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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2009
While trade in opium was of limited financial significance in the eighteenth century to the larger accounts of the Dutch East India Company as a whole, this article shows its critical importance to the Company's comptoir accounts at Batavia. The article examines the VOC's commercial operations at Batavia in the eighteenth century and places opium trade and opium revenues within that larger context. It examines how the trade in Bengal opium through Batavia changed over time, based on a statistical analysis of the Company's accounts. These results show that opium dwarfed all other individual or groups of commodities that were available to the Company to sell profitably on Java and in the Indonesian Archipelago over the long eighteenth century.
1 Research on opium has benefited from John F. Richards' contributions, see ‘The Indian Empire and Peasant Production of Opium in the Nineteenth Century’, Modern Asian Studies, 15:1 (1981), 59–82; and ‘Opium and the British Indian Empire: the Royal Commission of 1895’, Modern Asian Studies, 36:2 (2002), 375–420. Research on opium has grown rapidly in recent years, see Farooqui, Amar, Smuggling as Subversion: Colonialism, Indian Merchants and the Politics of Opium, (New Delhi: New Age International Publishers, 1998)Google Scholar; Trocki, Carl A., Opium, Empire and the Global Political Economy: A Study of the Asian Opium Trade 1750–1950, (London and New York: Routledge, 1999)Google Scholar; and Yangwen, Zheng, The Social Life of Opium in China. (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
2 See Reid, Anthony, Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce, 2 vols., (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988 and 1993)Google Scholar.
3 See Furber, H., Rival Empires of Trade in the Orient 1600–1800, (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1976)Google Scholar.
4 The VOC records used in this article are primarily found: (1) in the General State Archives, [the Algemeen Rijksarchief (ARA)] in the Koloniale Archieven Oost-Indie: Archieven van de Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie, (VOC) collection and papers in The Hague; and (2) the Indonesian National Archives (ARSIP) in Jakarta. For some of the printed Dutch records used in this article, see Coolhaas, W.P. et al. , eds., Generale Missiven van Gouverneurs-General en Raden aan Heren XVII der Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie, 11 vols., (The Hague: Rijks Grote Publicaten, 1960–2005)Google Scholar; abbreviated and cited in the text as GM; and van der Chijs, J.A. et al. , eds., Daghregisteer gehouden int Casteel Batavia vant passerende daer ter plaetse als over geheel Nederlandts India, 31 vols., (The Hague and Batavia: Departement van Koloniën, 1887–1931)Google Scholar, cited hereafter as DRB.
5 For the useful but dated classic study on this topic, see Baud, J. C., ‘Proeve van eene Geschiedenis van het Handel en het Verbruik van Opium in Nederlandsch Indië’, Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land-, en Volkenkunde van Nederlandsch Indië, 1 (1853), 79–220CrossRefGoogle Scholar. de Haan, F., Priangan: De Preanger Regentschappen onder het Nederlandsch Bestuur tot 1811, 4 vols., (Batavia: Bataviaasch Genootschap van Kunsten en Weternschappen, 1910–1912)Google Scholar is based upon a unique familiarity of the archives in Jakarta and contains helpful observations. For some of the recent work on the Company, which include discussions of opium commercialisation, see Vos, R., Gentle Janus, Merchant Prince: The VOC and the Tightrope of Diplomacy in the Malay World, 1740–1800, Jackson, B., trans., (Leiden: KITLV Press, 1993)Google Scholar; Nagtegaal, L., Riding the Dutch Tiger: The Dutch East Indies Company and the northeast coast of Java, 1680–1743, Jackson, B., trans., (Leiden: KITLV Press, 1996)Google Scholar; Knaap, Gerrit J., Shallow Waters, Rising Tide: Shipping and Trade in Java around 1775, (Leiden: KITLV Press, 1996)Google Scholar; Knaap, Gerrit J. and Sutherland, Heather, Monsoon Traders: Ships, Skippers, and Commodities in Eighteenth-Century Makassar, (Leiden: KITLV Press, 2004)Google Scholar; and Kian, Kwee Hui, The Political Economy of Java's Northeast Coast, c. 1740–1800, (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2005)Google Scholar. For a fascinating recent work on Batavia using the notarial records, see Niemeijer, Hendrik E., Batavia: Een Koloniale Samenleving in the 17de Eeuw, (Amsterdam: Balans, 2005)Google Scholar.
