European Expansion and Changes of Regime in East Asia during the Long Sixteenth Century
During the first hundred years of ‘the long sixteenth century’ (1450–1640), Spain and Portugal embarked on their commercial overseas expansion, followed in the latter half of the sixteenth century by England and the Dutch Republic. European mercantile capitalism succeeded in gaining footholds in the Americas and South and Southeast Asia, but China and Japan, which both underwent changes of regime in this period, remained remarkably untouched by European incursions. As noted below, Japan experienced its ‘Christian Century’ but by 1640 the Tokugawa shogunate had effectively expelled the Iberian traders and all but extirpated the Roman Catholic Mission. In fact, both the Qing empire and the Tokugawa regime successfully repelled European settlement or allowed trade factories only under very strict supervision. This source publication of the diaries kept by the successive chiefs of the trade factory of the Dutch East India Company on the island of Deshima in Nagasaki Bay records in detail how the Dutch were allowed to continue their trade with Japan at the expense of the Portuguese and other European merchants during the crucial 1641–1660 period.
Following on a long period of civil strife, Japan was unified under Tokugawa rule in 1600 and remained so until the Meiji Restoration of 1868. In China the Ming dynasty had collapsed after many decades of unrest and rebellions and was replaced in 1644 by Manchu rule, which lasted until 1911. The new regimes of Qing China and Tokugawa Japan created their own separate imperial world orders with single political systems which could depend on local elites, vast administrative infrastructures, social systems with clearly defined boundaries, and rules of legitimation framed to promote autarky (self-sufficiency) and tribute relations. In both cases, it took some forty years of state formation – Tokugawa Japan (1600–1640) and in Qing China (1644–1683) – before the new regimes were firmly established. Hence outside the bounds of the expanding modern world system, paradoxically the imperial world orders of China and Japan came to enjoy a ‘long, East-Asian seventeenth century’ for the simple reason that both empires, after momentous changes of regime, co-existed peacefully for almost two centuries until Western imperialism finally forced them to open up in the nineteenth century.
Somewhat later than other regions in Monsoon Asia, China and Japan encountered the first wave of European mercantile expansion in their coastal waters. The two European thalassocracies which had designs on gaining entrance to the East Asian markets in particular were the Portuguese Estado da Índia, based in Goa in India (1510), and the Dutch East India Company (VOC), centred on Batavia (1619) in the Indonesian Archipelago. Both seaborne empires sought to capitalize on the windows of opportunity offered by the regime changes in China and Japan. Initially they achieved this with remarkable success, and in this critical era even briefly acted as go-betweens in the Chinese-Japanese trade. Nevertheless, when the nascent state formations had been fully accomplished, their presence in the Far East was reduced to two isolated trading posts: Portuguese Macao in the Pearl River Estuary of Guangdong Province and the VOC factory on the artificial isle of Deshima in Nagasaki Bay.
In 1557, in their bid to gain a share in the Chinese-silk-for-Japanese-silver trade, the Portuguese established themselves in Macao. Acting as intermediaries between China and Japan, they were able to bypass the maritime prohibitions (hai jin,
Some forty years later, in 1609, the Dutch received red seal permits (shuinjō,
How the successive changes in regime and subsequent state formation processes took place in the Far East has been studied in detail using local and European sources. Japanese historians in particular have discovered the value of the copious record keeping by Dutch East India Company merchants stationed in Japan and Formosa (1624–1662), because the latter were in a privileged position to observe and experience what was going on in the East Asian arena. The 1641–1660 period covered by the present volume can be considered an axial period for the Dutch position in East Asia: in Japan the VOC factory was moved from Hirado to Nagasaki. Yet, by the end of the same period the Dutch colony in the island of Formosa had become so entangled in the ongoing civil war in China that it was finally lost to the Chinese Ming loyalist Zheng Chenggong (1624–1662), named Coxinga by the Dutch, in 1662. Consequently, the record keeping by the men-on-the-spot in the Deshima factory in Japan and Zeelandia Castle in Formosa in this critical period enable us to reflect on the momentous changes of regime in East Asia.2
Sakoku, the ‘Closure’ of Japan
In the past, historians have thought that the ‘closure’ of Japan in the 1630s was an abrupt reaction to foreign intervention by zealous Portuguese and Spanish merchants and missionaries, which had led to large-scale conversion of Japanese in the island of Kyushu to Roman Catholicism. However, the appearance of Asao Naohiro’s monograph Sakoku (Closed Country) in 1975 overturned the opinion shared among Japanese historians about the underlying causes of the so-called closure of Japan.3 Asao proposed a comprehensive institutional approach to explain the establishment of the bakuhan taisei, the order of the Bakuhan government of the Tokugawa period. He argued that the anti-Christian policies and the curtailment of foreign trade were part of a larger event: a fundamental state-formation process which was to create the radically new order. In a country which had been torn apart by a hundred years of civil strife, the Tokugawa regime strove to create an autarkic Japanese world order which would take its place alongside the existing Chinese world order. While the emperor, based in Kyoto, continued to fulfil ritual functions, in Edo (present-day Tokyo), the Tokugawa shogun, assisted by a council of elders (Rōjū), assumed supreme political power and exercised a unique divide-and-rule system in which he was served by some 250 hereditary vassals, the daimyō, who ruled their own domains from the north to the south of the expanded island empire.
