Pepper (34 page)

 …
relatives of the men who died in Amboyna received £3,615
 … Furber,
Rival Empires of Trade in the Orient,
p. 49.

 … slaves from various parts of Asia were shipped to the islands to harvest nutmeg.
Historian Markus Vink points out that, unlike the Atlantic slave trade, the Dutch and other Europeans in Asia relied on already well-established systems of slavery. Until the 1660s, the Dutch obtained slaves mainly from India; afterward most slaves were from Southeast Asia, particularly after the fall of Makassar in South Sulawesi. Thousands of slaves from Bali and South Sulawesi were taken to Batavia by Asian vessels between 1653 and 1682. See Markus Vink, “‘The World's Oldest Trade'. Dutch Slavery and Slave Trade in the India Ocean in the Seventeenth Century,”
Journal of World History
, Vol. 14, No. 2, pp. 131–77, University of Hawaii Press.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/20079204

“
…
while he lived with the Dutch, he was sent with other men to cut down the spice trees; and he himself did at several times cut down 700 to 800 trees.”
William Dampier,
A New Voyage Around the World,
1698, Vol. 1, p. 317, New York Public Library, Rare Books and Manuscripts Division.

“God has made the earth and the sea and has divided the earth among men and given the sea in common to all.”
See Leonard Y. Andaya,
The Heritage of Arung Palakka: A history of South Sulawesi (Celebes) in the Seventeenth Century,
(The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1981) p. 46. See also Anthony Reid, “Pluralism and progress in seventeenth-century Makassar,” pp. 55–73, in
Authority and Enterprise Among the Peoples of South Sulawesi,
edited by Roger Tol, Kees van Dijk, and Greg Acciaioli, (Leiden: KITLV Press, 2000).

“All the kings of these lands know full well what the planting of our colony at Jakarta signifies
…” Coen's threatening quote is published in C. R. Boxer's
The Dutch Seaborne Empire 1600–1800
, p. 189, among other secondary sources.

“The Bay of Batavia is the finest and most secure of any in the world.” The Voyage of François Leguat of Bresse to Rodriguez, Mauritius, Java, and the Cape of Good Hope,
Edited and Annotated by Captain Pasfield Oliver (The Hakluyt Society, 1891) p. 226.

“the road of Batavia is justly esteemed one of the best in the world, as well with regard to the anchoring-ground
…”
Voyages to the East Indies,
by J. S. Stavorinus, translated by S. H. Wilcocke, 1798 (reprinted by Dawsons of Pall Mall, London; 1969) Vol. I, p. 211.

Over the course of the seventeenth century, the Chinese became an economic force; Batavia
 …
was a Chinese colonial town under Dutch protection.
Historian Leonard Blussé has written extensively about the far-reaching impact of the Chinese in Batavia and on the events leading to the massacre of 1740, including “Batavia, 1619–1740: The Rise and Fall of a Chinese Colonial Town,”
Journal of Southeast Asian Studies,
Vol. 12, No. 1, “Batavia, 1619–1740: The Rise and Fall of a Chinese Colonial Town,” (March, 1981), pp. 159–178 (Cambridge University Press) URL:
http://www.jstor.org./stable/20070419
, and
Strange Company: Chinese Settlers, Mestizo Women and the Dutch in VOC Batavia
(Foris Publications, 1986).

“
Only one year after the founding of Batavia, the Dutch blockaded Jambi in eastern Sumatra and Bantam in Java in order to divert Chinese junks to Batavia.”
Historian M. A. P. Meilink-Roelofsz's masterly
Asian Trade and European Influence in the Indonesian Archipelago Between 1500 and About 1630
(The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1962) is one of the seminal books on European trade in Asia during the age of discovery. See pp. 253–261 for a description of how the Dutch intervened in the pepper trade in Bantam and eastern Sumatra.

“
In 1694
 …
over two million pounds of pepper were sold to twenty junks that had arrived in Batavia.”
Figure cited in Leonard Blussé's
Strange Company,
p. 126.

“
Indeed, by the end of the seventeenth century the Dutch had pulled out of direct trade with China entirely
 … Leonard Blussé, “No Boats to China. The Dutch East India Company and the Changing Pattern of the China Sea Trade, 1635–1690,”
Modern Asian Studies,
Vol. 30, No. 1 (Feb. 1996), pp. 51–76, Cambridge University Press, URL:
http://www.jstor.org/stable/312901

Many undocumented Chinese people were deported to China; a smaller number was banished to the Cape of Good Hope.
See Kerry Ward,
Networks of Empire: Forced Migration in the Dutch East India Company
(Cambridge University Press, 2009) p. 99.

