Merchant Kings

by Stephen R. Bown

  The Protestant reformation interrupted this cozy arrangement. In 1567 King Philip sent the ruthless Duke of Alva and an army of Spanish soldiers to the Netherlands to put down a revolt and collect a new series of taxes on the cities of the Lowlands. On February 16, 1568, the Inquisition declared that all three million citizens of the Netherlands, apart from a few exceptions, were heretics and were therefore condemned to death. Now Philip ordered Alva to carry out the Inquisition’s sentence. The cities of the Lowlands, chafing under their financial burden, Alva’s brutal massacre and the execution of thousands of citizens by rope, fire and sword, rose in revolt.

  Declaring the Spanish to be “cruel, bloodthirsty, foreign oppressors,” they coalesced around the leadership of William iii of Orange. Since Spanish rule was strongest in the southern Netherlands, most leading merchants and capital fled north during the conflict, as economic and religious refugees from Spanish and Catholic rule.

  The prime beneficiary of this movement of wealth and knowledge was the city of Amsterdam. For decades in the late sixteenth century, Spanish and rebel armies clashed inconclusively, effectively shutting down the port of Antwerp, and with it Portuguese commercial access to northern Europe. Amsterdam merchants began sailing to Lisbon to acquire spices until 1595, when King Philip shut down Lisbon, and thus closed Europe’s spice centre, to merchants from the Netherlands. This closure gave the merchants of what was becoming one of the greatest trading centres of northern Europe the incentive to launch their own voyages to the East.

  3

  IN 1592 A DUTCH TR AVELLER NAMED JAN HUYGHEN van Linschoten returned from an eleven-year journey throughout the East Indies in the service of Portuguese merchants. “My heart,” he mused, “is longing day and night for voyages to far away lands.” In 1596 he had completed and published his travelogue Itinerario, a detailed guide to the peoples and products of India and Indonesia. Itinerario was a route map to the wealth of the Portuguese trading network, the native kingdoms, their customs and interests, the goods they desired and the goods they traded—a sort of commercial Lonely Planet guidebook for merchants new to the region. In it van Linschoten described for the first time the original locations of cloves, nutmeg, mace, cinnamon and other spices, blending his account with quaint observations of their daily uses. “The Indian women,” he recorded, “use much to chawe Cloves, thereby to have sweete breath, which the Portugales wives that dwell there, doe now begin to use.” Regarding nutmeg and mace, he related that “the fruite is altogether like great round Peaches, the inward part whereof is the Nutmegge . . .T his fruite of Apples are many times conserved in Sugar being whole, and in that sort carried throughout India, and much esteemed.” The wandering Dutchman described the great benefits of all the spices, in case anyone still doubted that these were amazing substances.

  The historian Bernard Vlekke writes in his Nusantara: A History of Indonesia that “Linschoten also avowed, and again probably many others brought the same information, that the Portuguese empire in the East was decayed, rotten and tottering, a structure which would collapse if given even a moderate blow, or to change the metaphor, it was a plum ripe for the picking.”

  To Dutch merchants, flushed with idle capital and waging war against Spain for their independence, this was good news. They recognized a good opportunity: Portuguese power was waning.

  Thus Dutch merchants began to organize local expeditions to get to the spiceries themselves. Unlike the Portuguese ventures, which were directed and sponsored by the Crown, these were independent enterprises funded by private investors. Nine of them schemed in 1594 to form a “Company for Far Places” in defiance of the Portuguese monopoly and the papal decree that underpinned the Treaty of Tordesillas, which divided the world into two spheres of sovereignty, one belonging to Spain and the other to Portugal. The first voyage of four ships was led by Cornelis de Houtman, a merchant who had lived for a time in Portugal and was related to one of the key investors.

  De Houtman proved an unpredictable and dangerously erratic leader: one of his ships sank, 145 sailors out of 249 died and de Houtman insulted local traders wherever he landed. Since he had no maps and carried with him a poor choice of trade goods, including heavy woollen cloth and blankets, the enthusiastic reception he was given was due more to Malay traders being pleased with the competition he offered to the Portuguese and Spanish, who had earned a reputation for heavy-handed brutality and were openly hostile to local religions. De Houtman’s officers forced him to return to Holland without even attempting to reach the Moluccas, but he did manage to secure a small cargo of spices, and the expedition was hailed a success in Amsterdam.

  The investors quickly grasped the great potential of securing a full cargo of spices. Aided by the wealth of practical advice on navigation and local customs that had been detailed in Linschoten’s newly published Itinerario and the experience of de Houtman’s surviving crew, they formed a new company. The new commander would be Jacob Corneliszoon van Neck, and the seven ships in the expedition would be armed—they did not expect to be welcomed by the Portuguese. Van Neck, a levelheaded, diplomatic trader, formed friendly relations wherever his ships stopped throughout the Spice Islands. He returned with a full cargo of spices, particularly pepper, that brought a staggering 400 per cent return on invested capital, and the race was on. By 1598 five separate trading companies had launched twenty-two ships to the spiceries. Wherever they sailed in the Indies, they announced themselves as enemies of the Portuguese and as a result were warmly welcomed by the islanders. Within a few years, the mariners and merchants of the numerous Dutch trading companies had explored nearly every coast and visited every port in the region. In 1601 alone, sixty-five Dutch ships left for the Spice Islands.