A complete reorganization of the tax system was undertaken and the domestic economy was concentrated on the main corridors of inland traffic on Edo and Osaka. In addition to this, a unique system of overseas trade was introduced. Japan came to rely on closely supervised Chinese and Dutch shipping to Nagasaki and, through the intervention of the lords of Satsuma, Tsushima, and Matsumae, on border trade with the vassal states of Ryukyu and Korea and with the Ainu population in the north. In other words, the dictates of the internal policy of the Tokugawa shogunate and not those of foreign pressures – to put it in Rankean terms, das Primat des Innenpolitik versus das Primat des Außenpolitik – were the principal cause of the turn towards autarky in Japan. No wonder that Engelbert Kaempher, the German surgeon in VOC service, for whom international trade and intense diplomatic traffic were the normal state of affairs, called this remarkable phenomenon “the shutting up of the Japanese empire”.4
It should be pointed out that Asao’s iconoclastic ideas did not render obsolete the painstaking editing of foreign archival sources by the staff of the Historiographical Institute of Tokyo University (Shiryō Hensanjo,
Japan and China: Bilateral Relations
Given the momentous changes in regime in China and Japan, let us briefly summarize how state formation processes affected the bilateral trade relationship between the island empire and its gigantic territorial neighbour. In the course of the sixteenth century, the Ming government issued maritime prohibitions forbidding its subjects to engage in trade with Japan as a consequence of the depredations of the wakō (
Once the Qing had integrated Formosa into the Chinese world order, China’s south-eastern coastal provinces were officially allowed to send their shipping to overseas destinations, including Japan. The opening of Chinese overseas trade by the Kangxi Emperor in 1684 released a veritable tsunami of Chinese vessels setting sail to Nagasaki. Because of the Japanese imposition of a series of limitations, this was soon reduced to acceptable levels. Like the Dutch on Deshima, the Chinese merchants in Nagasaki were now restricted to their own quarters in that city.8 By the end of the seventeenth century, an officially sanctioned bilateral modus operandi in the field of the overseas trade between the Chinese and Japanese empires had been achieved. European go-betweens in the bilateral trade between China and Japan were no longer necessary and had consequently been excluded.
Dutch-Japanese Relations
What happened to Dutch-Japanese relations in this pivotal period? There are two monographs in western languages on Dutch relations with the shogunal authorities: Oskar Nachod’s Die Beziehungen der Niederländische Ostindischen Kompagnie zu Japan im 17en Jahrhundert, published 110 years ago, and Adam Clulow’s The Company and the Shogun: The Dutch Encounter with Tokugawa Japan, in 2014. Both authors draw exhaustively on the Dutch eyewitness accounts found in the VOC archives, with Clulow adding some Japanese source materials.9 Both studies rely mainly on reports by Company servants serving on the spot like the diaries published here, or letters to their superiors in Batavia. Yet, in order to fully understand Dutch behaviour in the Far East at large – the bellicose attempts by the Dutch to gain access to the China trade in the 1620s and 1630s on the one hand, and their submissive attitude in Japan on the other – let us first look into the background of Dutch rivalry with their Iberian rivals in East Asia.
The VOC versus the Estado da Índia
The VOC (Verenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie, 1602–1799) was founded as a monopolistic trading organisation into which all previous Dutch companies trading with Asia were merged. At the time the Low Countries were engaged in a protracted struggle for independence (1568–1648) from the Spanish crown, which had reigned over both Spain and Portugal since 1580. Because the principal aim on which the VOC was founded was to promote and safeguard Dutch trade with Asia, this inevitably meant that the struggle with the Spaniards and the Portuguese spilled over to their colonial possessions in the Indian Ocean and the China Seas. In these years when the master plan of Dutch overseas trade expansion was taking shape, it was inspired by the example of the Portuguese Estado da Índia. Like the Portuguese crown, the VOC management aimed to finance the trade between Asia and Europe with the profits generated by the intra-Asian trade, circumventing the necessity to invest bullion from elsewhere.
In their strategy for conquering a share of the intra-Asian trade, the Dutch inevitably ended up doing so at the expense of their Iberian predecessors. The cut-throat competition with the Portuguese for the role of supplier of preference to Japan was just one part of this struggle.10 In the space of sixty years, the VOC reduced the Estado da Índia to a shadow of its former self.11 Originally the Dutch and Portuguese merchants had collaborated closely in Europe. Throughout the sixteenth century, Dutch ships carried Portugal’s tropical imports from Asia to ports throughout Europe. The Portuguese king actually chose to sell the tropical export commodities of the Estado da Índia in Antwerp. When Philip II succeeded to the Portuguese crown in 1580, the Portuguese technically became the enemies of the Dutch. The about-turn from friend to arch-enemy which occurred in Asia twenty years later was inextricably intertwined with the Dutch war of independence.
In the first years of their appearance on the Asian scene, Dutch sailors of the various overseas trading companies sailing to the Orient had studiously tried to avoid clashes with their Portuguese competitors, but, when they encountered fierce animosity, the mood changed abruptly.12 The most obvious demonstration of this is the merger of all the existing Dutch companies into the United East India Company in 1602. Designed as an instrument of both trade and war in the struggle with the Spanish crown, the VOC was set up to trade directly with Asia, bypassing the shipping routes of the Portuguese Carreira da Índia, and to attack the Spanish/Portuguese enemies at their centres of power in Asian waters.
Where were these Iberian power bases? The Spaniards had established themselves in Manila close to the Spice Islands, but soon directed their full attention to China and engaged in the ‘Chinese silk-for-Mexican silver’ trade. The Portuguese were to be found almost everywhere in the Indian Ocean. They first set up their headquarters at Goa on the Indian Subcontinent, then gained access to the Spice Islands in the Indonesian Archipelago, and finally, via their strategically situated power base at Malacca, extended their navigation to China. From Macao, they were in a position to engage in the ‘Chinese-silk-for-Japanese-silver’ trade and create a foothold in Japan in Nagasaki.
