Hendrick Brouwer (c. 1581-1643) was a Dutch navigator and administrator in the service of the VOC who, as commander of two ships at Banda in 1612, drafted the “Secrete Instructie” of 4 April 1612 recommending the destruction of the Bandanese nutmeg trees as the means to coerce the Bandanese into submission — the policy that Coen would later execute in the 1621 conquest — and would go on to become Governor-General of the VOC from 1632 to 1636. Brouwer is the principal Dutch strategic advisor of the Banda chapter of Van der Woude’s Van der Woude (1948).
The 1612 Secrete Instructie
Brouwer, “zich met twee schepen voor Banda bevindende”, drafted the “Secrete Instructie” on 4 April 4 April 1612. The instruction, addressed to his superiors, recommended the construction of a fort at Lontor on Great Banda — “om daer mede een toon te hebben, van meester te sijn ouer beyde partijen” — and the destruction of the Bandanese nutmeg trees as the means to coerce the Bandanese into submission: “te weeten de nooteboomen te vernielen, destrueren, ende omhouden, datt lichtelijcker ende met minder peryckel sall connen geschieden dat hun vaste nesten te ouerweldighen, daer sij doch de vlucht wt nemen alsmen die vermeestert, waerdoor weynich voordeel op haer becomen”.
The instruction’s argument was the working-out of the Heeren Zeventien’s secret instructions of 11 April 1608 and 4 May 1609. Brouwer wrote the instruction “oock kennisse hebbende van de intentie der heeren Bewinthebberen” — with knowledge of the bewindhebbers’ intention — and his advice “kwam daarmee al bijzonder goed overeen”. The instruction also recommended the blockade of the Banda islands, though Brouwer acknowledged that this could only be done with jachts that were not available.
The strategic argument
Brouwer’s strategic argument — the destruction of the Bandanese nutmeg trees — was the principal Dutch strategic innovation of the Banda chapter. The argument inverted the usual commercial logic: instead of seeking to control the trees in order to harvest their produce, Brouwer proposed to destroy the trees in order to coerce the Bandanese into submission. The argument was based on the observation that the Bandanese, whose food supply was already precarious, could not survive the destruction of their nutmeg trees — their principal commercial asset — and would be forced to submit. The argument would be executed by Coen in the 1621 conquest: the Bandanese were depopulated, the nutmeg trees were parcelled out into perkenier plantations worked by imported slaves, and the Banda islands became the principal Dutch nutmeg monopoly.
The later career
Brouwer would go on to become Governor-General of the VOC from 1632 to 1636. His Governor-Generalship, which Van der Woude does not pursue, was marked by the consolidation of the Dutch position in the East Indies and the expansion of the Dutch trade with Japan and Formosa. Brouwer’s earlier role as the strategic advisor of the Banda chapter — and the author of the “Secrete Instructie” of 4 April 1612 — frames him as the principal Dutch strategic thinker of the early VOC period between Matelieff (whose Discours of 1608 had anticipated the Coen programme) and Coen (whose Discours of 1 January 1614 would complete it).
Significance
Hendrick Brouwer is, in Van der Woude’s narrative, the principal Dutch strategic advisor of the Banda chapter and the principal author of the “Secrete Instructie” of 4 April 1612 that recommended the destruction of the Bandanese nutmeg trees as the means to coerce the Bandanese into submission. The instruction — written “oock kennisse hebbende van de intentie der heeren Bewinthebberen” — was the working-out of the Heeren Zeventien’s secret instructions of 1608-1609 and the proximate intellectual cause of the Coen conquest of Banda in 1621. Brouwer’s role in the Dutch-Atjeh relationship was indirect: by 1612 the strategic centre of Dutch-Indies policy had shifted from Atjeh to Banda, and the Banda experience — not the Atjeh experience — would define the Coen programme.
See Also
- Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie
- Jan Pieterszoon Coen
- Discours of 1 January 1614
- Cornelis Matelieff
- Heeren Zeventien
- Twelve Years’ Truce (1609)
- Murder of Verhoeff at Banda (May 1609)
- Banda-eilanden
- Lontor
- Groot-Banda
- Acheh
- 1612
- 1621
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 X (pp. 322-323).