancy also fostered this 'frontier' mentality, full of tension and with a lack of concern for life. Mortality in Jakarta was very high, and often Dutch ideas exacerbated the situation. They believed that disease was carried in the air, so windows were kept shut and the occupants roasted. They insisted on wearing European clothes and eating European food, neither appropriate to a city located nearly on the equator. Jakarta was located on several small rivers, but to make it more like Amsterdam they dug canals, and these became sewers which spread diseases very efficiently. While Goa also suffered from water-borne diseases, in many areas the Portuguese seem to have acculturated much better than the Dutch.
The English company was prepared to tolerate private trade undertaken by its employees, and indeed this was one of the reasons for English success in the eighteenth century. Among the Dutch, after an early experiment with allowing some private trade by VOC employees, the company decided to rigorously enforce its monopoly. No company servant, at least in theory, was allowed any private trade. Only those who had left company employment could do this. This meant that many fewer Dutch men went native and, as we noted of the Portuguese, took part in the warp and weft of Asian trade. Some however did, such as one who was found having a splendid time on an