Initially the Dutch did wrest dominance over the spice trade in the Moluccas from the Portuguese and Spaniards, but they failed to seize strategic Portuguese Malacca, which occupied a key position in Southeast Asian trade. Not until Governor-General Jan Pietersz Coen had established permanent headquarters for the Company at Batavia in 1619 was the time ripe to strengthen the grip on the Spice Islands with the conquest of the Banda Archipelago, and to plot a broader strategy to wrestle a share in the China-Japan trade which had until then been fully in the hands of the Portuguese in Macao.
The Dutch and Japan
The VOC trade factory established on Hirado in 1609 initially led a rather precarious existence and functioned principally as an operating base for supplying the VOC strongholds in the Moluccas with rice and other victuals and for sending ships on privateering missions against Chinese shipping to Manila and Portuguese shipping to Japan. In 1620 the Dutch and English East India Companies even briefly joined forces in their struggle against Spain and sent the Fleet of Defence, consisting of five Dutch and five English men-of-war, to Manila with the aim of inflicting as much harm as possible on the Spanish trade with China.13 As Coen put it: “Because we have never shown ourselves to be renowned traders in Japan, but only put into the port of Hirado with many empty ships and pursue the enemy from there to the detriment of many Japanese, our reputation in Japan is very much in decline. We are called nothing but sea robbers in one breath with the English.”14 They were forced to desist in 1621 when Tokugawa Hidetada issued an edict forbidding the Dutch and the English to engage in any further violence against Portuguese shipping plying between Macao and Japan.
At this critical moment, the Dutch chief merchant at Hirado, Leonard Camps, warned (as his predecessor Jacques Specx had done on many occasions) that the mighty Shogun of Japan was in a totally different league to “the King of Makassar or a Pangoran of Bantam or other Javanese rulers”. In Japan, there was no room for any muscle-flexing, the Company was operating by grace of the shogun. The orders of his officials had to be followed without fail.15 Now that the edicts forbidding privateering activities had been issued, all violence against Portuguese shipping from China had to stop immediately. Camps drew up a comprehensive strategic proposal by which to gain a share in the China-Japan trade. In this he presented the trading figures he had collected about the Portuguese trade with China and Japan, and advised that the VOC should claim its share of the China trade by seeking a toehold on the Chinese market. As he saw it, the Portuguese financed all of their trade in the Indian Ocean from the profits they made on the traffic between China and Japan. This advice found a ready listener in Governor-General Coen, who then embarked on the China adventure which eventually led to the establishment of a Dutch factory on Formosa in 1624, just outside Chinese territory. In short, it took the management of the VOC a long time – some twenty years – before it was able seriously to consider an overall strategy and mount a campaign to gain access to the markets of China and Japan. It would take it another ten years of trials, errors, and setbacks – a trade embargo in Japan in 1628–1632, and even a thrashing by the Chinese maritime forces of Zheng Zhilong, known as Iquan in the Dutch sources, in 1632 – before that goal could be achieved.16
How does all this apply to the subsidiary role of the Dutch East India Company in the creation of the Tokugawa state? Why were the Dutch included in Japan’s state formation project while their European rivals were excluded? And what consequences did this subsidiary activity have for the general strategy of the VOC, which was then in the throes of creating a maritime empire of its own? The Hirado diaries and the Deshima diaries covering the period from 1633 to 1660 enable us to follow the daily activities and perceptions of the Dutchmen ‘on the spot’ in Japan, and it is these sources which Nachod, Clulow, and other historians working on Dutch-Japanese relations have generally employed. But what about ‘the official mind’ of the Company, that is, the higher levels of authority: the Governor-General and Council in Batavia (the so-called High Government of Batavia) and the directors of the VOC, the Heren XVII (Gentlemen Seventeen) in the Low Countries? Their views can be found in the [published] Generale Missiven (letters sent by Governor-General and Council in Batavia to the Heren XVII) and in the Patriase Missiven and Instructions (letters and instructions sent to Batavia by the Gentlemen Seventeen). In addition to looking at the VOC merchants in Hirado and Deshima and their continuous scheming to survive in the intense rivalry with other European traders during the chaotic events which eventually resulted in Japan’s ‘seclusion’ from the outer world, it makes sense to pay attention to their interaction with the Governor-General and Council in Batavia and even with the Gentlemen Seventeen in the Netherlands and to examine the state-formation process of the Dutch seaborne empire itself, which was happening at the same time as the restructuring of the Japanese and Chinese empires.
As already noted, the founding of Batavia, masterminded by Governor-General Jan Pietersz Coen in 1619, was followed up by his conquest of the Banda Archipelago in 1621 and his rash attempt to enter the China market by attacking the Portuguese settlement at Macao in 1622. Their defeat at Macao forced the Dutch to retreat to the barren Penghu Archipelago, where they built a fortress from which they were soon driven away again by a large Chinese invasion force in the summer of 1624.17 They subsequently established a very small Dutch garrison on the nearby island of Formosa, but in the years which followed they faced attacks and threats from every side: from Chinese pirate bands with whom the Dutch alternately clashed and collaborated; the danger of attack by a Spanish fleet from Manila which was deflected by a typhoon; and a deadlock in negotiations with visiting Japanese samurai traders, which solidified into a trade embargo with Japan between 1628 and 1632.
The clashes with the Japanese and their consequences – what is known as the Nuyts incident – have been described in detail and analysed by a contemporary, Justus Schouten, secretary to the Dutch negotiator sent in to clean up the mess of Dutch-Japanese misunderstandings.18 Oskar Nachod and Adam Clulow have both conveniently put the events in context. What sets Clulow’s version apart is that he resorts to hyperbole in his description of the Nuyts incident and the embargo which followed in terms of the Tokugawa shogunate forcing the “most formidable of all European overseas organizations active in Asia during the seventeenth century” to its knees. The VOC might have emerged as a formidable organization by the middle of the seventeenth century, but it was not yet so in the 1620s, and certainly not in the Far East, where it was beaten time and again by superior forces. Without going into too much detail, let me briefly clarify a few points.
