The final inspection of the VOC's military state in all of its Asian and African possessions was conducted by a Military Committee specially formed for the task in 1789-1792. Strikingly, this committee was not formed by the VOC in Asia, but rather was the result of an initiative taken by the Admiralty of Amsterdam. Writing on the state of the fort at Trincomalee in 1790, the committee clearly articulated the vulnerability of a small fort to bombardment by mortar and red-hot shot. This chapter will follow the evaluations and recommendations of this committee as it inspected the fortifications of Ceylon and Malabar in 1789-1790. The inspection of the defenses would be used to articulate proposals for their improvement and the engineer attached to the committee had the power to overrule the VOC's engineers and submit the final plans for improvemet. Given that, the selection of the chief engineer for this mission was of course a sensitive choice. But why was a committee that operated outside the regular VOC chain of command formed in the first place? The committee illustrates an important change in the relations between the Generality and the VOC. Since the first naval squadron under J.P. van Braam had been sent immediately after the Fourth Anglo- Dutch War, the admiralties of the Dutch Republic had continuously maintained small naval squadrons in Asia. Defense of the Asian possessions was no longer the exclusive responsibility of the VOC even before the committee was formed. Working outside the VOC hierarchy, the Military Committee would be able to present the States-General with an independent assessment of the state of defense of the empire in the East.

While the engineers had been debating their plans in Asia throughout the 1780s, events in the Netherlands had taken a dramatic turn, which would ultimately decide the engineers’ quarrels. The poor performance of the VOC in the war with Britain had convinced many in the Republic that intervention by the Generality was warranted.