No More Learning

The Malabar Coast, Kanara and Vengurla were organised as a


## p. 51 (#79) ##############################################

MALABAR AND CEYLON
51
separate administrative unit under a commandeur residing at Cochin.
The title of commandeur, which was also borne by the chief officials
at Galle and Jaffnapatam, who were subordinate to the governor of
Ceylon, was not a very high one. The commandeur ranked after the
director. In fact, the Malabar Coast never gave the Company all
that had been expected. The position here was quite different from
that in other establishments on the mainland of India, where the
Company traded in open competition with European and native
merchants. What had tempted it to conquer the Malabar Coast was
the prospect of a monopoly in the pepper trade; and in the eyes of
those who guided the Company's destinies, only a monopoly based
on contracts at low prices with the native rulers could compensate
the high cost of a political establishment. The first task of the com-
mandeurs, therefore, was to make the pepper monopoly a reality, but
this task proved more arduous than had been anticipated. English,
Portuguese, and Gujarat competition enabled the native rulers to
avoid dealing only on Dutch terms. It was impossible to prevent
smuggling by way of Calicut and of the mountains. Towards the end
of the Company's rule, however, the financial position was more
satisfactory in this region. ?
The Zamorin had preserved his independence, and relations with
him were frequently strained. In 1717 there was a war, after which
.
the Company attained greater influence over that potentate. But
Hyder Ali, who conquered the Zamorin's lands half a century later,
was a far more dangerous neighbour, and under Tipu, his son, the
Company was, very much against its inclination, drawn into the
quarrels between that ruler and the English.
In Ceylon, as on the Malabar Coast, the Dutch had merely stepped
into the position of the Portuguese. They held the coastal towns and
controlled most of the cinnamon fields and of the regions where
elephants were found. But the "emperor of Ceylon" still resided at
Kandi, in undisputed possession of the mountainous interior, and the
nobles and headmen of the plains, particularly of the south, never
quite renounced their allegiance to him. The ancient organisation of
society, under disawas and mudaliyars, was retained, and Dutch rule
rested on a native officialdom, open to many influences of race and
religion over which they had no control. It was the policy of the
Dutch to maintain friendly relations with the court of Kandi, because
whenever there was tension the king could stir up trouble for them
among the Chalias, the cinnamon-peelers, or among the Sinhalese
3
1 Selections from the Records of the Madras Government: Dutch Records,
No. 11 (1910), Memoir of Commandeur Caspar de Jong, 1761.
2 Dutch Records, No. 2 (1908), Memoir written in the year 1781 by Adriaan
Moens, p. 130.
8 Dutch Records, No. 8 (1910), Diary kept during the expedition against
the Zamorin, 4th Dec. 1716-25th April, 1717.


## p. 52 (#80) ##############################################

52
THE DUTCH IN INDIA
nobles and officials. Not only Raja Sinha, who lived until 1687, but
his successors as well, still claimed Colombo, and the Dutch, anxious
above all to be left in peace so that the cinnamon might be safely
collected, humoured their pretensions by paying them excessive
honours and posing as their humble allies bound to aid them against
the attacks of foreign powers. During Raja Sinha's lifetime this did
not prevent frequent trouble, the king sometimes attacking Dutch
posts and extending the cinnamon area directly under his control.
Cinnamon-peeling was repeatedly prevented and the export of areca-
nuts, the most important product of the king's own dominions, pro-
hibited. Better relations prevailed under his immediate successors,
although the Dutch maintained their pretension to keep the trade
with the outside world completely in their own hands, and in 1707,
in order the better to prevent smuggling, closed all ports except
Colombo, Galle and Jaffnapatam. By placing ships at the disposal of
the court for intercourse with Pegu, whence came Buddhist priests,
and with Madura, whence the kings generally obtained their wives,
the Company strove to make its control of overseas relations less
galling. The kings of the Dravidian dynasty, however, who came
to the throne in 1739 with Hanguraketa, and under whom all power
at court was in the hands of nayaks from the mainland, were not so
easily pacified. At the same time the Company's governors became
more and more impatient of the humiliating conditions of their
position in Ceylon. Particularly they disliked the annual embassy
to the king's court, in order to secure with abject genuflections the
right to collect the cinnamon-bark in the area under the king's
sovereignty.
But the relations with Kandi did not constitute the only difficulty
with which Dutch rule had to contend. Wide regions with popula-
tions of varying national and religious traditions and complicated
social structures were brought under direct Dutch control. “At the
time of the conquest, material misery, after Portuguese misrule and
protracted war, was the most pressing problem. The Dutch imported
slaves from Southern India to restore irrigation works and cultivate
the rice fields. They encouraged new crops, like cotton and indigo.
They did their best to reduce the chaos which reigned in land tenure.
In the Sinhalese country Maetsuycker's Batavia Statutes, a codifi-
cation of the Company's laws, were introduced, but experienced
Sinhalese were always members of the Landraads in order to see that
the ancient customs of the country were observed. In the north,
Tamil law, codified under Dutch auspices in 1707, was taken as the
basis for legal decisions so long as it appeared consonant with reason,
all deficiencies being supplied from Dutch law. The administration
of justice left, however, a great deal to be desired. The governors
never ceased complaining about the scarcity of officials with sufficient
legal training and at the same time conversant with the conditions
of the country.


