CHAPTER NINE

THE ENGLISH AND NUKU: GUNS AND SPICES

English interests in Maluku

The High Government of the VOC in Batavia tended to support the Sultan of Tidore in upholding his control of the areas in the Raja Ampat and the island of New Guinea and its vicinity because of its fear of the insidiously increasing English threat to the Dutch spice monopoly, which had had a cautious beginning almost a century earlier.1 In 1697, 160 English merchants were enraged after having been expelled from Bantam. A year afterwards, a squadron of five warships under the command of Captain Warren was made ready for an expedition to the Great East to obtain spices. Most of these ships did not reach their destination, but the Resolution did appear in Ambonese waters, between Boano and Asahudi, and immediately set course for Kisar. The crewmen landed on the island of Pisang but were driven away by the inhabitants.2 In 1700, William Dampier landed on the island of Sabuda and spent several days at the entrance to the McCluer Gulf. The English menace had been conceived as real as early as 1701, when the Gentlemen Seventeen in Holland learned that a quantity of spices had been exported to Chili without them having any idea about their origin. They probably assumed that the spices had been collected somewhere on the New Guinea Coast. On 31 De- cember 1705, the Dutch took pre-emptive action by arresting Dampier when he dropped anchor at Bacan, and took him to Ternate.3 Striving to protect the spice monopoly against intervention by other Europeans, the Company was eager to extend its control and power over the eastern part of the Archipelago. Suiting actions to words, by dint of making contracts it pushed the local rulers to help it control these areas. The English interest in Maluku during the second half of the eigh- teenth century was indissolubly connected with the growing need of South-East Asian products as an alternative form of payment in Canton. As Nicolas Tarling explains, the English EIC had difficulty in finding money to finance its expanding exports of silk and tea from Canton, and sought to limit its enormous shipments of silver to China by using South- East Asian produce, much sought after in China, as an alternative form of payment. Therefore the EIC industriously looked for ways to assist English China-bound ships in finding a source of spices and a steady 166 CHAPTER NINE supply of jungle and marine products; conversely also opening markets for the sale of Indian textiles and opium.4 In order to achieve this objec- tive, the English EIC developed a number of schemes to establish an entrepôt or a settlement in the Eastern Seas. One of the most favoured schemes for an eastern entrepôt in the 1760s originated from Alexander Dalrymple.5 He considered a settlement in the Sulu Archipelago and par- ticipated in the temporary British occupation of Manila in 1762–4.6 Parallel with this, the English endeavoured to promote the Bengkulu factory in West Sumatra by enticing indigenous traders to bring products such as cloves and nutmegs from Maluku. The President of Bengkulu, Roger Carter, was urged to attract the spice trade as a means of augment- ing local revenues and offsetting the costs of the settlement which was running at a deficit. In 1764, Carter hit on the scheme of buying cloves at 100 dollars per pikul on the Company’s account. His brainchild was not a success. One of the major causes of the failure was the stepping up of Dutch vigilance in Maluku. In 1765, an Ambon hongi expedition under the command of Captain Hendrik van den Brink attacked many of the villages in East Seram from where contraband cloves were transport- ed. At least fifteen vessels, including two big Makassarese vessels, were destroyed.7 The English reported forty vessels destroyed, five of which belonged to Edward Coles, the English Company’s warehouse keeper.8 The chances of an effective English intrusion into the Dutch-monop- olized Spice Islands intensified when Captain Wilson discovered a new course from Batavia to China via Maluku by ‘accident’. At the end of 1758, this skipper of the Pitt arrived in Batavia on his way to China. Finding it too late to proceed along the usual route, seized by the spirit of adventure he attempted to accomplish his voyage by sailing eastwards from Batavia, through the Malukan Islands and along the northern coast of New Guinea into the Pacific Ocean, only then veering northwards round the Philippines and steering a course between Luconia and Formosa to Canton. His business concluded, he returned the same way. This route took less time than was usually required in the South China Sea when ships were too late to take the usual route and had to sail against the monsoon. Once he had set an example, other English Company ships also used the same passage.9 Aware of the machinations of the English, the Dutch increased their vigilance. In this situation, the stretch of water known as Pitt’s Passage, which passed between the islands of Gomona and Obi so much nearer to the Dutch settlements than usual, fanned Dutch suspicions and gave them great offence.10 As a consequence, the Dutch sent a snow and a sloop literally to dog Captain Wilson’s wake. When Wilson anchored, the master of the snow prevented the launching of any boats from Wilson’s vessel. As a result of this, Wilson protested to the High Government in