South East Asia:Colonl Hist V1

Paul Kratoska

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781000558166
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

First published in 2004. The six volumes that make up this set provide an overview of colonialism in South East Asia. The first volume deals with Portuguese, Spanish and Dutch Imperialism before 1800, the second with empire-building during the Nineteenth Century, and the third with the imperial heyday in the early Twentieth Century. The remaining volumes are devoted to the decline of empire, covering nationalism and the Japanese challenge to the Western presence in the region, and the transition to independence. The authors whose works are anthologised include both official participants, and scholars who wrote about events from a more detached perspective. Wherever possible, authors have been chosen who had first-hand experience in the region. Volume I incudes Imperialism in South East Asia before 1800.

Imperialism in South East Asia Before 1800

Introduction

DOI: 10.1201/9781003101666-0

Peter Borschberg

The colonial quest between the late fifteenth and the early nineteenth centuries derives its more immediate origins from Europe, and particularly a centuries-old confrontation between Christian Europe and the Islamic world. Portugal and Spain, the powers of the Iberian Peninsula, represent the driving force of the early European expansion in the fifteenth century. Vasco da Gama discovered for the Portuguese the maritime route around the southern tip of Africa to India (in 1487), while Spain pioneered a route across the Atlantic to the Americas (1492), and a few decades later Ferdinand Magellan sailed from the Americas across the Pacific Ocean to the Philippine Islands (1521).

The two Iberian kingdoms were allies against Islam, and maritime exploration and trade became inseparably linked with their missionary zeal to propagate the Christian faith. At the same time, they were rivals in the quest for trading profits and national glory, and the conflict became sufficiently intense to invite papal intervention. The Treaty of Tordesillas (1494) drew a notional line of demarcation through the Atlantic Ocean and continental South America, separating the world, including the oceans, into an exclusive Portuguese zone to the east and a Spanish zone to the west of this line. The Treaty of Tordesillas is by far the most widely known occasion of Papal mediation and territorial donation, though it was by no means the first. A number of Papal bulls issued around the middle of the fifteenth century lent legal and moral support to Portugal’s exploration of the west coast of Africa, and their wording was sufficiently vague to cover later Portuguese ‘discoveries’ as far away as the Indian subcontinent and South East Asia. Nor did papal mediation entirely quell competition between the Spanish and Portuguese crowns over access to the Indies. Magellan’s voyage opened a western route to the rich markets of South East Asia, and re-ignited the commercial rivalry between the two Iberian states. In 1529 a second division of the world, known as the Treaty of Zaragoza, divided the Asia Pacific region into mutually exclusive Spanish and Portuguese spheres of interest. Most of South East Asia, with the exception of the Philippine Islands, fell within the Portuguese sphere. The Treaties of Tordesillas and Zaragoza confirmed, at least on paper, monopolies of trade for the two Iberian crowns, and are of considerable importance for unlocking the matrix of trade that emerged within South East Asia, and the pattern of colonial expansion subsequently pursued by the two powers.

This division of the world was made possible by rapidly growing acquaintance with the earth’s geography gained through maritime exploration. The Iberian powers used this knowledge to tap into established Asian networks of trade, and also to create new ones, the most significant being the link between Manila and Acapulco, on the west coast of Mexico.

Colonial expansion of the Iberian powers into South East Asia utilized institutions developed during the conquest and settlement of northern Africa, the Atlantic Islands, and (with specific reference to the Spaniards) the Americas. For both countries, overseas expansion drew its chief impetus from the crown and involved military force, missionary activity, exploitation of labour and cultural assimilation of the indigenous population. Yet, despite some striking parallels, Portuguese and Spanish empire building in Asia proceeded along different lines. The Treaty of Zaragoza confined Spain’s direct and formal interest in South East Asia to the Philippine archipelago, which became something of an appendage of Spanish America. The administration adopted colonial institutions in use there: Spanish settlers received certain rights of tribute from the indigenous population (encomienda) and also grants of land, practices with no parallels elsewhere in South East Asia. Portugal was the theoretical beneficiary of the Treaty of Zaragoza, which confirmed its claims to key trading outposts in insular South East Asia, but ultimately lacked the manpower to defend its far-flung forts and settlements, and lost out to later rivals.