Tamed Bullies or Sly Schemers?
Nachod’s and Clulow’s studies could not be more different. Sailing in the wake of Schouten, Nachod narrates the subsequent events, which he illustrates with carefully selected Dutch source publication materials. Opting for a structural and institutional approach, Clulow chooses to make a number of interesting and challenging statements about sovereignty, jurisdiction, and representation, and elucidates events with the help of data randomly chosen from the VOC archives and from interesting Japanese materials. Nachod portrays the irascible and inept Governor of Formosa Pieter Nuyts (1627–1629) as a bull in a china shop, and the Japan specialists on the spot like Jacques Specx, Leonard Camps, Nicolaes Coeckebacker, and, in particular, François Caron as sly schemers, who were well aware of the limited scope left to them in Japanese power relations. As Camps observed: “It is miraculous to see and no less hear how peaceful and quietly is ruled such a large empire as Japan; the greatest men in the empire [daimyō], who are kings of land and wealth and possess the power of lions, yearly travel like lambs 130–200 [Dutch] miles to pay obeisance to His Majesty, with whom they remain as long as the emperor [shogun] decides.”19 Clulow portrays the Dutch as conceited negotiators, playing bluff poker, who were beaten at their own game. His observations focus on what he calls the opulently outfitted, well-prepared diplomatic mission undertaken by the newly appointed Governor of Formosa, who was charged with defending Dutch claims of sovereignty over Formosa at the shogunal court in Edo.20
In reality, the Nuyts embassy was not at all carefully organized, but an ad hoc affair hastily put together in response to a panicky message from the small garrison in Formosa which asked Batavia for instructions about how to deal with well-armed Japanese merchants who had already been visiting Formosa for several years. The inexperienced Nuyts, ‘fresh off the boat’ from the Dutch Republic, had been appointed Governor of Formosa just one month after his arrival in Batavia, because nobody else in the Council of the Indies was willing to take up that risky position. Despite his inexperience, before taking up his post in Formosa, he was ordered to deliver a missive to the Shogun written by Governor-General Pieter de Carpentier (1623–1627), a man without experience of dealing with Asian rulers, certainly not with the Shogun. Upon arrival in Japan, Nuyts was outwitted and checkmated by the Nagasaki daikan (magistrate), Suetsugu Heizō.
In the preceding years, Chinese smugglers and Japanese merchants with and without shogunal passes had traded with each other in the Bay of Tayouan on whose shores the Dutch had erected Zeelandia Castle. Determined to wreck the diplomatic mission of the inexperienced Nuyts, Suetsugu Heizō even had a group of villagers dressed up as Formosan envoys and sent them to the court in Edo to dedicate their island to the Shogun. All these manoeuvres led to an accumulation of mutual irritation and misunderstanding, and finally even armed skirmishes and hostage-taking in Formosa. This eventually forced the shogunate to impose a full embargo on the trade of the VOC at Hirado. To add insult to injury, those Company ships and their crews which happened to be in Japan were put under arrest. The overbearing letter which Suetsugu Heizō sent to Batavia in 1629, urging the High Government to give up Dutch sovereignty over Formosa and surrender it to Japan, met with scepticism from Governor-General Specx (1629–1631), who, by a quirk of good fortune, was an ‘old Japan hand’. Having spent many years in Japan, Specx was well-acquainted with both the Japanese temperament and their way of doing politics, and he quite rightly suspected that the high-handed demands to give up Formosa were of Suetsugu Heizō’s own making and had little to do with expansive aspirations of the Bakufu. When Heizō suddenly passed away in complete disgrace in 1630, nobody in Edo disputed the Dutch claims to Formosa. By extraditing Pieter Nuyts, who had been recalled from his post two years previously and imprisoned for engaging in private trade, Specx created a face-saving device, a shimatsu-sho
Let us now take a broader look at the Dutch situation in Japan by questioning how the ongoing creation of the VOC maritime empire might have affected Dutch behaviour in various locations. In the 1620s, was the Dutch East India Company as Clulow postulates already “the most formidable of all European overseas organizations active in Asia in the seventeenth century”?22 Of course it was not. The Company’s business was still very much in a developmental phase. It was not until the 1650s that the management of the Company in Holland was able to formulate an over-all policy geared towards the multifaceted Asian society, and clearly set out how its personnel in Asia were to conduct diplomacy according to the various local norms and customs. Just as in China and Japan at least four or five decades of territorial state formation were to pass before their regimes were firmly established, it took the Dutch some sixty years before their seaborne empire took shape as an extensively widely coordinated maritime network of several dozen settlements fanning out around the Monsoon Seas, with a couple of territorial possessions like the Spice Islands, Formosa, Java, Ceylon, and the Cape Colony at the core.
The State Formation of the Dutch Seaborne Empire
Consequently, if it took the territorial regimes in China and Japan at least forty years to settle in, it took an even longer time to create the maritime empire of the VOC in Asia from scratch. Perhaps this delay was because a thalassocracy was of a fundamentally different character to a territorial empire. Whereas the latter strove for fixed frontiers, the levying of taxes, and economic self-sufficiency, the engine which kept the seaborne empire running was fuelled by profits made on overseas trade, dominance of the sea, trade monopolies vis à vis competitors, and, finally, territorial possessions which were used as production sites for export goods. Wherever they set foot on land in Monsoon Asia, the Dutch had to adapt themselves continually to the challenges of local politics. Their success in business depended on gaining exclusive rights to local export commodities which could be traded for others and, if possible, cutting out European rivals in trade. The VOC was constantly negotiating and renegotiating contracts with Asian rulers. Owing to the widely spread territories which the Company acquired over time as it extended its operations, it also ended up ruling and exploiting various regions in Asia, including Java, Ceylon, and the Moluccas.
