Cambodjanen in Nederland?

Nog wat tekst over waarom het Portugal, Spanje en NL op bepaalde plekken wel lukte te colonizeren en andere niet (in dit geval Cambodia) ….

Most explanations for European colonialism have tended to focus on how Europeans established colonies, comparing Europeans' and Asians' military technology, economic organization, and technological prowess. But it is better to ask not how Europeans colonized but why they colonized. In an important but neglected essay, M. N. Pearson argues that Europeans were unusual not in their capacities as colonizers but in their very desire to colonize: Asian states tended to focus on overland expansion rather than overseas expansion, leaving the oceans open to Europeans.5 His nuanced argument can be distilled to one basic hypothesis: States that gain the great majority of their revenue from agriculture act differently from states that rely upon trade for a significant portion of their revenues. According to Pearson, during the early modern period most large Asian states belonged to the first category (that is, they derived most of their revenue from agriculture) and therefore tended to be indifferent to oceangoing trade. By contrast, the colonizing Western European states belonged to the second category and therefore tended to focus on oceangoing trade.6

Pearson supports his hypothesis with cases drawn primarily from his area of expertise: Indian history. When the Portuguese arrived in the Indian Ocean in the late fifteenth century, they found it remarkably easy to impose their control over the most valuable maritime trade routes. According to Pearson, this was because Indian states, being bound to agricultural rather than commercial revenues, tended to ignore the prospects for revenue from oceangoing trade. Gujarat was the most sea-oriented of these states, and its merchants dominated routes throughout the Indian Ocean region, from the Persian Gulf to the Strait of Melaka. Even so, one of Gujarat's kings felt that “wars by sea are merchants' affairs and of no concern to the prestige of kings.”7 Its government gained only 6 percent of its income from maritime trade, and it was therefore not in the business of maritime adventurism.8 Later in the sixteenth century, the Mughals established their rule over India, founding a state an order of magnitude richer and more populous than the largest Western European states. They certainly could have challenged the Portuguese and their successors, but the Mughals, too, were focused on agricultural production as the basis of their tax revenues, and so they made little effort to subject the Indian Ocean region to their rule. Adages expressed by the elite of the Mughal era indicate this anti-oceanic perspective: “Merchants who travel by sea are like silly worms clinging to logs.”9 And so, when the Portuguese arrived in the Indian Ocean, they found the seas open to naval power. The Asian traders of the Indian Ocean were accustomed to peaceful trade, and it appears that, in the century preceding the arrival of the Portuguese, no Asian state had tried to establish hegemony over the seas. The Portuguese, then, benefiting from strong state support as well as the absence of serious competition, were able to establish control over large sectors of the Indian Ocean trade.

To be sure, Portuguese incursions provoked reactions. Early in the sixteenth century, Gujarat and Egypt formed an alliance to reclaim sea routes from the Portuguese. They constructed an armed fleet, which was defeated by the Portuguese in a battle at Diu in 1509. This battle shows the importance of Portuguese naval technologies and strategies, but it is also telling that the arrival of the Portuguese provoked so few such naval reactions. The Ottomans made a half-hearted and desultory attempt to drive the Portuguese out of the Indian Ocean, but they too were more concerned with affairs on land.10 And in the seventeenth century, the Omanis succeeded in driving the Portuguese from Muscat and other coastal enclaves.11 The Omanis' success demonstrates how easy it might have been for a major Asian power to remove the Portuguese altogether. The surprising thing is that, as Pearson points out, no major Asian state seriously tried. According to Pearson's statist hypothesis, the Portuguese were able to convert a naval advantage into oceanic hegemony because they had the strong support of their state whereas Asian states were relatively uninterested in overseas mercantile expansion. The same was true of the Dutch, who arrived a century after the Portuguese.

Pearson's hypothesis appears reasonable: Asian states do appear to have been less likely than European states to foster overseas aggression for commercial purposes, leaving Asian seas open to European control. Thus, Europeans were simply able to exploit a maritime power vacuum. But many questions remain. For example, there were plenty of Asian states that did emphasize overseas trade. Perhaps the most important are the maritime states of Southeast Asia, such as Macassar and Aceh. These were quite dependent upon revenues from overseas trade and were also at times effective in challenging Portuguese and Dutch expansion. Yet they did not engage in overseas colonialism like the western European states, so there must be other factors at play. We must study these states, and the others throughout the world that might serve as counter examples.

How does Taiwan fit into Pearson’s hypothesis? In one sense the European colonization of Taiwan fits it neatly. Whereas the states of India that Pearson surveys were simply indifferent to overseas commerce, China and Japan actively discouraged it. The Dutch and Spanish were able to colonize Taiwan because of this vacuum of maritime power. Yet Taiwan's European colonies ultimately fell, replaced by a formal Chinese colony. What does the fall of European colonialism on Taiwan say about the statist model?

It turns out that the fate of European colonialism on Taiwan was directly dependent upon the degree of maritime orientation of governments in China and Japan. So long as they were uninterested in maritime adventurism, as they usually were, European colonialism flourished in Taiwan. Thus, when the Dutch established their colony in 1624, there was no Chinese organization powerful enough to prevent them from gaining control over the trading infrastructure that Chinese traders had created on the island. To be sure, there was plenty of resistance: Groups of Chinese settlers defied or evaded Dutch control, such as those who apparently incited the people of Mattau to attack Ripon in 1623, and the smugglers who allied with the people of Favorolang to oppose the Dutch and the “Dutch Chinese.” The rebellion of 1652 was also a response to Dutch policies: The leaders were probably upset about their debts to the Dutch; the followers were upset about the conduct of Dutch soldiers who enforced the head tax (hoofdgeld). Had the rebels been able to appeal to their home government for help, they might have mounted a severe challenge to the Dutch, but they could not. Chinese governments—central, provincial, and local—were not interested in Taiwan.

The Japanese merchants who operated on Taiwan were more troublesome to the Dutch precisely because they did have some support in the Japanese government. When Suetsugu Heizo Masanao, the regent of Nagasaki, got angry about Dutch interference in his trade on Taiwan, he arranged to close down Dutch trade in Japan. Fortunately for the Dutch, he died in 1630. Even more luck for them was the shogunal edict of 1635 that forbade Japanese subjects to travel abroad. With Japan removed from colonial competition, the Dutch had a free hand on Taiwan, allowing them to focus their attention on the aborigines and on the creation of a flourishing co-colonial system. With no East Asian state interested in Taiwan, the Dutch colony flourished.

But in the 1650s, the Zheng government emerged. It was quite unlike the Ming dynasty that it sought to restore in that it was highly dependent on seaborne trade, which provided almost two-thirds of its revenues.12 The Zheng state competed with the Dutch in Southeast Asia and Japan, and when the Dutch applied European rules—capture interloping ships—it levied a devastating economic blockade on Taiwan, causing, as we have seen, the collapse of the colony's economy. When the Zheng state needed a new base, it invaded Taiwan and ousted the Dutch. The state, as Pearson's hypothesis would suggest, is the key to the colonial history of Taiwan.

Niels

Jan

Maaike Slingerland

Maaike Slingerland

Bernardo

Mar

errol

john ter Horst

mike

Mike