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Vol. V. Part -Ii Journal of the Malayan Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society August, 1927 SINGAPORE . PRINTED AT THE METHODIST PUBLISHING HOUSE 23XVÍ : RULIiS. Affiliation Privileges of Members. Royal Asiatic Society. The Royal Asiatic Society has its headquarters at 74 Grosvenor Street, London, W., where it has a large library and collection of MSS. relating to oriental subjects and holds monthly meetings from November to June (inclusive) at which papers on such subjects are read. , • 2. By Rule 105 of this Society all the Members of Branch Societies are entitled when on furlough or otherwise temporarily resident within Great Britain and Ireland, to the use of the Library as Non-Resident Members and to attend the ordinary monthly meetings of the Society. This Society accordingly invites Mem- bers of Branch Societies temporarily resident in Great Britain or Ireland to avail themselves of these facilities and to make their home addresses known to the Society so that notice of the meet- ings may be sent to them. 3. Under Rule 84, the Council of the Society is able to accept •contributions to its Journal from Members of Branch Societies, and other persons interested in Oriental Research, of original articles, short notes, etc., on matters connected with the languages, archaeology, history, beliefs and customs of any part of Asia. 4. By virtue of the aforementioned Rule 105 all Members of Branch Societies are entitled to apply for election to the Society without the formality of nomination. They should apply in writ- ing to the Secretary, stating their names and addresses, and men- tioning the Branch Society to which they belong. Election is by the Society upon the recommendation of the Council. 5. The subscription for Non-Resident Members of the So- ciety is 30/- per annum. They receive the quarterly journal post free. Asiatic Society of Bengal. • Members of the Malayan Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, by a letter received in 1903, are accorded the privilege of admission to the monthly meetings of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, which are held usually at the Society's house, 1 Park Street, Calcutta. Report of Governor Balthasar Bort on Malacca 1678. Translated by M. J. BREMNER. With an Introduction and Notes by C. 0. BI-AGDEN, M.A./D. l.rrr., Reader in Malay, University of London. Introduction. This Report has been translated from a Dutch manuscript belonging to the library of the India Office, London, where I became acquainted with it while cataloguing a' section of the manuscripts of that library. It formed part of a collection pur- chased in 1822,by the East India Company from the widow of •Colonel Colin Mackenzie, having been presented to him in 1813 by Madame Caulier of Chilinching, near Batavia, from her family library. It has been described by me in some detail under No. 54 •of the " Mackenzie Collection: Private " in the Catalogue of Manu- scripts in European Languages belonging to the Library of the India Office (1916), Vol. I, Pt. 1. Being struck by the interest and historical value of the •document, I put on record in the catalogue my opinion that it was deserving of publication. It was, therefore,' a great satisfaction to me when, some time later, the Committee for Malay Studies of the Federated Malay States asked me to undertake the transla- tion of it. Pressure of work connected with my other duties made'it impossible for me to dó this task myself, but I was fortu- nate in securing for the purpose a qualified translator in the person •of Miss M. J. Brernner, to whose care and assiduity I wish to pay here a tribute which is well deserved. As her translation pro- gressed, we revised it jointly, checking it with the original text and discussing all the many difficulties involved in it. After Miss Bremner had had her translation typed, a number of outstanding problems still remained, which I have done my best to clear up by means of such help as I was, able to obtain; and I must accept my full share of responsibility for the outcome, while recording that by far the greater part of the labour and the credit are to be put to Miss Brernner's account. • The manuscript was an extremely troublesome one to deal -with, being in archaic language, handwriting and spelling, full of abbreviations, by no means free from errors, and in many places almost illegible. It is too much to hope that all the difficulties thereby occasioned have been completely overcome; but if faults 2 CO. Blagden: Introduction remain, as doubtless some must have done, it is not due to any remissness on the part of the translator. The Indian Office manuscript is not unique. Other copies of this report exist in the Government Offices at Batavia and The Hague. In view of that fact Miss Bremner, being determined to make her translation as perfect as the circumstances permitted, made a special journey to The I lague and collated her work with the copy there preserved, thus clearing up some of the difficulties which she had encountered when dealing with the India Office copy. The report is a good specimen of the kind of documents which' it was the regular habit of Governors of Dutch settlements to pre- pare for the information of their successors. There are many such in the library of the India Office, but the others relate tO' places, such as the East Coast of Southern India, which do not directly concern the Committee for Malay Studies. The Malacca Report is a very full one. It contains a comprehensive survey not only of Malacca itself but of all the manifold Dutch activities centered in that town. If one compares it with the Portuguese account written by Barretto Resende about forty years earlier, the English version of which only takes up about eight pages in No. 60: of the Journal of the Straits Branch of the R.A.S., 1911 or even with the much longer description in Francois Valentyn's- great work (translated in Nos. 13, 15, 16, and 22 of the same- Journal), one realizes what a mass of fresh material is contained in Governor Bert's report. From it we get a clear view of the1 principles of Dutch policy and the details of Dutch administration- in this part of the East. The meticulous care with which the- servants of a great trading Company kept its accounts and en- deavoured to increase its profits reminds one of the work of coral. insects painfully and persistently building up an atoll, and is. deserving of all praise. Whatever may have been the short- comings of these trading officials, they certainly cannot have beeni due to lack of general orders and departmental instructions, for the report teems with such, and every little matter seems to have- been well weighed and considered. As for the general lines of Dutch policy, we have again to- bear in mind that we are reading the records of a trading com- pany. Unlike their Portuguese predecessors, the Dutch had no* religious feud with their Muhammadan neighbours. But they had a great need of showing a good balance sheet to their Direc- tors, and, in their view, which was perhaps a shortsighted one,, the quickest way to that end was by the application of a system of strict monopoly in the trade of the more important articles of' commerce. The chief of these, among the imports to the Malay Peninsula, were cotton piece goods, and, among the exports, tin. It was, therefore, their aim to confine to themselves as much as possible of the supply of piece goods from continental India to» Journal Malayan Branch [Vol. V,. Report of Governor Balthasar Bort on Malacca 3 the eastward, and likewise the control of the export of tin from "the whole of the Peninsula. Besides this they endeavoured to take toll of all shipping passing through the Straits, and as far as in them lay they tried to compel it to call at Malacca. In pursuance of this policy, the Dutch East India Company imposed on the weak Malay States in their neighbourhood a number of contracts, •some of which will be found in the report, whereby they acquired .at the expense of these states specially favourable or exclusive trading privileges. When the Malay state, as sometimes happened, tried to evade its contractual obligations, the Dutch Company proceeded to exercize pressure by blockading its ports, or by other more or less drastic means. For a power which was only in effective occupation of the town of Malacca, about half its present territory, and the Island of Dinding (Pangkor), to have attempted to carry out such a policy as this, may be deemed to have been a gross abute and a defiance •of all the principles of international law and' common justice. And so no doubt it was. But the Dutch were acting quite in accordance with ancient precedent. The Portuguese before them liad endeavoured to control all the trade that went through the Straits of Malacca, and so long as they kept the command of the seas in that part of the world they had practically succeeded in their endeavour. Again, in much earlier days, the same policy had been carried cut by the great Sumatran State of Palembang, which from the 8th to the 13th century had possessed various out-- stations on both sides of the Straits. Living as it did largely on the tolls that it levied on international, shipping, Palembang com- pelled merchant vessels to call at its ports by simple and drastic means, as recorded by Chao Ju-Kua (trans.