Because of the sheer size of its operations, this Dutch maritime empire in the making developed a rather unique system of written information infused with checks and balances in which the different levels of decision making, from man-on-the spot reportage all the way up to those in command at Batavia, were closely coordinated insofar as sailing traffic, determined by the monsoon winds, allowed it.
Taking all this into consideration, do the records preserved in the VOC archives at The Hague reveal anything like a master plan, a strategy developed over the years in which Japan was designated a special role? Yes they do; it all had to do with the Company gaining access to the much-coveted China market. In 1700 the first historian of the VOC, Pieter van Dam, claimed that the directors of the Company had understood at a very early stage that the rich commerce between China and Japan could generate the capital the Company needed for its intra-Asian trade.23 Once this lucrative commerce had been secured, the directors believed they would be relieved of having to send large shipments of silver from Europe.
In the first twenty years of the VOC’s existence, the Dutch first challenged the Spanish and Portuguese presence in the Spice Islands. They conquered most of the spice trade by making treaties with local rulers and forcibly occupying strategic islands, which they put under direct rule. Failing to take Portuguese Malacca, and, thereby, control of the Straits of Malacca, in 1619 they established their headquarters Batavia in Java at the northern end of the Sunda Strait, the primary alternative thoroughfare between the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea. Then they focused on opening up the China market in a bid to gain a share in the silk-for-silver trade with Japan.
When in 1621 Tokugawa Hidetada issued stern edicts forbidding acts of piracy against all shipping in Japanese coastal waters, Governor-General Jan Pietersz Coen thought that the time had come to launch an all-out campaign to acquire access to the China Coast. As mentioned previously, the Dutch established themselves on the Pescadores (the Penghu Archipelago) in 1622, but, repulsed two years later by a huge Chinese fleet offensive, they withdrew to nearby Formosa, where they established themselves at the entrance of the Bay of Tayouan. Their factory in Formosa was set up to coordinate the Company’s triangular trade between China, Japan, and Batavia. In its first few years in the island, the small Dutch garrison stationed in a partially reinforced fortress teetered on the brink of a disaster. It faced attacks from Spanish Manila, the Spanish settlement in northern Formosa, Chinese pirates, and challenges by the underlings of the daikan of Nagasaki, Suetsugu Heizō. Only after eight years of uninterrupted trouble with Chinese pirates and a Japanese embargo between 1628 and 1632 did a regular trade between China and Japan via Formosa finally emerge in 1633.
What had happened on the Chinese Coast in the meantime? Not strong enough to force the Chinese authorities to open up trade with the VOC, Nuyts’ successor as Governor of Formosa, Hans Putmans (1629–1636), had turned to teaming up with various Chinese pirate bands. He thereby unwittingly strengthened the hands of Iquan (Zheng Zhilong), a former pirate in Dutch service now metamorphosed into naval commander of the Chinese coastal command. Oddly enough, after the Dutch suffered a decisive naval defeat at the hands of the latter’s superior forces, they obtained the desired opening of trade with China, albeit on Iquan’s terms.24 VOC ships were not welcome on the Chinese coast, but henceforth Zeelandia Castle in Formosa could rely on Chinese shipping from nearby Fujian Province which would bring the desired commodities for the Japan market. Hence, at long last the VOC gained its place as a go-between in the trade between China and Japan.
When the shogunate discovered that both the VOC and the Portuguese in Macao were capable of satisfying Japan’s demands for Chinese silks, it issued the maritime prohibitions which forbade its own Japanese subjects to engage in any further overseas shipping (1633–1636). Finally, the so-called ‘Christian rebellion’ of Shimabara proved the decisive factor in banishing the Portuguese altogether in 1639. This left the VOC as the supreme supplier of Chinese commodities to the Japanese market, although not for long. The Dutch briefly believed that their dreams about conquering a major share of the Chinese and Japanese export markets had come true. Instead, the diaries show, their dreams soon turned into a nightmare. Although Paulus Traudenius, Governor of Formosa (1640–1643), reported in 1640 that he had concluded a contract with Iquan, whereby the latter promised to deliver a steady supply of Chinese commodities for the Japanese market, in the following year it became clear that his Chinese partner was not willing to honour the agreement.
Nonetheless, it should be pointed out that, as soon as the VOC management in Batavia thought that it had at long last stabilized its Far Eastern trade and begun to reap its bountiful proceeds, it felt it was free to challenge Portuguese power elsewhere in Asia and move its operations into the main arena of the Estado da Índia, the Indian Ocean. Only then did the real expansion of Dutch power in the Indian Ocean begin and the Company began to assume its ultimate form.25 In 1636 a large fleet was sent out to mount a fully fledged offensive against the Estado da Índia. Or, as Governor-General Antonio van Diemen (1636–1646) put it, “the time has come to help the Portuguese out of India.”26 That year, the Dutch mounted a blockade against strategic Portuguese Malacca on the thoroughfare between the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean and after a prolonged siege Malacca fell in 1641. This success prompted Van Diemen to write to his superiors in Holland: “And it is certain that with God’s help and the dispatch of necessary troops by Your Lordships we can soon force the Portuguese out of all India.”27 Shortly afterwards, the conquest of Portuguese Ceylon began, to be followed by the capture of Portuguese Cochin and other Portuguese establishments on the Malabar coast in the 1660s. By then, the foundations of Dutch seaborne power in Asia had been laid. As a result, the centre of gravity of the VOC’s intra-Asian trade was relocated from the China Seas to the Indian Ocean, where it would remain until the Company’s dissolution in 1799.28
In other words, as soon as the China-Japan trade came into its own, the VOC’s focus on Asian trade shifted dramatically from the China Seas to the Indian Ocean theatre. Bullion-exporting Japan, which was originally to serve as a springboard to the Chinese market, now became the provider of bullion for the VOC’s Indian Ocean trade, while the Company’s trade with China weakened in the face of Chinese competition and the chaos ensuing from the Manchu conquest of China.
