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Private Money for Company Trade: The Role of the Bills of Exchange in Financing the Return Cargoes of the VOC

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 June 2011

Femme S. Gaastra
Femme S. Gaastra
Affiliation:
(Leiden University)
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Extract

‘One does not write history with value judgements.’ Van Leur made this remark, countering the ‘Dutch refrain’ sung by Godée Molsbergen, which indicted the corruption of the VOC-servants as a cause of the Company's downfall. Van Leur explained that the standard for a modern officialdom was only created with the Napoleonic state and ‘it was therefore anachronistic to apply this standard to the 18th century’. Criticism of the integrity of the Company servants in this century is a post facto criticism. But if history cannot be written with value judgements, it cannot do without any judgements at all. Van Leur judged ‘the achievements of a Hartingh, a Von Hohendorff, a Mossel, a Van der Parra, and, on the Indonesian side, of a Mangkubumi, a Mas Sahid, a Cakraningrat certainly on par with those of Speelman, a Van Goens, and a Aru Palakka’.

Type
Articles
Information
Itinerario , Volume 18 , Issue 1 , March 1994 , pp. 65 - 76
Copyright
Copyright © Research Institute for History, Leiden University 1994

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References

Notes

1 van Leur, J.C., ‘On the eighteenth century as a category in Indonesian history’, in: id., Indonesian Trade and Society. Essays in Asian Social and Economic History (Dordrecht 1987) 287.Google Scholar

2 Ibid., 285.

3 Boxer, C.R., Jan Compagnie in oorlog en vrede (Bussum 1977), 74–80Google Scholar; see also Boxer, C.R., ‘On the Eighteenth Century as a Category in Indonesian History: a Reconsideration of J.C. van Leur’, Documenlatieblad Werkgroep Achttiende Eeuw 41/42 (1979) 4–16.Google Scholar

4 See Gaastra, F.S., ‘Geld tegen goederen’, Bijdragen en Mededelingen betreffende de Geschiedenis der Nederlanden 91 (1976) 249–272Google Scholar; de Korte, J.P., De jaarlijkse financeële verantwoording in de VOC (Leiden 1984)Google Scholar. I also use the unpublished M.A. thesis of John Wasser, ‘Indisch Fortuin. De assignaties van Indiē naar Nederland, in het bijzonder vanuit Batavia 1690–1722’, in conjunction with contributions by G. Wolfers, A. van Gemeren, W. van Altena and M.P.M. Vink for a seminar in 1987 called ‘Indisch Fortuin’.

5 There is a great number of resolutions of both the Heren Zeventien and the Government of Batavia relating the bills of exchange; in the seminar ‘Indisch Fortuin’ we collected 175, mostly (154) from the 18th century. In some resolutions the directors urged their servants overseas to use the term ‘assignatie’ rather than the word ‘wissel’ or ‘wisselbrief’. Because in the English literature the term ‘bill of exchange’ is always used, I am using that word here too.

6 Glamann, K., Dutch-Asiatic Trade 1620–1740 (The Hague 1981–2)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Pol, A., ‘Tot gerieff van India. Geldexport door the VOC en muntproduktie in Nederland, 1720–1740’, Jaarboek voor Munt- en Penningkunde 72 (1982) 65–195.Google Scholar

7 On the opium trade and Opium Societeit, see: Baud, J.C., ‘Proeve van eene geschiedenis van den handel en het verbruik van opium in Nederlandsch-Indiē’, Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde van Nederlandsch-Indiē I (1853) 79–222CrossRefGoogle Scholar (much of this article is to be found in Vanvugt, E., Wettig Opium. 350 jaar Nederlandse opiumhandel in de Indische Archipel (Haarlem 1985)Google Scholar; Prakash, Om, ‘Opium Monopoly in India and Indonesia in the Eighteenth Century’, Itinerario XII (1988), 1, 73–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For data on the shareholders and dividends, I used the unpublished thesis of I.E. Mens, ‘De Amphioen Societeit (1745–1794)’, (Leiden 1987).

8 On this topic, see Furber, H., John Company at Work. A Study of European Expansion in India in the late Eighteenth Century (New York, 1972) 78–109Google Scholar; Marshall, P.J., East Indian Fortunes. The British in Bengal in the Eighteenth Century (Oxford 1976) 225–227Google Scholar, 242–243. Furthermore I use the results of the seminar ‘India as source of wealth’ (1990–91), with contributions by W.H. van Beek, M. Berends, I. Brand, P.H. van der Brug, G. van Genderen Stort, W. Kuiters, W. Schepen, H.C. Simon Thomas, PJ.S.Th. Stehouwer and K Vos.

9 Ross, R., ‘The Rise of the Cape Gentry’, Journal of Southern African Studies IX (1983) 199–200.Google Scholar

10 Brummel, L., ‘Achttiende-eeuwse kolonialisme in brieven’, in Bijdragen tot de Geschiedenis der Nederlanden 87 (1972) 171–204Google Scholar (on Van Reede tot de Parkeler); van Schouwenburg, K.L., Godfried Carel Gockinga. Zijn nakomelingen en zijn erfgenamen (Delft 1982)Google Scholar (on the residents of Cheribon). On Falck and Ross see Furber, John Company at Work, 81–83.