The Singapore and Melaka Straits: Violence, Security and Diplomacy in the 17th Century

Itinerario, 2004

The study of the early European colonial presence in Asia has been stimulated in recent years by a series of excellent works. These have been both of general and specialist nature, written not only by historians, but also by political scientists as well as specialists of international relations. The truly excellent study published in 2002 by Edward Keene, can be taken as a point in case. Central to his revisitation of seventeenth-century treaties of the United Dutch East India Company (VOC) with the Emperor of Kandy, is the notion of divided sovereignty expounded by Hugo Grotius around 1600-1610. It was against the backdrop of such concepts of divided sovereignty that the VOC could ultimately conclude its complex web of treaty relationships that broadly characterise the Dutch colonial empire in the East Indies up the advent of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars. There is some legitimacy in contending that Keene's postulations effectively rework and reinterpret, at the...

2014

The Portuguese conquest of Malacca in 1511 was a watershed moment, revolutionising the history of the Straits region. Its impact and the local response, as well as the arrival of northern Europeans at the turn of the 16th into the 17th centuries, breaking into the Portuguese trade monopoly, are examined and analysed. War was the catalyst for change. The conquest of Malacca in 1641 by the Dutch East India Company (VOC) was another significant moment in the history of the region and a continuation of the European presence and influence.

2015

"This book offers annotated translations of documents touching on Dutch admiral Cornelis Matelieff de Jonge and his voyage to Asia between 1605 and 1608. These translations are aimed at a contemporary English-speaking Asian readership interested in the early modern history of European trade, warfare and expansion in Southeast Asia with a focus on Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia. Researchers specialising in early European colonialism, international law, international relations, security studies, and diplomatic history will also find that the documents translated in this volume offer new and unfamiliar perspectives. Materlieff’s business acumen, military and diplomataic prowess as well as his vision of empire all have implications for examining not only European expansion into Southeast Asia, but also into other regions at large, including especially south Asia, Africa and the Americas. Admiral Matelieff was a director of the Rotterdam Chamber of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) formed in 1602. He was appointed fleet commander on one of the company’s first voyages to Asia. Matelieff’s mission was both commercial and military: he launched a major sea-borne attack on the Portuguese colony of Melaka, arranged for the signing of treaties with the rulers of Johor, Aceh and Ternate, and founded the first Dutch fort on the island of Ternate. His endeavours, however, to open the Chinese market for the Dutch company proved unsuccessful. Following his return to the Dutch Republic in September 1608, Matelieff penned a series of memorials and letters. In these he advanced recommendations for changing the way the company organized its fleets and conducted business. More importantly he offered his Dutch contemporaries a vision of empire in Asia. The materials contained in this volume offer important observations of a perceptive analyst who was also determined to grasp the political and economic structures of Asia, and also of inter-state relations in across this vast region. At a time of Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Danish, French and English engagement in Southeast Asia, Matelieff sought to critically assess and strategize on the ways in which Europeans were increasingly engaging with Asian polities and their rulers. This book will be released for sale in Australasia and Europe in June 2014 and available in the Americas after September 2014 """"

2019

This paper revisits the evidence touching on Singapore in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. At this time, Singapore had revived as a trading port under the Johor Sultanate. The port and its facilities were significant enough to warrant the presence of a shahbandar, a “lord of the haven”, whose existence and trade facilities are found in some crucial travelogues and cartographical specimens of the period. Deemed “one of the best ports that serves the East Indies” by the Flemish trader Jacques de Coutre, Singapore acted as a strategic choke point: It served as gatekeeper of the upstream towns of the Johor River, including Johor’s royal administrative centre at Batu Sawar. Singapore’s location along the busy Straits also made it an important nodal point in the transition from the South China Sea to the Melaka Straits and the Bay of Bengal. Due to these roles and its geographic location, it is unsurprising that the waters around Singapore became contested spaces. Moreover, the islands here and nearby featured regularly in plans of the early colonial powers to assert their dominance and project commercial hegemony across the region in the five decades from 1590 to 1640.

Admiral Cornelis Matelieff de Jonge, a Director in the Rotterdam chamber of the Dutch East Indies Company (VOC) for three decades during the early 17th century, set sail from the Dutch Republic for Asia in 1605. He launched an attack on Portuguese Melaka in 1606 and subsequently signed landmark treaties with the rulers of Johor (1606) and Ternate (1607). After returning to the Netherlands in the autumn of 1608, he wrote a series of epistolary reports and memoranda that were carefully studied by leading policy makers in the Republic, among them the renowned jurist Hugo Grotius, and the statesman Johan van Oldenbarnevelt. These materials yield candid insights into key issues of trade, security, the diplomacy of regional polities and relations with Spain and Portugal, and they contributed substantially to the formulation of early VOC policy for the Southeast Asian region in the period 1605-20. Here translated into English for the first time, and illustrated with 70 drawings and maps from the period, this collection of treaties, reports and excerpts from Matelieff’s travelogue make a substantial contribution to Southeast Asian and early colonial history, international relations and international law. (http://nuspress.nus.edu.sg/products/2015-journal-memorials-and-letters-of-cornelis-matelieff-de-jonge-security-diplomacy-and-commerce-in-17th-century-southeast-asia?variant=1302894468)