Chapter 12 The Colonial Period 447investment expanded from trade alone to production by means of another
social invention of colonial times, the plantation system.
Better funded, the Dutch became the foremost naval and commercial
nation in the first half of the seventeenth century. They captured the Javanese
city of Jacatra, renaming it Batavia (it’s now Jakarta), and from here the first
company governor-general, Jan Coen, ruthlessly extended Dutch control, both
maritime and inland. In order to monopolize local trade in spices, they used
their armies to destroy independent producers and traders. Cloves could only
be grown in the Dutch-controlled region around Amboina; so 65,000 clove
trees were destroyed in the Moluccas. When nutmeg growers on Banda Island
resisted Dutch control, 2,500 inhabitants were massacred and 800 were taken
to Batavia. This process reduced whole island populations, once prosperous
with spice production and trade, to poverty.
They also killed whole sectors of long-distance trade that once enriched
Asian communities from Southeast Asia to India. For instance, Indonesian and
Indian merchants had traded island spices for Indian cloth; cloth imported to
Southeast Asia between 1620 and 1650 had been worth 60 tons of silver a year.
The Dutch killed this trade by importing their own cloth, and then, by ruining
the indigenous Southeast Asian trade system, the buying power of the people
plummeted so that even the Dutch textile trade was permanently depressed.
The British East India Company also had ambitions in the Spice Islands,
but the Dutch were intent on monopolizing this trade. There was an ugly inci-
dent in 1623 when the Dutch captured 17 British traders whom they tortured
and decapitated. This was the turning point; the British turned to India as sec-
ond best.
Britain’s Indian Empire
Elizabeth I’s contemporary in India was Akbar, the greatest of the Mughal
emperors. The Mughals were the Indian extension of the greatest colonizing
empire ever to dominate Central Asia, whose founding figure, Genghis Khan,
united the Mongol tribes in 1206 (see chapter 3). They conquered China in
1279 but stopped short of India. In 1398 Tamerlane plundered Delhi, but not
until 1526 did a descendant of both Genghis Khan and Tamerlane actually con-
quer and stay to build an Indian empire. That was Babur, who had inherited a
kingdom around Samarkand but sought fame and fortune first in Kabul and
then by invading India. We know quite a lot about Babur, because he was a cul-
tured, Persianized lover of the arts who wrote his memoirs in a charming and
personal style. From Babur on, India has been ruled by people who, like the
Chinese, make extensive administrative records, keep journals and write auto-
biographies, commission regional gazetteers, and in other ways leave a wealth
of records about social life. Babur did not live long after conquering India, and
it was really his brilliant grandson, Akbar, who created the Mughal Empire.
Neither China nor India ever imagined maritime empires, though both
countries have lengthy coastlines with vigorous trading communities that, for