Historia

"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."""""

This paper examines the vision of Empire spelled out in the memorials of Admiral Cornelis Matelieff de Jonge written between 1608 and 1612. Matelieff was the third fleet commander to set sail from Europe under the flag of the Dutch East India Company in May 1605 and is best remembered today for his accomplisments in battle and not for his business acumen. Among his most memorable achievements are his seaborne-attack on the Portuguese colony of Malacca in 1606 and his founding of the first fort on the island of Ternate n June 1607. Matelieff’s memorials offer a both vision of Empire and a blueprint for fundamentally reforming the way the company operated across the Indian Ocean and West Pacific. Most of Matelieff’s recommendations were implemented over the course of about a decade and arguably set the stage for the first Dutch Empire in Asia.

The Southeast Asian spice trade involved an evolving network of trade as well as the meaning of the term "spice". This paper takes a snapshot of the spice trade in Southeast Asia at large as well as specifically in the royal Johorese capital Batu Sawar around the year 1600. The backbone for this study is formed by hitherto unknown or sparsely known materials that include so-called rutters as well as the Batu Sawar factory records of the Dutch East India Company

Ibn Baṭūṭah (Arabic: أبو عبد الله محمد بن عبد الله اللواتي الطنجي بن بطوطة‎, ʾAbū ʿAbd al-Lāh Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Lāh l-Lawātī ṭ-Ṭanǧī ibn Baṭūṭah), or simply Ibn Battuta (ابن بطوطة) (February 25, 1304 – 1368 or 1369), was a Moroccan explorer of Berber descent. He is known for his extensive travels, accounts of which were published in the Rihla (lit. "Journey"). Over a period of thirty years, Ibn Battuta visited most of the known Islamic world as well as many non-Muslim lands. His journeys included trips to North Africa, the Horn of Africa, West Africa and Eastern Europe in the West, and to the Middle East, South Asia, Central Asia, Southeast Asia and China. Ibn Battuta is considered to be among the great travellers of all time.

The Telepinu Myth is an ancient Hittite myth. Telepinu was the god of agriculture of the Hittites, people of the ancient Near East. According to a Hittite legend, the disappearance of Telepinu caused all fertility to fail, both plant and animal. In order to stop the havoc and devastation, the gods seek Telepinu but fail to find him. Hannahannah, the mother goddess, sent a bee to find him; when the bee did, stinging Telipinu and smearing wax on him, the god grew angry and began to wreak destruction on the world. Finally, Kamrusepa, goddess of magic, calmed Telepinu by giving his anger to the Doorkeeper of the Underworld.

Joannes Leo Africanus, (c. 1494 – c. 1554?) (or al-Hasan ibn Muhammad al-Wazzan al-Fasi, Arabic:حسن ابن محمد الوزان الفاسي) was an Andalusian Amazigh Moorish diplomat and author who is best known for his book Descrittione dell’Africa (Description of Africa) describing the geography of North Africa.

As part of the Roman religion, the prodigies represented an important role closely linked to the fear they caused to be understood as manifestations of gods with negative character. These were understood to be produced only when humans had taken any action for which they were responsible and that had angered some particular deity, must be atoned for as soon as possible based on rituals perfectly set. The Romans suffered defeats at the hands of Hannibal only understood by them as produced by the loss of the favor of the gods, and in their search to confirm there were reports of numerous miracles which were recorded by Livy.

En el S. XVI mares y océanos se habían convertido en ajetreadas zonas de paso, confrontación, exploración, etc. por las que pululaban armadas, corsarios, piratas, comerciantes y aventureros tanto de coronas europeas como de reinos norteafricanos y orientales. La corona española centraba su interés en controlar las rutas comerciales, puertos, etc. tanto en las Américas como en el Mediterráneo y Norte de España, para proteger esos mercados tanto de la flota Otomana y los berberiscos en el Mediterráneo como de corsarios y demás enemigos en el Atlántico y pacifico, lo cual determino el sistema naval y defensivo que iba a emplear el imperio.