The Janus face of the Dutch East Indies Company—representing a merchant on one side and a prince on the other—has long puzzled historians. How could a commercial enterprise, firmly rooted in a tradition of free trade, turn into a powerful monopolistic empire the moment its ships rounded the Cape of Good Hope? This book, based on Company archives and Malay historical material, offers a reconstruction of the VOC’s double role in the complex world of eighteenth-century Malay court politics. It describes the successes and failures of the VOC’s political trade system as practised in its tin trade in the Straits of Malacca from 1740 to 1800. Careful consideration is given to the Company’s relations with the sultanates of Pelembang and Johore, and the position of the VOC with respect to its English and Chinese competitors. The author’s main thesis is that the VOC’s political mode of operation, far from being a deviation from its proper merchant’s role, was an essential means to achieving success: trade privileges were ‘bought’ by rendering political support to indigenous princes. Contrary to popular opinion, however, the system was not based on forced deliveries, the merchant prince’s iron hand. When this resulted in stable and friendly alliances gentle Janus’s system could bear fruit, even in the difficult years of the late eighteenth century.

Written in the perspective of a Malaysian Dutch descendant, it gives a comprehensive and never before narrated story about the history of the Dutch in Malaysia and the Malaysian Dutch community. This book divides the Dutch historical influences in Malaysia into four different eras. Each era is analysed and represented in relation to its respective social environment and political developments. Included are the historical contributions of individuals, such as the Dutch Admirals who attempted to capture Malacca, the Dutch Governors and their administrative ranks who governed the town and the contributions of the Malacca Burghers in shaping Malaysia's history.

This case study of the tea trade of the Dutch East India Company with China deals with the most profitable phase of the Dutch Company's China trade, focusing on the question why and how the tea trade was taken out of the hands of the High Government in Batavia and put under the supervision of the newly established China Committee in 1757. Various factors which contributed to the phenomenal rise of this trade and its sudden decline are dealt with in detail. Filling in lacunae left open by previous research and this monograph contributes to a more comprehensive understanding of the VOC trade with Asia.

Offers a reinterpretation of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Malaysian history, revealing continuities between pre-colonial and colonial periods that have been obscured by attention given to the European intrusion.

The first English translation of Professor Locher-Scholten's 1994 Dutch text, a study of the reaction to Dutch colonial expansion by the Sumatran sultanate of Jambi. The Dutch text has been called "an excellent teaching tool for work on the Netherlands imperial project " [Locher-Scholten's] extensive archive work, in both Holland and Indonesia, her explicit reference to secondary theoretical works, and her useful lists mean that her analysis is transparent and accessible."

In the Name of the Battle against Piracy discusses antipiracy campaigns in Europe and Asia in the 16th-19th centuries. Nine contributors argue how important antipiracy campaigns were for the establishment of a (colonial) state, because piracy was a threat not only to maritime commerce, but also to its sovereignty. 'Battle against piracy' offered a good reason for a state to claim its authority as the sole protector of people, and to establish peace, order, and sovereignty. In fact, as the contributors explain, the story was not that simple, because states sometimes attempted to make economic and political use of piracy, while private interests were strongly involved in antipiracy politics. State formation processes were not clearly separated from non-state elements. Contributors are: Kudo Akihito, Satsuma Shinsuke, Suzuki Hideaki, Lakshmi Sabramanian, Ota Atsushi, James Francis Warren, Fujita Tatsuo, Murakami Ei, and Toyooka Yasufumi.

This study compares Melaka and Penang in the context of overall trends - policy, geographical position, nature and direction of trade, and morphology and sociology - and how these factors were influenced by trade and policies. Conclusions are drawn concerning where and how Melaka and Penang fit in the urban traditions of Southeast Asia and the significance of the fact that the period under study coincided with the shift from the height of the "Age of Commerce" towards a period of heightened imperialist activities.

The last century of the exuberantly diverse independence of Asia's smaller states, before the colonial embrace of 1860-1900, has been dismissed as a doomed period of stagnation and reaction by colonial, nationalist and Marxist historians alike. But the newest writing, represented here by 17 leading specialists on the different states of Southeast Asia and Choson Korea, has discovered in these states an astonishing laboratory of autonomous attempts to grapple with the pressures of modernity.

This book is the first to use local primary sources to explore the interaction between foreign and native merchants in Asian countries. Contributors discuss the different economic, political and cultural conditions that gave rise to a variety of merchant communities in Korea, China, Japan, Taiwan, the Philippines, Singapore and India.

No European country enjoyed such long-standing relations with the Thai Kingdom of Ayutthaya as the Netherlands. This study focuses on the perceptions of the merchants of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) of the Thai royal court in the seventeenth and eighteenth century. Basing herself on a wealth of Dutch primary sources, the author shows how trade, politics, and diplomacy shaped a unique relationship based on ‘partnership’ and a ‘sense of differences’. The book contributes to expanding the study of the history of Ayutthaya—known for its scarcity of sources— with the help of contemporary Dutch views.