Debating Natural Law in the Banda Islands: A Case Study in Anglo–Dutch Imperial Competition in the East Indies, 1609–1621 (2016)
This article examines Anglo–Dutch rivalry in the Banda Islands in the period from 1609 to 1621, with a particular focus on the process of claiming initiated by the Dutch East India Company (VOC) and English East India Company (EIC). Historians have paid little attention to the precise legal justifications employed by these organisations, and how they affected the outcome of events. For both companies, treaties with Asian rulers and peoples were essential in staking out claims to trade and territory. Because so many different parties were involved, individual documents had to serve multiple purposes, both on the ground in the East Indies and at the negotiating tables back in Europe. Whenever a VOC or EIC official presented a treaty to a Bandanese leader, he had to recognise local power structures in the Spice Islands, but also needed to consider his European competitors in the area, his superiors in Batavia or Bantam, and the company directors back in Amsterdam or London. Consequently, the safest and most reliable course of action was to make as many arguments as possible, piling them on top of one another. The result was an inherently messy process of claiming, yet one that was also clearly intelligible to most parties involved, including Asian rulers and peoples. A constantly changing legal suite extended to freedom of trade and navigation, contracts and alliances with native peoples, just war, conquest, actual possession, and the (perceived) surrender of native sovereignty to European authorities.
...MoreSimilar Citations
Book
Anna Winterbottom;
(2016)
Hybrid Knowledge in the Early East India Company World
(/isis/citation/CBB551587576/)
Article
Pyenson, Lewis;
(2011)
The Enlightened Image of Nature in the Dutch East Indies: Consequences of Postmodernist Doctrine for Broad Structures and Intimate Life
(/isis/citation/CBB001022672/)
Book
Robert-Jan Wille;
(2019)
Mannen van de microscoop: De laboratoriumbiologie op veldtocht in Nederland en Indië, 1840-1910
(/isis/citation/CBB335385064/)
Article
Ertsen, M. W.;
(2007)
Irrigation Design in the Netherlands East Indies
(/isis/citation/CBB001180594/)
Book
Ertsen, Maurits;
(2010)
Locales of happiness: Colonial irrigation in the Netherlands East Indies and its remains, 1830--1980
(/isis/citation/CBB001180584/)
Thesis
Moon, Suzanne M.;
(2000)
Constructing “Native development”: Technological change and the politics of colonization in the Netherlands East Indies, 1905--1930 (Indonesia)
(/isis/citation/CBB001562686/)
Article
Martin Hugh Fitzpatrick;
(2016)
From Natural Law to Natural Rights? Protestant Dissent and Toleration in the Late Eighteenth Century
(/isis/citation/CBB233484914/)
Book
Christine Petto;
(2015)
Mapping and Charting in Early Modern England and France: Power, Patronage, and Production
(/isis/citation/CBB153352848/)
Book
Brett, Annabel S;
(2011)
Changes of State: Nature and the Limits of the City in Early Modern Natural Law
(/isis/citation/CBB001201179/)
Article
Ian Hunter;
(2013)
The Figure of Man and the Territorialisation of Justice in ‘Enlightenment’ Natural Law: Pufendorf and Vattel
(/isis/citation/CBB579257393/)
Article
Christian Maurer;
(2016)
Archibald Campbell and the Committee for Purity of Doctrine on Natural Reason, Natural Religion, and Revelation
(/isis/citation/CBB162756479/)
Article
J. A. Edgington;
(2023)
Three botanical watercolours by Richard Bradley (c.1688–1732) including of coffee and cinnamon
(/isis/citation/CBB279891342/)
Article
Mikael Hård;
Mai Lin Tjoa-Bonatz;
(December 2020)
Trading zones in a colony: Transcultural techniques at missionary stations in the Dutch East Indies, 1860 – 1940
(/isis/citation/CBB316057746/)
Article
Pieter van Wingerden;
(2020)
Science on the Edge of Empire: E. a. Forsten (1811–1843) and the Natural History Committee (1820–1850) in the Netherlands Indies
(/isis/citation/CBB848529337/)
Chapter
Moon, Suzanne M.;
(2005)
Development and the Dual Economy: Theories of Colonial Transformation in the Netherlands East Indies, c. 1920
(/isis/citation/CBB000774973/)
Chapter
Ertsen, M. W.;
(2005)
Irrigation design in the Netherlands East Indies: The Tjipoenegara system in West Java
(/isis/citation/CBB001180596/)
Thesis
Luthfi Adam;
(2020)
Cultivating Power: Buitenzorg Botanic Garden and Empire-Building in the Netherlands East Indies, 1745-1917
(/isis/citation/CBB491950509/)
Article
Claire Edington;
Hans Pols;
(2016)
Building Psychiatric Expertise across Southeast Asia: Study Trips, Site Visits, and Therapeutic Labor in French Indochina and the Dutch East Indies, 1898–1937
(/isis/citation/CBB623646766/)
Article
Pols, Hans;
(2007)
Psychological Knowledge in a Colonial Context: Theories of the “Native Mind” in the Former Dutch East Indies
(/isis/citation/CBB000700406/)
Article
Hoogte, Arjo Roersch van der;
Pieters, Toine;
(2014)
Science in the Service of Colonial Agro-Industrialism: The Case of Cinchona Cultivation in the Dutch and British East Indies, 1852--1900
(/isis/citation/CBB001421062/)
Be the first to comment!