6 It is part of a larger research/publishing project, tentatively entitled: ‘On Sea, on Land: the Political Economy of Commerce and Commodities in Asia and the Early Modern World’. This recent research on maritime trade and opium at Batavia permits a thorough historical reconstruction and an economic analysis of the maritime trade at Batavia, the major colonial port city within the region and globally, and a supply or commodity chain analysis of Bengal opium from production to consumption in the later half of the seventeenth and the entire eighteenth century.
7 Jacobs, Els M., Koopman in Azië: De handel van de Verenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie tijdens de 18de eeuw, (Zutphen: Walburg Pers, 2000)Google Scholar.
8 For a discussion of these developments in Southeast Asia, see George Bryan Souza, ‘Developing Habits: Tobacco and Opium in the Indonesian Archipelago, c.1650 to 1800’, Association for Asian Studies (AAS) Annual Conference, Chicago, Illinois, March 31–April 3, 2005.
9 Bello, David Anthony, Opium and the Limits of Empire: Drug Prohibition in the Chinese Interior, 1729–1850, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
10 Alves, Jorge Manuel dos Santos, ‘O Triângulo Madeira-Achém-Macau: Um Projecto Transoceânico de Comércio de Ópio (1808–1816)’, Archipel, 56:1(1998), 43–70CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
11 For an interesting discussion of the establishment of Batavia from the Chinese (Hokkien) as well as the Company's perspective, see chapters 5 and 6 in the unpublished doctoral dissertation by James K. Chin, ‘Merchants and Other Sojourners: the Hokkiens Overseas, 1570–1760’, University of Hong Kong, 1998.
12 For a useful introduction and summary of Jakarta's early history and geography, especially its spatial characteristics and growth, see Cobban, James L., ‘Geographic Notes on the First Two Centuries of Djakarta’, Journal of the Malay Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 44:2 (1971), 108–150Google Scholar.
13 See Broeze, F., ‘Introduction: Brides of the Sea’, in Broeze, F., ed., Brides of the Sea: Port Cities of Asia from the Sixteenth to the Twentieth Centuries, (Honolulu: University of Hawai Press, 1989), 4Google Scholar.
14 See Reid, Anthony, ‘The Origins of Revenue Farming in Southeast Asia’, in Butcher, John and Dock, Howard, eds., The Rise and Fall of Revenue Farming: Business Elites and the Emergence of the Modern State in Southeast Asia, (London: Macmillan Press, 1993), 67–79Google Scholar.
15 See Blussé, Leonard, ‘Chinese Trade to Batavia during the Days of the VOC’, Archipel, 18 (1979), 195–213CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Strange Company: Chinese Settlers, Mestizo Women and Dutch in VOC Batavia, (Dordrecht: Foris Publications, 1986); and Blussé, Leonard, Oosterhoff, Jan and Vermeulen, Ton, ‘Chinese Trade with Batavia in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries: a Preliminary Report’, in Haellquist, Karl Reinhold, ed., Asian Trade Routes: Continental and Maritime, (London: Curzon Press, 1991), 231–245Google Scholar.
