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History of the Orchid Pavilion
Editor|History of the Orchid Pavilion
After the Ambon Massacre, Britain was greatly damaged in the spice trade, closed its trading post in Ambon, withdrew its agents, and only retained some British merchants in Batavia and other places.
At this time, the Dutch had become more and more powerful, the spice trade gradually became the core trade of the Netherlands in the East, and Indonesia gradually became a Dutch colony.
Although Britain gradually developed weakly in the spice trade, it was difficult to ignore the huge benefits in the spice trade, so the struggle between Britain and the Netherlands in the Spice Islands did not end completely with the emergence of the Holocaust.
Due to the violent Dutch policy in the Indonesian archipelago, Britain's most valuable bargaining chip at this time was the surrender agreement on the island of Rann, which was signed by Korthope. So, at the heart of the struggle between Britain and the Netherlands in the spice trade during this period was ownership of the Isle of Langnes.
Treaty between Britain and the Netherlands is signed
After the British lost the island of Lang, they had twice surrendered to Britain and signed a surrender agreement and a land transfer agreement with Cotthope, and they always wanted to restore their rule over the island of Langn and regain their share in the spice trade.
Because although the 1619 Defense Treaty provided for one-third of Britain's share of spices, the two countries hardly fulfilled the content of the treaty. So Britain wanted to regain control over the island of Langn through war, negotiations and other means.
The Dutch were well aware of Britain's ideas, so after the Dutch forcefully defeated British power in the spice trade, Cohen destroyed villages and boats in the Banda Islands, sold hundreds of indigenous people into Java as slaves, and brutally slaughtered the remaining more than a hundred adults.
All the arable land was allocated to the Dutch who had come to settle it, and slaves were used to cultivate it, and even the nutmeg trees of the Banda Islands were transplanted and destroyed.
Cohen implemented a cruel policy on the Banda Islands to control the nutmeg trade, preventing the British from regaining large quantities of nutmeg if they had to cede the island of Langne to the British in the future.
Britain and the Netherlands both wanted trade rights in the Banda Islands, so in the decades following the Ambon massacre, the two countries negotiated extensively over compensation and ownership of Rann Island.
Although there was considerable room for British reparations for the Ambon massacre during the negotiations, the Netherlands also acknowledged responsibility for the Ambon massacre.
But most of the negotiations ultimately failed because Britain decided that the Isle of Langn had to replant nutmeg trees and return them to the UK, and Dutch rule over the Isle was inevitable.
Therefore, the contradictions between Britain and the Netherlands are on the verge of erupting. In addition, the Netherlands showed considerable strength in European maritime trade, becoming the greatest threat to British maritime trade. The Anglo-Dutch War broke out.
The First Anglo-Dutch War (1652–1654) ended with the Treaty of Westminster, in which Cromwell exerted his English advantage and won the war.
Thus, in the Treaty of Westminster, Britain put forward the Dutch claim that the Netherlands should pay reparations to the Ambon massacre and restore British ownership of the Isle of Lang.
In the First Anglo-Dutch War, the Netherlands not only lost control of important ports in other regions, so the Netherlands was forced to sign the treaty, agreeing to return ownership of the Isle of Langn to Britain.
Britain once again nominally had trading rights in the spice trade. The decades of Anglo-Dutch strife and bloodshed over the island of Langn seem to have been forgiven through this paper contract. But the reality is not so simple.
The Dutch governor Cohen had already replaced the plantation owners on the island with employees of the Dutch East India Company when he occupied the island of Lang, and the British trade at that time was focused on the Indian cotton trade, and the battle for the island of Langn was only a struggle of the British East India Company in the spice trade, so when the news reached London, the British ruling class sent personnel to the island of Langn to recover it after a long time.
The time spent choosing the Reconquisiers and sailing them, and the time spent fighting the local Dutch after reaching Rann Island, was enough time for Britain and the Netherlands to maintain peace.
Anglo-Dutch relations once again slipped to the brink of war, and the Dutch drove the British out of the island of Rann again, and in retaliation burned all the nutmeg trees on the island of Lang.
This act infuriated the British Duke of York, who in 1663 attacked the Dutch-occupied territory of New Netherland, Manhattan. The Amsterdam fortress in Manhattan was poorly equipped and the English fleet was more armed, so the Duke of York occupied the Dutch colony of Manhattan in 1664.
Both Britain and the Netherlands were dissatisfied with each other's actions, demanding that the other return all their lands, but refusing to return all the other sides, and this hostile relationship made the already tense Anglo-Dutch relations even more tense, and the Anglo-Dutch war broke out again.
The Second Anglo-Dutch War ended with the Treaty of Breda. The treaty set out the long-standing Anglo-Dutch dispute over the ownership of the Isle of Langn and the question of the ownership of Manhattan.
The deadlock between the English demand for immediate access to Rann Island and the Dutch rejection of the request and the return of Manhattan during the treaty negotiations was until the Peace Council intervened, culminating in the signing of the treaty on July 31, 1667.
The treaty provided that the Netherlands would continue to occupy the Isle of Langn in exchange for British territorial ownership of Manhattan. As a result of this rule, the British East India Company directly lost its share of the spice trade.
And the Netherlands completely completed the monopoly on nutmeg. On the face of it, this is true, but from the perspective of the subsequent development of world trade and colonization, the exchange of the two colonies was actually a treaty favorable to Britain.
