Silk for Silver

Silk for Silver TAMO-5-hoang.indd i 9-7-2007 11:51:48 TANAP Monographs on the History of Asian-European Interaction Edited by Leonard Blussé and Cynthia Viallé VOLUME 5 TAMO-5-hoang.indd ii 9-7-2007 11:51:48 Silk for Silver Dutch-Vietnamese Relations, 1637-1700 By Hoang Anh Tuan LEIDEN • BOSTON 2007 TAMO-5-hoang.indd iii 9-7-2007 11:51:48 The TANAP programme is funded by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO). This book is printed on acid-free paper. ISSN 1871-6938 ISBN 978 90 04 15601 2 © Copyright 2007 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Hotei Publishing, IDC Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. printed in the netherlands TAMO-5-hoang.indd iv 9-7-2007 11:51:49 contents v This book is dedicated to my mentors: Professor Femme Gaastra Professor Leonard Blussé Professor Nguyễn Quang Ngọc Hoangh_TAMO5-1.indd v 24-7-2007 9:02:33 vi contents Hoangh_TAMO5-1.indd vi 24-7-2007 9:02:34 series editor’s foreword vii SERIES EDITOR’S FOREWORD Probably nowhere in the world have such profound changes in historiography been occurring as in the nation states of Monsoon Asia that gained independence after the conclusion of the Pacific War in 1945. These traditionally outward-looking countries on the rims of the Indian Ocean and the Eastern Seas have been interacting with each other through maritime transport and trade for more than two millennia, but the exigencies of modern nation-building have tended to produce state-centred historical narratives that emphasize a distinc- tive heritage and foster cultural pride and identity on the basis of such heroic themes as anti-colonial resistance. No one will deny the need for and utility of such ‘nation-building’ agendas, but an inward-directed national historiography does not necessarily prepare one’s citizens for our present age of regional co-operation and globalization. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the coastal societies of Monsoon Asia witnessed the entry of European traders, the emergence of global maritime trading networks, and the laying of the foundations of colonial empires that reached their apogees in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The difficulties of studying this pre-colonial and early colonial past should not be underestimated. Local sources are often rare because of wars and the frequent changes of both indig- enous and colonial regimes. The hot and humid tropical climate is also unkind to the preservation of manuscripts. The mass of west- ern-language data preserved in the archives of the former East India Companies and those of the Spanish and Portuguese empires in Asia often have an undeniably Europe-centred character and bias. Thus we face not only a highly imbalanced supply of source material, but also the very complex problem of how to decode the hidden agendas that often colour these primary materials. Over the past fifty years there has been a pronounced effort in aca- demic circles in North America, Australia and the former European colonial nations to ‘decolonize’ historical writing on Asian-European interaction, albeit for reasons totally different from those in their Asian counterparts. Increasingly doubt has been cast on such longstanding paradigms as the superiority of the dynamic West over static Asian societies. Historians of international trade such as the late Holden Hoangh_TAMO5-1.indd vii 24-7-2007 9:02:34 viii series editor’s foreword Furber, whose description of this period as ‘The Age of Partnership’ inspired the name of the TANAP programme, have taken an interest in the various ways and means by which Asian-European interaction began in various kinds of competition, collaboration, diplomacy, and military confrontation. This approach has forced historians to return to the archival sources and the places where these events unfolded with the result that new frontiers of research have opened up in which close partnerships between Asian and European historians, with their specific cultural tool kits and linguistic backgrounds, are now starting to bear fruit. In anticipation of the four hundredth anniversary of the establishment of the Dutch East India Company in 1602, members of the History Department of Leiden University proposed the establishment of an international research programme aimed at training a new gen- eration of Asian historians of Asian-European interaction in the early modern period. It was taken for granted that any such drive towards international educational co-operation should be carried out in care- fully planned collaboration with the National Archives in The Hague, the Arsip