Principals and Agents, Colonialists and Company Men: The Decay of Colonial Control in the Dutch East Indies Author(s): Julia Adams Source: American Sociological Review, Vol. 61, No. 1 (Feb., 1996), pp. 12-28 Published by: American Sociological Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2096404 Accessed: 30/03/2010 08:56 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=asa. 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The metropolitan principals of these organizations faced special problems in monitoring and controlling their own colonial agents. Focusing primarily on the Dutch United East Indies Company and second- arily on its English counterpart, I argue that the network structure of each organization affected the degree to which relationships between patrimonial principals and their agents could serve as a disciplinary device. Dutch de- cline was imminent when alternative opportunities for private gain, avail- able via the ascending English East India Company, allowed Dutch colonial servants to evade their own patrimonial chain and encouraged its organiza- tional breakdown. Features of network structure determined whether colo- nial agents saw better alternatives to the official patrimonial hierarchy, when they could act on them, and whether principals could respond. "O! when degree is shak'd, petitors were central challenges, of course, Which is the ladder to all high designs, although they could be taken too far, even from the colonialists' perspective. For, as The enterprise is sick. " Coen's metropolitan critics reminded him, -Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida "there is no profit at all in an empty sea, empty countries, and dead people" (quoted in Meilink-Roelofz 1962:232). Within these The famous, or infamous, pioneers of the not unimportantlimits, however, colonialists first wave of European colonialism also faced dilemmas inherent in their own or- never tired of asserting that the project of co- ganizational structures; it is this complex of lonial domination was a difficult and precari- issues that is highlighted here. ous one, requiring the "strongest power on I argue that network structures mediated water and land," in the words of Jan Pieters- principal/agent relationships among early zoon Coen, an early Governor-Generalof the modern European colonialists. The capacity Dutch East Indies (Coen [1620] 1919:554). of principals in Europe to control their agents Subjugating indigenous populations and in the colonies depended on specific struc- overcoming metropolitan and colonial com- tural relationships-simultaneously political and economic-that bound them together. In *Direct correspondence to Julia Adams, De- the Dutch case, the principals first disposed partment of Sociology, University of Michigan, of resources that the agents required, and Ann Arbor, MI, 48109 (Internet: jpadams@ agents lacked viable alternatives to the net- umich.edu). My thanks to Fred Cooper, Femme work channels that linked them to the Neth- Gaastra, Mark Gould, Mark Mizruchi, several erlands. But a seismic shift in that opportu- anonymous ASR reviewers, the ASR Editor and nity structureopened the way for heightened Managing Editor, and Deputy Editor Charles Tilly for their helpful comments on the manu- principal/agent problems and undermined script. The research was partially supported by a group discipline, contributing to the demise summer grant from the Fulbright Foundation. of Dutch hegemony and the rise of the En- [Reviewers acknowledged by the author include glish empire in the eighteenth century. This Peter Evans, and Edgar Kiser. -ED.] was clearly an outcome of global historical 12 American Sociological Review, 1996, Vol. 61 (February:12-28) PRINCIPAL/AGENT PROBLEMS IN EARLY MODERN COLONIALISM 13 importance and one that illustrates the im- Dutch case is indispensable for sociolo- portance of network structuresin epochal so- gists-a key to our understandingthe forma- cial change. The story of early modern Euro- tion of the global colonial system in the sev- pean colonial enterprise should interest so- enteenth century and clarifying the causal cial theorists as well as students of the past factors that made for organizational success on other grounds as well: It reveals both the in that system. potential fruitfulness of principal/agentmod- We can also investigate factors that led to els for comparative historical sociology and failure and systemic transformation. By the the need to better specify these models sys- end of the eighteenth century, the close of the temically and historically. Dutch ancien regime, the patrimonial struc- ture was severely strained. It soon gave way altogether. In the metropole, the European WHY THE NETHERLANDS? center of the global colonial system, it was SETTING THE SCENE replaced by differentiated profit-making en- In its first, triumphant, phase, the seven- terprises, twinned with a power-wielding teenth-century Golden Age (Gouden Eeuw), state. In the colonies, the developmental the Netherlands established an unpreceden- story is not so neat. A cursory glance at the ted position of world power. Dutch develop- post-Company situation in Indonesia, the ments during this period illuminate the gen- central pillar of the Dutch empire, reveals eral character of the first wave of European new and unstable modes of colonial domina- colonial enterprise. The basic structure of tion. But there also, ancien regime styles of early modern European colonialism was cre- accumulation and rule were displaced, and ated when merchant capitalists and their Dutch colonialism moved away from Com- home states joined together to charter large- pany rule and toward a more bureaucratic, scale monopoly companies aimed at global socially interventionist systemr.2 commercial and imperial dominance. The Clearly, exogenous shocks played a part in Dutch pioneered key aspects of the chartered the sagging performance and ultimate col- company form with the foundation of the lapse of the partnership between the Dutch United East Indies Company (Vereenigde state and the VOC. Particularly salient were Oost-Indische Compagnie, or VOC) in 1602. the growing economic and military power of The VOC merged individuals' assets into a other metropolitan state-company duos and single permanent ongoing enterprise, and the collapse of social formations indigenous was invested with sovereign rights over for- to so-called colonial target areas. Metropoli- eign territory and vassals. Charteredcompa- tan Dutch developments were also important. nies were quintessentially patrimonialforms, Here, I treat these processes as external pres- conjoining economic and sovereign political sures and opportunities, bracketing their goals at the behest of the ruler's personal dis- causes analytically, in a kind of "thought ex- cretion. l periment."The empirical questions I address Once launched, the VOC soon became an are: What endogenous developments under- organizational template for other metropoli- mined the Dutch colonial system? To what tan merchants and rulers, inspiring, among extent, in particular, was the troubled rela- others, the English East India Company and tionship among colonial rulers themselves a the many French Compagnies des Indes problem? How did these internal processes Orientales. It remained one of the most suc- cessful of the many hybrid colonial enter- 2 I follow conventional historical practice by prises whose licensed mercantile ambitions designating 1795 as the end of the Dutch ancien and fields of operation spanned the globe, regime. In that year France invaded the Nether- ranging from the spice and cloth trades of lands and set up a client state that lasted until Indonesia and India, to the Brazilian sugar 1815. Schama (1977) provides the comprehensive English-language account of this period in the industry and the African slave trade. Thus the metropole. In the East Indies, the remnants of the VOC limped along until 1806, the onset of a 10- I On the concept of patrimonialism, see Weber year, mainly English, interregnum (1806-1816). ([1922] 1968, especially pp. 1006-1007, 1010-