Читать книгу The Honourable Company - John Keay - Страница 15

To secure some concession in the way of access to the spice-producing islands, and to win redress for past wrongs, the government now took up the Company’s cause and entered into protracted negotiations with the Dutch States General. These negotiations would have some bearing on events in the East; but word of any agreement could take a year to reach the Moluccas and even then amity between the two governments was no guarantee of amity between the two Companies. All too often a dispatch from London would add only poignancy to the disasters that now unfolded.

In the Bandas Keeling and David Middleton had occasionally cleared their decks for action and had supposedly unmasked several Dutch plots to assassinate them. Whether or not their fears were justified there can be no doubting Middleton’s assertion that the Hollanders, seeing his cockleshell fleet beating round the islands, ‘grew starke madde’. ‘The Dutch envy is so great towards us,’ noted one of the Company’s Bantam factors, ‘that to take out one of our eyes they will lose both theire own.’ While the English stood by, pretending neutrality but in fact encouraging local resistance, the V.O.C. was incurring enormous costs and losing good men – in 1610 their garrison in Neira had been almost annihilated in a Bandanese ambush. Methodical and determined, the Dutch bitterly resented both Michelborne’s piracy and the Company’s opportunism. They saw no reason why, because of services rendered in Europe under a previous sovereign and in the previous century, the English – ‘a pernicious, haughty and incompatible nation’ – should now presume on preferential treatment from a Dutch trading company on the other side of the world.

‘The Hollanders say we go aboute to reape the fruits of their labours’, wrote John Jourdain as he renewed the arguments of his English predecessors during a visit to Ambon and Ceram in 1613. ‘It is rather the contrarye for that they seem to barre us of our libertie to trade in a free countrye, having manie times traded in these places, and nowe they seeke to defraud us of that we have so long sought for.’ The young Dutch commander who had just intercepted him was unimpressed. With vastly superior forces at his command, Jan Pieterson Coen forbade Jourdain any trade and declared that every bag of cloves that found its way into an English hold was a bag stolen from the Dutch nation. Jourdain, ‘a clever fellow’ according to Coen, stood his ground and unexpectedly invoked the principle of self-determination. He summoned an assembly of the local headmen and, knowing full well their answer, asked them in the presence of the Dutch whether they would trade with him.

To which wordes all the country people made a great shoute saying ‘we are willing to deal with the English’ [and] demanding the Hollanders what say they to itt. Whereunto they [the Dutch] were silent, answering neither yea nor naye.

Needless to say this impromptu referendum, conducted to the accompaniment of a pounding ‘suffe’ on some Ceramese promontory, did nothing to improve Jourdain’s chance of securing a cargo. He was ordered to sea and could retaliate only with a muttered threat to settle matters ‘when next we meete twixt Dover and Calais’. It also did nothing to endear him to Jan Pieterson Coen. As Governor-General of the Dutch East Indies, Coen was destined to become his lifelong adversary. They would meet again, but not ‘twixt Dover and Calais’.

Calling at Butung, where Middleton had left a lone British factor who was now happily married to an island siren and reluctant ever to move (although truly grateful for a new supply of linen), and then at Macassar where he established a factory among ‘the kindest people in all the Indies’, Jourdain repaired to Bantam and the unenviable job of Chief Factor for the next four years. Towerson was gone (he was now commanding the Hector on her fifth and last voyage to the East) and there were more Englishmen in Bantam. But not much else was changed.

As he entered the oily waters of Bantam’s sheltered anchorage Jourdain looked for a resounding welcome from the Trades Increase of the Sixth Voyage. At 1200 tons far and away the biggest ship in the Company’s fleet, she had been launched with great ceremony by James I and was now on her maiden voyage with Sir Henry Middleton in command. It had not been a happy voyage. As will appear, the choleric Sir Henry had spent part of it in an Arab dog-kennel and, far from increasing trade, his flagship had seemingly hastened the demise of British commerce in India.

Spying her enormous bulk now lying off Bantam, Jourdain fired a salvo. There came no reply. Then ‘we hailed them but could have no answer, neither could we perceive any man stirring’. The Company’s flagship had in fact become a grounded and gutted hulk; her commander was dead, her crew decimated, and her hull was now serving as a hospice for the terminally sick. Instead of a rumbustious homecoming Jourdain was received by four factors, ‘all of them like ghosts of men fraighted’, who came aboard from a native prabu.

I demanded for the General [Middleton] and all the rest of our friends in particular; but I could not name any man of note but was dead, to the number of 140 persons; and the rest remaining were all sick, these four being the strongest of them and they scarce able to go on their legges.

To malaria and dysentery were now added the perils of ‘our people dangerously disordering themselves with drinke and whores ashoare’. But a worse disorder stemmed from the system of separate voyages, which meant that there were now three separate English factories in Bantam, each with its residue of competing, quarrelling and dying factors and each a prime target for the town’s busy ‘pickers, thievers and fire raisers’. In search of a peaceful solution Jourdain visited each establishment. At one he was greeted by a fevered factor ‘who came running forth like a madman asking for the bilboes [shackles]’ and at the next by another tottering invalid who tried to run him through with a sword. ‘If he had been strong he might have slaine me.’

Just preserving some order among his own people taxed Jourdain’s considerable abilities, never mind the Dutch threat. In 1614 no shipping at all could be spared for the Moluccas but in 1615 a vessel was sent to Ceram and a pinnace to the Bandas. Both fared badly, their crews being captured and briefly imprisoned by the Dutch. A factor was again left on the Banda island of Ai and he was still there a year later when a much larger British fleet meekly withdrew at the first threat of a Dutch attack.

By now there had been regular visits to Run and Ai for ten years, and for at least six years there had been a permanent British representative on the islands. It could be argued that two isolated spice gardens, together totalling little more than three square miles, were scarcely worth an armed confrontation between two of the world’s strongest maritime nations. But that, according to Jourdain, was not the point. Principle was at stake. The Dutch based their claims on prior occupation and on the dubious treaties they had signed with the islanders. But in the case of Ai and Run the English could claim to have been first on the scene; and if documentary evidence were needed, it would be found.

In 1616 the Dutch prepared for another attack on Ai. On behalf of the Company, Captain Castleton agreed not to interfere so long as an English factor was allowed to continue on the island and so long as Run was recognized as being outside the Dutch sphere of monopoly. The Dutch commander agreed to these terms in writing. All that remained was to secure the consent of the Run islanders. It was not hard to come by. When the Dutch duly overran Ai, the headmen of both islands voluntarily and indeed eagerly pressed their little nutmeg seedling on Richard Hunt, the English factor. It was a token, he understood, that they formally made over their ‘cattel and countrie for the use of the English nation’. In due course it was ratified in an impressive document declaring King James I ‘by the grace of God, King of England, Scotland, Ireland, France, Puloway and Puloroon’. Henceforth the status of Run and Ai would involve more than commercial concessions and the rights of a trading company. The issue of national sovereignty was involved and the rights of the English Crown would have to be taken into account.

Escaping from Ai in the company of its loyal chiefs, Hunt made his way back to Bantam. There the outwitted Dutch showed what they thought of his treaty and his wilting nutmeg tree. Hunt was immediately waylaid in the street by a mob of Hollanders, beaten up, ‘hailed through the durte by the haire of the head’, and clamped in irons ‘in the hotte sun without hatt’. Jourdain retaliated by seizing a Dutch merchant and giving him the same treatment. Although the prisoners were eventually exchanged, English and Dutch now fought openly in the city’s lanes and Jourdain determined to strike back in the Bandas.