“Europeans would doubtless be dazzled, and inclined to envy his hospitable host, the luxurious Batavian.”
Jeremiah N. Reynolds,
Voyage of the United State Frigate
Potomac …
in 1831, 1832, 1833, and 1834
(Harper & Brothers, 1835), p. 299.

“
…
most unwholesome place of abode, and the mortality greater here, than at any other spot of the Company's possessions…”
J. S. Stavorinus,
Voyages to the East Indies,
translated by S. H. Wilcocke, 1798, (reprinted by Dawsons of Pall Mall, London, 1969) Vol. III, p. 398–399.

“The
VOC had many more ships than the English East India Company—from 1600 to 1650,
…
the Dutch sent 655 ships to Asia while the English sent only 286
 … From J. R. Bruijn and Femme S. Gaastra's
Ships, Sailors and Spices: East India Companies and their Shipping in the Sixteenth, Seventeenth, and Eighteenth Centuries
(Amsterdam: NEHA, 1993).

“The English managed to import more than one million pounds only twelve times in the years between 1603 and 1640.”
From a table compiled by K. N. Chaudhuri,
The English East India Company
(Routledge) p. 148.

“The country trade and the profit from it are the soul of the Company which must be looked after carefully…”
Cited in Om Prakash, “The Portuguese and the Dutch in Asian Maritime Trade: a comparative analysis” in
Merchants, Companies and Trade: Europe and Asia in the Early Modern Era,
edited by Sushil Chaudhury and Michel Morineau (Cambridge University Press, 1999) p 182.

“The Coromandel Coast is the left arm of the Moluccas…”
Hendrik Brouwer's famous quote is published in George D. Winius and Marcus P. M. Vink's
The Merchant-Warrior Pacified
(Oxford University Press, 1991) p. 12, among other secondary sources.

“Guserat textiles must be traded for pepper and gold on the shores of Sumatra; pepper from Banten for reals and textiles from the coast [of Coromandel];…”
Dutch historian Femme S. Gaastra published the full text of Coen's 1619 letter in
The Dutch East India Company
(Walberg Press, 2003) p. 121. Excerpts from this letter are published in many other secondary sources about Dutch trade in Asia.

Historians estimate that the Dutch shipped cloth from the Coromandel coast of India to Batavia worth some 22,000 to 44,000 pounds of silver (roughly one to two million guilders) annually from 1620 to 1650.
Figure cited in “Economic and Social Change, c. 1400–1800,” by Anthony Reid, in
The Cambridge History of Southeast Asia,
Volume One, edited by Nicholas Tarling (Cambridge University Press, 1992) page 471.

“When the Japanese banned the export of silver in the later part of the century, business began to wane.”
Om Prakash, “The Portuguese and the Dutch in Asian Maritime Trade: a comparative analysis” in
Merchants, Companies and Trade: Europe and Asia in the Early Modern Era,
edited by Sushil Chaudhury and Michel Morineau, (Cambridge University Press, UK), pp. 186–188.

“Let people nowhere in this country plant pepper, as is done in Jambi and Palembang
…” Quote cited in Anthony Reid,
Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce,
Volume Two,
Expansion and Crisis
(Yale University Press, 1993) p. 300.

“The Mallayans are such admirers of opium that they would mortgage all they hold most valuable to procure it,”
Charles Lockyer, “An account of the trade in India: containing rules for good government in trade,… with descriptions of Fort St. George,… Calicut,… To which is added, an account of the management of the Dutch and their affairs in India.” London 1711. Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO), Gale, New York University.

“
…
that opium was the ‘chief article' bartered for pepper in Penang
…” Constable Pierrepont papers. Manuscripts and Archives Division. The New York Public Library. Astor, Lenox, and Tilden Foundations.

“Nothing is more certain than that opium brings generally 100 percent [profit] when sold to the Malays in Barter
…” Constable Pierrepont papers. Manuscripts and Archives Division. The New York Public Library. Astor, Lenox, and Tilden Foundations.

