Free The Indian Ocean by Michael Pearson Page B

presently, but first we must introduce the northern Europeans.
    The Portuguese claimed, or at least their poet Luís Vas de Camões claimed, that Gama sailed through seas never before sailed. This was true enough if one follows a passage from Lisbon around the Cape of Good Hope to about the modern Delagoa Bay, but not from there on across the Indian Ocean. So also with the Dutch. They followed the Portuguese. Their novelty consisted in their 'discovery' of the roaring 40s and fearful 50s in the southern ocean. Once they were established in Indonesia they soon learnt to keep south of the Cape, and scream across the southern ocean to the west coast of Australia, then head north to Indonesia. This route had never been sailed before, except possibly by Indonesians returning from Madagascar, but we noted earlier that this claim seems to be quite fanciful (see pages 60–1).
    The Dutch and the English were concerned to break in on the trade pioneered by the Iberians. 49 Their attitude to trade was often as positive as that of the most rigid free-market economist of today. In 1711 Joseph Addison, in an essay called 'Trade as a Civilising Force', wrote in a strikingly benign way that
    Nature seems to have taken a particular Care to disseminate her Blessings among the different Regions of the World with an Eye to this mutual Intercourse and Traffick among mankind, that the Natives of several Parts of the Globe might have a Dependence upon one another, and be united by their common Interest. 50
    The wonder of the East, now focused on products rather than mysteries and the fabulous, was well expressed by Samuel Pepys:
    My Lord Broucker and Sir Edmund Pooly carried me down into the hold of the India ship, and there did show me the greatest wealth lie in confusion that a man can see in the world. Pepper scattered through every chink, you trod upon it; and in cloves and nutmegs I walked above the knees; whole rooms full. And silk in bales... as noble a sight as ever I saw in my life. 51
    In the following sketch I have taken to heart a powerful admonition from the late Denys Lombard. He wanted to
    underline the importance of preventing the study of the companies from being separated from the Asian context in which they were formed anddeveloped. When seen from Europe, they doubtless appear to be autonomous institutions of wonderful effecacity, heralding the colonial empires of the nineteenth century. When seen from Asia, they seem first and foremost to be uncertain attempts on the part of newcomers to find their way as best they could into a system which had been in existence for centuries. 52
    Thinking back to the typology we sketched earlier in this chapter, the Dutch and English, like the Portuguese, acquired some ports, and many trading posts (known as factories) in existing ports, and at times they moved to the second stage, where they participated in production in the interior. But their move to the third stage, where they controlled politically the interior, in most areas came later in the eighteenth century. Specifically, while Europeans established ports on the Coromandel coast, such as Chennai, this did not mean that they did well in local trade, and nor did they outcompete native ports. So also on the west coast of India. Mumbai was set up by the British in the 1660s, but it took seventy years for it to overtake the great port of Surat. The
coup de grâce
was military rather than commercial: in 1759 Surat was taken over by the British. And so also in Indonesia: Jakarta (Batavia) won only after the Dutch conquered Makassar.
    The Dutch had some decades of maritime experience behind them, especially in the Baltic and North Sea, before they ventured to the Indian Ocean late in the sixteenth century. They had also done well in the distribution within Europe of spices brought to Lisbon by the Portuguese. When Spain conquered Portugal in 1580 their access was restricted, and this seems to have been the main motive for the decision of some