Privateering

""This book offers annotated translations of documents touching on Dutch admiral Cornelis Matelieff de Jonge and his voyage to Asia between 1605 and 1608. These translations are aimed at a contemporary English-speaking Asian readership interested in the early modern history of European trade, warfare and expansion in Southeast Asia with a focus on Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia. Researchers specialising in early European colonialism, international law, international relations, security studies, and diplomatic history will also find that the documents translated in this volume offer new and unfamiliar perspectives. Materlieff’s business acumen, military and diplomataic prowess as well as his vision of empire all have implications for examining not only European expansion into Southeast Asia, but also into other regions at large, including especially south Asia, Africa and the Americas.
Admiral Matelieff was a director of the Rotterdam Chamber of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) formed in 1602. He was appointed fleet commander on one of the company’s first voyages to Asia. Matelieff’s mission was both commercial and military: he launched a major sea-borne attack on the Portuguese colony of Melaka, arranged for the signing of treaties with the rulers of Johor, Aceh and Ternate, and founded the first Dutch fort on the island of Ternate. His endeavours, however, to open the Chinese market for the Dutch company proved unsuccessful.
Following his return to the Dutch Republic in September 1608, Matelieff penned a series of memorials and letters. In these he advanced recommendations for changing the way the company organized its fleets and conducted business. More importantly he offered  his Dutch contemporaries a vision of empire in Asia. The materials contained in this volume offer important observations of a perceptive analyst who was also determined to grasp the political and economic structures of Asia, and also of inter-state relations in across this vast region. At a time of Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Danish, French and English engagement in Southeast Asia, Matelieff sought to critically assess and strategize on the ways in which Europeans were increasingly engaging with Asian polities and their rulers.
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Paper submitted to the Winston Churchill Fellowship in Australia in completing the 2012 Fellowship.  Research project entailed archival investigations for historical documents associated with the early colonial history of Australia and the Pacific trade.

"A succinct overview of the process of privateering and letters of marque and reprisal, as demonstrated by the London merchants John Jacob and William Jacob FRS, London merchants and traders. The article overviews the ships Hero, Pandour and Memphis in the period 1807 to 1810 as a proxy for privateering and contraband voyages.
Abstracto en Espanol - Vista sobre los processos de corsarios de Inglaterra y patentes de corso. El ejemplo es los hermanos Juan Jacob y Guillermo Jacob de Londres. Este texto estudia los buques Hero, Pandoour y Memphis durante 1807 a 1810 como ejemplo de contrabando y los viajes de corso."

This book investigates how the rulers of the Habsburg world empire developed and implemented a central maritime policy for the Netherlands and appointed an admiral of the sea or admiral-general for that purpose. It also explains why the Habsburgs were eventually unable to gain control of the maritime affairs of the Netherlands, in spite of the support of the powerful Burgundian Lords of Veere, who occupied the central position of admiral from 1491 to 1558. From their power base on the island of Walcheren in Zeeland, known as the key to the Netherlands at the time because of its central location between Holland, Flanders, Antwerp and the sea, they held an ideal vantage point for exercising the admiralship. The result not only offers an illuminating insight into the organisation of the war fleet, maritime trade and fishery, privateering and prize law in the Habsburg Netherlands, but also puts the success of the later Dutch Republic in a new perspective.

"This article examines the transition of the Dutch East Indian Company (VOC) from a policy of self-defense into its full espousal of large-scale privateering and plundering. I argue that this shift was driven by both economic and political factors, and can be traced to the very formation of the Company as a unified trading venture. The taking of prizes became a cornerstone not only of the economic fortunes of the company, but the establishment
of the Dutch colonial empire in Asia. Of particular interest is not only the instructions emanating from the company directors and the Dutch government in the metropolis, but especially the implementation and adaptation of these directives on the ground. It is this local context that adds a crucial dimension to interpretations of the eager espousal of maritime violence by the VOC and its agents in Asian waters."

