Dutch Attacks against Portuguese Shipping in Asia (1600–1625) (original) (raw)

Dutch Attacks against the Goa-Macau-Japan Route, 1603-1618

Macau - The Formation of a Global City, ed. by C.X. George Wei, London: Routledge, 2014, pp. 95-106.

The route Goa-Macau-Japan was the most important Portuguese trade route in Asia during most of the second half of the sixteenth century and the first four decades of the seventeenth century. As such, the great carracks that sailed it were obvious targets for the Dutch after they arrived in Asia at the end of the 16th Century. The 1603 capture of the richly laden carrack Santa Catarina by the Dutch captain Jakob van Heemskerck was the first and most famous case in a series of incidents which led the Portuguese to stop using carracks and galleons on their voyages to Macau and Japan in 1618, replacing them with smaller ships such as galleots and pinnaces. In this article, I propose to analyze Dutch attacks on Portuguese ships travelling between Goa and Macau and Japan before 1618, in order to know better the process that led to the replacement of large vessels by smaller ones on the route.

From Self-Defense to an Instrument of War: Dutch Privateering Around the Malay Peninsula in the Early Seventeenth Century

Journal of Early Modern History, 2013

This article examines the transition of the Dutch East Indian Company (VOC) from a policy of self-defense into its full espousal of large-scale privateering and plundering. I argue that this shift was driven by both economic and political factors, and can be traced to the very formation of the Company as a unified trading venture. The taking of prizes became a cornerstone not only of the economic fortunes of the company, but the establishment of the Dutch colonial empire in Asia. Of particular interest is not only the instructions emanating from the company directors and the Dutch government in the metropolis, but especially the implementation and adaptation of these directives on the ground. It is this local context that adds a crucial dimension to interpretations of the eager espousal of maritime violence by the VOC and its agents in Asian waters.

Bachelor Thesis: The First Dutch West India Company (1621-1674). An historical approximation to the conflicts and circulations of Dutch goods and people in the Atlantic Ocean

Bachelor Thesis: The First Dutch West India Company (1621-1674). An historical approximation to the conflicts and circulations of Dutch goods and people in the Atlantic Ocean, 2019

The First West India Company can also be considered to some extent the less studied sister cooperation of the East India Company, her Pacific counterpart that was founded in 1602 to unify trade and thus obtain the commercial monopoly in Asia. This same mission relied on the WIC in 1621, experimenting with remarkable highs and lows. My objective is to study these first +/- 50 years, until the bankruptcy of 1674, approaching them from the following previously devised questions: 1) How did the Habsburg Dynasty affect the development of Dutch commerce? What do we see in the Atlantic world after the creation of the Dutch West India Company? 2) How the United Provinces developed and what framework gave birth to the creation of this new company. 3) What were the prime differences between the North and the South Atlantic, and how did the loss of Dutch Brazil influence the Caribbean.

The Seizure of the Sta. Catarina off Singapore: Dutch Freebooting, the Portuguese Empire and Intra-Asian Trade at the Dawn of the Seventeenth Century

Revista de Cultura/ Review of Culture, 11, pp. 12-25, 2004

"The article revisits the “Santa Catarina incident”, the famous episode of the first Portuguese ship captured by the Dutch in Asian waters, placing it within the broader context of Luso-Dutch rivalry in the Malay world, particularly the Straits of Singapore and Malacca. Through a careful analysis of European sources, the author assesses the broader consequences of this event and the ensuing international implications. After 1603, the VOC directors and the regents of the Dutch Republic were alerted to how profitable the policy of freebooting and despoiling the enemy could be, while the Portuguese authorities of the Estado da Índia became aware of their vulnerability in the face of geographical constraints. There is also a discussion of the legal defence of the Dutch interests as presented by Hugo Grotius, the Dutch jurist who has frequently been upheld as the “father of modern international law”. What becomes very transparent in the course of the present account is how important the Macao merchants really were to the Estado da Índia, how far their networks of trade spanned deep into Southeast Asia, and how, despite suffering a number of severe setbacks as a result of VOC freebooting activities, they managed to recuperate from these blows with amazing agility and perseverance. You can download this paper from http://www.icm.gov.mo/RC/TextPE.asp?No=11&ID=555"

The Military Revolution and European Wars Outside of Europe: The Portuguese-Dutch War in Asia in the First Quarter of the Seventeenth Century

The Journal of Military History, 2020

This article discusses Portugal's defeat in the Portuguese-Dutch war in Asia during the first quarter of the seventeenth century, focusing on the much-debated issue of whether a military revolution in Europe produced a military exceptionalism that made Europeans militarily superior to non-Europeans in the Early Modern period. The view that Asian military influence on the Portuguese in the sixteenth century made them militarily inferior to European enemies such as the Dutch remains prevalent in Portuguese historiography. Such influence appeared to occur only in certain areas of naval warfare, however, in a way that does not corroborate claims for an extensive early modem western military exceptionalism.