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Indonesia The United East India Company
The United Provinces of the Netherlands was, in a
sense, the
world's first modern state. It was a republic dominated by
middle
class burghers rather than a dynastic monarchy. Winning
independence from Spain in 1581, the Netherlands became a
major
seafaring power. During the seventeenth century, Amsterdam
emerged
as Europe's primary center for commerce and banking.
Largely
Protestant and Calvinist, the new state, unlike Portugal,
did not
reflect the crusading values of the European Middle Ages.
A four-ship Dutch fleet entered Indonesian waters in
1596,
visiting Banten on the western tip of Java as well as
north-coast
Javanese ports and returning home with a profitable cargo
of
spices. There followed a few years of "wild" or
unregulated
voyages, when several Dutch trading concerns sent out
ships to the
islands. In 1602, however, these companies merged to form
the
United East India Company (VOC) under a charter issued by
the Dutch
parliament, the Staten-Generaal.
Although its directors, the Heeren Zeventien (Seventeen
Gentlemen), were motivated solely by profit, the VOC was
not simply
a trading company in the modern sense of the word. It had
authority
to build fortresses, wage war, conclude treaties with
indigenous
rulers, and administer justice to subject populations. In
the early
years, the Heeren Zeventien attempted to direct their
operations
from Amsterdam, but this proved impossible and in 1610 the
post of
governor general of the VOC was established. Jan
Pieterszoon Coen,
governor general from 1619 to 1623 and again from 1627 to
1629, was
the most dynamic VOC chief executive. He seized the port
of
Jayakarta (modern Jakarta, also known as Batavia during
the
colonial period) from the sultan of Banten in western Java
and
established the trading post at Sunda Kelapa. Since then,
it has
served as the capital of the VOC, of the Netherlands
Indies after
1816, and of the independent Indonesian state after World
War II.
Coen was determined to go to almost any lengths to
establish
and reserve a VOC monopoly of the spice trade. He
accomplished his
goal by both controlling output and keeping non-VOC
traders out of
the islands. Ambon had been seized from the Portuguese in
1605, and
anti-Iberian alliances were made with several local
rulers.
However, the English East India Company, established in
1600,
proved to be a tenacious competitor. When the people of
the small
Banda archipelago south of the Malukus continued to sell
nutmeg and
mace to English merchants, the Dutch killed or deported
virtually
the entire population and repopulated the islands with VOC
indentured servants and slaves who worked in the nutmeg
groves.
Similar policies were used by Coen's successors against
the
inhabitants of the clove-rich Hoamoal Peninsula on the
island of
Ceram in 1656. The Spanish were forced out of Tidore and
Ternate in
1663. The Makassarese sultan of Gowa in southern Sulawesi,
a
troublesome practitioner of free trade, was overthrown
with the aid
of a neighboring ruler in 1669. The Dutch built fortresses
on the
site of the Gowa capital of Makassar (modern Ujungpandang)
and at
Manado in northern Sulawesi and expelled all foreign
merchants. In
1659 the Dutch burned the port city of Palembang on
Sumatra,
ancient site of the Srivijaya empire, in order to secure
control of
the pepper trade.
Data as of November 1992
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