## p. 53 (#81) ##############################################

RELIGIOUS POLICY
63
On the whole, circumstances were not such as to favour the growth
of a vigorous public spirit among the officials. The society in which
they lived at Colombo and in the other coastal towns remained
permeated with Portuguese influences. The same was true, to a greater
or lesser extent, for all the places on the mainland of India and in the
Malay Archipelago from which the Dutch had ousted the Portuguese,
and it is to be explained by two characteristics of Portuguese colonisa-
tion, their marriages with the natives and their successful propagation
of Catholicism. Under Dutch rule ministers of the Dutch Reformed
Church at once took charge of the communities of Christians formed
by the Portuguese ecclesiastics, but far into the eighteenth century
complaints were frequent that the attachment of native Christians,
then numbered in hundreds of thousands, to Protestantism, and even
to Christianity, was purely nominal. The later historian owes a very
real debt to some of the Dutch Reformed ministers. We mention only
Philipus Baldaeus, whose description of Ceylon and the Malabar
Coast was published in 1672, François Valentyn, whose encyclopaedic
work on the possessions of the Company appeared from 1724 to 1726,
Abraham Rogerius, probably the best scholar of them all, who was
at Pulicat from 1631 to 1641, and whose Gentilismus Reseratus
was described by A. C. Burnell in 1898 as “still, perhaps, the most
complete account of South Indian Hinduism, though by far the
earliest". The principal author, too, of the famous botanical work
Hortus Malabaricus, which under the patronage of Van Reede tot
Drakensteyn appeared in 1678 and following years, was a minister of
the church—Johannes Casearius. But the Dutch predikants had little
of the missionary zeal which distinguished the Roman Catholic priests,
and they made far less impression on the native populations in whose
midst they lived. In Ceylon, seminaries for the training of native
missionaries were founded in 1690, but until the governorship of
Baron van Imhoff, 1737-40, when only one at Colombo survived,
they led a precarious existence. Afterwards half-caste Malabar and
Sinhalese pupils regularly passed from the Colombo seminary to
Holland, and, after a course of theology at the universities of Utrecht
or Leyden, returned to their native land fully qualified ministers of
the Dutch Reformed Church. Their influence was never very deep
however, and in spite of all repressive measures--no doubt greatly
relaxed during the second half of the eighteenth century-Catholicism
continued to show much vitality. Portuguese remained the language
of the slave population and this, added to the deplorable failure to
provide good education for them, had unfortunate effects on the
children of the officials, who frequently entered the Company's
service when they grew up. The number of Dutch free burghers who
settled in Ceylon was never very great. There was, in short, no healthy
1 Van Troostenburg de Bruyn, De Hervormde Kerk in Nederl. Oost-Indie
onder de 0. I. Compagnie, pp. 574 sqq.


## p. 54 (#82) ##############################################

54
THE DUTCH. IN INDIA
public opinion to restrain corruption and loose living among the
official class, and the efforts of several able and energetic governors
to improve this state of affairs had little effect.
Nor could the Company's general policy be called inspiring. While
conflicts with the native powers were anxiously avoided and the
armed forces in the island lost all martial spirit, and fortresses were
allowed to fall into ruin, the underpaid officials were everywhere
urged to increase the financial profits. It was particularly private
trading in areca-nuts with which they enriched themselves at the
Company's expense, but the abuses which a reforming governor at
the beginning of the eighteenth century (Hendrik Becker) discovered
and tried to stamp out were of many other kinds besides.
'It so happened that not long after Becker's governorship there
were two governors in succession against whom the central autho-
rities were constrained to take extreme measures. The first was Pieter
Vuyst, a man born in the East, and who behaved like the worst type
of eastern tyrant. In 1732 he was arrested by a commissioner, specially
sent over from Holland by the Seventeen, and, having been found
guilty of the most revolting abuse of power, he was executed at
Batavia. The commissioner, who became governor in his stead, Pieter
Versluys, reduced the people to despair by speculating in rice. Again
the home authorities interfered. A new governor was sent out, who
had Versluys arrested and sent to Batavia, where after long delays
he escaped with a fine. The misconduct of these men shook Dutch
authority in the island. At the same time the cinnamon-peelers
complained of undue exactions imposed on them, while agrarian
unrest was rife in the Sinhalese districts. So in 1736 a very serious
rebellion broke out in the cinnamon region, soon spreading over the
whole south and south-west of the island, and secretly encouraged by
the king of Kandi. The Dutch suffered some serious reverses and the
situation might have taken a disastrous turn, had not in 1737 a
vigorous governor appeared on the scene, Baron van Imhoff, who
soon restored order.
The events of 1736 were a foretaste of the much more serious war
that broke out in 1760, under the governorship of Jan Schreuder.
It began with a rebellion in the district of Colombo, in which the
Chalias, supported by the maharaja, soon joined. In 1761, the
maharaja, who was especially aggrieved by the refusal of the Dutch
to allow him freedom of trade from his last remaining ports of Chilaw
and Puttalam, openly took the part of the rebels, and the deteriora-
tion of the Company's military forces soon became evident. The forts
of Matara, Kalutara and Hanwella were captured by the Sinhalese,
and although they could not long maintain their position in the plains,
the Dutch were very greatly alarmed. The governor-general at
Batavia tried to pacify the king by sending him a letter couched in
1 Van Kampen, Geschiedenis der Nederlanders buiten Europa (1832), II, 19.


## p. 55 (#83) ##############################################

TREATY WITH KANDI
65
flattering terms and transmitted with the greatest ceremony. Fear
of the English, from whom the Dutch had just suffered a severe
humiliation on the Hugli and who were known to be in communi-
cation with the king, no doubt contributed to inspire this policy. When
it failed, nothing remained but to make a military effort, and the
suspicion of English intentions now served to drive home the necessity
of carrying it through to a definite conclusion. A new governor, Van
Eck, repeatedly attempted to invade the mountain kingdom. Troops
were collected in Malabar, Coromandel and Java. In 1765, Van Eck
succeeded in penetrating to the capital, which was plundered dis-
gracefully. Van Eck died soon afterwards. The garrison of 1800 men
left behind at Kandi could not maintain itself owing to lack of
provisions. Its withdrawal became a disaster. In spite of this, such
was the distress of the Sinhalese that, while the new governor, Iman
Willem Falck, a young man of great ability, was making vigorous
preparations for a new invasion, the king opened negotiations. On
14 February, 1766, a treaty was signed which restored peace and
placed the relations between the Dutch and the king on a more
satisfactory basis than that afforded by the treaties of 1638 and 1640.
The Dutch Company's absolute sovereignty over the regions which
they had held before the war was recognised. In addition, the
,
sovereignty over a strip of land four miles in width from the sea coast
round the whole of the island was expressly ceded to the Dutch, who
had. occupied Chilaw and Puttalam early in the war. For the rest
the king's sovereignty was recognised, but he lost the power to permit
or forbid the Company's trading in such produce of his dominions as
experience had shown to be indispensable or profitable. The degrading
ceremonies attending the annual embassy to the court were abolished.
Finally, while the Company pledged itself to protect his dominions
from all external aggression, he promised not to enter into any treaty
with any European or Indian power, and to deliver up all Europeans
coming within his territory.
The Dutch could congratulate themselves that the treaty of 1766
had consolidated their position in Ceylon. Falck, moreover, proved
one of the best governors the island had ever known. Much was done
during his term of office to improve the administration and to in-
crease the economic prosperity of the people. But meanwhile the rise
of English power constituted a menace against which nothing availed.
In 1781, the king of Kandi appeared to be unwilling to support the
English in their enterprise against Dutch rule on the island. In 1796,
his aloofness no longer mattered: Dutch power, as we shall see,
collapsed at the first touch.
In the seventeenth century, the Dutch Company's position in
India rested on sea-power. While the English made of Surat, where
they were dependent on friendly relations with the Moghul, the
centre of their Indian system and obtained a footing at Goa itself by
an amicable arrangement with the Portuguese, the Dutch broke down