For all the wonderful information which the Hirado and Deshima diaries offer on Dutch activities in Japan and, more importantly, the political events in Japanese society in this exciting period, it should be understood that the eyewitness reports by the men-on-the-spot in Nagasaki do not provide us with the broader picture of VOC policies towards Japan. It would be myopic to see the day-to-day observations of the merchants serving in Nagasaki as being representative of the Dutch East India Company’s policy towards Japan. As a matter of fact, once the Company management had determined with a sigh of relief that its foothold in Japan had been saved at the expense of its European rivals, it turned its priorities elsewhere and continued its empire building in the Indian Ocean sphere. Even François Caron, the quixotic Japan specialist who had been instrumental in solving most of the nagging problems in Dutch-Japanese relations, soon distinguished himself elsewhere – as conqueror of Ceylon, as Governor of Formosa, and, finally, as the second-in-command, director-general of the Company, before being recalled to the Netherlands to face charges of engaging in private trade.
1641–1662, From Privileged Ally to Condoned Merchant
Turning now to 1641–1660, the first twenty years on Deshima, we can see how the position of the Dutch in Japan changed within these two decades from one of trusted ally into that of more or less despised merchants whose presence was suffered only as gatherers of intelligence and suppliers of tropical and exotic merchandise which they imported from their extended network in Monsoon Asia.
Unquestionably the Ōmetsuke (inspector-general of religious affairs), Inoue Chikugo-no-kami Masashige, patronized Japanese-Dutch relations during this axial period. By following his actions we can see how sakoku gradually took shape. Owing to his special position, Chikugo-no-kami could move freely in and out of the meetings of the Rōjū (Council of Elders) and even had access to Tokugawa Iemitsu. Chikugo-no-kami orchestrated all Dutch affairs in Edo and advised the Dutch visitors on their deportment at court; he even selected the presents they should offer. He also ensured that they kept certain privileges because he saw them as his collaborators, if not his instruments. During their annual court visit, Inoue would interview the Dutch opperhoofd extensively prior to his audience with the Rōjū and the Shogun. Inoue was continually debriefing the Dutch, or had others, like the Governors of Nagasaki, do this for him, not only because he wanted to gain information from them, but also to prepare them for tricky questions during their annual audiences with the Rōjū in Edo.
What issues Inoue was interested in become clear from the references in the diaries to the meetings he had with the Dutch. Prior to 1641 he exhibited a lively curiosity about the situation in Formosa, wondering when the Dutch would dislodge the Spanish from their settlement in Chilung (Jilong) on the northern tip of the island. He would prefer to have the Dutch rather than the Castilians as his near neighbours.29
Furthermore, questions were asked about the political constellation in the Netherlands and the marital ties between the House of Orange and other European courts. Inoue might have been puzzled about the intermarrying practices between dynasties – or perhaps he might have taken it in his stride. In Japan, intermarriage between members of the Tokugawa family, the imperial house, and the various han (domains), was, after all, also common practice.
When Opperhoofd Wilhem Versteeghen visited Edo in January 1647, he once more faced questions about Dutch relations with the Portuguese and other overseas countries. Security concerns loomed large both in governmental circles in Japan and among the Dutch merchants in Nagasaki. In a way, these worries kept the two parties hostage to each other. The shogunal government needed the eyes and ears of the Dutch in Formosa and Batavia to be kept informed about the course of the civil war in China and about the dealings of the Iberians and their English allies elsewhere in Asia. On the other hand, the Dutch needed Inoue’s advice about what was going on among the Rōjū in the government circles in Edo.
What were Inoue’s motives for his constant patronage of them? His behaviour and his deeds, as described in the Deshima diaries, clearly reveal that, as he could continually debrief the VOC merchants, he regarded them as being useful suppliers of intelligence and as potential allies against the common enemy. How could they best provide information about the enemy’s agenda and how could the Iberian enemy be kept at bay? Until the late 1650s, when he retired on account of his advanced age, Inoue continued to patronize the Dutch.
During that same decade, Formosa gradually lost its position as an entrepôt in the trade between China and Japan. The scarce quantities of raw silk which the Dutch still were able to gather from war-torn China had to be supplemented with silk from Tonkin (North Vietnam). Cotton goods were henceforth imported straight from Bengal. Iquan, the VOC’s enigmatic partner and rival in trade with Japan, surrendered to the Qing in 1647 and was whisked off to Peking where he was put under house arrest, but his son Zheng Chenggong, alias Coxinga, remained loyal to the Ming and continued the resistance struggle, financing his military campaigns from the proceeds of his merchant fleet’s trade with Japan. After an acrimonious dispute with the Dutch after the seizure of his shipping in Palembang, in Sumatra, he even briefly imposed an embargo on all trade with Formosa. Backed into a tight corner by the encroaching Manchu troops, Coxinga began writing threatening letters to Frederik Coyett, Governor of Formosa (1656–1662), challenging Dutch sovereignty over the island. In the spring of 1661, he finally suited the action to the word: with an invasion force of 20,000 soldiers he crossed the 110 mile-wide Formosa Strait and laid siege to the Dutch headquarters in Zeelandia Castle.