“women and children were decorated with a profusion of silver ornaments
…” Lady Raffles,
Memoir of the Life and Public Services of Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles
, (London: F.R.S. &c., 1830) p. 319.

Near the end of the eighteenth century, the English East India Company was importing some fifteen to twenty million pounds of tea from China …
Figure cited in Holden Furber,
Rival Empires of Trade in the Orient, 1600–1800
, p. 244.

“The trade in piece goods, which in former times, produced such considerable benefit to the company, is now almost entirely in the hands of the English;…”
J. S. Stavorinus,
Voyages to the East Indies,
translated by S. H. Wilcocke, 1798 (reprinted by Dawsons of Pall Mall, London, 1969) Vol. I, p. 364.

One enterprising employee in Bengal, India, set up his own company in his wife's name to carry on private trade.
Historian Om Prakash has written widely about the many ways that fraud was practiced in the Bengal factory. See his book
The Dutch East India Company and the Economy of Bengal
(Princeton, 1985) and page 85 for the example cited here.

An investigator estimated that fraud and private trading in India had cost the company as much as 3.8 million guilders from 1678 to 1686.
Figure cited in Julia Adams's “Principals and Agents, Colonialists and Company Men: The Decay of Colonial Control in the Dutch East Indies,”
American Sociological Review,
1996, Vol. 61, (February: 12–28), p. 25.

“The seamen [the Dutch] who go to the Spice Islands aren't supposed to bring spice back for themselves, except for a small amount for their own use, a pound or two,
…” William Dampier,
A New Voyage Around the World,
Vol. 1, p. 317.

In 1676, a year when the harvest was particularly good, company employees smuggled 152,600 pounds of the drug into Batavia …
Om Prakash,
The Dutch East India Company and the Economy of Bengal,
p. 155.

At one time corruption was thought to be the main factor that led to the end of the VOC—the initials VOC were once cynically referred to as
Vergaan Onder Corruptie,
collapsed through corruption.
See C. R. Boxer's
The Dutch Seaborne Empire 1600–1800
(Hutchinson & Co., 1965) p. 205.

“all the extraordinary waste which the fraud and abuse
…” Adam Smith as quoted in K. N. Chaudhuri, “The English East India Company in the 17th and 18th Century,” in
The Organization of Interoceanic Trade in European Expansion, 1450–1800,
edited by Pieter Emmer and Femme Gaastra (Variorum, Ashgate Publishing Limited, 1996) p. 188.

Desertion was so common among men serving the English and Dutch companies that a standard “form of agreement” for the rendition of deserters had been drawn by the early eighteenth century.
See Furber's
Rival Empires of Trade in the Orient,
pp. 303–304, for more about the miseries of working for the northern European mercantile companies.

“purloining the Company's goods, deceiving private men, insolvent behavior … and great wealth they have suddenly gathered together.”
Cited in K. N. Chaudhuri's
The English East India Company
(Routledge, 1999) p. 87.

“The man from the ‘Westcountry' was ‘Friendly and courteously enterteyned by us all in generall.'” The Travels of Peter Mundy,
Vol. III, Part II (The Hakluyt Society, 1919; reprinted in 1967 by Karaus Reprint Limited) p. 337.

Englishman Roger Wheatley admitted in 1725 that he had been employed by a lady whose husband had been a member of the Council of Batavia, to smuggle 150 chests, or 21,000 pounds, of opium.
Holden Furber,
Rival Empires of Trade in the Orient, 1600–1800,
p. 277.

“These indulgences were … extended to all sorts of commodities, both Indian and European, to the great detriment of our own ships' officers and crews,…”
J. S. Stavorinus,
Voyages to the East Indies
, translated by S. H. Wilcocke, 1798 (reprinted by Dawsons of Pall Mall, London, 1969) Vol. I, p. 367–368.

Seven: U.S. Pepper Fortunes

“For the coast of Sumatra now I'm bound,…”
James W. Gould, “America's Pepperpot: 1784–1873,” Essex Institute Historical Collections, Vol. XCII, April 1956, p. 120.

“If our Government does not send a frigate next season and destroy Soo-soo, Tangan Tangan, Muckie and South Tallapow, we must bid adieu to the pepper trade.”
George G. Putman's
Salem Vessels and Their Voyages: A History of the Pepper Trade with the Island of Sumatra
(Salem, Mass.: The Essex Institute, 1924) p. 126.