## p. 56 (#84) ##############################################

66
THE DUTCH IN INDIA
1
the Portuguese monopoly by the open and persistent use of force,
capturing their ships and supplanting them as the actual rulers of one
stronghold after another. Even in their relations with the Moghul they
occasionally brought their naval superiority into play. So conscious
were they of their naval supremacy that in 1652 the outbreak of war
with both England and Portugal was welcomed at Batavia as likely
to turn to the Company's advantage. The advantage, as against
England at any rate, was confined to the occasional capture of prizes.
The factories of the English Company were protected by the Moghul's
peace. In the third Anglo-Dutch War (1672-4) communications
between Surat and the new English settlement of Bombay were
constantly threatened, and three home-bound English ships were
captured in the Bay of Bengal. France was England's ally in that
war, and in 1671 Louis XIV had already dispatched to India a fleet
of twelve sail under the command of Admiral de la Haye. Even
before war had been declared in Europe, the French occupied some
abandoned forts in the bay of Trinkomali, Van Goens, who was then
governor of Ceylon, without losing time, collected such ships as were
available and attacked the intruders. Soon reinforcements arrived
from Batavia, and de la Haye was forced to leave Ceylon with the loss
uf several of his ships. With the remainder he sailed for St Thomé
and captured that town. Van Goens was soon on the spot and
blockaded the town from the sea side, while the king of Golconda, its
rightful sovereign, invested it by land. The English and the French
were too jealous of each other to co-operate, and an English fleet
of ten sail allowed itself to be beaten separately off Petapoli. About
a year afterwards, 6 September, 1674, de la Haye capitulated. He had
lost all his ships, and the 900 men left to him out of the 2000 with
whom he had started, were transported to Europe in Dutch vessels.
While the naval power of the Dutch was the despair of their
rivals, they themselves often were inclined to envy the English, who
were able to carry on their trade without incurring the vast expenses
for the upkeep of any navy and of fortresses and garrisons which
burdened the budget of the Dutch Company. The recollection that it
was the Dutch attacks on the Spanish-Portuguese monopoly which
had opened the Indian trade to their rivals as well as to themselves
added bitterness to these feelings. In fact, the settlements where they
had not taken up the responsibilities of sovereignty were by far the
most profitable in the eyes of the Company, which never learnt to
separate its purely trading accounts from its political budgets. In the
years 1683-1757, therefore, the only period for which these figures are
4
1 Aalbers, Rijklof van Goens, p. 81.
2 De Jonge, Geschiedenis van het Nederlandsch zeewezen, 1. 768.
3 Shafaat Ahmed Khan, Sources for the History of British India in the
Seventeenth Century, pp. 245-6.


## p. 57 (#85) ##############################################

FINANCE AND ORGANISATION
67
3
available, Surat, Bengal and Coromandel figure in the Company's
books with annual profits of hundreds of thousands of guilders each,
although Bengal, after 1720, very frequently shows a loss. Ceylon
and Malabar on the other hand constantly showed heavy losses,
although we know from other sources that Malabar ceased to be
"a bad post" towards the end of the eighteenth century. In these
figures profit and loss made by commercial transactions are lumped
together with the yield of taxation and tributes and the expenses of
administration, and no account is taken of profits made in Holland
by the sale of merchandise,
All through the eighteenth century the Company's commitments
as a sovereign power increased: garrisons became more numerous,
the expenses of administration grew. As a result, although its trade
continued to prosper, the Company's finances became more and more
involved. Something like 50 per cent. profit was regularly made on
the Company's turnover even as late as the seventies of the eighteenth
century, very largely owing to the enormously profitable trade of
Surat, Bengal and Ceylon. At the same time the general balance-
sheet showed a steady decline. In 1700 there were still 21,000,000
guilders on the credit side; in 1724 the zero point was passed, and
the deficit grew uninterruptedly until in the eighties of the eighteenth
century it surpassed 100,000,000 guilders.
Obviously the Company's system suffered from graye defects.
Great as it had been as an empire-builder, able as it still was as a
merchant, it failed as a colonial ruler. Its strict adherence, against the
advice of all its ablest governors-general, to the policy of commercial
monopoly was perhaps its gravest mistake. The settlement of “free
burghers," which might have brought in its train a much more inten-
sive economic development of countries like the Malay Archipelago
and Ceylon, was consistently discouraged by the directors at home.
Another defect, and one which more nearly concerns the Company's
possessions in India, was the severe subordination of the whole of its
system to the administrative and commercial centre at Batavia.
Ceylon was the only place whence direct communications with
Holland were more or less regularly conducted, and its governors
were allowed to correspond with the Seventeen, while the chiefs of
all other settlements could only correspond with the governor-general
and his council. One unfortunate result of the distance of the central
authority was the prevalence of corruption. No posts in the Com-
pany's employ were considered so lucrative as those in what were
called “the Western Quarters”. 5
1 G. C. Klerk de Reus, Geschichtlicher Ueberblick, Beilage ex.
2 See above, p. 36, note 2.
3 Klerk de Reus, Geschichtlicher Ueberblick, p. 193.
4 Klerk de Reus, op. cit. Beilage VIII.
8 This term in the early days was applied more particularly to Surat and
the Persian and Arabian factories.