16 See Souza, George Bryan, The Survival of Empire: Portuguese Trade and Society in China and the South China Sea, 1630–1754, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
17 Many of the historians of the Company have commented on its accounting practices and the difficulties they pose in consolidating its profitability, see van Dam, Pieter, (Stapel, F.W., van Boetzelaer, C.W.T.van Asperen, and Dubbeldam, Herdruk, eds.), Beschryvinge van de Oostindische Compagnie, 7 vols., (The Hague: Rijks Grote Publicaten, 1927–1954)Google Scholar; Glamann, Kristof, Dutch-Asiatic Trade, 1620–1740, (Copenhagen and The Hague: Danish Science Press and Martinius Nijhoff, 1958)Google Scholar; and Gaastra, Femme S., De geschidenis van de VOC, (Zutphen: Walburg Pers, 2002)Google Scholar. For an enlightening and detailed explanation of the intricacies of the Company's accounting, see de Korte, J.P., De Jaarlijkse Financiele Verantwoording in de Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie, (Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff, 1983)Google Scholar.
18 For a discussion of the small vessel/inland shipping reports, which are found in the ARSIP, DRB 1683–1745, see Souza, “Developing Habits . . .” 2005.
19 For a description of Company's shipping to and from and within Asia and their organisation, personnel and ports of call, see Bruijn, J.R., et al. , Dutch-Asiatic Shipping in the 17th and 18th Centuries, 3 vols., (The Hague: Rijks Grote Publicaten, 1979–1987), I, 119–142, 195–209, and 223–245CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
20 See the separate Chinese and foreign shipping lists plus individual cargo details from 1684 onwards for Batavia, ARA, VOC 1382 to 3971. For some of the Asian participants in maritime trade that were present at Batavia, see Lombard, D., Aubin, J., eds., Asian Merchants and Businessmen in the Indian Ocean and the China Sea, (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2000)Google Scholar.
21 Tonnage calculations are a better economic indicator than the number of vessels trading at Batavia, since they permit individual, annual and total trader groups' cargo capacity to be compared in a given market. While they have been calculated for trading participants at Batavia for the entire period, they are not presented for the sake of brevity.
22 For a detailed discussion of Chinese merchant activity at Canton at this time, see Van Dyke, Paul A., The Canton Trade: Life and Enterprise on the China Coast, 1700–1845, (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2005)Google Scholar.
23 ARA, VOC 2868 to 3951, foreign vessel lists with trading details from 1755 to 1792.
24 ARA, VOC 1382 to 3971, sales and purchases records or Samengetrokken Lijsten from 1693 to 1796.
25 See de Hullu, J., ‘Over den Chinaschen Handel der Oost-Indische Compagnie in de Eerste Dertig Jaar van de 18e eeuw’, Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde, 73 (1917), 32–151CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
26 One picol equaled 133⅓ pounds.
27 The conversion of rijksdaalers (rsd) to Chinese taels and Spanish pesos is: 1 rsd to 3 guilders, 2.85 guilders to 1 tael and 2.5 guilders to 1 peso of 8 reales.
28 There are two observations about these sales reports related to the Company's modifications in the preparation and inclusion of trade and non-trade related commercial data that had not previously been included in the report and/or favourably distort the actual figures for sales directly attributable to maritime trade at Batavia to Asian and other Europeans: (1) from 1748 to 1764, the Company included 1,978,751 rsd. from their annual sales by public auction at Batavia in these accounts; and (2) 5,965 chests of opium. Although these are significant quantities and values of sales income, it was decided not to suppress or exclude these amounts and values from this data.
