James Lancaster’s Atjeh visit of June 1602 — the first English East India Company mission to the kingdom of Atjeh, conducted by Sir James Lancaster with four ships of the English East India Company’s first voyage, which anchored two miles off the city on 5 June 1602 and remained until October — is the opening English-Achehnese encounter and the first instance of the Anglo-Dutch commercial co-operation in the East Indies that would culminate in the joint capture of the Portuguese carrack on 3 October 1602. Told at length by Johan van der Woude in his Van der Woude (1948) on the basis of Clements Markham’s Hakluyt Society edition of Lancaster’s voyage, the visit is the principal English episode of the Atjeh chapter.
The arrival and the reception
Lancaster dropped anchor “op twee mijl afstand van de stad” on 5 June 1602. He was welcomed by two Dutch merchants already on shore — survivors of the Van Caerden affair — who assured him that the sultan would receive him favourably, and that the Queen of England stood in high regard in those parts “by reason of the warres and great victories which she had gotten against the king of Spaine”. The sultan himself, in an audience with Lancaster and his retinue, praised Queen Elizabeth as “a princesse of great noblenesse, for fame speaketh so much of her”. The reception was ceremonial: Lancaster and his officers were treated to a banquet, feasts and dances, and gifts were exchanged in a procession of richly caparisoned elephants.
Lancaster was granted leave to trade without difficulty. He found, however, that the prices of pepper were far higher than his pilot John Davis had led him to expect, and that he lacked the capital for a full cargo. He sent one of his ships to Priaman on the west coast of Sumatra to make up the deficit, and conceived the plan of intercepting the annual Portuguese carrack that came at this season from the Koromandel coast to Malaka — a prize that would repay the voyage and inflict commercial damage on the common enemy. Lancaster, who had practised such buitvaart in earlier voyages, displayed “veel beleid” in inducing the sultan to prevent news of his arrival from reaching Malaka by way of the Portuguese or their agents.
The French visit and the Spilbergh fleet
While Lancaster lay at Atjeh, the French ship Croissart appeared on 24 May 1602 — its consort Corbin had been wrecked on one of the Maldives early in May. The French were received civilly and given leave to land their goods in a house and trade, but they arrived at an unfavourable moment: the pepper had mostly been bought up by the Zeelanders and the English, and “door zieckte van den Gouverneur, als ander quaet toesicht” they could not get into trade; on 20 September 1602 the Croissart sailed for home. The French visit marks the first appearance of a fourth European nation on the Atjeh roadstead within four years.
In early September the Dutch yacht ‘t Lam under Cornelis Spex arrived, having become separated from the Joris van Spilbergen fleet near the Comoros. The yacht was so badly damaged that Spex did not dare continue the voyage; Lancaster took the ship and crew into his service. A few days later Spilbergh himself arrived with the other two ships of his fleet, having visited Ceylon on the way. When Spilbergh heard of Lancaster’s plan to ambush the Portuguese carrack, he offered to join with one of his ships for an eighth of the prize — the first recorded Anglo-Dutch joint naval operation in the East Indies.
The capture of the Portuguese carrack (3 October 1602)
On 21 September 1602 the English and Dutch ships sailed from Atjeh and spread themselves across the Strait of Malaka, “al spread our selues a mile and a halfe one from another”. On 3 October a sail was sighted: the expected Portuguese carrack from the Koromandel coast. She was quickly taken, and the captors set about transshipping her cargo. “Within fiue of sixe daies we had unladen her of nine hundred and fiftie packes of calicoes and pintados, besides many packets of merchandize: she had in her much rice and other goods, whereof we made full account.” Spilbergh received 120 bales and his share of the chests for his eighth; the six hundred Portuguese crew were allowed to depart unhindered for Malaka in the empty carrack. The capture is the central event of Lancaster’s Atjeh visit and the first major Anglo-Dutch naval co-operation in the East Indies — a precedent that, as Van der Woude notes, would become impossible within a few years as the commercial rivalry between the two northern European nations intensified.
Significance
James Lancaster’s Atjeh visit is, in Van der Woude’s narrative, the principal instance of the early phase of Anglo-Dutch commercial co-operation against the Portuguese in the East Indies, before the rivalry between the VOC and the English East India Company had hardened into the conflicts that would mark the 1610s and 1620s. The visit also shows the sultan’s court as the diplomatic theatre in which the European nations first encountered one another face to face: by the autumn of 1602 the English, the Dutch and the French were all present at Atjeh at once, and the sultan’s balancing policy extended to all three. Lancaster’s reception — the elephants, the banquet, the praise of Queen Elizabeth — is the principal instance in the early English East India Company records of ceremonial Asian diplomacy, and the precedent it set for later English embassies to Achehnese and other Indian Ocean courts. The joint capture of the Portuguese carrack on 3 October 1602 is the high-water mark of Anglo-Dutch naval co-operation in the East Indies; the next time English and Dutch squadrons met off Atjeh, in the 1610s, they would be rivals.
See Also
- James Lancaster
- English East India Company
- Joris Spilbergh
- Joris Spilbergh’s Atjeh visit (1602)
- Cornelis Spex
- John Davis
- Sultan of Atjeh (1589-1604)
- Capture of the Portuguese carrack off Atjeh (October 1602)
- Priaman
- Koromandel kust
- Malaka
- Ceylon
- St Helena
- Acheh
- 1602
Source
Coen, Koopman van Heeren Zeventien. Geschiedenis van den Hollandshen Handel in Indië (1598-1614), by Johan van der Woude (Amsterdam: C.V. Uitgeverij v/h C. De Boer Jr., 1948), Hoofdstuk V “Voorgangers, Hollanders en mededingers tot 1614. Atjeh. Djohor. Malaka.” (pp. 117-118).
The Voyage of Sir James Lancaster, Kt, to the East Indies, ed. Clements R. Markham, Hakluyt Society (London, 1877), pp. 74-76.