"Four hundred years ago, the Dutch humanist and jurisconsult Hugo Grotius was commissioned by the United Netherlands’ East India Company (VOC) to write a defense of Admiral Jakob van Heemskerk’s seizure of a Portuguese merchant carrack in the Straits of Singapore (February 1603). At the time he was twenty-one years old. What Grotius produced between 1604 and 1606 is a comprehensive political and historical exposé on war. Today, this work is known as De Jure Praedae Commentarius, or “Commentary on Law of Prize and Booty”. Only part of this comprehensive manuscript was published during its author’s lifetime and is known as Mare Liberum or “The Free Sea” (1609).
Mare Liberum is essentially a propagandistic treatise and argues for Holland’s merchants to freely access emporia in Asia by unimpeded navigation across the high seas. The freedom of navigation forms a subset to the overarching arguments on the freedom of access and trade. This particular assessment of Mare Liberum stands in sharp contrast to past interpretations, insofar as these have placed the ‘freedom of the seas’ - and not the broader issues surrounding ‘free trade’ - at the forefront of scholarly attention. From this vantage point, Grotius was surprisingly consistent in his thinking on the broader issues of maritime trade and navigation.
During the first two decades of the seventeenth century, Grotius lent a helping hand in the process of forging political and commercial treaties between the VOC and Asian rulers. Far from championing peace and the freedom of navigation on the high seas for which the Dutch humanist is best remembered in modern times, Grotius should also assume a place among the intellectual fathers of Dutch colonial rule in Asia."""""

"O artigo revisita o “Incidente do Santa Catarina”, o famoso episódio da primeira embarcação portuguesa capturada pelos holandeses nos mares asiáticos, inserindoo no contexto mais vasto da rivalidade luso-holandesa no mundo malaio, mais concretamente nos estreitos de Singapura e Malaca. Através de uma cuidadosa análise de fontes europeias efectua uma avaliação completa das maiores consequências deste evento e das suas subsequentes implicações internacionais. Depois de 1603, não só se consciencializaram os dirigentes da Companhia Holandesa das Índias Orientais e os governantes da República Holandesa de como poderia ser lucrativa a política de pirataria e de pilhagem do inimigo, como também as autoridades portuguesas do Estado da Índia se tornaram progressivamente mais cientes das suas vulnerabilidades devidas às condicionantes geográficas. Dedica ainda alguma atenção à defesa legal dos interesses holandeses orientada por Hugo Grotius, o jurisconsulto holandês por muitos considerado o “pai do moderno direito internacional”. Deste artigo resulta igualmente muito evidente a importância efectiva dos mercadores macaenses para o Estado da Índia, a profunda expansão das suas redes mercantis para o Sudeste Asiático bem como, não obstante o facto de terem sofrido alguns reveses em consequência da pirataria da Companhia Holandesa das Índias Orientais, o modo como conseguiram recuperar desses abalos, com extraordinária agilidade e perseverança.

Download for free from:
http://www.icm.gov.mo/RC/TextPE.asp?No=11&ID=555"

""The article revisits the “Santa Catarina incident”, the famous episode of the first Portuguese ship captured by the Dutch in Asian waters, placing it within the broader context of Luso-Dutch rivalry in the Malay world, particularly the Straits of Singapore and Malacca. Through a careful analysis of European sources, the author assesses the broader consequences of this event and the ensuing international implications. After 1603, the VOC directors and the regents of the Dutch Republic were alerted to how profitable the policy of freebooting and despoiling the enemy could be, while the Portuguese authorities of the Estado da Índia became aware of their vulnerability in the face of geographical constraints. There is also a discussion of the legal defence of the Dutch interests as presented by Hugo Grotius, the Dutch jurist who has frequently been upheld as the “father of modern international law”. What becomes very transparent in the course of the present account is how important the Macao merchants really were to the Estado da Índia, how far their networks of trade spanned deep into Southeast Asia, and how, despite suffering a number of severe setbacks as a result of VOC freebooting activities, they managed to recuperate from these blows with amazing agility and perseverance.