The late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries saw the arrival of other European traders who, often through force of arms, fought for a share of the lucrative trade with South East Asia. They introduced new dynamics into the process of European expansion, and tipped the fragile balance of power. Each of the new entrants – the English, the Dutch, the Danes and the French – formed an East India Company that enjoyed exclusive franchises granted by their respective governments, and contested the monopolistic claims of the Iberian powers for trade and dominion of the seas. These East India Companies were privately run commercial enterprises earning profits for their shareholders, but they also held charters giving them formidable powers to acquire territory, conclude treaties, and act as agents of war and peace.

The East India Companies initially established, or captured, forts and settlements along key trading routes in order to tap into regional flows of trade. One of the most successful was the Dutch United East India Company, or VOC. Created by the amalgamation of private trading companies in 1602, the VOC claimed a monopoly over key commodities, particularly spices, and pursued a two-pronged approach to eliminate its European rivals. First, the Dutch seized Portuguese ships and their cargo, and attacked Portuguese forts and settlements, conquering both Melaka and the Spice Islands in the eastern archipelago. Second, the VOC concluded a web of treaties of exclusive trade and mutual defence with princes in South East Asia, and used these agreements to enforce monopolies of trade and production.

Measured by its paid-up capital, the Honourable East India Company (EIC) based in London was significantly smaller than its Dutch counterpart during the early seventeenth century. Less than two decades after its formation, the Dutch invited the EIC to join their efforts to contain the Spanish and Portuguese in Asia, and expressed the hope that a united company might expel the two Iberian powers from Asia altogether. This proposal came to nothing, and under VOC pressure the English largely withdrew from South East Asia, returning only in the latter part of the eighteenth century.

To maximize profits and to bring the wildly fluctuating prices of commodities in Europe under control, the VOC gradually expanded its activities beyond pure trading and became engaged in production. During the eighteenth century, the VOC responded to growing demand for crops such as sugar and coffee by promoting plantation cultivation in the Javanese hinterland. This move significantly increased the company’s involvement in local disputes and concerns and ultimately led them to acquire dominion over the greater part of the island of Java. As the plantation economy grew, the VOC found itself trying to manage increasingly complex and fragile political situations, and experienced serious difficulties in managing costs and sustaining margins that yielded a profit, a situation made worse by inefficiency and corruption. The VOC was ultimately declared bankrupt at the end of the eighteenth century, and its assets passed into the hands of the Dutch government. At the time, most of continental Europe was engulfed by a period of turmoil that radically altered social and economic structures at home and seriously affected the state and administration of the increasingly ailing colonies. As political unrest and the Napoleonic Wars spread across Europe, the curtain fell on the early modern colonial world in South East Asia. The balance of power had fundamentally changed, and Great Britain would emerge as the principal beneficiary. A new age of colonial expansion was about to dawn.

***

The articles in the present volume trace some of the key developments relating to the Western presence in South East Asia during the early modern period. Apart from highlighting milestones in the process of colonization, the authors go beyond conventional Eurocentric perspectives and consider aspects of partnership, collaboration and co-dependency.

The volume has been divided into three sections. The first addresses issues relating to the early penetration of Spain and Portugal into South East Asia, including the European political environment, the arrival of the Spanish from across the Pacific Ocean and the growth of geographical knowledge relating to South East Asia. The second explores the dynamics of Iberian trade and the nature of the early colonial enterprise in the region. The articles in this section include studies of maritime trade, projects for colonial conquest, the development of colonial empires, the exploitation of native labour, and colonial administration in the Portuguese colonies of South East Asia. The final section concentrates on the arrival of northern European traders and the East India Companies, and examines Western activities and settlement in South East Asia with a special focus on the Dutch and English East India Companies.