29 There is one observation about these purchase reports related to the Company's modifications in the preparation and inclusion of trade and non-trade related commercial data that had not previously been included in the report, which significantly distort the actual figures for purchases directly attributable to maritime trade at Batavia to Asian and other Europeans: (1) from 1758 to 1764, these reports included an additional total quantity of 927,009 picols or 4,559,606 rsd. of sugar, coffee, pepper and indigo purchased by the Company from the Java hinterland. In addition, significant quantities of Palembang pepper and Bangka tin (in total: 346,661 picols or 3,991,921 rsd.) were also registered. For pepper and cloves, see Bulbeck, D., et al. , Southeast Asian Exports since the 14th Century: Cloves, Pepper, Coffee, and Sugar, (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 1998), 17–106Google Scholar; and Chaudhuri, K.N., The Trading World of Asia and the English East India Company. 1660–1760, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), 313–328CrossRefGoogle Scholar; for tin, see Irwin, G.W., ‘The Dutch and the Tin Trade of Malaya in the Seventeenth Century’, in Ch'en, J., Tarling, N., eds., Studies in the Social History of China and South-East Asia, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), 267–87Google Scholar; and Jackson, J.C., ‘Mining in 18th Century Bangka: The Pre-European Exploitation of a “Tin Island’”, Pacific Viewpoint, 10:2 (1969), 28–54Google Scholar.
30 Jörg, Christiaan J.A., Porcelain and the Dutch China Trade, (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1982)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
31 For a general introduction into opium cultivation and production in India, see Bose, S., ed., Credit, Markets, and the Agrarian Economy of Colonial India, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994)Google Scholar; for cultivation and production in Malwa: see Habib, I., The Agrarian System of Mughal India (1556–1707), (Bombay, New York, published by Asia Publications House 1963)Google Scholar; Gordon, S.N., ‘Burhanpur: Entrepot and Hinterland, 1659–1750’, IESHR, 22:4(1988), 425–42Google Scholar; ‘Forts and Social Control in the Maratha State’, Modern Asian Studies, 13:1(1979), 1–17; and ‘The Slow Conquest: Administrative Integration of Malwa into the Maratha Empire, 1720–1760’, Modern Asian Studies, 11:1(1977), 1–40. For cultivation, production and early commercialisation in Bengal, see Prakash, O., The Dutch East India Company and the Economy of Bengal, 1630–1720, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; ‘European Trade and the Economy of Bengal in the Seventeenth and Early Eighteenth Century’, in J. van Goor, ed., Trading Companies in Asia 1600–1830, (Utrecht: HES Uitgevers, 1986).
32 The weight of each chest, including its contents, was standardised at 145 ponden and one Dutch pond was equal to 1.09 lbs. or 0.4 kilos.
33 Prakash, The Dutch East India Company. . . (1985), 57 and 58. One maund was 681/2 ponden.
34 See Prakash, Om, ‘Trade and Politics in Eighteenth Century Bengal’, in Blussé, Leonard and Gaastra, Femme, eds., On the Eighteenth Century as a Category of Asian History: Van Leur in Retrospect, (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 1998), 237–260, especially, 251–256Google Scholar.
35 For a discussion of the eisch or order reports in general and their role in the Company's trade to Japan, see Omori, Minoru, ‘The Eisch Boek in Dutch-Japanese Trade’, in Haellquist, Karl Reinhold, ed., Asian Trade Routes: Continental and Maritime, (London: Curzon Press, 1991), 199–208Google Scholar.
36 Prakash's pioneering work examined the Company's order records for opium from 1659 to 1717, see Prakash, The Dutch East India Company . . . (1985), 150–151; for the 1719 to 1771 order records, see ARA, VOC 13575 to 13620, ‘Kopie-eisen van gouverneur-generaal en raden aan de factorijen, met aantekeningen betreffende hetgeen naar Batavia is verzonden, 1719–1771’.
37 See GM, III, 547, for the incorporation of Bengal opium in Mughal trading activities with neighbouring Arracan in the 1660's; for details on indigenous and European traders activities involving purchases of Bengal and sales at Bantam in the late 1670's and early 1680's prior to the Company's occupation of that port-city, see GM, IV, 18, 389 and 402 and J.M.J. de Jonge, compiler, De Opkomst van het Nederlandsch Gezag in Oost-Indië, 13 vols., (The Hague-Amsterdam, 1862–1888), VII, 9–10. For VOC complaints of Malay involvement in the trafficking of Bengal opium to Andragieri, Jambi, Palembang, Borneo and the ports of the Java north coast in the 1700's, see GM, VI, 431.
