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Pieter Phoonsen of Surat, c. 1730–1740
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 November 2008
Extract
Pieter Laurens Phoonsen, son of Bernard Phoonsen, a distinguished servant of the Dutch East India Company, was born at Gale in Ceylon in 1691 and probably never saw the Netherlands in his life. He was enrolled as a common sailor on a ship of the Dutch Company at Batavia in the year 1707. The peak of his career in the service of the Company was reached when he succeeded Herman Bruinink as the directeur of the Dutch council at Surat late in the year 1728. The papers produced at the Dutch lodge at Surat throughout the 1730s show Phoonsen as an efficient servant of the Company, an upright man keen to uphold the honour of the white race in an alien environment and, on the whole, aloof from the fearful complications of these years in the city of Surat. Phoonsen's colleagues in the council at Surat carefully emulated their chief and the official papers give no ground to suspect that the Indian world enmeshed in any way with life as it went on behind the walls at the Dutch lodge or that the Company, whatever the directors might say, had any well-founded reason for complaint. True, such upright men were not universally admired even at the time. Apart from the distant suspicion of Amsterdam, there was scepticism closer at hand. Writing an ordinary business letter in the early 1730s, Henry Lowther, the chief of the English factory at Surat, noted: ‘The Dutch have sold their cargo, that is the Chief and Council have bought it underhand but at what price no one knows.’ The prolix correspondence from the Dutch lodge at Surat was not, however, tainted with such meanness.
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References
1 There are two ‘salary-extracts’ entered in Koloniaal Archief vol. 2437 at the Algemeen Rijksarchief, The Hague, which at p. 2215 give the details about Phoonsen's birth and his first enrolment in the service of the Dutch East India Company. Phoonsen in his letter to the Governor General and Council at Batavia, dated 7 September 1728, gave the information about the death of Bruinink and his taking over provisionally at the Surat lodge, K. A. 1996, p. 2, in the second part of the volume.Google Scholar The general situation in the city of Surat has been given in some detail in my Indian Merchants and the Decline of Surat, 1700–1750 (Wiesbaden, 1979),Google Scholar while short sketches of Bernard Phoonsen and Pieter Phoonsen are available in van Resandt, W. Wijnaendts, De Gezaghebbers der Oost-Indische Compagnie op hare Buiten-Comptoiren in Azie (Amsterdam, 1944). I regret I do not have the latter book at hand for citing exact references. Phoonsen's mother, ‘the widow Kerkeling’, left him a house in Amsterdam and some money, a little before the troubles began in the Dutch lodge at Surat. A statement to that effect was found in Phoonsen's private papers after he had fled to the governor of Surat, K.A. 2437, pp. 2188f. Complaints from the Heeren XVII, the directors of the Dutch Company, were frequent in the 1730s, e.g. letter dated 12 September 1736, cited in K.A. 2339, pp. 13–16, letter dated 17 September 1737 in K.A. 2367, pp. 25–8 and letter dated 20 September 1738 in K.A. 2401, pp. 56–8. The comment made by Henry Lowther is in his letter to Robert Cowan, governor of Bombay, 10 January 1731. The ‘Papers of Robert Cowan’ are at the Public Record Office, Belfast. I read this letter in microfilm reel 2020 at the India Office Library and Records, London.Google Scholar
2 The breakdown of Van der Heijden was of a serious kind as he had presumably turned violent. The council noted on 28 March 1736 that Van der Heijden was being strictly guarded but even then it was inadvisable to let him stay on ‘in a Muslim town’. They added that a change of air under similar circumstances had produced good results before, K.A. 2282, p. 564. There is no mention, however, of Van der Heijden's departure or return from Batavia.Google Scholar
3 Van den Berg broke up the Dutch factory at Mocha and returned to Surat in late 1738. His letter dated 15 August 1738 to the council at Surat, suggesting methods of coercing the administration at Mocha, is in K.A. 2367, pp. 506–12. The subsequent developments can be followed in the minutes of the council of 14 February 1739, pp. 292–4, 18 February 1739, pp. 336–8, and 30 March 1739, pp. 433–4 in the same volume; also the minutes of the council dated 18 September 1739 which noted Van den Berg's living among strangers of doubtful character like the English, in K.A. 2401, pp. 360–1, and finally the attempt to arrest Van den Berg which ended in failure in the minutes of 18 April 1740, ibid., pp. 790–803.
4 The denunciation of Phoonsen by Van der Heijden is in K.A. 2436 p. 155, and the further developments as related in the proceedings of the council can be read in sequence. Jan Schreuder, on arrival at Surat in early October 1740, expressed great dissatisfaction at the fact that these minutes were not written at the time but immediately before he himself took over charge.Google Scholar
5 It may be noted here that on an earlier occasion the directeur and council had protested to the governor of Surat against the ill treatment of Dutchmen on the streets of the city, without any amplification. This trifling matter indicates how much we miss in the bland notes of the official proceedings.
6 In this letter, which is in K.A. 2436, pp. 306–7, Phoonsen said that his son Pompeus had taken him to the shelter of the bakshi but later when it was alleged that he had converted to Islam, the bakshi sent him to Rustum's garden. He added that this garden he had in rent for the last several years.Google Scholar
7 Phoonsen's flight to Bombay and the initial reaction of the English were noted by the Dutch council on 5 December 1740, ibid., pp. 531–3. The English council of Bombay, however, noted the fugitive's arrival upon the island in their consultation of 1 December 1740, cf. Bombay Public Proceedings, Range 341, vol. 11, at the India Office Library and Records, London, under date. There are two letters from Stephen Law to Schreuder refusing to give Phoonsen up and stressing Phoonsen's poverty, dated 29 December 1740 and 20 March 1741 in K.A. 2436, pp. 885–6 and 1246. In the consultation of 13 August 1742, the English council at Bombay noted that on property of Phoonsen's could be recovered for Schreuder as whatever trifle he left had been claimed by her ‘whom he declared his lawful wife and bequeathed everything to before his death’, B.P.P., Range 341, vol. 13, under date.Google Scholar
8 The narration is based on council minutes of the Dutch at Surat and can be followed under the different dates in K.A. 2436. The important letter from Van der Laar is in K.A. 2437, pp. 1731–35.Google Scholar
9 Housel's testimony is in K.A. 2437, p. 1746. The comment on Manichaeism and Upanishads is, of course, an interpolation of mine.Google Scholar
10 The two letters of Van der Laar, containing detailed allegations against the manner in which the Dutch affairs were run at Surat, even under Schreuder, are in ibid., pp. 2607–42. It is interesting to note that Schreuder himself made a similar allegation when on arrival he found the Dutch garden and the lodge in a sorry state of disrepair but a considerable amount of money shown every year in the council's books as having been spent on maintenance: cf. Schreuder and Pecock, secret letter to Batavia, 31 March 1741, ibid., pp. 2547–8.