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D. Bassett British Trade and Policy in Indonesia 1760-1772. (Met 3 Kaarten)

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D. Bassett British Trade and Policy in Indonesia 1760-1772. (Met 3 Kaarten) D. Bassett British trade and policy in Indonesia 1760-1772. (Met 3 kaarten) In: Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 120 (1964), no: 2, Leiden, 197-223 This PDF-file was downloaded from http://www.kitlv-journals.nl Downloaded from Brill.com09/25/2021 10:19:41AM via free access BRITISH TRADE AND POLICY IN INDONESIA 1760-1772 • he general outlines of British policy in the Eastetin Seas during \ and after the Seven Years' War are well known. .The East India Company had difficulty in paying for its expanding exports of silk and tea from Canton and sought to limit its shipments of silver to China by using South East Asian produce as an alternative form of payment. The Company also hoped to attract Chinese junks to an entrepot outside the monopoly of the Co-hong, where the terms of exchange would be more favourable to the British. These solutions to the China remittance problem involved the establishment of a British settlement in the China Sea or the Indonesian Archipelago. The search for an eastern entrepot took many forms, but in the 1760's it was confined to Alexander Dalrymple's scheme for a settlement in the Sulu Archipelago and to the temporary British occupation of Manila in 1762-4:1 In the 1770*s, as the Company's payments' problem became more acute, the Balambangan project was supplemented by official British missions seeking permission for a settlement in Acheh, Kedah, Riau, Trengganu and Cochin China.2 British private, or "country", traders such as Francis Light and James Scott also recommended the occupation of Junk Ceylon and Penang.3 None of .these schemes was immediately. successful, and the search was renewed, with strategie overtones, after the Anglo-French war of 1778-83 and the Anglo- Dutch war of 1780-4. Probably the greatest setback to British hopes 1 V. T. Harlow, The Founding of the Second British Empire, 1763-1793, I, (London, 1952), 62-83. 2 D. G. E. Hall, A History of South East Asia, (London, 19SS), 427-8; L. A. Mills, "British Malaya, 1824-67", JMBRAS, XXXIII, (3), (1960), 18-9; A. Lamb, "British Missions to Cochin China: 1778-1822", JMBRAS, XXXIV, (3) & (4), (1961), 13-77; Harlow, op. cit., 97-102; H. P. Clodd, Malaya's first British pioneer: the life of Francis Light, (London, 1948), 12-25, 29-32, 34-42. 3 Clodd, op. cit. Dl. 120 13 Downloaded from Brill.com09/25/2021 10:19:41AM via free access 198 D. K. BASSETT. was the defeat of the Bugis of Riau and Selangor by admiral J. P. van Braam in 1784, which foiled a current British plan to settle at Riau. The unjustified British fear thait Van Braam's victory was the prelude to Dutch domination of Malacca Strait impelled the Calcutta govern- ment to accept the sultan of Kedah's offer of Penang in 1786.4 It is evident that most of the British schemes for an eastern entrepot were directed to localities on the periphery of the Dutch Malay- Indonesian empire. Acheh, Kedah, Junk Ceylon and Cochin China were independent of Dutch control in the eighteenth century and the Sulu Archipelago was claimed by Spain, not Holland. But the geo- graphical scope of the British quest for a settlement was not so limited as to justify Dr. Tarling's recent generalization that the British Com- pany "avoided openly invading the Dutch sphere of influence" until Thomas Forrest sought to open a factory at Riau in 1784.5 The attempt of Monckton to conclude a British defensive alliance with the Bugis in 1772 would have involved the establishment of a British military post at Riau. This was a far more provocative proposal than Forrest's plan to open a small trading post at Riau and mediate in the Dutch-Bugis war in 1784.6 Equally challenging from the Dutch view- point were governor Roger Carter's schemes to extend British trade and settlement from the Bencoolen presidency to Banjarmasin, Sunda Strait and east Java in 1762-7. These schemes are the subject of the present paper. The trade which Carter sought to develop with eastern Indonesia involved both the British Company and the British "country" traders. The intrusions of the latter into the Java Sea in the 1760's, while their India-based compatriots were threading Malacca Strait to Riau, do much to explain Dutch reluctance to concede the British right of free navigation in the Eastern Seas explicitly during the Anglo- Dutch peace negotiations of 1784. British free navigation had been synonymous with free or illicit trade since the Seven Years' War and the British assurances in 1784 that the spice monopoly would be respected must have seemed particularly hollow in the light of past Dutch experience. The enterprize of the British "country" trader also 4 V. Harlow and F. Madden, British Colonial Developments, 1774-1834, (Oxford, 19S3), S2-3; D. K. Bassett, "Thomas Forrest, an eighteenth century mariner", JMBRAS, XXXIV, (2), (1961), 117-8. 