You can download this paper from
http://www.icm.gov.mo/RC/TextPE.asp?No=11&ID=555""

"In 1602, the United Netherlands East India Company, better known by its historic initials from the Dutch V.O.C.,  was formed from six smaller trading firms known as the voorcompagnieën or predecessor companies.  The immediate objective of this merger was to stabilize the prices – and consequently also the revenues from taxation – linked to produce from the East Indian trade, spices such as nutmeg, cloves, mace and also pepper. But the merger had another ostensible objective: to project the Dutch war against the Iberian powers of Spain and Portugal from the European theatre into Asia, thus creating a private “arm” in the broader war effort.
This paper traces the early steps in the transition from employing force or violence in self- defence (1590s) though key resolutions and developments that sought to transform the VOC into a privately-financed privateering and plundering machine. It will be shown that pressure was stepped up between the formation of the company in March 1602 and the resolution of the Dutch States General in early November 1603, after which VOC fleets departing from Europe were issued with express and detailed instructions that contained both commercial and military objectives. The geographic focus of this paper will be placed on attacks on Iberian targets and privateering activities around peninsular Southeast Asia, including significantly also the Singapore and Melaka Straits.
The paper is divided into three principal parts. The first explores the related but legally distinct concepts of piracy, privateering and freebooting, and how these evolved and became “inflated” in the course off the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The formation of the Dutch VOC and the stepped up violence exerted against the Iberian powers of Spain and Portugal in Asian waters straddles the first and second parts. Of particular interest will be the interaction of formal policy formulated in Europe with actual events on the ground in Asia.  Instructions to Dutch fleet admirals departing after November 1603 feature a mixture of commercial and military objectives. The third part explores the views of other historians in the Netherlands and beyond to come to terms with the evolving modus operandi of the Dutch company from its foundation in 1602 up to the conclusion of the Twelve Years’ Truce (April 1609) and the dispatch of a first permanent governor-general (1609-10) for Asia.
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""• The role of the British Royal Charter companies of the East India Company (EICo.) and the South Sea Company (SSC), which operated to exclude the commercial exploitation of the Pacific Ocean from 1600 until 1786 (when legislation was in play for establishing a penal colony at Botany Bay)
• The rapid rise in British commercial consciousness of the Pacific as a new source of fishing, sealing and trading opportunities following the establishment of the penal settlement at Sydney, facilitating interactions across the Pacific
• Spain’s concern for the loss of control of what had been its sovereign territory of the Pacific Ocean, which it was not in a position to enforce or eject foreign vessels
• The sudden impact of the confrontations over the Nootka Sound, as Britain and Spain moved towards war in the late 1780’s; and the retraction by Spain when unsupported by its ally France.
• That following the resolution of the conflict through the Nootka Convention of 1790 between Spain and Britain, the Pacific was suddenly opened to British whale fishery, and a rapid sequence of legislative changes in Britain heralded the diminution of the Royal Charter companies in terms of their exclusive trade monopolies, for both the East India Company and the South Sea Company.
• The advent of war between Britain and Spain in 1796 brought the sudden capture of the London whaling fleet by the Spanish colonies of America, without a shot being fired, through stealth and cunning.
• Whalers emerging as both vessels for pursuing the sperm whale, and as an agent of privateering and as a platform for contraband (read smuggling) into the Spanish Americas.  The paper explores how the privateers were funded, who owned them, and what was the objective?
• Processes to become a privateer, the legal formalities, and how did privateers differ from pirates; and finally how successful were privateers, and were they exclusively war-like or were there different objectives
• If a privateer captured a Spanish vessel, then what?  Did the Spanish have their own privateers or Navy in the Pacific?
• how whaling and sealing gravitated to contraband trade in colonial Spanish Latin America between the period 1793 and 1810, and the legislative changes that facilitated this transformation.
• What is revealing are the sporadic records discovered of escaping and time expired convicts that stowed-away on ships in Sydney, and were later captured on the Pacific coasts of South America.
• How these adventures in Latin America by British traders directly led to the bankruptcy and economic crisis of 1810 in industrial England
• And of course, some of the 'ripping yarns' on captured British mariners in South America and how they found their way home to London, or in some cases Sydney and the Cape of Good Hope.
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