## p. 58 (#86) ##############################################

68
THE DUTCH IN INDIA
The commonest form of peculation was private trading. While
the Company jealously suppressed the rise of a class of independent
traders within its sphere of influence, it was powerless to prevent
its own servants from infringing its monopoly to their own private
advantage. As early as 1609 the directors bitterly complained of the
prevalence of the abuse, but while they continued grievously to under-
pay their employees, the constantly reiterated edicts prohibiting the
practice, threatening penalties, prescribing oaths, remained entirely
without effect. In 1626, the directors resolved that all the establīsh-
ments in the East were to be visited every year by two inspectors, to
one of whom "the Western Quarters" were allotted; they were to
report both to Batavia and to the Seventeen themselves. In spite of
another resolution to the same effect in 1632, nothing came of this
annual inspection, and even requests, made by the directors in 16502
and repeated afterwards, that an inspection should be held every
two years had no result. The Batavia government excused themselves
by the difficulty of finding suitable men for so arduous a task, but no
doubt they were themselves lukewarm in the cause of integrity.
Inspections were actually ordered only when there were special
reasons to suspect mismanagement, but even then an energetic and
honest man like Van Goens, who inspected Surat in 1654, had to
confess 3 that it was difficult to bring the wrong-doers to book, as
they knew well how to escape detection. In 1684 the Seventeen, de-
spairing of ever getting the Batavia government to act with requisite
firmness, themselves appointed a commissioner-general to inspect the
Western Quarters, Hendrik Adriaan van Reede tot Drakensteyn,
formerly commandeur of Malabar, whom we have met on the Coro-
mandel Coast. For seven years Van Reede laboured at his herculean
task; when he died in 1691, it was still far from being completed, and
the results of the inspections actually carried out soon vanished. From
then onwards no serious attempts were made to put down the evil,
and it grew steadily. So much had it become an accepted thing that
directors themselves began to traffic in appointments, and about 1720
an Amsterdam burgomaster accepted 3500 guilders for conferring on
a candidate the post of under-merchant, the official salary for which
was only 480 guilders a year. 4
As in course of time the Company, from being a purely trading
body, became the sovereign of many Eastern lands, its servants could
enrich themselves in other ways than by infringing its monopoly or
embezzling its money. Oppressions and exactions at the expense of
the subject populations were no less lucrative and no less common.
We have seen in the case of Vuyst and Versluys that the supreme
authorities were not prepared to countenance the worst excesses.
1 J. A. van der Chijs, Nederlandsch-Indisch Plakkaatboek, I, 188.
2 Aalbers. Rijklof van Goens, p. 30.
8 Op. cit. p. 107.
4 Colenbrander, Koloniale Geschiedenis, u, 219.


## p. 59 (#87) ##############################################

ATTEMPTED REFORM
59
.
Vuyst's judicial murders even caused them to introduce a general
reform. Governors and directors had until then always presided over
the Council of Justice in their governments. In 1738 this function
was transferred to the second. Nor are these cases the only ones to
show that the growth of humanitarian ideas during the eighteenth
century occasionally inspired the authorities at Batavia or at home to
energetic interference on behalf of the Company's wronged native
subjects. In 1765, for instance, the Seventeen ordered action to be
taken against the governor of Coromandel, Christiaan van Teylingen,
on the strength of serious charges which a minister of the king of
Tanjore, Paw Idde Naiker, had succeeded in bringing directly to
their knowledge.
If the directors occasionally exerted themselves to put down some
crying abuse; if now and again an able and energetic man rose to
some high executive post in the Indies; no radical reform of the
Company's defective system was ever attempted. Van Imhoff, whom
We have met as governor of Ceylon, became governor-general in 1743,
and high expectations were founded on him, which were hardly
realised. He attempted, among other things, to put down the illicit
trade in Bengal opium by allowing officials to form an "Opium
Society. " among themselves, thus legalising private trade in this one
instance. When, however, another generation of officials had arisen
who did not own any shares in the "Society", matters were as bad
as ever. In 1747, again, the Orangist restoration at home seemed to
offer better prospects, but the new stadtholder, William IV, for whom
in 1748, under the direct pressure of public opinion, the office of
director-general of the Company was created, did not effect any
essential or permanent changes.
At the same time circumstances had arisen which made the need
for reform more urgent. Towards the close of the seventeenth century,
the English Company, realising the insecurity of its position in the
troubled Moghul Empire, had copied from the wise Dutch" their
policy of the strong arm. The first attempts ended in failure, but, as
the eighteenth century proceeded, just when the Dutch had allowed
their navy hopelessly to decay, and in their relations with native
rulers trusted to flattery and presents, it became clearer that the
position of the European nations in India had no solid basis except
in naval and military power. The rise of French influence in the
southern part of the peninsula caused the Dutch many alarms. Par-
ticularly obnoxious was Dupleix's capture of Masulipatam in 1750.
In the War of the Austrian Succession, the Dutch Republic, althougn
technically neutral, had in fact sided with England. In the Seven
Years' War, on the other hand, its neutrality was real, with, if any.
1 A. K. A. Gysberti Hodenpyl, De Gouverneurs van Koromandel: Christiaan
van Teylingen (1761-65) en Pieter Haksteen (1765-71), Bijdragen voor Vader-
landsche Geschiedenis, v, X (1923), 136 sqq.


