The above excerpt from a letter from Pieter Sluysken, commander of Galle, probably written to Governor-General Willem Arnold Alting in the summer or fall of 1787, sums up the problems facing the VOC's high command in the second half of the 1780s: too many engineers. In itself this would not have been a problem if only the engineers had been able to work out consensus proposals which they could present to the VOC's high command (either the local governor or the High Government) for approval. However, the engineers working on Ceylon in the 1780s could not agree on anything other than that the fortifications needed to be modernized. The actual modifications themselves would become the object of intense debate, as all engineers attempted to have their own proposals accepted. Since the officials who would have to make the decision in this matter were not themselves technically trained, the technical debate over the various proposals also and perhaps in the first place, became a contest between rivalling networks of patronage within the VOC. The ensuing ruckus clearly illustrates the enduring tensions between Batavia and Ceylon even in the late eighteenth century.

War: The Fourth Anglo-Dutch War in Asia, 1780-1784

Ever since the American Revolutionary War had erupted into a wider European conflict by France's entry into it in 1778, the position of the Dutch Republic in Europe and of the VOC in Asia had become more precarious.