  The Dutch merchants were so successful, swarming and overwhelming the Portuguese traders, that they started to compete with each other, lowering the price of spices in Europe and raising them in the East Indies. The investors, now worried, came upon a simple yet effective solution: they would form a single company to limit competition among themselves and combine their efforts against the Portuguese and Spanish. The merchants of Amsterdam approached the States General, the governing body representing all the provinces of the United Netherlands, requesting a monopoly for themselves only and excluding merchants from other Dutch cities and provinces. For years the States General had been admonishing merchants from the various provinces to cease their cutthroat competition and join in common cause against their enemies. Their warning met with bitter opposition, however: each region feared losing its independence. Yet, after much negotiating, on March 20, 1602, the Dutch East India Company, the voc, was formed under the auspices, direction and coercion of the States General. The company was to have a twenty-one-year monopoly on all trade with the East Indies. gentleman merchants met periodically in their offices in Amsterdam. Eight were representatives from the Amsterdam city government, four hailed from Middelburg, and one each came from the cities of Enkhuizen, Hoorn, Delft and Rotterdam. The final director was elected in rotation from cities other than Amsterdam, so that Amsterdam itself, the Netherlands’ largest commercial centre, could never hold a majority of the votes and decision-making power. Theoretically, any Dutch citizen could become a shareholder, but soon the entire enterprise was governed by a small number of powerful merchants, with capital invested for a ten-year period rather than in each voyage. This venture, the world’s first “joint stock company,” was set to become the world’s largest single business enterprise of the seventeenth century. Mere days after the initial public offering, and before the first shareholders had even paid for their shares, those shares were being traded on the Amsterdam stock exchange for a 17 per cent premium.

  The new company’s governing “Council of Seventeen”

  More significantly, the new monopoly was granted powers over the Eastern trade, not normally the province of merchants.

  It would be a private commercial corporation operating free from the direct control of the government of the Un
ited Netherlands, yet it would have the authority to make decisions in the name of that government. The voc could make treaties and declare war or peace in the name of the States General, construct forts and arm them with cannons, hire troops, establish colonies, dispense justice and enact laws, even issue its own currency— its coins were not stamped with the symbol of a nation or head of state, but with the company insignia. The voc would essentially operate as a state within a state. In the ensuing years, it forged its way around Africa in the wake of the Portuguese and proceeded to battle them for control of the spice trade, rapidly displacing its erstwhile enemy. The historian Philip D. Curtin has commented wryly, “The voc began with its military force more important than its trade goods. It was less a capitalist trading firm than it was a syndicate for piracy, aimed at the Portuguese power in Asia, dominated by government interests, but drawing funding from investors rather than taxpayers.”

  The first voc fleet sailed from Amsterdam on December 18, 1603, with orders not only to trade but to attack Portuguese ships and forts wherever possible. The voc’s relentless assault on the Portuguese progressed relatively smoothly and rapidly, the company pursuing trade and war with equal vigour. In the first years of its existence, cargoes on voc ships sent out by the Council of Seventeen were weighted as heavily with guns and ammunition as they were with trade goods and silver bullion. When voc ships clashed with Portuguese galleons, the Dutch almost always won. In 1605 the voc captured the Portuguese fort on the island of Ambon, its first territorial acquisition, and continued its conquest rapidly. Within a few years the Dutch company spread across the East from Arabia to Japan, with a vast network of trade depots, forts and factories, many of them seized from the Portuguese, who retreated from this violent onslaught. But soon the voc faced competition from a source closer to home, from an erstwhile ally in the struggle against Imperial Spain: England.

  Although English merchants had formed their East India Company, with royal assent, in December 1600, two years earlier than the voc had been set up, they pursued the spiceries at a more stately pace and with less capital. Having fewer ships and men and meagre financing, they had no choice, and in their absence the Dutch traders of the voc swarmed the entire region with cannons blazing. The objective: to eliminate not only the Portuguese but also to redirect local trade networks into the fold of their monopoly. They had no interest in tolerating yet other competitors, such as the English. Edmund Scott, an English merchant at Bantan, wrote in February 1604 that “blowe which way the winde would, they had shipping to come thither, eyther from the East or from the West; insomuch that one woulde have thought they want to carry away the pepper growing on the trees.” English traders had difficulty obtaining spices because the Dutch company collected them first, so the English began shadowing Dutch company ships and erecting factories alongside voc posts. Regarding the English merchants as interlopers and violators of their monopoly, the Dutch viewed them with hostility right from the start. Soon, even while peace reigned in Europe, the servants of the two nations’ companies were shooting at each other. Long before the voc’s first twenty-one-year monopoly ended, its ships had engaged in naval battles with every major maritime nation in the world.