## p. 60 (#88) ##############################################

60
THE DUTCH IN INDIA
thing, a bias against England. Clive's successes in Bengal were viewed
by the authorities at Batavia with deep suspicion. It was felt that the
power to which the English, through their ally and tool Mir Ja'far,
had now attained, threatened the prosperity, if not the existence,
of establishments which were looked upon as constituting one of the
Dutch Company's main supports. Immediately after Plassey, Dutch
trade on the Hugli was reported to be suffering, and exactions on the
part of the Indian authorities became more unbearable. So the
governor-general and his council resolved to make an attempt to
retrieve the position. It only served to make it apparent to all the
world how far the Dutch Company had left the days of Coen and of
Van Goens behind it. The ships sent up the Hugli were captured,
the troops cut to pieces. Nothing remained but to make a speedy
submission, and the Dutch retained their factories, but had to promise
not to garrison them with more than a small number of troops. They
were now worse off than before, but the next crisis, in 1781, was to
leave them even more helpless.
In the American War the Dutch Republic, tossed by violent party
struggles, recklessly provoked England, and when England, at the
end of 1780 declared war, the republic proved entirely incapable of
defending its own interests. Its trade came to a dead stop. In the
colonial world, the English took Negapatam, which in spite of its
large garrison offered little resistance. Trinkomali was lost, and
regained only by the efforts of the French. But ai the peace congress
Holland could not be saved from all loss by its ally. Negapatam had
to be given up, and free access to the waters of the Archipelago had
to be granted to English commerce.
The war, moreover, had revealed the Company's financial distress
The state had had to assist it when it proved unable to raise the money
needed for its own armaments and for the reimbursement of the
French. In 1783 only a public guarantee of the Company's shares
enabled it to carry on. Everybody realised that the state must take
in hand the reform of a body which had the care of such important
national interests. Unfortunately, the state was too much shaken by
internal dissensions to be capable of energetic action. When in 1787
the Orangist régime was restored by England and Prussia, still very
little was done. In 1793 the republic was involved in the Revolu-
tionary War, and only in 1795, when the Batavian Republic was
established under French influence, did the state formally take over
the administration of the Company's possessions. But at the same
time these were exposed to the attacks of England, with whom the
Batavian Republic found itself automatically at war.
1G. C. Klerk de Reus, “De expeditie naar Bengale in 1759", De Indische
Gids, 1889 and 1890.


## p. 61 (#89) ##############################################

CHAPTER III
THE FRENCH FACTORIES IN INDIA
THE French appeared in India long before the time of Louis XIV.
In the second quarter of the sixteenth century, about thirty years
after the Portuguese had reached the Malabar Coast by way of the
Cape, in July, 1527, a Norman ship belonging to the Rouen merchants
appeared, according to the Portuguese João de Barros, at Diu. In the
next year the Marie de Bon Secours, also called the Grand Anglais,
was seized by the Portuguese, at the very time when one of Jean
Ange's most famous captains was proposing to that famous merchant
to sail to Sumatra and even to the Moluocas. In 1530 the Sacre and the
Pensée actually reached the west coast of Sumatra; but they did su
without touching at any intermediate point on the shores of Asia;
and contemporary documents do not indicate the arrival of any other
French ships in Indian harbours in the later years of the sixteenth
century or the earlier ones of the seventeenth.
However, many facts show at the beginning of the latter a desire
to open maritime and commercial relations with India. In 1601 we
have the equipment by a conipany of St Malo merchants, de Laval
and de Vitré, of the two ships, the Croissant and the Corbin, the
voyages of which have been related by François Pyrard de Laval as
far as the Maldives, and by François Martin de Vitré to Sumatra by
way of Ceylon and the Nicobars; in 1604-9 came the attempts of
Henry IV to set up a French East India Company, like those just
established in the Netherlands and England; then in 1616 a fleet sailed
from St Malo for the Moluccas, while in that year and 1619 the two
so-called "fleets of Montmorency" sailed from Honfleur for Malaya and
Japan. But the scanty success of these enterprises, and the violence
of the Dutch, eager to keep for themselves the monopoly of that
profitable trade with the Far East, soon checked these bold attempts
of the French sailors. In 1625 Isaac de Razilly declared that "as
regards Asia and the East Indies there is no hope of planting colonjes,
for the way is too long, and the Spaniards and Dutch are too strong
to suffer it". 1 A little later Richelieu observes in his Testament
Politique that “the temper of the French being so hasty as to wish the
accomplishment of their desires in the moment of their conception,
long voyages are not proper for them"; but nevertheless he admits
that "the trade that could be done with the East Indies and Persia
. . . ought not to be neglected”. 2
1 Léon Deschamps, “Un Colonisk teur: au temps de Richelieu", Rev. de
Geographie, XIX, 460, December, 1886.
2 Ed. Amsterdam, 1708, pr 134-5.


## p. 62 (#90) ##############################################

62
THE FRENCH FACTORIES IN INDIA
However, some captains, especially the Normans, attempted,
though their accomplishment is on many points obscure, if not to
reach India itself, at least to make it easier of attainment by securing
near the Cape of Good Hope a place of refreshment, whence they
could make their way to Arabia, Persia, the Deccan ports, Bengal,
or the Malayan Islands. Such were Gilles de Rezimont and Rigault,
the latter of whom obtained in 1642 from Richelieu for himself and
his associates the privilege of sailing to Madagascar and the neigh-
bouring islands, to establish colonies and trade there. Indeed the
French almost at once established themselves on the south-east coast
of Madagascar, setting up their first post at Fort Dauphin, easily
reached by ships coming from or going to India. Moreover, some of
their ships or smaller vessels between 1650 and 1660 proceeded to the
Arabian or Indian coasts. Thus was confirmed the opinion expressed
some years earlier by the navigator, Augustin de Beaulieu, who had
commanded one of the Montmorency fleets, in a memoir of 1631-2,
still unpublished:
I find the said island (Madagascar) proper, once we are established there, for
adventures to any place whatever in the East Indies . . . for from the said place
at the due season Persia can be reached . . . where a very useful and important
trade can be established. . . . And when the said trade with Persia is inconvenient,
that with the countries of the Great Moghul, Ceylon, Masulipatam, Bengal.
Pegu, Kedda, Achin, Tiku and Bantam, can easily be followed.
By way of Persia, which Beaulieu recognises as a valuable market,
it was easy to reach India. While French sailors were exploring the
sea-route by the Cape, various travellers and merchants were exploring
the much shorter land-route, which leads from the shores of the
Levant through Asia Minor right on to the valleys of the Indus and
the Ganges. After the Italian, Pietro della Valle and the Englishman,
Thomas Herbert (only to mention the most recent) several French-
men tried this way, such as Capuchin missionaries, including Father
Raphael du Mans in 1643, inspired by the ideas of Father Joseph du
Tremblay (the famous Eminence Grise), and before him the well-
known traveller Tavernier who thus began in 1632-3 his numerous
journeys in the East, and who on his return became controller oi
the household to the Duke of Orleans, brother of Louis XIII. Soon
afterwards (1642-8) he returned eastwards, and reached India by
way of Ispahan, followed speedily by the Angevin noble La Boullaye
le Gouz, whose travels were so popular when they were published in
1653. Thus was heightened the eager desire felt in France on the eve
and at the beginning of the personal reign of Louis XIV to share with
Dutch and English in bringing to Europe the precious goods of India.
Neither Fouquet, superintendent of finances, whose father had been
1 Flacourt, Relation de la Grande Ile Madagascar, ed. 1658, p. 193. Cf. "Les
Documents inédits relatifs à la Constitution de la Campagnie des Indes de 1648",
Bull. du comité de. Madagascar, October, 1898, pp. 481-503.


