Changes

The VOC was originally founded in 1602, as the result of the merger of a number of different firms which had previously been in competition with one another; these firms united under a board of directors known as the Seventeen Gentlemen, forming the United East India Company.<ref>Matsuda, 77.</ref> Based at Amsterdam, a city with perhaps the most efficient money market and lowest interest rates in the world, the VOC raised ten times the capital of the [[English East India Company]].<ref name=tignor/> Like the English East India Company, the VOC was granted a monopoly on all trade “East of the Cape of Good Hope but also in and beyond the straits of Magellan,” and (so far as the Dutch authorities had power to say so) access to all “Islands, Ports, Havens, Cities, Creeks, Towns, and Places” in that vast region; though they faced competition from the English, Portuguese, and various groups of Asian merchants, the VOC were to have no competition from other Dutch organizations. The Company enjoyed a considerable degree of autonomy, and even state-like powers, including engaging in diplomacy, deploying military forces, and claiming territory, even as it simultaneously enjoyed considerable support from the Dutch Republic.<ref>Adam Clulow, “Like Lambs in Japan and Devils outside Their Land: Diplomacy, Violence, and Japanese Merchants in Southeast Asia,” ''Journal of World History'' 24:2 (2013), 352.</ref>

The VOC was originally founded in 1602, as the result of the merger of a number of different firms which had previously been in competition with one another; these firms united under a board of directors known as the Seventeen Gentlemen, forming the United East India Company.<ref>Matsuda, 77.</ref> Based at Amsterdam, a city with perhaps the most efficient money market and lowest interest rates in the world, the VOC raised ten times the capital of the [[English East India Company]].<ref name=tignor/> Like the English East India Company, the VOC was granted a monopoly on all trade “East of the Cape of Good Hope but also in and beyond the straits of Magellan,” and (so far as the Dutch authorities had power to say so) access to all “Islands, Ports, Havens, Cities, Creeks, Towns, and Places” in that vast region; though they faced competition from the English, Portuguese, and various groups of Asian merchants, the VOC were to have no competition from other Dutch organizations. The Company enjoyed a considerable degree of autonomy, and even state-like powers, including engaging in diplomacy, deploying military forces, and claiming territory, even as it simultaneously enjoyed considerable support from the Dutch Republic.<ref>Adam Clulow, “Like Lambs in Japan and Devils outside Their Land: Diplomacy, Violence, and Japanese Merchants in Southeast Asia,” ''Journal of World History'' 24:2 (2013), 352.</ref>

The Dutch originally established their presence in Japan with a [[factory]] in [[Hirado]] in [[1609]]. (The [[English East India Company]] established their Hirado factory in [[1613]], and closed it in [[1623]], leaving the Japan trade at that time.) The Dutch presence in Japan was quite precarious for its first few decades, encountering numerous difficulties, and engaging in much negotiation, demands, concessions, and conflict. A very elaborate and expensive [[1627]] mission to [[Edo]] led by [[Pieter Nuyts]] was refused an audience with the shogun, and its gifts rejected; Nuyts and his men ended up fleeing Edo in the middle of the night. Nuyts became head of the Company's operations in Taiwan the following year, but his conflicts with the Japanese continued, leading to a Japanese raid on Fort Zeelandia. Nuyts was captured (at that time, in [[1628]]) and Japanese trade with the VOC was terminated; four years later, the shogunate agreed to resume trade in exchange for Nuyts' imprisonment in Edo - he was held for three and a half years.<ref>Clulow, ''The Company and the Shogun'', 1-2.; Gary Leupp, ''Interracial Intimacy in Japan: Western Men and Japanese Women, 1543-1900'', A&C Black (2003), 8, 61-63.</ref> While many historical narratives of Japanese history, or of Dutch-Japanese relations, by necessity skim over these details to present a more general overview, historian Adam Clulow emphasizes that neither the Dutch position in Japan, nor the Dutch relationship to the shogun, were obvious or automatic (or peaceful) from the beginning, but rather that these things only settled down into a standard form as the end result of considerable negotiation and conflict. Over the course of their time in Japan, the Dutch were forced to adapt, considerably, to the circumstances circumscribed by the shogunate: though the Company engaged in considerable maritime violence against its rivals in the early decades of the 17th century, this was forced to be reduced dramatically; the VOC also had to convince the shogunate of its legal and rightful ability to engage in diplomatic negotiations, and had to defend its possession, administration, and exploitation of colonial territories against shogunal suspicions and concerns.<ref>Clulow, ''The Company and the Shogun'', 16-17.</ref>

