­chapter 13 The Asian Foundations of the Dutch Thalassocracy: Creative Absorption and the Company in Asia

Remco Raben

For a short period, Dutch carried the day. From the 1620s to the 1650s, Dutch ships seemed to wield the greatest power on the global seas. Not without effort, Dutch commanders succeeded in establishing footholds in many key areas in Asia, and the Americas.1 The expansion was not centrally directed by the of the Dutch Republic, but by the various stakeholders in the overseas enterprises. Their unconcerted effort – ​and the relative weakness of opponents in this period – ​resulted in an impressive mar- itime network. Indeed, Dutch tentacles reached far and wide. In recent years there has been discussion about the nature of early mod- ern Dutch expansion, and whether it deserves to be characterized as ‘empire’.2 What was the defining role of the monopolistic Dutch trading companies: that of merchant or king, company or state? This question goes beyond semantics. The general tendency has been to qualify the coercive character and the ter- ritorial ambitions of Dutch early modern , even to the extent to brand it “expansion without empire”, and to characterize the Dutch as “reluc- tant imperialists” –​ which has become a kind of topos in the historiography of early modern Dutch expansion.3 Although recently the political, state-​like features of voc rule have received more attention, the predominant perspec- tive on the Dutch companies in the Atlantic and in Asia remains that of trad- ing organizations. Hardly without exception, historians first and foremost em- phasize commercial rationales, shipping patterns and trading routes – ​with or without emphasizing the role of coercion.4

1 This period of Dutch ascendency was, tellingly, branded “the Dutch moment” by Klooster 2016. 2 The classic account of a Dutch ‘empire’ is, of course, Boxer 1988, but his discussion of the imperial character is not very detailed. 3 Emmer and Klooster 1999, 48–69;​ Gaastra 1991, 37; Greig 1987; De Jong 1998, 45. 4 An interesting, pertinent approach is adopted by Antunes and Gommans 2015, who stress the networked character of the empire and especially its linkages to other networks, but do not discuss its imperial features.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | DOI:10.1163/9789004407671_014 The Asian Foundations of the Dutch Thalassocracy 313

This chapter will concentrate on the Dutch East Company and eval- uate its modes of operation within the framework of empire studies. By look- ing at the voc from the perspective of , and in particular maritime empires, we may be able to better understand its dynamics and solve the par- adox of the Company’s persona as both a commercial undertaking and a sov- ereign “state”. It will also help us to foreground the Asian sources of Company rule. This is done by highlighting three specific ‘imperial’ features of the voc in Asia: that of its power structures, its methods of extraction, and manners of staffing and labour mobilization. By addressing these themes, two things will become clear: in the first place, that the Company has always blended the roles of both merchant and territorial ruler: extractive and exploitative strategies were part and parcel of the commercial enterprise the Company purportedly was. Secondly, it is striking how much the voc empire relied on and absorbed local practices. This process of accommodation or creative absorption is typical for most empires, as for reasons of scale they have to creatively integrate standing practices in order to be able to rule efficient- ly and extract wealth from the countries under domination. The result was an organization with a fundamentally hybrid structure, drawing from both metropolitan inspirations and local practices – ​and developing new colonial policies of its own.

Network, State, Empire, Thalassocracy

Over the past twenty years, the growing interest in empires has resulted in a wave of publications on specific empires and on comparative imperialism. Al- though conceptualizations of empires would seem unstable – ​in particular in the premodern period distinctions between empires and other kinds of poli- ties are not clear-​cut – ​historians have demonstrated a surprising consensus about the basic features of empires.5 Most historians agree that empires are geographically extensive polities, with most of the territory won by violent conquest. War was a permanent feature of empires, both as a means of ex- pansion and of integration. Moreover, empires develop a very diverse admin- istrative structure. Various methods and instruments of rule are applied in different corners of the empire. Empires also contain diverse cultural spheres and enclose a variety of cultures and peoples, who have different rights and

5 Howe 2002; Münkler 2005; Barkey 2008; Burbank and Cooper 2010; Bang and Kołodziejczyk 2012, 11–​12.