Abstract
Cornelis Matelieff de Jonge was one of the first directors of the Dutch East India Company for the chamber of Rotterdam. In 1605, he left for Asia at the head of one of the company’s early fleets. Returning in 1608, he had sailed throughout the Indian Ocean and the China seas, from Mauritius to China, had conducted treaties with Aceh and Johor, and had besieged Melaka and had built a fort on Ternate. Returning to the Netherlands, Matelieff would continue to air his views on the proper conduct of trade in Asia. He would be the first VOC-official who argued in favour of establishing a permanent government for the company in Asia, and argued that this government should be established at Jayakerta; present day Jakarta. To understand the early history and the trajectory of the VOC, Matelieff de Jonge is thus a crucial figure and this volume sets out to make his writings available to a non-Dutch speaking audience for the first time.
Peter Borschberg has published extensively on the early-modern history of the Melaka Straits, the Malay Peninsula and the island of Singapore. Source publications are not new to him either, as he published the Memoirs and Memorials of Jacques de Coutre in 2014. This experience clearly shows in this volume, as it has been translated with great care and is supported by two extensive glossaries for geographic names and terms and non-geographic terms, currencies, measures and commodities. Great care has been taken to translate the Dutch text into clear modern English, which is not only understandable, but actually pleasant to read. This is a great accomplishment as seventeenth-century Dutch texts can be very hard to read at times, even for those trained to do so. The first document in the book, an excerpt of the Historische Verhael focusing on the abortive siege of Melaka is especially well translated. This piece especially will also be of interest to military historians of Early Modern Asia.
The book is a compilation of no less than thirteen documents pertaining to Cornelis Matelieff de Jonge, backed up by a further ten ‘supplementary documents’. The thirteen main documents can be divided into three different categories. In the first place, there are the documents that were written in Asia: an excerpt from his Historische Verhael which focusses on the siege of Melaka, advice given by Matelieff de Jonge to Admiral Paul van Caerden, the next VOC-admiral to be sent to Asia and a letter to the next admiral to arrive from Europe. These last two documents being written in Banten in January 1608. The most captivating of these is the first document, also the largest piece in the book. The account of the siege of Melaka is a fascinating read, and will be of obvious interest to military historians of Early Modern Asia, as it details very well the difficulties encountered in the Dutch-Johorese cooperation. The second block of sources in the main part of the book are three discourses on the state of the Indies, the VOC’s trade and factories, and Matelieff’s comments on Dutch trade with the East Indies. These three documents were written between June 1607 and January 1609, shortly after his return in the Netherlands. These documents are notable, for it is here that Matelieff espouses the idea of a VOC government in Asia to be set up at a central location. Furthermore, he already suggests Jayakerta as the most suitable location. Finally, there are six letters to Hugo de Groot (Grotius) and Johan van Oldenbarnevelt. These letters are of interest because Grotius would use Matelieff’s input in the Anglo-Dutch conference on fisheries and colonial trade of 1615, for example. In these letters as well, Matelieff promoted Jayakerta as the best location of a rendezvous, rather than Johor or Banten. All documents are preceded by a short introduction explain time and circumstances under which they were written. Some of these texts had been published as source-publication before, but never in English.
To these thirteen main documents are added ten supplementary documents. These include instructions from the Gentlemen XVII; treaties with Aceh, Ternate and Sambas; two letters of Johor to the States General and stadholder Maurits; as well as a period English translation of a Dutch pamphlet which covers the period between January 1606 until January 1607 and with a focus on the siege of Melaka. Another piece originally written in English is a letter from the EIC’s chief factor in Banten to his brother in England, dated 30 April 1607 (old style date). The final document are the original Dutch captions to a fine map, now in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, of the siege of Melaka which is rendered as a fold-out in between pages 440 and 441. The varied places where the originals of all these documents were found, in the Dutch national archives in The Hague, the BNF or the British Library attests to the tenacity of the editor in finding relevant pieces.
This large body of transcribed sources is provided with a 140-page introduction which gives a background on the early history of the VOC, the figure and voyage of Matelieff de Jonge, the background of the sources themselves, and the editorial policy in transcribing and translating them. The introduction on the early history of the VOC is interesting as it aligns well with recent trends in the historiography that focus that the VOC was envisioned as a war-making organization from the outset. This runs in contrary to the historiography which tends to focus more exclusively on the VOC’s commercial side. As mentioned above, two explanatory word lists provide additional information on terms and words that readers might find puzzling, such as currencies and geographic names.
The self-stated goal of this volume is to make the memoirs, papers and letters of Cornelis Matelieff de Jonge available to a readership of students and researchers who focus on Early-Modern Southeast Asia. These goals are achieved admirably: the texts have been translated carefully and form a coherent, if somewhat large body of texts. Translating the original Dutch text into pleasant and readable English is a notable feat indeed. For historians interested in the early history of the VOC, in military history or in the history of the area around present-day Singapore and the Melaka Straits, the book, or parts of it, will be compulsory reading. When reading this copious volume, I was however struck by the question if this is the future of source publications. It must be stressed: this is a very well researched and carefully edited volume. But is online or digital publishing with embedded maps and word lists not a more logical option when it comes to making sources available to a new readership at reasonable cost? This is a wonderfully edited, carefully researched source publication. The future will show if it is to be one of the last to be published as a paper book.