As a result of Coxinga’s invasion, the situation of the Dutch in Japan underwent a sea change. The strategic position of Dutch Formosa as a reliable ally and buffer state between Japan and China was suddenly on shaky ground. How dramatically the mood changed within the span of a few years becomes properly visible, because in 1661 Opperhoofd Hendrick Indijck was still happy with the constructive attitude of the Japanese officials in Nagasaki and Edo. On Deshima, he received visits in his office from Governor Takagi Hikoemon, who admired the “many beautiful and rare things the Dutch possess”. Upon arrival in Edo, Indijck was told that the Shogun had been enquiring after the arrival of the Oranda kapitan, “an exceptional honour because it means we are in the Shogun’s thoughts”.30 The Dutch chief had brought his six-year-old son along to the shogunal capital, where the little boy melted the hearts of the usually aloof state councillors. One of them, Sakai Uta-no-kami, even ended up peeling a tangerine for the child. On the way back from Shimonoseki to Nagasaki, Indijck and his retinue noticed with surprise that the village streets through which they were passing had been cleared and cleaned for them.
Reading the Deshima diaries from 1660 onwards, it simply leaps off the page that, after the fall of Formosa, the attitude of the Japanese authorities towards ‘Jan Compagnie’ changed radically from a haughty but not unkind toleration to a dismissive demeanour which gave the Dutch fairly elephantine hints that henceforth their commercial presence in Japan would be suffered only as long as they meekly submitted themselves completely to the draconian rules and the (often fickle) temper of the local officials of Nagasaki. At the end of 1666, the two newly appointed Governors of Nagasaki, Matsudaira Jinzaburō and Kōno Gon’emon, suddenly slapped such restrictive measures on the Dutch that Daniel Six, opperhoofd of Deshima, had to plead with the interpreters to submit a request in which he wished “to have our former liberties which we have enjoyed for twenty-five years as friends of the Shogun restored”. The interpreters turned a deaf ear to this request and refused to take any action. Constantijn Ranst, who replaced Six in the autumn of 1667, did not mince his words: “We live in Japan as dumb, deaf and imprisoned men.”31
How did the Dutch lose so much of their standing in the eyes of the Japanese so quickly? Several factors seem to have played a role in the changing mood in Nagasaki. The principal reason which springs to mind is an important political consideration. In the Deshima diaries of the 1640–1660 period, the Japanese elite, their contempt for the mercantile class notwithstanding, were hardly able to disguise their admiration for the naval and military power of the Dutch in Asia and Europe. Inoue, who used to host the Deshima opperhoofd and his companions every year at his residence in Edo, loved to listen to his ‘red-haired’ guests boasting of Dutch victories over the Portuguese in Asia, although he was dismayed to hear about the Peace of Westphalia concluded with Spain in 1648 and the loss of Brazil to the Portuguese in 1654. Although mere merchants in the eyes of the Japanese, the Dutch were considered loyal allies and instruments in the ‘joint struggle’ against the Roman Catholic enemies of Tokugawa Japan: Spain and Portugal. Their role was to act as the informants of the Bakufu on events in the world overseas, and it was seen as their duty to inform the shogunal authorities about every move made by the Spaniards and the Portuguese in Asia, in particular if there were any indications these nations might have designs against Japan. From 1641, they were given an order to this effect every year.
But there is a second issue, which has never been pointed out in the historical literature: because of their colonization of nearby Formosa, the Dutch were seen by the Japanese as strategic and trusted neighbours. Most of the higher-ranking Company servants serving on Deshima had actually served some time in Formosa, and vice-versa, a fact which was known to the Japanese authorities.
All this changed dramatically after the surrender of Zeelandia Castle to Coxinga, who had invaded Formosa ten months earlier with an army of more than 20,000 soldiers, on 1 February 1662. The VOC merchants on Deshima enjoyed some empathy while the castle was still under siege; but when the colony was lost and it became obvious that the Dutch would not be able to recoup their losses, this sympathy changed in the twinkling of an eye. When Opperhoofd Dirck van Lier was lodging in Edo in early May 1662, news reached the shogunal capital that Zeelandia Castle had fallen. Although some commiseration was shown for this loss, the Dutch were clearly told that, even though they were now at war with Coxinga, they were strictly forbidden to attack Chinese junks on the high seas, because Japan “could not do without the silk goods, medicines, and other commodities from China”.32 This mantra was repeated over and again in the following years. A discussion between Governor Shimada Kyūtarō Toshiki, the otona of Deshima, and several interpreters in December 1662 clearly reveals that, “the reputation of the Dutchmen had suffered a severe blow”. When the governor was told that Coxinga had died suddenly shortly after his victory, the conversation on the topic of how the Dutch would be able “to repair the loss of honour and respect” by recapturing Formosa continued. “If only Coxinga had left Tayouan and the Dutchmen in peace,” Kyūtarō concluded the conversation.33 That re-conquest in collaboration with the Qing army never occurred.
Boxer, C.R., The Great Ship from Amacon; Annals of Macao and the Old Japan Trade, 1555–1640 (Lisbon: Centro de Estudos Históricos Ultramarinos, 1959).
The diaries of Zeelandia Castle at Tayouan in the island of Formosa have been fully published both in Dutch and in Chinese translation. Blussé, J.L., Milde, W.E., Everts, N.C., and Ts’ao, Yung-ho (eds), De Dagregisters van het Kasteel Zeelandia, Taiwan, 4 vols (’s-Gravenhage: Instituut voor Geschiedenis, 1986–2000). Chiang, Shu-sheng (
Asao, Naohiro, Sakoku (Tokyo: Shōgakukan, 1975). Ronald Toby recapitulated the whole discussion begun by Asao Naohiro in: Toby, Ronald P., ‘Reopening the Question of Sakoku: Diplomacy in the Legitimation of the Tokugawa Bakufu’, Journal of Japanese Studies, 3/2 (1977), pp. 323–363. See also his later book: Toby, Ronald P., State and Diplomacy in Early Modern Japan (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991).