Papal Politics, Iberian Rivalry and the European Reconnaissance

1 The Political and Cosmographical Background to the Spanish Incursion into the Pacific in the Sixteenth Century

DOI: 10.4324/9781003101666-1

Colin Jack-Hinton

Source: Journal of the Malayan Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society 37(2) (1964): 125–61.

Perhaps the most dominant feature of the period immediately prior to the Spanish discovery of and incursion into the Pacific or Great South Sea, was the intense rivalry which existed between the two great Catholic maritime nations of Europe, Spain and Portugal. It was a rivalry dating at least from the fourteenth century when, in 1344, Pope Clement VI granted the Canaries to the Spaniard Don Luis de la Cerda, a grant, it can be argued, which the King of Portugal accepted de facto but which he denied by right of discovery and conquest.

By 1430 the Canaries were under Castillian occupation, and Prince Henry, called ‘the Navigator’, saw their occupation as a threat to Guinea and the further prosecution of his African discoveries and conquests. Having failed to gain them by diplomatic methods and two abortive raids on Grand Canary, he secured in 1435 an overriding grant from Pope Eugenius IV on the doubtful grounds that the group was not under effective ownership. The protest of John II of Castille and the arbitration of the Bishop of Burgos seem to have induced Eugenius to caution the Portuguese, enjoining them to do nothing prejudicial to Castille, and stressing that the concession had been made in the honest belief that the group was ownerless.

By 1453, however, Henry had not only sought a Papal grant of exclusive Portuguese rights to North-West Africa, but had reinvaded the Canaries, and in 1454 Pope Nicholas V acknowledged Portuguese conquests in Africa and “the islands … adjacent to them from Capes Non and Bojador and as far as Guinea”.¹ The Bull itself was particularly significant in acknowledging Henry’s intention to make the oceans navigable as far as the land where the ‘Indians … are said to worship the name of Christ’, an allusion either to the supposed Christians of the Malabar coast or to the subjects of Prester John. In 1456 Calixtus III reiterated and enlarged on the grant of 1454 by granting spiritual jurisdiction over lands to be acquired by the Portuguese from Cape Non to India. The kings of Castille, however, maintained their claim to Africa and the Canaries, and although Henry IV allowed the dispute to remain dormant, it flared up in sporadic naval battles along the Atlantic coastline.

It was the appearance of Columbus after his discovery of the Antilles which brought matters to a head. He had promised Cathay by a westerly passage; a promise based on Toscanelli, Seneca, d’Ailly, Marinus of Tyre,² Isaiah and his own peculiar interpretation of Alfragan’s estimate of the length of an equatorial degree,³ and an assurance that nothing lay between the Canaries and the riches of the Grand Khan but a stretch of ocean broken only by Cipangu (Japan). According to his calculations Cipangu lay only 2400 nautical miles from the Canaries, Quinsay⁴ only a further 1150 miles; an even more optimistic figure than the 3080 miles of the Behaim globe of 1492⁵ with which his concept may have shared a common cartographical origin.⁶ As Acton remarked of Columbus:

it appeared that what this forlorn adventurer required for himself was to be admiral of the Atlantic … and a large proportion of the intended spoil. And he would accept no less. None divined what he himself knew not, that the thing he offered in return was dominion over half the world.⁷

Ferdinand suspected that the Antilles discoveries infringed Portuguese rights, and when in 1493 Columbus was preparing for his second voyage he had, at Columbus’ instigation and through fear of a rival Portuguese expedition to the new discoveries, taken steps to secure Papal ratification of Spanish rights to discoveries made and to be made. By the Bull Inter caetera of May 3rd, 1493, Pope Alexander VI, a Spaniard and a Borgia, granted to Spain the lands and islands discovered, or thereafter to be discovered, in the West, towards the Indies in the Ocean Sea, provided that they did not already belong to any Christian prince.⁸ The Portuguese, however, w...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half-Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table Of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Chronological table of reprinted articles and chapters
• General introduction
• VOLUME I Imperialism in South East Asia before 1800
• Papal Politics, Iberian Rivalry and the European Reconnaissance
• The Iberian powers in South East Asia
• East India companies and the arrival of the northern European competitors