Johan van Oldenbarneveldt (1547-1619) — the Raadpensionaris (Landsadvocaat) of the County of Holland from 1586 until his execution in 1619 — was the principal Dutch statesman of the period of the founding of the VOC and the Twelve Years’ Truce, the chief political architect of the Dutch Republic’s commercial policy in the East Indies, and the principal Dutch advocate of the peace with Spain that the war party — led by Prince Maurits and the Heeren Zeventien’s commercial interests — opposed. Van der Woude treats him as the principal political figure of the background chapters of his Van der Woude (1948) and the principal opponent of the Coen programme of monopoly-by-force.
The founding of the VOC
Oldenbarneveldt, as Raadpensionaris, was the chief political architect of the founding of the VOC in 1602. Van der Woude notes that “Oldenbarneveldt uit de eerste hand op de hoogte was van dit streven” — the unification of the voorcompagnieën into a single chartered company — and that the Staten-Generaal, under his leadership, “steeds hadden vermeden, den groothandel te belasten met belemmerende bepalingen; de vorming van kapitaal was een van de middelen om het succes van den opstand te stabiliseeren en de onafhankelijkheid van den Staat te bevestigen”. The political motive — strengthening the Republic against Spain — was as important as the commercial.
The Twelve Years’ Truce
The Twelve Years’ Truce of 1609 was Oldenbarneveldt’s chief diplomatic achievement and the proximate cause of his political destruction. The truce negotiations of 1608-1609 turned on the colonial clause: whether the truce would apply to the East Indies, and whether the Dutch would be free to trade there. Oldenbarneveldt, who “accepteerde den tusschenweg van een wapenstilstand”, accepted the compromise that trade was free in the regions where it had been carried on, restricted to the king’s European dominions and to those places where his allies’ subjects had traffic by mutual consent. The French and English ambassadors explicitly declared that the East Indies were included; Oldenbarneveldt accepted the declaration. The war party — Prince Maurits, the urban merchant interests, and the Heeren Zeventien’s commercial lobby — opposed any peace that conceded Spain’s claim to exclude the Dutch from the East Indies, and used the colonial issue to attack Oldenbarneveldt throughout the truce period.
The conflict with Prince Maurits
The truce period (1609-1621) saw the political conflict between Oldenbarneveldt and Prince Maurits come to a head. Theological-political divisions — between the Remonstrants (Oldenbarneveldt’s party) and the Contra-Remonstrants (Maurits’s party) — overlaid the commercial-political divisions over the truce. The Sharp Resolution of 1617, by which Oldenbarneveldt authorised the cities of Holland to raise their own armed forces (waardgelders) against the States-General’s authority, was the proximate cause of his arrest in 1618. He was tried for treason by a commission of the States-General, convicted, and beheaded in The Hague on 13 May 1619. The execution marked the triumph of the war party and the prelude to the resumption of the war with Spain in 1621.
Significance
Johan van Oldenbarneveldt is, in Van der Woude’s narrative, the principal Dutch statesman of the period of the founding of the VOC and the Twelve Years’ Truce, and the principal Dutch advocate of the peace with Spain that the war party opposed. His role in the founding of the VOC was the political foundation of the early Dutch-Indies trade, and his acceptance of the compromise colonial clause in the truce of 1609 was the proximate cause of the political conflict that produced his execution in 1619. Oldenbarneveldt’s defeat and death also marked the triumph of the war party — the Heeren Zeventien’s commercial lobby, the orthodox Calvinist clergy, and Prince Maurits — and the prelude to the Coen programme of monopoly-by-force that would define VOC policy in the 1610s and 1620s. The Dutch-Atjeh commercial relationship, which Van der Woude treats as having lost most of its strategic significance by 1614, unfolded within the political framework that Oldenbarneveldt had constructed and that his execution would destroy.
See Also
- Founding of the VOC (1602)
- Twelve Years’ Truce (1609)
- Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie
- Heeren Zeventien
- Staten-Generaal
- Prince Maurits
- Huigh de Groot
- Jan Pieterszoon Coen
- Acheh
- 1602
- 1609
- 1619
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), Hoofdstukken I-II (pp. 7-65).