## p. 63 (#91) ##############################################

COLBERT'S COMPANY
63
concerned in all the maritime enterprises of Richelieu, nor Colbert,
who had been employed in the private business of Mazarin before
coming to play his great part under Louis XIV, were unaware of
these travels, and sometimes even received direct reports. Thus the
latter became the interpreter of the unanimous desire of the merchants
and mariners of the kingdom, as well as of all those who desired its
economic development, when he proposed to his master the creation
of “a French company for the trade of the East Indies". 1
His personal convictions even more than public opinion had led
Colbert to regard the establishment of a company of this kind as
likely to render the greatest services to and powerfully to aid the
development of French maritime trade, on condition that it should be
strong in a very different way from the numerous associations of a like
nature that had formerly sprung up throughout the kingdom. Those
had hardly been more than municipal, such as the Company of St
Malo, the de Laval and de Vitré Company, or the coral companies •
of Marseilles; or provincial, such as the Company de Morbihan,
and had never included more than a small number of shareholders.
Their financial resources had always been limited, and their influence
and prestige alike slight. No attempt had been yet made to create a
national association, uniting the whole forces of the country. But that
was just what Colbert desired the new Compagnie des Indes Orientales
to do. He laboured therefore in every way before constituting it to
educate public opinion, and, when it had been formed, to secure it
full success. Hence the publication in April, 1664, of a Discourse of
a faithful subject of the Ring touching the establishment of a French
company for the East India trade addressed to all Frenchmen, prepared
by François Charpentier, the Academician, and printed at the king's
expense; hence a little later the formation of a company to which
Louis XIV not only gave his full approval, but also advanced 3,000,000
livres free of interest, from which were to be deducted all losses that
the company might incur for the first ten years; moreover he made
the members of the royal family subscribe, and displayed his interest
strongly enough to make the courtiers follow his example. Hence also
Colbert's own subscription to the new Compagnie des Indes Orientales,
and the campaign which he conducted throughout the country to
induce the officials and merchants of the chief towns to prove their
real interest in a project thus royally patronised.
By letters-patent in the form of an edict the Compagnie was placed
under the management of a general chamber of twenty-one directors
(twelve for the capital and nine for the provinces) and received for
a term of fifty years an exclusive privilege of trade from the Cape of
Good Hope to India and the South Seas. It also received a perpetual
grant of Madagascar and the neighbouring islands, on condition of
promoting Christianity there, a perpetual grant with all rights of
1 Souches de Rennefort, Hiscoire des Indes Orientales, p. 2.


## p. 64 (#92) ##############################################

84
THE FRENCH FACTORIES IN INDIA
1
seigneurie of all lands and places conquered from its enemies, and
ownership of all mines and slaves which it might take. The king was
to supply the Company at cost price with all the salt required for its
fleets, to pay it a bounty of fifty livres on every ton of goods exported
from France and seventy-five on every ton imported into the country,
to allow the Company to establish a free port on the French coast,
with a reduction of duties on the articles of trade with France, and
a special exemption of duties on all stores needed for the building of
ships. The General Chamber, which was to be renewed one-third
every year and to prepare accounts every six months, was entrusted
with the duty of appointing governors of its possessions, and the
king limited himself to giving them their formal investiture. The
chamber was , also to give account of its management every year
to an assembly of shareholders each possessing at least six shares.
The capital of the Company was divided into 15,000 shares of 1000
livres each.
The privileges thus granted were very considerable. But in order
to form a complete idea of them it is necessary also to take account of
certain other privileges, also of value, enumerated in the forty-eight
articles of the charter establishing the Company as an official body
and confirming at once its rights and duties. On his part the king
promised to protect the new Company and to escort its ships with his
own men-of-war; he allowed the Company to send ambassadors to
make treaties with, and declare war on, the sovereigns of India; and,
at the same time as he allowed it to fly the royal flag, he granted it
arms and a motto-Florebo quocumque ferar. -signifying the great
hopes placed by both him and Colbert in the new association.
If the country had responded with enthusiasm to the appeals made
to it, the Company would doubtless have realised those hopes and
become that "mighty company to carry on the trade of the East
Indies" anticipated in the preamble of the letters-patent. But nothing
of the sort happened. For various reasons—lack of enterprise among
the trading classes and the lesser noblesse de robe outside the ports
and a few great cities; dislike of most wealthy men for distant expe-
ditions; losses of the war with Spain still not made good; revival of
the frondeur spirit in the face of an admittedly official propaganda;
fear lest the subscription should be merely a device to tax the nobles
and other exempt persons the king's appeal addressed to the mayors
and bailiffs of the principal towns in the form of a lettre de cachet,
was unheeded and the royal example followed by few. So that of the
15,000,000 livres of which the capital was to have consisted, only about
8,200,000 livres were actually subscribed, and of that only a third was
called up when the letters-patent of August, 1664, had given legal
existence to the new Company. Thus the Compagnie des Indes
>
1 Unsigned letter to Colbert (Depping, Correspondance administrative sous
de règne de Louis XIV; 103, 476).