See Appendix VI: ‘An Enquiry, whether it be conducive for the good of the Japanese Empire, to keep it shut up’, in: Kaempfer, Engelbert, The History of Japan (London: J.G. Scheuchzer, 1727), Vol. II, pp. 52–75. In 1801, this essay was translated into Japanese from the Dutch edition of Kaempher’s monograph by Shizuki Tadao under the title ‘Sakoku-ron’.
For a historiographical overview of early sakoku literature, see Blussé, Leonard, ‘Japanese Historiography and European Sources’, in: Emmer, P.C., and Wesseling, H.L. (eds), Reappraisals in Overseas History (Leiden: Leiden University Press, 1979), pp. 193–224.
Boxer, C.R., The Christian Century in Japan 1549–1650 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1951). Arano, Yasunori, ‘The Entrenchment of the Concept of “National Seclusion”’, Acta Asiatica, 67 (1994), pp. 83–103. Katō, Eiichi, ‘Research Trends in the Study of the History of Japanese Foreign Relations at the Start of the Early Modern Period: On the Re-examination of “National Seclusion” – from the 1970’s to 1990’s’, Acta Asiatica, 67 (1994), pp. 1–29.
Cheng, Wei-chung, War, Trade and Piracy in the China Seas, 1622–1683 (Leiden: Brill, 2013).
Zhao, Gang, The Qing Opening to the Ocean: Chinese Maritime Policies, 1684–1757 (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2013).
Nachod, Oskar, Die Beziehungen der Niederländische Ostindischen Kompagnie zu Japan im 17en Jahrhundert (Leipzig: R. Friese, 1897). Clulow, Adam, The Company and the Shogun: The Dutch Encounter with Tokugawa Japan (New York: Columbia University Press, 2014).
They almost succeeded in doing so, but the Portuguese were never completely phased out. George Winius has dubbed the ongoing slumbering Portuguese presence in the Indian Ocean the ‘shadow empire’; see Winius, George, ‘The Shadow Empire of Goa in the Bay of Bengal’, Itinerario, 7/2 (1983), pp. 83–101.
See Blussé, Leonard, and Winius, George, ‘The Origin and Rhythm of Dutch Aggression against the Estado da India, 1601–1661’, in: Souza, Teotonio R. de (ed.), Indo-Portuguese History: Old Issues, New Questions (New Delhi: Concept Publishing, 1985), pp. 73–83.
Veen, Ernst van, and Blussé, Leonard (eds), Rivalry and Conflict, European Traders and Asian Networks in the 16th and 17th Centuries (Leiden: CNWS Publishers, 2005).
Nachod, Beziehungen, p. 177.
Jan Pietersz Coen. Bescheiden omtrent zijn verblijf in Indië, ed. Colenbrander, H.T., and Coolhaas, W.P., 7 vols (’s-Gravenhage: Martinus Nijhoff, 1919–1952), Vol. I, p. 682 (20 December 1621).
“A Short Relation of the Profits and Advantages which the Dutch-East-India Company in Iapan might acquire, in case they could compass the China Trade and Commerce, by Leonard Camps”, in: Boxer, C.R. (ed.), A True Description of the Mighty Kingdoms of Japan & Siam by Francois Caron and Joost Schouten (London: Argonaut Press, 1935), pp. 59–65.
Andrade, Tonio, ‘The Company’s Chinese Pirates: How the Dutch East India Company tried to Lead a Coalition of Pirates to War against China, 1621–1662’, Journal of World History, 15/4 (2004), pp. 415–444. Blussé, Leonard, ‘Minnan-jen or Cosmopolitan? The Rise of Cheng Chihlung alias Nicolas Iquan’, in: Vermeer, Edward B., (ed.), Development and Decline of Fukien Province in the 17th and 18th Centuries (Leiden: Brill, 1990), pp. 245–269.
Blussé, Leonard, ‘The Dutch Occupation of the Pescadores (1622–1624)’, Transactions of the International Conference of Orientalists in Japan, 8 (1973), pp. 28–44.
Blussé, Leonard, ‘Justus Schouten en de Japanse gijzeling’, Nederlandse Historische Bronnen, 5 (1985), pp. 69–110.
Coen. Bescheiden, Vol. VII-2, p. 1060, Letter of 12 Jan. 1623.
Clulow, Company and Shogun, pp. 60, 70–97.
Valentijn, François, Van Oud en Nieuw Oost-Indiën (Dordrecht: Van Braam, 1724–1726), V-b, p. 165.
Clulow, Company and Shogun, p. 2.
Dam, Pieter van, Beschryvinge van de Oostindische Compagnie, ed. Stapel, F.W., 7 vols (’s-Gravenhage: Martinus Nijhoff, 1927–1954), Vol. II-1, p. 698.
See note 16.
Blussé and Winius, ‘Origin and Rhythm of Dutch Aggression’, pp. 73–83.
Tiele, P.A., and Heeres, J.E. (eds), Bouwstoffen voor de geschiedenis der Nederlanden in den Maleischen Archipel, 3 vols (’s-Gravenhage: Martinus Nijhoff, 1886–1895), Vol. II, p. 358.
Ibidem.
Blussé, Leonard, ‘No Boats to China: The Dutch East India Company and the Changing Pattern of the China Sea Trade, 1635–1690’, Modern Asian Studies, 30/1 (1996), pp. 51–76.
Dagregister Overtwater, 8–9 Nov. 1642.
Viallé, Cynthia, and Blussé, Leonard, The Deshima Dagregisters, Vol. XIII, 1660–1670, Intercontinenta 27 (Leiden: Institute for the History of European Expansion, 2010), p. 23 (entry 29 Mar. 1661).
Ibidem, p. 257 (entry 8 May 1668).
Ibidem, p. 43 (entry 3 May 1662).
Ibidem, p. 66 (entry 14 Dec. 1662).