Decay or defeat ? : an inquiry into the Portuguese decline in Asia 1580-1645

Abstract

Already in the 1590s the Portuguese in Asia looked upon the Dutch as a threat and most historiography has not been able to get away from the part that the Dutch played in the Indo-Portuguese drama. The decline of the Portuguese-Asian empire was however the result of endogenous and extrageneous developments, in Asia as well as in Brazil, Africa and Europe. For an analysis of these developments a multi-linear approach has been chosen in the form of, what one could call, a revolving stage. Each scene, or rather each chapter, produces in the end a different answer to the same question. The first five chapters discuss the social and financial fundamentals of the Portuguese 'empire' overseas and the position of the Portuguese in Asia, in terms of population, trade and military power. Special emphasis has been laid on the relationship of the so called New Christian Portuguese with the Castilian crown and their particular role in the trade with India. It will be shown that, to them, satisfying the need for silver of the Habsburg monarchy became a more attractive proposition than investment in the Carreira da India. This and other developments in Asia undermined the position of the Estado da India and of the private Portuguese traders in Asia, before the Dutch became a serious threat to them. The next three chapters are concerned with the Dutch: it will be shown that their active role in the Iberian and the Luso-Atlantic trade did not exclude an aggressive mood in Asia, or vice-versa. Dutch aggression in Asia was in the first instance prompted and legalized by the States-General, but commercial considerations also caused the bewindhebbers of the VOC to adopt a bellicose way of thinking and writing. However, it will be shown that apart from some acts of piracy and privateering against Portuguese ships and attacks on the Portuguese forts on the Moluccan islands, Dutch violence was mainly directed against the Spanish in the Philippines and the Chinese trade with these islands. On the other hand, whereas the conquest of the Moluccan spice trade became a first priority, the VOC was unable to prevent the Spaniards from taking over many Portugue-se forts and even had to accept that the Portuguese spice merchants moved to Macassar, where for a long time they stayed out of reach of the Company. In the discussion of the Dutch commercial and military initiatives many of the paradigms around the rise of the Dutch empire in Asia will be punctured. In the first forty years of its existence the VOC was far from the effective business organization or war machine that many writers have made it to be. Many of the glorified feats of arms can only be described as defeats or a waste of manpower, ships and money. Finally, the ninth chapter concentrates on the Asian environment in which the Luso-Dutch confrontation took place. During the period under review, major shifts in the local political situation were caused by the southward expansion of the Moghul empire, the rise of the Nayaks of Ikkeri in Kanara, the expansion of Persia under Shah Abbas, the unification and state formation in Japan under the Tokugawas and finally, the Manchu conquest of China. As far as the Portuguese were concerned, all these developments, each in their own way, worked in the same, negative, direction