38 For an example of the Portuguese involvement in exporting Bengal opium to the Malabar Coast in the 1690's, see Souza, George Bryan, ‘Portuguese Colonial Administrators and Inter-Asian Maritime Trade: Manuel de Sousa de Meneses and the Fateh Moula Affair’, Portuguese Studies Review, 12:2, (2004–2005), 25–62Google Scholar.
39 See GM, V: 758–761.
40 In specific years, English and French purchases and exports of opium from Bengal were significant or superior in comparison to the VOC's purchases and exports. The VOC reported in 1711, for example, that English purchases and exports were 850 chests in a year that the VOC exported 800 chests. French purchases and exports in 1714 were 4 to 500 chests in a year that the VOC exported 1,165 chests, see GM, VI, 719 and VII, 105–106.
41 See Heeres, J.E. and Stapel, F.W., eds., Corpus-Diplomaticum Neerlando-Indicum, 6 vols., (The Hague, 1907–1953)Google Scholar; for the agreements granting the VOC the exclusive right to import Indian textiles and opium into, for example, Mataram (1677), Palembang (1678), Cheribon (1681), see Corpus, III, 74–79, 140–142, 233–240 and 267–270. The VOC celebrated a similar treaty with Jambi in 1684; see GM, IV, 724. Despite a treaty with Palembang, the VOC reported indigenous shipping laden with textiles and opium in 1684; see GM, IV, 719.
42 For example, on November 17, 1692, Company naval forces stopped a French ship at Phuket (Udjung Salang) and confiscated its cargo of opium, see GM, V, 591. Alexander Hamilton's ship was stopped and searched by VOC authorities at Melakka in 1712 and 18 chests of opium were confiscated, see GM, VI, 858. The Raad van Justitie at Batavia reviewed the Hamilton case in 1713 and upheld the actions of the VOC authorities; see GM, VI, 912.
43 The Amphioen Sociëteit (Opium Society), a company within the Company, became responsible for marketing and financing the sales of opium to indigenous merchants in exchange for a guaranteed price on delivered volumes from the Company in 1745 and was active till 1794, when it was succeeded by the Amphioen Directie, see I.E. Mens, ‘De Amphioen Sociëteit (1745–1794). Middel tot “redres” van de Compagnie of wellicht meer een middel to verijking van de Hoge Regering’, unpublished, M.A. dissertation, Leiden University, 1987.
44 See ARA, VOC 3252–3971; the total numbers of ships involved were 57 (51 English, 3 Portuguese, 1 French, 1 Prussian and 1 Armenian).
45 Small quantities (90 chests in both years) of Levantine opium were sold by the VOC to the Amfioen Sociëteit at Batavia in 1753 and 1778, see Baud, ‘Proeve van eene Geschiedenis . . ., 151; there is increased activity in the delivery of Levantine opium, see the Amphioen Sociëteit (AS) documentation in the ARSIP (ARSIP, AS 1 to 34); for a discussion of the early nineteenth century trade of Levantine opium, see Schmidt, Jan, From Anatolia to Indonesia: Opium Trade and the Dutch Community of Izmir, 1820–1940, (Istanbul: Nederlands Historisch-Archaeologisch Instituut, 1998)Google Scholar.
46 See Baud, ‘Proeve van eene Geschiedenis . . .’, 216–219.
47 ARA, VOC 1603 to 3609: Annual Batavia comptoir reports, 1697–1781. For supplementary details or breakdown of the Jacatra payments for 1722, 1723, 1725–1729, 1734 and 1736, see ARA, VOC 2005 to 2398.
48 See Reid, ‘The Origins of Revenue Farming. . .(1993), 75.
49 See Rush, James R., Opium to Java: Revenue Farming and Chinese Enterprise in Colonial Indonesia, 1800–1910, (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1990)Google Scholar.
