Organizer: Kerry Ward, University of Michigan
Chair: Eric Tagliacozzo, University of British Columbia
Discussant: Rudolf Mrazek, University of Michigan
This panel will focus on the intersection between technology and state protocols in the Dutch maritime realm of Asia, from the early modern era to the turn of our own century. The primary theme linking the papers is the use (or attempted use) of new technologies and the protocols of state by various groups to negotiate expanded power. Dutchmen in the Indies, first in the guise of the Dutch East India Company (VOC), and then as the colonial state itself, incorporated such technologies in a number of ways. In Maluku, the VOC used superior maritime power to enforce its monopoly on cloves, while the protocols of diplomacy were used to negotiate continued peace in the region. In Batavia, technologies of torture, incarceration, and the protocols of bureaucracy were utilized to ensure Dutch primacy at the colonial ‘center’. While Dutch merchants based in the Indies peddled guns in Japan, canons were presented by the VOC as diplomatic gifts to the state. By the turn of the twentieth century, the maturing Dutch colonial state was using technology as never before, building a vast system of lighthouses, beacons, and buoys to delineate and enforce its vast island empire within the protocols of modern international shipping. This panel ties together disparate periods and places under one conceptual lens. We are interested in exploring how technology and state power met in various contexts, as well as the incorporation and resistance-strategies of non-state actors.
Military Might and Foresight: The Contribution of the Dutch Presence in Asia to the Acquisition of Armaments in Tokugawa Japan
Martha Chaiklin, University of Leiden
It is an accepted historical fact that guns were brought to Japan soon after the accidental landing of the Portuguese in 1543, and that they came to play a significant role in the power struggles of the Sengoku period. Only one book has dealt in any depth with what happened subsequently. Noel Perrin is not a historian and has no in-depth knowledge of Japan, or Asia, yet his book Giving up the Gun has shaped western thinking on the role of military technology in the period. This paper sets out to debunk Perrin’s thesis through a close examination of the available archival record. It utilizes Dutch East India Company (VOC) records from Batavia as well as contemporary Japanese sources. As a nation primarily at peace, guns did not attain the level of significance in Japan that they had in the West. But the Japanese most certainly never "gave up the gun." Military technology was sought and acquired by the Japanese through both trading and diplomatic relations with the Dutch. These distinct archival records show not only the trends for the acquisition of western military technology but also reveal the complex role this technology played in ‘sakoku’ Japan.
A Feigned Peace? Maritime Power and Ritual Diplomacy in the Relations Between the Sultanate of Ternate and the Dutch East India Company, 1700–1750
Hendrik Niemeijer, Kampen Theological University
After a series of bloody wars against both the Iberian powers and local Malukan rulers, the Dutch East India Company (VOC) stabilized much of the region of Ternate, Ambon, and Banda. The Pax Neerlandica reached during the course of the seventeenth century was partially determined by superior western military and maritime technology. Regional stability also depended on cooperation between local rajas and VOC officials. This paper argues that several local rulers profited from western maritime superiority, but never really accepted Dutch overlordship. The result, a feigned peace, was camouflaged by ritual diplomacy, cultural exchange and gift giving. This thesis is examined through an evaluation of the technological, military and political power bases of both the Sultan of Ternate and the VOC on the island of Ternate during the reign of Sultan Safiudin (1714–1751). During his long rule, Safiudin maintained diplomatic relations with a succession of twelve Dutch governors. VOC officials were focused on their economic objectives of sustaining peace in the region and enforcing the ban on clove trees outside Dutch plantations. At first, Dutch maritime technological superiority guaranteed constant pressure on the Sultan to meet VOC demands. But as VOC military and economic power diminished in the eighteenth century, protocols of diplomacy upheld the alliance. The burial of Safiudin in 1751 finally sparked off important changes in this dialectic.
Technologies and Protocols of Criminality in the Dutch East India Company Empire
Kerry Ward, University of Michigan
This paper examines the methodologies of crime and punishment in the Dutch East India Company’s (VOC) Indian Ocean empire. The Company’s concern with internal security, essential for governance and trade, resulted in the construction of an elaborate penal system which incorporated an imperial dimension in the use of exile. In the VOC capital of Batavia, security was maintained through the application of technologies of pain and of paper. On the one hand, the use of public judicial torture and execution created the spectacle of power over the individual who transgressed Company law. Pain was inflicted both as a performance of punishment and as a warning to others. On the other hand, the VOC’s bureaucratic machinery created one of the earliest examples of the ‘criminal record’ in detailed written accounts of crimes, police records, transcripts of interrogations (many conducted under torture), court proceedings, executioner’s expense accounts, and criminal registers. This pen and ink dimension of controlling criminality was a form of surveillance not open to public scrutiny. Imprisonment combined these technologies of ‘branding’ individuals into a criminal category, from which there was theoretically no escape. This paper argues that the use of penal transportation and political exile, as well as the setting up of ‘prison islands’ throughout the VOC’s Indian Ocean empire, consolidated Company power both locally and in its imperial realm.
Lighting Indie: Coastlights, Beacons, and Buoys in Anglo/Dutch Colonial State Expansion, 1870–1910
Eric Tagliacozzo, University of British Columbia
This paper explores how lighthouses, beacons, and buoys were used by the Dutch and British colonial governments in Southeast Asia around the turn of the twentieth century. Specifically, it addresses how such technologies were employed by these states to maximize the "optics" of rule. Singapore and Batavia utilized these maritime tools with increasing frequency as their respective imperiums solidified and grew. Indeed, the sciences of lighting and delineating the vast ocean frontier between these states became of crucial importance. Lighthouses and beacons acted not only as reference points for passing ships, but also as nodes of the state’s symbolic power and vigilance; buoys channeled trade into avenues desired by the state, at the same time that they warned passersby of dangerous rocks and shoals. The dual nature of these "tools of empire" was evident to nearly everyone at the time: colonial administrators and planners, neutral shippers, and those who wished to sidestep (or challenge) the state’s expanding power. The paper discusses changing technologies of lighthouses, beacons, and buoys, as well as the geographical spread of these tools, as they gradually came to grid much of the region. Between 1870 and 1910, the maritime face of the archipelago underwent radical change, and these constructions and installations were important contributors to this process.