## p. 65 (#93) ##############################################

INITIAL PLANS
65
Orientales began its existence with a capital of about 5,500,000 livres.
including the 3,000,000 advanced by the king.
Colbert in fact was in haste to secure for France a share in the
considerable profits which foreigners were then drawing from the
East India trade, and which were rendering the Dutch, as Charpentier
said, the wealthiest people in Europe. So from October, 1664, ne
sought to prepare the way for the traders whom the new Company
was meaning to send as soon as possible to the most distant shores
of the Indian seas. To the shah of Persia and to the Great Moghul
he sent by way of Aleppo representatives of the king and agents of
the Company with orders to secure the favour of those princes and
to hold preliminary discussions for the conclusion of real treaties
of commerce. At the same time he was busy with the preparation
of the first fleet. After passing the Cape the Company's ships were
to put into Madagascar® to strengthen the position of the French
colonists already settled on the east and south-east coasts of the Ile
Dauphine, as the island was now officially called, and to set up a post
for victualling and refreshment for French vessels on their way to
India; they would then push up the East African coast to Arabia,
leaving it to a later fleet to reach the Deccan ports and establish
factories there.
At first sight the plan seems wise and well concerted. Was it not
wise in fact to secure to French vessels a good port of call on the long
voyage to India, and to place it at a point from which the Company's
ships could easily push on in all directions? By establishing them:
celves at Table Bay in 1652, by seeking to establish themselves at
Mauritius from 1638, by trying to form a colony on the west coast of
Madagascar at St Augustine's Bay, both the Dutch and English had in
a way imposed this policy on Colbert, rendering it the more necessary
by the jealousy which they displayed of the young French Company.
His real error, explained, however, by his love for his country and
his master, by the ambition of Louis XIV, and the devotion of France
to the king at the outset of his personal rule, lay in not discerning
sharply enough how the position of the French Company differed
from tha' of the Dutch in the East; the result was that he imposed on
the former from the first the task of conducting at the same time
two distinct enterprises—a considerable colonising effort as well as
the establishment of a commerce full of risks; perhaps also he
reckoned too lightly the mishaps and successive disappointments of
every new enterprise, especially in a field so remote from the seat
of control. In point of fact the Company escaped no kind of misfor-
tune, so that Colbert's elaborate plans were hardly realisable. Even
if any of the five nobles and merchants who set out for the Middle
East at the end of 1664 had been able to fulfil their instructions, none
of the four ships that made up the first fleet sailing in March, 1665,
>
1 Discours d'un fidèle sujet du roi.
5


## p. 66 (#94) ##############################################

66
THE FRENCH FACTORIES IN INDIA
got further than Madagascar. The second fleet of ten vessels that
sailed a year later, made, like the first, a very long voyage to Fort
Dauphin; so that, only at the beginning of 1668, nearly four years
after the formation of the Company, did any of its qualified repre-
sentatives arrive by the sea-route in the Swally Roads on the coast
of Gujarat.
There one of the agents sent in 1664 had long been awaiting his
chiefs. Béber (for so he was named), after accompanying La Boullaye
le Gouz to Agra in August-September, 1666, had returned to Surat,
where he proceeded to act on a farman of Aurangzib granting the
French a site and factory at Swally and permission to trade in the
neighbouring town on the same terms as the Dutch and the English.
A man of zeal and ability, as one of his chiefs testifies, Béber had so
well prepared for the new arrivals that they were able to establish
themselves at once, purchase a certain quantity of goods, and send
them back by one of the ships that had accompanied them from
Madagascar.
Unluckily there, as at Madagascar, jealousies and misunderstand-
ings between the directors themselves, and between them and their
subordinates, led to disastrous results. A good beginning had been
made; from Surat several of the Company's ships had sailed up the
Fersian Gulf, visiting Bandar Abbas (where Mariage, who had set
out from France with Béber, had a short time before established a
factory), and even reaching Basra; a footing had been also secured
on the Malabar Coast as a stage on the way to Ceylon and Malaya.
But François Caron, an old servant of the Dutch Company and a man
of experience and intelligence whoin Colbert had engaged in the
French service, relying on his knowledge, tried to keep all business
in his own hands, while he was also influenced by his personal sympa-
thies and dislikes. Hence resulted many differences, of which the
Dutch, irreconcilable enemies of the French establishment in India,
took advantage the more easily because Caron had quarrelled with
the Moghul governor of Surat.
Meanwhile many events had induced Colbert to modify his
original project. In France what enthusiasm had at first been aroused
by the formation of the Company had quite disappeared; many share-
holders, who had only subscribed in order to pay their court to the
king and minister, preferred to lose what they had already paid than
to meet the demand for the second instalment, called up in December,
1665, and it was still worse with the demand for the remaining third
a year later; so that the king had had to promise (September, 1668)
two more millions to the company to enable it to carry on. Moreover,
the reports from the Ile Dauphine had shown Coibert that matters
there were going ill. that, as he said, considerable sums had been
absolutely squandered. Witnout yet deciding to give up the Mada-
gascar project, the minister agreed for the present to relieve the


## p. 67 (#95) ##############################################

LA HAYE'S SQUADRON
67
Company of the task of planting that great unsettled island, in order
to employ all its resources in the eastern trade, and, as the directors
demanded, go straight to India. " But on the advice of La Boullaye
le Gouz and Caron, who from their knowledge of the country had
urged him "to show a little sample of his master's power” to the
princes of Asia, Colbert resolved early in 1669 to send a considerable
fleet into the Indian seas. It was to display the fleurs de lys, to give
the native sovereigns "a high opinion of the justice and goodness inf
His Majesty, at the same time that they learnt his power", and to
disprove the assertions of the Dutch who had never ceased attempting
to ruin the French réputation among the people of India. Accordingly
a squadron of ten vessels, under the command of Jacob Blanquet
de la Haye, "governor and Lieutenant-general for the King in the
Ile Dauphine and in all India", sailed from La Rochelle 30 March, 1670.
The “squadron of Persia", as it was called to show the public, and
especially the shareholders of the Company, the new direction of
policy, took no less than eighteen months to reach Surat, instead of
the six or seven months Colbert had expected. When it arrived at
last, in the middle of October, 1671, Caron was no longer there. In
spite of the divisions among the tiny group of Frenchmen, he had
succeeded in the preceding months in founding certain factories on
the Malabar Coast and another at Masulipatam, and had then set
out to establish yet another at Bantam, in the extreme west of Java.
Thus the directors charged by Colbert with the restoration of amity
in the French factory, and de la Haye's great squadron, arrived
during his absence. De la Haye, who had taken the title of viceroy on
his arrival in India, had been instructed above all "to establish the
company so strongly and powerfully that it shall be able to maintain
itself and to increase and augment itself in the course of time by its
own power". Such was the "sole and single purpose" of this important
squadron in Indian waters. De la Haye was to effect it by establishing
fortified posts at points reckoned most favourable for trade, in
Ceylon especially, and by force if necessary.
Doubtless such an
enterprise would injure the European peoples already established in
India, especially the Dutch; but such a consideration would weigh
little with Louis XIV or Colbert, who could not forgive the United
Provinces for their manifestations of political and economic hostility.
Colbert wrote to de la Haye, "The Dutch, though powerful, will not
dare to prevent the execution of His Majesty's designs; but it will be
necessary to be on your guard against any surprise on their part".
And in this connection, as in all others, de la Haye was "to act in
concert with, and even follow the views and orders of, the directors
of the company who are in India;. . . and even though the Sieur de
i Dernis. Recueil et collection des titres concernant la Compagnie des Inde:
Orientales, 1, 187


