Rijckloff Volckertsz. van Goens, formerly the Dutch East India Company's (VOC) governor of Ceylon had, by the fall of 1672 been appointed Superintendent and commander-in-chief of the VOC's establishments and forces in South Asia. A French fleet had anchored in Trincomalee on Ceylon and in July of that same year had sailed to São Tomé de Meliapur on the Coromandel Coast and taken the town. News had just arrived from Europe that the Dutch Republic and France were at war, spurring Van Goens to take another critical look at the disposition of the VOC's forces in the region. Negapatnam on the Coromandel Coast, taken from Portugal in 1659, was seen as a weak point and in need of new fortifications. Dombaer and Butler, together representing the commercial and military sides of the Company, were dispatched to Negapatnam to inspect the existing works and suggest improvements. Van Goens remarked to the Company's leadership in Batavia that he himself had drawn a possible new trace for the fortifications in their plan “in dotted lines.” Negapatnam would ultimately be refortified, but only in the 1680s, at the instigation of another fortification enthusiast, Hendrik Adriaan van Reede tot Drakenstein, empowered as the direct representative of the Company's Dutch leadership to inspect the VOC establishments west of Malacca. This episode draws our attention to the processes by which the Company decided to build fortifications, the process of designing these fortifications and their actual construction. As this example suggests, many of the individuals engaged in the design of fortifications were not, in fact, specialized military engineers, but rather amateurs, “experienced theorists or practitioners.” This is an interesting point, since much importance is attached to the role European artillery fortifications played in Early Modern European expansion.

The VOC plays a special role in this debate, since it built more fortifications over a much wider geographic scope than any of its rivals. The East India Company (EIC), focused in its territorial possessions on India since the 1680s, built fewer forts and would later focus its military energies on constructing a potent field force.