The VOC in Japan: It was the personality of one man who became known as ‘The Kapitan’ to the shogun in power that the VOC was allowed to establish the only foreign trade-mission to operate in Japan on the island of Hirado in the Nagasaki prefecture. That happened in the year 1609 and that man was Jacques Specx, who was to be in charge of the Japanese VOC Factory from the 20th of September 1609 till the 28th of August 1612 and again from 1614 to 1621. During his time in office, Specx had been so successful that the Heeren XVII appointed him to the top job of Governor General of the VOC in Batavia, after Jan Pieterszoon Coen’s death on the 21st of September 1629. But I am running ahead of my story now. The first Dutch merchants had already arrived in Japan on the, in 1598 built, VOC vessel ‘De Liefde’ in the year 1605 skippered by the Englishman William Adams. However when their ‘Upper Koopman’ Victor Sprinckel had problems trading because of hostile actions by the present Portuguese merchants, it was the well-spoken Jacques Specx who had arrived at the island of Hirado in the meantime with two ships, who after being introduced by Adams, got the licence from the present Shogun to be the sole resident operator of the VOC factory to be established on the island. Life was not easy for the VOC workers in Hirado, as no public exposure was allowed of their beliefs like crosses, bibles and other religious literature, not even VOC currency with a cross. This was the result of actions by the Portuguese traders since 1543, who apart from normal trading, were also diligently converting Japanese to Christianity and building churches. Under strict rules of a new shogunate, the Portuguese were expelled finally in 1639 after being accused of now smuggling priests into the country, thereby contravening the Shogun’s edict. As agreed, the current VOC Governor had to present himself yearly to the Shogun in Edo (Tokyo) to offer tribute. No women were to be brought in; the dead were to be buried on the small island of Hirado and not on the mainland. As a note of interest, the Dutch township of Noordwijkerhout has a sister relation-ship with Hirado at present. In the course of time the situation changed as a so called ‘close-door policy’ was adopted by a newly established shogunate and ‘notice to quit’ was issued to the VOC in 1638 with an order to move to a man-made island named Dejima in Nagasaki harbour, not later than 1641. This was especially sour grapes for the Portuguese for whom this island originally was created. The VOC as authorised by the local government, would now be the sole trading company allowed in Japan and free to trade in all kind of merchandise for the next two hundred years. Special cargo vessels had been designed, built and equipped, after Specx had managed to convince the Heeren XVII, that these types were the most economical for use in the inter-asia trade and military operations, with the special view on the relative short life of 8 to 10 years and subject to tropical borers (Teredo) and climate. In 1624 the directors had decided to concentrate their main trade on Formosa (Taiwan) and built fort Zeelandia. The VOC had tried consistently to establish a factory in China to trade, however without result and so after a few naval actions in which they were defeated, the VOC directors then had decided to start a factory on Formosa. This trading post in time became a very profitable part of the VOC -empire as the Chinese refused to trade with Japan directly, because Japanese pirates were attacking Chinese trading vessels. And now the VOC merchants were shipping exquisite Chinese silks and porcelain to Japan against copper, silver and gold. During this period even Japanese samurai were used to cut down a revolt in the spice-islands. However around the year of 1670 the Asian trading pattern started to change and decline slowly, mainly as a result of Chinese internal turmoil when the Ming Dynasty was being overthrown by the Qing Dynasty and one of their generals Koxinga had laid successful siege to Fort Zeelandia whereby the VOC lost their settlement on Formosa. Though the VOC traders had adjusted by replacing the popular Chinese silks for those from India’s Bengal, the Japanese rulers now restricted the export of precious metals like gold and silver during this period. Then conflict with competing English merchants during this period when two costly naval wars were fought, these being from 1665-1667 and 1672-1674, known as the second and third English wars, when Admiral Michiel de Ruyter sailed up the Medway and captured the navy’s flagship Royal Charles. Against this the Dutch lost towards 450 trading vessels captured by the opposition. The third war, this time against France supported by the Brits went reasonably well for the Dutch again under supreme leadership of de Ruyter. However business suffered for the time being because of these upheavals outside VOC control. By member Gerard Woerlee.
Posted on: Wed, 15 Oct 2014 02:35:51 +0000
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