Commodity and Market 29
to international markets. Bantam maintained close trade relations with
Ming China. However, as it gained power, a newcomer was hovering on
the scene. In 1596, four Dutch ships from Amsterdam anchored in the
port for the βirst time. J.C. van Leur cites accounts from the Dutch records
and depicts a vivid picture of the intense trading atmosphere:
There came [on board] such a multitude of Javanese and other
nations as Turks, Chinese, Bengali, Arabs, Persians, Gujarati, and
others that one could hardly move.
... each nation took a spot on the ships where they displayed
their goods, the same as if it were on a market.^102Until the Dutch capture of the port town in the late seventeenth century,
the British East India Company was in the habit of obtaining Chinese
commodities from here.
The amount of raw silk brought to Bantam on Chinese junks each
year was 300‒400 piculs. Homeward-bound, they shipped back pepper
and other commodities.^103 Chinese merchants were an important group
among the port communities. Although other foreign communities, such
as Gujaratis, Coromandelese, Bengalis and Indonesians from other parts
of the Archipelago, among them Buginese, Bandanese, Banjarese, people
from Ternate, Makassar and eastern Java were lodged in the suburbs, the
Chinese merchants lived in a quarter within the walls of the port city and
“dwelt in stately houses, owned warehouses and ships, and held slaves”,
Van Leur states.^104 Living cheek by jowl with the principal merchants or
wholesale dealers were “the mass of traders carrying their valuable goods
on board ship or selling the commissioners a few bags of rice, pepper,
or spices on the market”. Even the Chinese buyers might venture “inland
into the villages with their weights in hand”.^105 Despite the peddling
nature of the business of the small traders, the total amount of the goods
that changed hands was very substantial owing to the multitude of the
participants.
Initially Bantam was Batavia’s rival entrepôt but it was gradually
weakened by internal conβlict and was consequently forced to accept VOC
rule in 1682.
Makassarese, Bugis and the Riau Trading Zones: Prior to the sixteenth
century, as Gene Ammarell citing Anthony Reid points out, the long-
distance trade between Malacca, Java, Celebes (Sulawesi) and the Spice
- J.C. van Leur, Indonesian Trade and Society, p. 3.
- Ibid., p. 126.
- Ibid., pp. 138–9.
- Ibid., p. 139.