## p. 68 (#96) ##############################################

68
THE FRENCH FACTORIES IN INDIA
la Haye knows that they are doing ill, [he should) after representing
his opinions to them, exactly follow their judgment”. 1
In the face of instructions so formal and even imperative, what
could de la Haye do but await the return of Caron, whom Colbert
had mentioned by name as “having a profound knowledge, by reason
of his twenty-two years' service with the Dutch, of all that can and
ought to be done in India for the profit of the company"? He there-
fore awaited his return from Bantam. Hence followed a delay by
which the Dutch profited, strengthening their defences, especially as
at the end of 1671, in India as in Europe, war had been expected
between France and the republic. To crown this, even when Caron
and the newly arrived directors had met, they could not agree, which
added to the delay in the sailing of the squadron. Not until the
beginning of January, 1672, could de la Haye and his ships leave
Swally Roads “to carry into the Indies the first knowledge of the
arms and might of His Majesty".
The viceroy's instructions ordered him to neglect no means of
attaining this end. He spent, therefore, six weeks sailing down the
Malabar Coası, trying "to show 'it off, and to display to advantage its
beauty, power, guns, and crews”, firing numberless salutes in every
port he visited-Daman, Bombay, Goa, Calicut, Kranganur, Cochin,
etc. Just as he was about to quit the coast and make for Ceylon, he
learnt of the approach of a Dutch fleet; on 21 February he sighted
twelve ships out to sea off Cape Comorin. He desired to approach
them, and even to attack; but "M. Caron was as displeased [de la
Haye wrote to Louis XIV some months later] as if I had proposed to
him a crime. How often [he adds with some bitterness and not a
little reason] have I regretted my express orders to follow the
opinions of the directors”. He was indeed right; and Caron, over-
whelmed as he had been with benefits by Colbert, was already
beginning to exhibit a strange, dubious conduct, which later
developments were to prove still more dubious.
Leaving then with great regret his enemies to sail away, de la
Haye coasted round the south and west of Ceylon, where the Dutch
were already established, and then ran up the east coast as his
instructions directed. Soon he was off Trinkomali Bay, the one
natural harbour of the island, which he entered at once, but only to
find that the Dutch had been beforehand with him, and had impro-
vised, if not solidly built, various defences. Thus the position reckoned
on by Colbert in December, 1669, had totally changed by March, 1672.
Was he then to give up that considerable settlement on Ceylon,
which the minister's instructions said was to open the cinnamon
trade to the Company? Was he to disregard the king's view, that
nothing could be more for the benefit of the Company? De la Haye
1 Clément, Lettres, instructions et mémoires de Colbert, III(2), 461-70.


## p. 69 (#97) ##############################################

SIEGE OF ST THOME
69
thought not. Since then he was sent to choose a site, build a post
there, put it in a state of defence, and provide it with every necessity,
he paid no heed to “the insolent orders” of the Dutch to leave the
harbour. But he went no further. Once more at the repeated
instances of Caron he abandoned his project, which was to fight the
fleet of the Admiral Rijckloff van Goens, and contented himself with
procuring from the king of Kandi a grant of the bay of Trinkomali,
with the country of Kutiari and its dependencies, taking possession
in the king's name, and building a little fort there. He did not know
that the Dutch had told the natives that he had not dared to fight
them, that they were isolating him, and that they were about to
deprive his crews and sick of victuals. A victory would have estab-
lished the prestige of the "squadron of Persia", and made the French
undisputed masters of Trinkomali, if not of India ; but on 9 July
de la Haye quitted the bay without having given battle, merely
leaving on one of the little islands within it a handful of men whom
the Dutch seized a few days later, thus justifying in the eyes of all
the assertions of his enemies.
A little later, on his arrival before St Thomé (or Mailapur, as the
Indians called it) on the Coromandel Coast, de la Haye reaped the
fruits of his error; the officers sent to ask for victuals met with an
unreasonable refusal from the Muhammadan officials and insults
from the populace. On the advice of Caron, who was certainly the
evil genius of this campaign, and who may with cause be suspected
of treason, the viceroy resolved to strike a blow; on 25 July, 1672,
five days after dropping anchor before the place, he carried it by
escalade, to the great alarm of the Muhammadans and even of the
Europeans scattered along the coast in the various factories.
Ten years earlier the king of Golconda had conquered St Thomé
from the Portuguese, and had also occupied the neighbouring part
of the Carnatic. The loss of the place irritated this sovereign; he at
once set to work to recover it, and quickly surrounded it with horse
and foot, elephants, and work-people with everything needed for a
blockade. 2 In spite of the diligence with which he had sought to
consolidate his position, de la Haye had had no time in which to lay
in provisions; and from the beginning of October he had to revictual
himself by sea. As yet the Dutch had not joined the Muhammadans,
although they had learnt a month earlier of the outbreak of war
between France and England on the one side and the Netherlands
on the other. By dint of his own energy, the bravery and spirit of
his troops, the zeal and intelligence of his subordinates, volunteers or
agents of the company, the French leader held St Thomé for two
years against the king of Golconda and the Dutch, with no help
from the English. But courage and good will themselves are not
1 Mémoires de Bellanger de Lespinay, p. 143.