Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t8hqh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T11:18:38.211Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

2 - The Evolution of Governance and Forced Migration

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 July 2009

Kerry Ward
Affiliation:
Rice University, Houston
Get access

Summary

Six Amsterdam ships set sail from the Texel roadstead in 1602 with a full crew carrying, along with provisions and armaments, the authority of the newly sealed Charter endorsing the sovereign rights of the Dutch East India Company and its first fleet. The States-General, as the highest ruling body of the United Provinces, had granted the charter on March 20, 1602, and, while it did not literally provide ballast to keep the ships from floundering, it did become the legal cornerstone for VOC operations on the coastal fringes of the Indian Ocean. The Dutch East India Company was undoubtedly first, foremost, and forever preoccupied with trade and profit. Nevertheless, its charter contained the legal conditions of possibility for its transformation from trading company to empire by allowing the enactment of laws to maintain order and discipline within the Company's own ships and settlements and by defining the principles for the Company's engagement with foreign powers, including terms of trade, diplomacy, and conquest. Although not anticipated by the States-General in 1602, the Dutch East India Company created in situ and over time, economic, political, social, legal, and administrative networks through which its partial sovereignties coalesced into an imperial web that spanned a large part of the Company's octrooigebied (charter domain) east of the Cape of Good Hope and through the Straits of Magellan.

Type
Chapter
Information
Networks of Empire
Forced Migration in the Dutch East India Company
, pp. 49 - 84
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2008

