48 Boundaries and Beyond
and spices. With no choice but to acquiesce in the Japanese restriction on
the number of Dutch ships permitted to trade in the country, the Dutch
East India Company was forced to abandon the direct trade between
Ayudhya and Nagasaki in 1715.^167
Although the Dutch built fortresses in the Java Sea region and had
no qualms about using force to achieve full control or a monopoly, they
were constrained by the fact that they were primarily a trading company.
This required them to have second thoughts about using force if the costs
outweighed the beneβits to be gained.^168 Throughout the seventeenth
century, they were just one of the many players in the existing indigenous
trade network that showed no signs of losing its effectiveness. In 1660s,
for instance, the aggressive Dutch policies against the Chinese junks
that were trading between Tonkin and Nagasaki, failed badly simply
because the vested interests of both the Japanese ofβicials and the
Trinh government of Tonkin provided them with protection against the
unwelcome Dutch interlopers.^169 In Batavia or on Java’s northeast coast,
the Dutch knew perfectly well that they would need to collaborate with
the Fujianese junk traders, local Chinese merchants and the indigenous
rulers for own commercial survival.^170
The Dutch gained a commanding position in 1743 after obtaining
contractual suzerainty over the most important regencies in Java.
Despite their consolidation of power in the island, the Dutch Company
was fully aware that a burgeoning trade “demanded cooperation with
local partners” and the Company continued to depend on the Chinese
merchants, “whether to secure the products desired or sell imported
commodities”.^171 During the century, the Company was able to extract
great proβits from the trade in Moluccan spices, Indian textiles, Ceylonese
cinnamon and Chinese tea, until they were sidelined by the British
advance in Asian trade in the later decades of the century.^172
India‒Singapore‒China
By the late seventeenth century, the English East India Company had
established itself in Surat, Madras, Bombay and Calcutta and was casting
a speculative eye on the lucrative China trade. In 1712, the EIC obtained
- See Shimada Ryuto, “Siamese Products in the Japanese Market”, p. 149.
- Luc Nagtegaal, Riding on the Dutch Tiger, p. 16.
- Iioka Naoko, “The Rise and Fall of the Tonkin-Nagasaki Silk Trade”, pp. 51–2.
- Arun Das Gupta, “The Maritime Trade of Indonesia: 1500–1800”, in Southeast
Asia: Colonial History, ed. Paul H. Kratoska, p. 122. - Cited in Kwee Hui Kin, The Political Economy of Java’s Northeast Coast, pp. 6, 14.
- Ibid., pp. 15–6.
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