5 N. Tarling, Anglo-Dutch Rivalry in the Malay World, 1780-1824, (Queensland, 1962), 6, 12-3. 8 Instructions from Warren Hastings and council to Thomas Forrest, 31 May 1784, Harlow and Madden, British Colonial Developments, 12. Downloaded from Brill.com09/25/2021 10:19:41AM via free access BRITISH TRADE AND POLICY IN INDONESIA. 199 compelled the British Company to adopt a firmer attitude towards Dutch pretensions to the exclusive navigation of the Java Sea than is usually imagined.. Dr. Tarling seems to imply that prior to 1784 the British Company limited itself to the negative policy of avoiding recognition of Dutch claims in this matter.7 In fact, the British Company explicitly asserted the British right of free navigation in the Eastern Seas on several occasions in the 1760's. The Anglo-Dutch treaty of 1784 simply gave diplomatic sanction to the British Company's traditional position. The settlement of Fort Marlborough at Bencoolen had little to recommend it, although it was the most important British possession in Indonesia between 1714 and 1825. East Indiamen bound from London to Canton found difficulty in beating up from Batavia to Bencoolen to take in a cargo of pepper. The distance separating Ben- coolen from the shipping lanes of Sunda Strait also hindered the expansion of the settlement's trade in Indonesia. Bencoolen lacked a proper harbour where pepper could be shipped and the local mortality rate for Europeans was very high. The subordinate British settlements on the west Sumatran coast were widely dispersed and the Company's sloops which were used to bring their pepper and cassia to Bencoolen were costly to maintain. It was a normal condition for the presidency to produce an annual deficit.8 Bencoolen depended heavily on Batavia for its supplies of rice, timber and naval stores, but the tolerance of the Dutch government was uncertain. John Herbert was the official British resident at Batavia during the Seven Years' War, but the Dutch government apparently declined to continue this arrangement in 1763 and 1764. It was even reported in August 1764 and August 1765 that governor-general Van der Parra had forbidden dealings with the British in victuals and naval stores.9 The rumours proved incorrect, but the transactions of the Bencoolen government at Batavia in 1764-73 were usually conducted through two Batavian citizens, James Burnett and Stephen Lieve Garrison.10 These were the natural handicaps of Bencoolen. In 1760-1 the settlement had suffered an extraordinary setback when the French T Tarling, op. cit., 6-11. 8 For a discussion of local problems see J. Bastin, Essays on Indonesian and Malayan History, (Singapore, 1961), 40-2, 143-63., Tapanuli, Natal, Moko Moko, Lais, Manna and Krui were the principal British out-stations or residencies in west Sumatra. 9 F.M.C., 31 Aug. 1764, S.F.R., (I.O.L.), vol. 72; 7 Aug. 1765, S.F.R., vol. 73. 10 James Burnett returned to Europe in October 1769. Downloaded from Brill.com09/25/2021 10:19:41AM via free access PHILIPPINES SOUTH CHINA SEA X.TOtNMANU y^~ RWEB • SÉTTLEMENT «HCOOLtH BRITISH SETTIEHENT o 400 MILES Downloaded from Brill.com09/25/2021 10:19:41AM via free access BRITISH TRADE AND POLICY IN INDONESIA. 201 captured Fort Marlborough, destroyed the fortifications and dispersed the population. After the restoration of the British administration at Bencoolen in 1762, president Carter sought to revive the prosperity of the settlement by bringing back the Chinese who had been carried to Batavia by the French. A considerable number were repatriated to Bencoolen on the Diligent in June 1763 and Prince Henry in August 1764.11 Appeals were also made to the British supercargoes at Canton and the deputy-governor of British-occupied Manila to send techni- cally skilied Chinese to Bencoolen.12 But the Canton supercargoes were reluctant to risk an incident with the Chinese imperial govemment and the Manila military command could send only a few hundred Chinese artisans. The latter, who probably came to Bencoolen under duress, proved more of a liability than an asset, and in May 1765 the Bencoolen government suspended its request for Chinese immigrants until the future location of the presidency was settled.13 There were really three major aspects to British policy in Indonesia in 1762-72. At bottom there was the firm conviction that Bencoolen was an unsatisfactory site for the presidency. For twenty years after the French conquest the British directors declined to rebuild the fortifications of Bencoolen properly because they contemplated moving the settlement to a better site. Secondly, there was the necessity to make the best of the existing situation by attracting Indonesian trade, particularly the spice trade, to Bencoolen.
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