The Dutch originally established their presence in Japan with a [[factory]] in [[Hirado]] in [[1609]]. [[Nicolaes Puyck]] and [[Abraham van den Broecke]] led a small mission to [[Sunpu]], where they presented two cases of raw [[silk]], some [[lead]], and two gold goblets to [[Tokugawa Ieyasu]] as gifts, promising that later ships would have much more considerable cargoes. Ieyasu granted their request for trade, and presented them with a sword, a sign of the binding of a relationship.<ref>Cynthia Viallé, "In Aid of Trade: Dutch Gift-Giving in Tokugawa Japan," ''Tokyo daigaku shiryôhensanjo kenkyû kiyô'' 16 (2006), 58.</ref>

Fort Zeelandia was established on Taiwan in [[1624]], and served as a powerful entrepot (intermediary trading port) for trade with both China and Japan. In [[1639]], the Dutch exported 1.85 million [[tael]]s of [[silver]] (527,250 florins) from Japan via Taiwan. One of the fort's chief individual trading partners was the smuggler/pirate/trader [[Zheng Zhilong]], who traded [[gold]], [[silk]]s, and other goods to the Dutch in exchange for Japanese silver, but also competed against them. His son, [[Zheng Chenggong]] (aka Coxinga), later drove the Dutch out of Taiwan entirely, seizing Fort Zeelandia in [[1662]].<ref>Jansen, 26-27.</ref> It was only after this that Batavia came to eclipse Taiwan as the VOC's chief trading post in the region.<ref>Shimada, Ryuto. “Economic Links with Ayutthaya: Changes in Networks between Japan, China, and Siam in the Early Modern Period.” ''Itinerario'' 37, no. 03 (December 2013): 94.</ref>

 

Fort Zeelandia was established on Taiwan in [[1624]], and served as a powerful entrepot (intermediary trading port) for trade with both China and Japan. In [[1639]], the Dutch exported 1.85 million [[tael]]s of [[silver]] (527,250 florins) from Japan via Taiwan. One of the fort's chief individual trading partners was the smuggler/pirate/trader [[Zheng Zhilong]], who traded [[gold]], silks, and other goods to the Dutch in exchange for Japanese silver, but also competed against them. His son, [[Zheng Chenggong]] (aka Coxinga), later drove the Dutch out of Taiwan entirely, seizing Fort Zeelandia in [[1662]].<ref>Jansen, 26-27.</ref> It was only after this that Batavia came to eclipse Taiwan as the VOC's chief trading post in the region.<ref>Shimada, Ryuto. “Economic Links with Ayutthaya: Changes in Networks between Japan, China, and Siam in the Early Modern Period.” ''Itinerario'' 37, no. 03 (December 2013): 94.</ref>

Under the leadership of [[Jan Pieterzoon Coen]], who has been quoted as saying that trade cannot be conducted without war, nor war without trade, the VOC took Jakarta in [[1619]], burning down much of the town, driving out the local population, and building a fortress from which it would base its operations in Southeast Asia. Two years later, they took the Banda Islands, known for their nutmeg, similarly driving out, enslaving, and/or murdering the local inhabitants. After securing a monopoly on nutmeg, the VOC pushed on to seize control of the trade in cloves, and destroyed every last cloves tree on a number of islands, leaving only a few islands as the only sources of cloves in the region, thus driving prices up dramatically, to the benefit of the Company, which controlled the islands. Soon afterwards, they turned their attentions to pepper, taking control of the Javanese port of Bantam (Banten), the chief pepper-exporting port in the region. By 1670, the Company had taken the Maluku Islands as well, and dominated the spice trade in the Dutch East Indies. Though focusing on monopolizing the spice trade, and on extracting as much volume of spices as possible from these islands, the Dutch found they also needed to engage in trade in a variety of other goods, including textiles, tea, and coffee, in order to have goods to trade in China other than precious metals, since the Chinese were generally disinterested in European manufactures.<ref name=tignor/>

Under the leadership of [[Jan Pieterzoon Coen]], who has been quoted as saying that trade cannot be conducted without war, nor war without trade, the VOC took Jakarta in [[1619]], burning down much of the town, driving out the local population, and building a fortress from which it would base its operations in Southeast Asia. Two years later, they took the Banda Islands, known for their nutmeg, similarly driving out, enslaving, and/or murdering the local inhabitants. After securing a monopoly on nutmeg, the VOC pushed on to seize control of the trade in cloves, and destroyed every last cloves tree on a number of islands, leaving only a few islands as the only sources of cloves in the region, thus driving prices up dramatically, to the benefit of the Company, which controlled the islands. Soon afterwards, they turned their attentions to pepper, taking control of the Javanese port of Bantam (Banten), the chief pepper-exporting port in the region. By 1670, the Company had taken the Maluku Islands as well, and dominated the spice trade in the Dutch East Indies. Though focusing on monopolizing the spice trade, and on extracting as much volume of spices as possible from these islands, the Dutch found they also needed to engage in trade in a variety of other goods, including textiles, tea, and coffee, in order to have goods to trade in China other than precious metals, since the Chinese were generally disinterested in European manufactures.<ref name=tignor/>