Zeeland Company's Atjeh mission (1601)

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tagsevent, dutch, precolonial, atjeh, trade, diplomacy, 1601, zeeland, middelburgsche-compagnie, netherlands-east-indies
aliasesMiddelburgsche Compagnie Atjeh 1601, Zeelanders at Atjeh 1601, Tonneman's Atjeh visit, Zeeland visit to Atjeh August 1601

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The Zeeland Company’s Atjeh mission of August 1601 — the third Dutch commercial visit to the kingdom of Atjeh, conducted by two large and two small ships of the Middelburgsche Compagnie under the admiralship of Hans Huybrecht Tonneman, captain of the Middelburg, which anchored off Atjeh on 23 August 1601 after stops at Andschuan (one of the Comoro Islands) and Ceylon — is the mission that established the first stable Dutch factory on Achehnese soil, obtained the unconditional release of Frederik de Houtman and his surviving companions, and dispatched the first Achehnese embassy to the Netherlands. The mission is the centrepiece of the early Dutch-Atjeh narrative in Johan van der Woude’s Van der Woude (1948).

Background and arrival

The fleet had left Zeeland on 28 January 1601 and reached Sumatra on 23 August after a prosperous voyage. At Andschuan the local ruler had given them a letter of recommendation to the sultan of Atjeh; at Ceylon they had taken on refreshment. Frederik de Houtman, still in captivity at Atjeh, heard the salute guns fire and “ondervond alras dat de houding van den vorst te zijnen gunste veranderde” when the sultan ignored Portuguese advice to send the Dutchmen into the mountains for safety. The Zeelanders were received solemnly, presented a letter from Prince Maurits, and gave gifts in money and merchandise. To demonstrate his good will, the sultan ordered Houtman’s chains struck off — “die hij acht maanden lang had gedragen” — and released him and his companions without ransom.

The pepper contract and the lodge “Zeelant”

The Zeelanders, forewarned that English and French ships were on their way, did not flinch at the relatively high prices being asked. They brought their merchandise on shore and bought a full cargo for two ships. A Portuguese suggestion that the Dutch reals were counterfeit was disproved when the sultan ordered a thousand coins cut in half; the Zeeland merchants Gerard le Roy and Laurens Bicker assured the sultan that Paulus van Caerden’s seizure of pepper from Arab junks in January 1601 had exceeded his commission and that the aggrieved merchants would certainly be compensated — a concession that smoothed over the chief remaining grievance from the Van Caerden affair.

The sultan then dispatched his own embassy to Prince Maurits — the Atjeh embassy of 1601 — and the Zeelanders obtained leave to settle two commiezen and three assistants on shore at a lodge that they named “Zeelant”. The lodge, which they stocked with money and merchandise, was the first Dutch factory on Achehnese soil. The sultan further permitted two of the commiezen to travel with his letters of favour to the king of Cambay, opening from Atjeh the Dutch trade with Guzerat that would become one of the Company’s most important branches.

The capture of the Portuguese galleon

On 29 November 1601 the two loaded ships sailed for the Netherlands with the Achehnese embassy aboard; off St. Helena they were saluted by cannon-fire from a richly laden Portuguese galleon, which they captured after a two-day fight and brought home to the United Provinces. The two other ships of the Zeeland fleet sailed the same day for Bantam by way of the west coast of Sumatra, where they evaded a Portuguese fleet sent against them by André Furtado de Mendonça and continued to the Molukken. The destruction of the Portuguese galleon and the successful rounding of the Cape with both a cargo and a captured prize gave the Zeeland mission a prestige that helped consolidate the movement for a unified East India company in the United Provinces.

The fire of 13 January 1602

The Zeeland lodge at Atjeh survived only a few weeks. On 13 January 1602 a great fire broke out in Atjeh, destroying some 200 houses; the Zeeland lodge burned down with the rest, though with little loss of goods. Jan Grenier, vice-admiral of the Jacob van Neck fleet, who arrived off Atjeh on 15 December 1601 and witnessed the fire, sailed on 19 February 1602 to Tikoe — where he could buy no pepper because trade with foreigners in the west-coast ports was forbidden except at Atjeh — and then to Bantam. The first Dutch factory on Achehnese soil thus passed out of existence within six months of its founding, and the Dutch trade at Atjeh was henceforth conducted from visiting ships rather than from a permanent lodge.

Significance

The Zeeland Company’s Atjeh mission of 1601 is, in Van der Woude’s narrative, the principal instance of the early Dutch-Achehnese commercial relationship at its most cordial. The mission secured what the Houtman visit of 1599 and the Van Caerden visit of 1600-1601 had failed to secure: the unconditional release of the Dutch captives, a working factory, and a reciprocal embassy to the Staten-Generaal. The lodge “Zeelant” was the first Dutch factory on Achehnese soil and the prototype of the system of factories that the VOC would establish across the archipelago after 1602. The mission’s success also confirmed the bewindhebbers’ view that Atjeh pepper was worth pursuing despite the political risks, and that competition among the European nations — Zeelanders, English, French — drove up prices and made the case for a unified company more urgent. The mission’s outcome, including the dispatch of the Achehnese embassy to Prince Maurits, helped lay the diplomatic groundwork for the founding of the VOC in March 1602.

See Also

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. 115-117).

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