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Gaastra, Femme S., The Dutch East India Company: Expansion and Decline. Zutphen, Netherlands: Walburg Pers, 2003Google Scholar
Ball, John, Indonesian Legal History. Sydney: Oughtershaw Press, 1982, pp. 2–3Google Scholar
Adams, Julia, “Trading States, Trading Places: The Role of Patrimonialism in Early Modern Dutch Development,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, 36 (2), 1994, p. 326CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Adams, Julia, The Familial State: Ruling Families and Merchant Capitalism in Early Modern Europe. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005, chapters 2 and 3, pp. 38–105Google Scholar
Thomson, Janice E., Mercenaries, Pirates, and Sovereigns: State-Building and Extraterritorial Violence in Early Modern Europe. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994, pp. 1–20Google Scholar
Hahlo, H. R. and Kahn, E., The South African Legal System and Its Background. Cape Town: Juta, 1968, p. 535Google Scholar
Blussé, Leonard, Strange Company: Chinese Settlers, Mestizo Women and the Dutch in VOC Batavia. Dordrecht-Holland: Foris Publications, 1986, pp. 35–48Google Scholar
Hooker, M. B., A Concise Legal History of South-East Asia. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978Google Scholar
Chanock, Martin, Law, Custom and Social Order: The Colonial Experience in Malawi and Zimbabwe. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1985, p. 4Google Scholar
Adams, Julia, “The Familial State: Elite family practices and state-making in the early modern Netherlands,” Theory and Society, 23(4), August 1994, pp. 505–539CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Day, Clive, The Policy and Administration of the Dutch in Java. New York: Macmillan and Co., 1904, p. 86Google Scholar
Lewis, Dianne, Jan Compagnie in the Straits of Malacca 1641–1795. Athens, Ohio: University Center for International Studies, 1995, p. 13Google Scholar
Visagie, G. G., Regspleging en Reg aan die Kaap van 1652–1806. Cape Town: Juta, 1969, p. 21Google Scholar
Edwards, Charles S., Hugo Grotius The Miracle of Holland: A Study in Political and Legal Thought. Chicago: Nelson-Hall, 1981Google Scholar
Ittersum, Martine Julia, Profit and Principle: Hugo Grotius, Natural Rights Theories and the Rise of Dutch Power in the East Indies (1595–1615). London: Brill, 2006CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Klaveren, J. J., The Dutch Colonial System in the East Indies. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1953, p. 53Google Scholar
Toit, Andre du and Giliomee, Hermann, Afrikaner Political Thought: Analysis and Documents, Volume One: 1780–1850. Cape Town: David Philip, 1983, pp. 1–9Google Scholar
Winius, George and Vink, Markus, The Merchant-Warrior Pacified: The VOC (The Dutch East India Company) and Its Changing Political Economy in India. Delhi, India: Oxford University Press, 1994, p. 13Google Scholar
Hoffman, J. E., “Early Policies in the Malacca Jurisdiction of the United East India Company: The Malay Peninsula and Netherlands East Indies Attachment,” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies (hereafter, JSEAS), 3(1), March 1972, p. 4CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Prakash, Om, The Dutch East India Company and the Economy of Bengal 1630–1720, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985. p. 259Google Scholar
Andrade, Tonio, How Taiwan Became Chinese: Dutch Spanish and Han Colonization in the Seventeenth Century. New York: Columbia University Press, 2006Google Scholar
Sleigh, Dan, Islands: A Novel. Trans. Brink, André. London: Secker and Warburg, 2004Google Scholar
Vaughan, Megan, Creating the Creole Island: Slavery in Eighteenth-Century Mauritius. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005, pp. 1–33CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Korte, J. P., De jaarlijke financiele verantwoording in de Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie. Leiden: Het Nederlandsch Economisch-Historisch Archief, no. 17, 1984Google Scholar
Leupe, P. A., “Letter Transport Overland to the Indies by the East India Company in the Seventeenth Century,” in Meilink-Roelofsz, M. A. P., Opstall, M. E., and Schutte, G. J., Dutch Authors on Asian History. Dordrect-Holland: Foris Publications, 1988, pp. 77–90Google Scholar
Rues, G. C. Klerk, “Geschichtlicher Uberblick der Administrativen, Rechtlichen und Finanziellen Entwicklung der Niederlandisch-Ostindischen Compagnie,” Verhandelingen van het Bataviaasch Genootschap van Kunsten en Wetenschappen, vol. 47, 3. Batavia: Albrecht en Rusche, ‘sHage: Martinus Nijhoff, 1894, pp. 140–141Google Scholar
Jonge, J. K., De Opkomst van het Nederlandsch Gezag in Oost-Indie. Versameling van onuitgegeven stukken uit het Oud-Koloniaal Archief. Vol 5. ‘sGravenhage: Martinus Nijhoff; Amsterdam: Frederick Muller, 1870. pp. 57–84Google Scholar
Leiden, Rijksuniversiteit, All of One Company: The VOC in Biographical Perspective. Utrecht: Hes, 1986, pp. 92–107Google Scholar
Kock, Victor, Those in Bondage: An Account of the Life of the Slave at the Cape in the Days of the Dutch East India Company. Pretoria: Union Booksellers, 1963, p. 165Google Scholar
Schiller, A., “Conflict of Laws in Indonesia,” The Far Eastern Quarterly, 2(1), November 1942, pp. 31–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stapel, F. W., “Bijdragen tot de Geschiedenis der Rechtspraak bij de Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie 1,” Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land-en Volkenkunde van Nederlandsch-Indië (hereafter BKI), 89, 1932, p. 52Google Scholar
Haan, F., Oud Batavia, vol. 1. Batavia: G. Kolff & Co., 1922, pp. 451–462Google Scholar
Fox, James, “‘For Good and Sufficient Reasons’: An Examination of Early Dutch East India Company Ordinances on Slaves and Slavery,” in Reid, Anthony, Slavery, Bondage and Dependency in Southeast Asia. St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1985, pp. 248–249Google Scholar
Haan, F. W., Priangan: De Preanger-Regenschappen onder het Nederlandsch Bestuur tot 1811. 4 vols. Batavia: G. Kolff & Co.; ‘sGravenhage: Martinus Nijhoff, 1910Google Scholar
Hoadley, Mason C., Selective Judicial Competence: The Cirebon-Priangan Legal Administration, 1680–1792. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Southeast Asia Program, 1994Google Scholar
Sonius, H. W. J., “Introduction,” in Holleman, J. F., Van Vollenhoven on Indonesian Adat Law: Selections from Het Adatrecht van Nederlandsch-Indië (vol. 1, 1918; vol. 2, 1931). The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1981, pp. 33–58Google Scholar
Slot, B. J., Hoof, M. C. J. C., and Lequin, F., “Notes on the Use of the VOC Archives,” in Meilink-Roelofsz, , Raben, , and Spikerman, , De archieven van de VOC, pp. 47–70
Vink, , “‘The World's Oldest Trade’: Dutch Slavery and Slave Trade in the Indian Ocean in the Seventeenth Century.”Journal of World History, 14(2), 2003, p. 139CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×