Laurens Bicker was a Dutch merchant of the Middelburgsche Compagnie who, together with Gerard le Roy, conducted the commercial negotiations of the Zeeland mission of August 1601 at the court of the Sultan of Atjeh and undertook to handle the indemnification of the Arab claimants for Paulus van Caerden’s seizure of pepper from their junks in January 1601 — an indemnity that, as he reached agreement with the Nieuwe Compagnie in 1602, was set at ƒ 51,048 in damages. He is, with Le Roy, the principal Dutch commercial figure of the Zeeland mission of 1601.
The Zeeland mission (1601)
Bicker and Le Roy were the two chief merchants of the Middelburgsche Compagnie fleet that arrived off Atjeh on 23 August 1601 under the admiralship of Hans Huybrecht Tonneman. Their arrival, with gifts and a letter from Prince Maurits, produced the diplomatic rapprochement that the Houtman ambush of 1599 and the Van Caerden affair of 1600-1601 had foreclosed. The sultan released Frederik de Houtman without ransom, granted the Zeelanders a factory called “Zeelant”, and permitted two of the commiezen to travel with his letters of favour to the king of Cambay to open trade with Guzerat.
The indemnity arrangement
The chief remaining grievance between the Dutch and the sultan was Van Caerden’s seizure of pepper from Arab junks at anchor on 12 January 1601 — a seizure that the Arab claimants had demanded compensation for and that the sultan had used to justify the rearrest of Frederik de Houtman in chains. Le Roy and Bicker “waren zoo verstandig, den sultan de verzekering te geven dat Paulus van Caerden zijn bevoegdheid te buiten was gegaan toen hij de peper uit de Arabische jonken lichtte, en dat de gedupeerde kooplieden zonder twijfel schadeloos zouden worden gesteld”.
Bicker, who would handle the Arab claimants’ interests, reached an agreement with the Nieuwe Compagnie in 1602 for the payment of ƒ 51,048 in damages — a sum that, according to Francisc Pyrard, was still unpaid in 1608 and, per Tiele, still pending in 1617. The long-running compensation claim was the principal commercial-legal consequence of the Van Caerden affair and the principal instance of the early Dutch companies’ willingness to indemnify third-party losses caused by their commanders’ unilateral actions.
Significance
Laurens Bicker is, in Van der Woude’s narrative, the principal Dutch commercial figure of the Zeeland mission of 1601 — together with Le Roy — and the principal handler of the indemnification arrangement that enabled the release of Frederik de Houtman. The indemnity he undertook to pay — for Van Caerden’s seizure of the Arab junks — was the principal commercial-legal consequence of the Van Caerden affair and the principal instance of the early Dutch companies’ willingness to indemnify third-party losses caused by their commanders’ unilateral actions. The mission’s success — and the indemnity arrangement that made it possible — 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.
See Also
- Zeeland Company’s Atjeh mission (1601)
- Middelburgsche Compagnie
- Gerard le Roy
- Hans Huybrecht Tonneman
- Paulus van Caerden
- Paulus van Caerden’s Atjeh visit (1600-1601)
- Frederik de Houtman
- Frederik de Houtman’s Atjeh captivity (1599-1601)
- Sultan of Atjeh (1589-1604)
- Prince Maurits
- Cambay
- Acheh
- 1601
- 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. 115-116).