Because in the 18th century, with the emergence of other consumer goods such as tobacco, coffee, sugar and other consumer goods in the European market, the profits of the spice trade and the value of the island of Langn were greatly reduced, and Manhattan gradually became a very prosperous port due to its geographical location and the development of global colonial trade.
In addition, after the Ambon massacre, the British gradually shifted their focus to India and other trade, and did not pay much attention to the question of the ownership of the island of Ran.
So the Treaty of Breda was signed at the time when Britain lost the Isle of Langn and the Netherlands gained benefits, but in the long run, the treaty played a role in Britain's subsequent development.
After the Ambon massacre, Britain and the Netherlands struggled for decades over ownership of the island of Rann, culminating in the Treaty of Breda after the Second Anglo-Dutch War.
The end of the struggle for ownership of the island of Langn actually meant the end of the main Anglo-Dutch struggle in the spice trade. The struggle between the two countries over spice shares went through peaceful competition, détente negotiations, and fierce bloodshed, which finally came to an end in the treaty signed after the war.
The Netherlands became the supreme of spices
Britain and the Netherlands have been fighting for spices, beginning with an eastward voyage in the late 16th century in search of spices.
From the comparison of the number of ships and personnel of the two countries during the initial voyage, to the capital contest between the two countries to establish the East India Company, and then the dispute over the island of Ran, to the so-called cooperation between Britain and the Netherlands due to the various circumstances of the time, until the bloodshed of the Ambon Massacre, Britain and the Netherlands fought in the spice trade for nearly two hundred years, and finally the signing of the Treaty of Breda was the final conclusion.
The Netherlands completed its monopoly on cloves through the Ambon massacre, completed its monopoly on nutmeg through the Treaty of Breda, and finally completely completed its monopoly on two spices, while also indirectly completing its colonial rule over Indonesia.
England's abrupt end in the spice trade was not just stipulated by a treaty of 1667, but was caused by a combination of reasons.
First, in the wake of the Ambon massacre, Britain has reduced its investment in the spice trade. For three or four years, the British merchants of Banten did not receive any shipping and investment capital, and even considered themselves left to their own devices.
In addition, trade for the English East India Company during this period was in a slump, and in 1635 the company's 18 employees in London had to have their wages reduced, and in 1639, the company was forced to suspend its shipbuilding program, resuming its chartering practices on its earliest voyages.
Even on January 14, 1657, the company-owned factories in Rann Island, Banten, etc., as well as houses and other rights in the Indies, were sold to "any native of England" by way of public auction.
It can be seen that the English East India Company was unable to compete for spices before 1667.
The British persisted in their struggle for ownership of the Isle of Lang, partly to preserve their last chance in the spice trade, and partly because national self-confidence and self-esteem would not allow for no reason to give up this glorious legacy from the Kurthope period in the struggle with the Netherlands.
While the British East India Company weakened in the spice trade, the Dutch continued to grow in strength. Between 1620 and 1629, the total shipping volume of the Dutch East India Company in Asia increased by 80% and 50% of the traffic of ships compared to the previous period.
Since the Netherlands adopted Batavia as a trading center, some shipping routes around Java have also developed rapidly; Between 1630 and 1639, Dutch maritime trade was further strengthened, and although the total volume of shipping increased less significantly than in the previous period, shipping still increased by 23% and total volume by 17%.
Between 1640 and 1649, the total volume of Dutch sea freight in Asia increased by another 19% compared with the previous period, and freight traffic increased by almost 50%; Between 1650 and 1659, the number of Dutch seaborne Asians declined compared to the previous period, during which the number of intra-Asian voyages decreased by 2% and the number of voyages decreased by 8%.
Despite the decline in shipping volumes, the overall strength of the Netherlands in Asia did not decrease, and the stock price of the Dutch East India Company remained high from 1640 to 1671 while other countries were in economic crisis.
The volume of Dutch shipping in Asia and the stock price of the Dutch East India Company indicate that the Dutch trade in Asia at that time was very profitable, and the spice trade was the most central pillar of the Dutch East India Company's trade in Asia.
The signing of the Treaty of Breda provided an opportunity for the Dutch monopoly.
The Treaty of Breda marked the Dutch monopoly on spices such as nutmeg and cloves, but the Netherlands did not completely drive British merchants out of the Indonesian archipelago. There are still British merchants in Sumatra, Jambi, etc.
These merchants traded spices through some smuggling opportunities, and although not as large as the Netherlands, it was also proof that the Dutch monopoly in Indonesia was not completely completed.
It was not until 1682 that the Dutch ordered all British merchants to be permanently expelled by suppressing the rebellion on the Indonesian archipelago and supporting the sultan who obeyed the Dutch as the leader of the Indonesian islands, that the monopoly on the spice trade was completely completed and became the world's spice hegemon.
In addition, the Netherlands expelled Britain from Indonesia and successfully became the suzerainty of Indonesia, completely completing the colonization of the Indonesian archipelago.
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[1] John Keay, The Honourable Company, Harper Collins Publishers, 1993, pp.127-129.
[2] Robert Parthesius, Dutch Ships in Tropical Waters :The development of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) shipping network in Asia 1595-1660 , Amsterdam University Press, 2010, pp.138-142.