Matelieff’s Malaka campaign of 1606 — the first major Dutch siege of the Portuguese fortress of Malaka, conducted by Bewindhebber-Admiraal Cornelis Matelieff de Jonge with a fleet of eleven ships that had left the Texel on 12 May 1605 and appeared before Malaka on 30 April 1606, supported by a Djohor fleet of more than fifty galleys and three thousand men under the sultan of Djohor, which produced the first Dutch-Malakan accord of 17 May 1606, the indecisive naval battle against the Portuguese viceroy’s relief fleet of 18 August 1606, the destruction of the Portuguese fleet on 22 October 1606 and the second accord of 23 September 1606 granting the Dutch the right to build a fort on Djohor territory — is the central military-naval episode of the Atjeh-Djohor-Malaka chapter of Johan van der Woude’s Van der Woude (1948) and the principal instance of the Dutch-Djohor military alliance against the Portuguese in the first decade of the VOC.
Background and arrival
Matelieff had left Texel on 12 May 1605 with nine ships, having received secret instructions to attack Malaka — instructions that, as Van der Woude notes, “verloren is gegaan”. At the Mauritius he conferred with Admiraal Steven van der Haghen about the state of the Indies; both agreed that Malaka should be the first target. The fleet’s destination was kept secret from the crews until the Nicobaren, where Matelieff finally announced the plan and overcame the men’s reluctance with the promise of prize money. The fleet appeared before Malaka on 30 April 1606.
The first accord with the sultan of Djohor (17 May 1606)
Matelieff called on the sultan of Djohor for support. The sultan arrived on 17 May 1606 with “een oorlogsvloot van meer dan vijftig galeien en fusten, bemand met drie duizend koppen” — a force that, as Matelieff soon discovered, “van weinig of geen beteekenis was”. On the same day the first accord was concluded: the sultan promised to assist in the conquest of the city, the Dutch were granted freedom from tolls and a monopoly of the trade, the booty was to be divided, the city would become Dutch property and the surrounding territory Djohor’s. The Dutch attack on the city failed; the landing force was stopped at the fortifications, which proved resistant to Dutch cannon fire. Matelieff was forced to fall back on a blockade to starve the garrison out, and by mid-summer the garrison was on the point of surrender.
The naval battles of 18 August and 22 October 1606
On 14 August 1606 Matelieff received word that a Portuguese relief fleet — twice the size of his own, under the command of the Viceroy of India, Martim Afonso de Castro — was approaching from Atjeh. Matelieff withdrew his troops from the land, drew up his fleet for battle, and on 18 August 1606 engaged the Portuguese. Both sides lost two ships; the Viceroy himself was among the dead. Matelieff, short of ammunition, retired to Djohor to repair his fleet, and from there learned that half the Portuguese fleet had been detached to the Nicobaren. Returning to Malaka on 20 October 1606, the Dutch attacked the remaining seven galleons and three galleys on 22 October 1606; four galleons were captured, the other three the Portuguese themselves set on fire, and many prisoners were taken and later ransomed.
The second accord (23 September 1606)
During the campaign Matelieff had also concluded the second accord with the sultan of Djohor on 23 September 1606, confirming the first accord and granting the Dutch the right to build a fortified post somewhere on the sultan’s territory — a right that, as Van der Woude notes, was never realised. Matelieff’s purpose in seeking the right was strategic: “men soude eerst en voor alle dingen moeten soecken de stadt van Johor vast te maecken”. The sultan, however, was already negotiating with the Portuguese and was reluctant to commit. Van der Woude treats the unrealised fort at Batoesawer as the strategic mistake of the campaign: had the fort been built, and had a permanent Dutch squadron been stationed at Djohor, the Portuguese position at Malaka would have been untenable.
The strategic assessment
Van der Woude’s verdict on the campaign is double-edged. The destruction of the Portuguese fleet on 22 October 1606 was a major naval victory that effectively ended the Portuguese ability to project sea power in the western archipelago. But the failure to take the city — the consequence of the sultan’s waverings, the inadequacy of the Dutch landing force, and Matelieff’s shortage of ammunition — meant that the Portuguese retained their chief strategic base in the Strait of Malaka for another thirty-five years, until the joint Dutch-Djohor conquest of 1641. Matelieff himself, in his Discours van den Oost-Indischen Staet of 12 November 1608, drew the larger lesson: “soo dunckt mijn dat wy de saecke van Oost-Indien niet en sullen konnen staende houden, met de selve alleen te laten regeren door de Heeren Bewinthebberen, want sie niet datse authoriteyt ghenoech hier in Indien sullen krijgen, om de saecke ten goeden eynde te brengen.” The campaign, in other words, showed that the VOC could not be run from Amsterdam alone; the Staten-Generaal must take the lead.
Significance
Matelieff’s Malaka campaign is, in Van der Woude’s narrative, the principal instance of the first phase of Dutch-Portuguese naval warfare in the Strait of Malaka — the phase of large fleet engagements and formal alliances with Malay rulers. The campaign showed both what the VOC could achieve (the destruction of the Portuguese fleet) and what it could not (the conquest of a fortified city without a sustained blockade and a land force). The two accords with the sultan of Djohor of 17 May and 23 September 1606 defined the formal Dutch-Djohor alliance that would frame Dutch policy in the strait until the Achehnese attack on Djohor of 1613 destroyed the alliance’s strategic basis. The campaign also marked the strategic turn away from Atjeh — which Van der Woude treats as having lost most of its commercial significance for the Dutch by 1606 — and toward Djohor as the Dutch’ chief Malay ally. Matelieff’s strategic memorandum of 1608, with its argument that the VOC needed state support to survive, became the foundational text of the Coen school of Indies administration; the campaign that produced the memorandum is thus the link between the first decade of Dutch-Atjeh commerce and the Coen programme of monopoly, fortification, and state-backed conquest.
See Also
- Cornelis Matelieff
- Steven van der Haghen
- Pieter Willemsz. Verhoeff
- Sultan of Atjeh (1589-1604)
- Djohor
- Batoesawer
- Malaka
- Nicobaren
- Mauritius
- Verhoeff’s Malaka expedition (1608)
- Atjeh’s attack on Djohor (May 1613)
- Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie
- Staten-Generaal
- Acheh
- 1606
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. 127-129, 137-139).
Discours van den Oost-Indischen Staet, by Cornelis Matelieff, 12 November 1608, in Begin ende Voortgangh, Dl. II, 13e hfdst.