Nasional of the Republic of Indonesia in Jakarta and the archives of Cape Town (South Africa), Colombo (Sri Lanka) and Chennai (India), which together hold several kilometres of archival records from the former Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie. The TANAP—Towards a New Age of Partnership—educational and archival preservation programme was started in 2000 thanks to generous grants from the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO), the Netherlands Foundation for the Advancement of Tropical Research (WOTRO), the Netherlands UNESCO Commission, and Leiden University. Twelve universities in Asia sent some thirty young lecturers to Leiden during 2001-2003. Under the auspices of the Research Institute for Asian-African and Amerindian Studies (CNWS), these historians participated in an advanced master’s programme that included intensive courses on historiography, palaeography and the old Dutch written language. With additional funding from several Asian foundations, in 2002 seventeen of the TANAP graduates from Sri Lanka, India, Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, China, Taiwan, Japan, South Africa and the Netherlands began working towards a PhD degree at Leiden. Three others went on to pursue their doctorates at universities elsewhere in Hoangh_TAMO5-1.indd viii 24-7-2007 9:02:34 series editor’s foreword ix the world. The TANAP Monographs on the History of Asian-Euro- pean Interaction, which includes two studies on early modern South African society, are the offspring of their doctoral theses defended at Leiden. Leonard Blussé Leiden University Hoangh_TAMO5-1.indd ix 24-7-2007 9:02:34 x series editor’s foreword Hoangh_TAMO5-1.indd x 24-7-2007 9:02:34 contents xi CONTENTS Preface and Acknowledgements xvii Abbreviations xxi Explanation for units of measurement xxiii Glossary xxv Maps xxx INTRODUCTION The subject 1 Tonkin in the intra-Asian trade of the VOC 3 Source materials and analytical framework 5 PART ONE: THE SETTING Introduction 9 Chapter One: Political background 11 1. Vietnamese maritime trade prior to 1527 11 The Hundred Việts and the Vietnamese 11 The Chinese colonization of northern Vietnam, 179 BC–AD 905 12 Independent Đại Việt and the state monopoly of foreign trade, 1010−1527 16 2. Incessant conflicts and political schisms, 1527–1672 19 Chapter Two: Economic background 26 1. Handicraft industries and export commodities 26 Raw silk and piece-goods 27 Ceramics 30 Other miscellaneous exports 31 2. New trends in foreign trade 33 A more open trend in foreign trade, the 1500s 33 The birth of the seventeenth-century commercial system 36 Complicated trading conditions 39 3. Foreign merchants 44 Hoangh_TAMO5-1.indd xi 24-7-2007 9:02:34 xii contents The Chinese 44 The Japanese 48 The Portuguese 50 The Dutch 52 The English 52 Other foreign merchants 55 Concluding remarks 57 PART TWO: THE POLITICAL RELATIONS Introduction 59 Chapter Three: Intimate phases 61 1. The abortive Dutch trade with Quinam, 1601−1638 61 2. The Dutch arrival in Tonkin, 1637 66 3. Ideological struggles and belligerent decisions, 1637−1643 70 Military or peaceful involvement, 1637−1641? 70 Tension escalating in Quinam, 1642 74 The Dutch military defeats, 1642−1643 77 4. The Quinam interlude and frigid relations with Tonkin, 1644−1651 83 The VOC’s unilateral war with Quinam, 1644−1651 83 The peace agreement with Quinam, 1651 86 Frigid relations with the Trịnh, 1644−1647 88 The relationship deteriorated, 1647−1651 91 Chapter Four: Vicissitudes, decline and the final end 96 1. Revival of the relationship, 1651–1660 96 Verstegen’s commission to Tonkin, 1651 96 A short-lived permanent factory, 1651 98 The first phase of decline, the 1650s 99 2. Attempts to expand the Tonkin trade, 1660–1670 103 The decline in the Tonkin-China border trade and the loss of Formosa 104 The VOC’s ‘Tinnam strategy’, 1661–1664 106 Tonkin as a permanent factory, 1663 110 Continued decline, the 1660s 111 3. Towards the final end, 1670–1700 115 The eventful 1670s 115 Hoangh_TAMO5-1.indd xii 24-7-2007 9:02:35 contents xiii Decline intensified, 1680–1690 118 The last ship, 1699/1700 121 Concluding remarks 123 PART THREE: THE COMMERCIAL RELATIONS Introduction 125 Chapter Five: The import trade 127 1. Silver 127 2. Japanese copper zeni 133 The Vietnamese monetary system prior to the seventeenth century 133 The cash shortage in the 1650s and the VOC’s import of Japanese copper zeni into Tonkin 134 3. The arms trade and the import of other miscellaneous items 139 Chapter Six: The export trade (i): Tonkinese silk for Japan 143 1.

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