Maagden als losprijs — “maidens as ransom” — was the request put to Commissaris Pieter Soury’s embassy to Atjeh in 1641 by the Atjeh court, asking whether the Dutch had brought “Portugeesche jonge dochterkens” — Portuguese maidens — to be delivered as losprijs (ransom). The request, made at an audience attended by the Panglima’s of Pedir and Deli and many other Atjeh nobles, is preserved in the chapter-title of chapter XI of Godee Molsbergen’s Tijdens de O.I. Compagnie: “Atjehsche ambassade. Inlandsche feesten. Maagden als losprijs.”
The request of 1641
At an audience at the court of the Sultana, attended by the Panglima’s of Pedir and Deli and many other Atjeh nobles, the chiefs asked whether the Dutch had brought “Portugeesche jonge dochterkens” — Portuguese maidens — to be delivered as losprijs (ransom), as they had previously requested.
The context of the request was the Atjeh court’s long-running conflict with Portuguese Malakka — a conflict that had only just been resolved in 1641 by the joint VOC–Atjeh–Djohor capture of the city. The Atjeh court had Portuguese prisoners of rank in its custody, most notably the nobleman Francisco de Souza de Castro. The request for Portuguese maidens — to be exchanged, presumably, for Atjeh prisoners or for some other ransom arrangement — must be understood in that context.
Soury’s response
Soury answered gravely that there were no Portuguese maidens to be had at Batavia, and that the ships had lain seven days at Malakka but could obtain none there either. His instructions had recommended him to add that the sending of maidens was tegen onze wet en religie — against our law and religion — but when the two Atjeh ambassadors who had come back with him from Batavia confirmed what he had said, he omitted that declaration. The omission is itself a small act of diplomatic discretion: Soury chose not to moralise once the practical answer (no maidens available) had been confirmed by the Atjeh ambassadors themselves.
The connection with the Portuguese prisoner
The “maidens as ransom” request is closely connected with the captivity of the Portuguese nobleman Francisco de Souza de Castro at Atjeh — a captivity that intersected directly with the Soury embassy of 1641. The Atjeh court clearly associated the Dutch visit with the prospect of a Portuguese exchange, and De Castro’s person was part of that calculation. The embassy’s diplomatic clarification — that Portugal in 1640 had been freed from Spain, was no longer the Republic’s mortal enemy, and that the Republic had concluded a ten-year truce with Portugal the following year — also bears on the losprijs question, in that the Dutch-Portuguese truce complicated the Atjeh court’s calculation of what to do with its Portuguese captive.
Significance
For Atjeh’s history, the “maidens as ransom” request is a striking instance of the sultanate’s expectations of its Dutch diplomatic partners — expectations that the VOC was neither willing nor able to meet. The request reveals a side of Atjeh court diplomacy that the formal ceremonial of the 1 July 1641 audience does not show: the sultanate’s interest in human exchange as a means of resolving its long-running conflict with Portuguese Malakka. The Dutch refusal — practical, not moral — is a small but significant marker of the limits of the Dutch-Atjeh alliance.
See Also
- Pieter Soury’s mission to Atjeh (1641)
- Atjehsche ambassade ceremony (1 July 1641)
- Francisco de Souza de Castro
- Sultana of Atjeh (1641)
- Panglima
- Pedir
- Deli
- 1641
- Acheh
Source
Tijdens de O.I. Compagnie, by Dr. E. C. Godee Molsbergen, Oud-Hoogleeraar, Landsarchivaris te Batavia (Amsterdam: N.V. Swets & Zeitlinger Boekhandel en Uitgevers Mij., 1932), chapter XI (“Atjehsche ambassade. Inlandsche feesten. Maagden als losprijs”), pp. 39–43 of the numbered-letter sequence.