  After several setbacks—enduring the huge expenses of the ongoing military campaign while failing to completely oust either the Spanish or the Portuguese, and witnessing the increasing presence of English traders—the Council of Seventeen realized the need for more coordinated activity in the region if its traders were ever to secure their monopoly—and the enormous profits that would then be forthcoming. It restructured the governing council at Bantam, now called the Council of the Indies, as a central authority over the voc’s affairs in the spiceries and created a new position, that of the governor general, who would have unchallenged authority over all the company’s activities in the East Indies. Pieter Both, a trader of many years’ experience in the East, was the first man chosen for this lofty position. He arrived at Bantam in December 1610 with a group of colonists, including craftsmen, clerks, traders, artisans and thirty-six women. Both also brought with him Jan Pieterszoon Coen, now on his second voyage to the East Indies, as a senior trader and as Both’s assistant. Observing the terrible conflict descending on the merchant world of the Indies, Coen foresaw great opportunities opening up—opportunities both for revenge and for profit.

  4

  THE MAN STAR ES FROM HIS PORTR AIT WITH RIGID, self-righteous indignation. Sleek and manicured, Jan Pieterszoon Coen was a man of impeccable grooming, from his slicked hair to his neatly trimmed Vandyke beard, from his coiled moustache to his expensive clothes. His embroidered doublet is patterned with paisley that has detailed trim around the seams. His neck ruff is starched and perky, and he stands erect and stiff, almost regal, while his left hand grips the handle of a sword. His lean and hungry face is dominated by a large hooked nose and eyes that do not betray a shred of humour or liveliness. His eyes are his most distinguishing characteristic— they do not hint at warmth, forgiveness, humanity or empathy. They are hard and shiny like little pebbles. Overall, the painting conveys an impression of humourless arrogance. Coen was a harsh man, living in a harsh era, and the events of his life and his overriding competitiveness conspired to suppress his more empathetic characteristics.

  On one occasion, when he discovered his twelve-year-old foster daughter, Saartje Specx, who had been left in his care when her father returned briefly to the Netherlands, in the arms of a fifteen-year-old soldier in his home, Coen displayed his characteristic, stunning inhumanity: the soldier was publicly beheaded and Saartje was publicly whipped. This was a reprieve from Coen’s first inclination, which was to have Saartje placed in a tub and drowned. Historian Holden Furber notes in his book Rival Empires of Trade in the Orient, 1600–1800 that “in single-mindedness of purpose, in ambition for personal wealth, in callous disregard for human suffering, Coen much resembles many empire builders in Africa in the later nineteenth century.”

  Those who associated with him learned to fear Coen’s grim pronouncements. He was disliked even by his own men. Having little tolerance for anything other than work and defeating his enemies, Coen saw the lack of these essential characteristics in others as a failing. He despised the local peoples, considering them dishonourable, corrupt and untrustworthy, but he also was repulsed by his own countrymen, disdaining their love of alcoholic drink and the less-than-strict morality of some of the female colonists. Coen was ambitious and never shy to denigrate the soft-hearted opinions and actions of others if it made for the greatest profit. With everyone, he seemed to be locked in a death struggle from which only one would emerge victorious.

  All challengers had to be crushed, and all contracts enforced to the letter—with force, if necessary. Coen certainly believed that the use of violent force was the only path to prosperity for the voc. An accountant by training, he proved to be a master tactician and ruthless strongman.

  Born on January 8, 1587, in the village of Twisk, near Hoorn, a small seafaring community on the Zuider Zee, Coen was well educated. When he was thirteen his parents sent him to Rome, where they had secured for him a position with a Dutch merchant, Joost de Visscher (or Justus Pescatore), possibly a distant relative who lived and ran a trading enterprise there. Here he learned bookkeeping and general accounting, as well as some Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, French and Latin. He sailed with the voc’s Fourth Fleet in 1607 as a junior merchant. The fleet, under Verhoef, had orders to use force and coercion to secure the monopoly of cloves and nutmeg in the Spice Islands, particularly in the Moluccas. Coen witnessed the failure of those ambitious goals, the killing of Verhoef and what he believed to be the culpability of the English in aiding the Bandanese in their attack on the Dutch. After his youthful experience with Verhoef ’s disastrous expedition in 1609, his opinions hardened, and his distrust and hatred solidified. He never forgot these events, and they influenced much of his future behaviour.

  After that calamitous voyage, Coen returned home to the N
etherlands in 1610. He gained the confidence of his superiors with his forthright manner and shrewd analysis of the company’s operations. In 1612 he accepted a promotion to senior merchant, in charge of two ships, and sailed in the entourage of the new governor general, Pieter Both. After a grand tour of the voc’s holdings in the Spice Islands, Both was impressed with Coen’s fervour, dedication and clear understanding of the company’s operations. Both appointed him chief bookkeeper and director of commerce at Bantam. Here the twenty-eight-year-old Coen produced his famous treatise—the “Discourse on the State of India,” a report on the company’s affairs that singled him out for further promotion—which he submitted to the Council of Seventeen in 1614 . That same year, the Seventeen promoted him to the position of director general, the second-highest rank in the spiceries.