Abstract
The VOC’s military campaign to gain access to the Chinese market reveals a great deal of reliance on (military) intelligence as a means to reach decisions on the type of military action that was to be taken. A comparison with contemporaneous intra-European wartime practices reveals that the VOC, in this transcultural context of warfare, resorted to many of the same means of intelligence gathering and implementation, revealing an institutional flow between European and Chinese theatres of action. The essential difference, however, was the need to rely on intercultural mediators who could act as agents in the information flow in order to gain the intelligence and assistance the VOC needed. The Chinese Ming Empire was nevertheless able to exert control over intercultural mediators who aided the company. The Ming Empire thus displayed enough political cohesion in the face of European military strength to force the Dutch to conform to its demands. In the end, the Dutch campaign failed because of a lack of grand strategic intelligence, which could only be supplied by the kind of high-level intercultural mediators that the Dutch could not access, and because of the Batavia leadership’s flawed assumption that military pressure was enough to force compliance from the Ming Empire. This flawed assumption stemmed from an erroneous reading of Portuguese successes in gaining access to the Chinese markets and reveals a lack of understanding of the internal political workings of the Chinese bureaucracy, its relationship with Beijing, and its entanglements with powerful local merchants.
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Notes
- 1.
Derek Croxton, “‘The Prosperity of Arms Is Never Continual’: Military Intelligence, Surprise, and Diplomacy in 1640s Germany,” The Journal of Military History 64, no. 4 (2000): 981–1003; Barbara Donagan, War in England 1642–1649 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008); Christopher Storrs, “Intelligence and the Formulation of Policy and Strategy in Early Modern Europe: The Spanish Monarchy in the Reign of Charles II (1665–1700),” Intelligence and National Security 21, no. 4 (2006): 493–519.
- 2.
See Ralph D. Sawyer and Mei-chün L Sawyer, The Tao of Spycraft: Intelligence Theory and Practice in Traditional China (Boulder: Westview Press, 2004). Since these manuals were composed many centuries before the early modern era, it would require an empirical study of early modern Chinese military intelligence to determine their continued relevance across the ages. An analysis of early modern Chinese military intelligence would be too-ambitious an endeavour within the scope of this article, especially considering the dearth of modern academic studies on the topic.
- 3.
I realise that using the labels “European” and “Asian” are too broad, too undifferentiated, and simplify a reality that was much more complex and multi-polar. In fact, in the course of the European penetration of Asia after the sixteenth century, European and Asian actors often cooperated, and even joined forces against other European-Asian coalitions. Unfortunately, much of the debate on the military of the Europeans in Asia is framed in terms of a dichotomy between “European” and “Asian” or even “Western” and “Eastern.” See John F. Guilmartin, “The Military Revolution: Origins and First Tests Abroad,” in The Military Revolution Debate: Readings on the Military Transformation of Early Modern Europe ed. Clifford J. Rogers (Boulder: Westview Press, 1995), 299–333; Victor D. Hanson, The Western Way of War: Infantry Battle in Ancient Greece (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1989); John Keegan, A History of Warfare (London: Hutchinson, 1993); Geoffrey Parker, The Military Revolution: Military Innovation and the Rise of the West 1500–1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). My case study does involve a fairly straightforward military conflict between the Dutch VOC and Ming China. However much one can see them as typical representatives of Europe and Asia is a matter of debate. Another example would be the expedition of the English East India Company against the Mughal Empire in the 1680s, which also did not end well for the Europeans involved. See John E. Wills, 1688: A Global History (London: Granta Books, 2001), 285–286.
- 4.
William R. Thompson, “The Military Superiority Thesis and the Ascendancy of Western Eurasia in the World System,” Journal of World History 10, no. 1 (1999): 143–178. See also Geoffrey V. Scammell, “Indigenous Assistance in the Establishment of Portuguese Power in Asia in the Sixteenth Century,” Modern Asian Studies 14, no. 1 (1980): 1–11. He also argued that Portuguese expansion depended on local indigenous cooperation.
- 5.
Antje Flüchter and Jivanta Schöttli, “The Dynamics of Transculturality: Concepts and Institutions in Motion”, in: Idem ed., Concepts and Institutions in a Transcultural Context (Heidelberg 2014), 1–46, 21–23.
- 6.
John E. Wills, “Maritime Europe and the Ming,” in China and Maritime Europe 1500–1800: Trade, Settlement, Diplomacy, and Missions, ed. John E. Wills (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 32–40.
- 7.
Martin van Creveld, Command in War (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985), 17–23. A notable exception to this disregard for pre-modern (military) intelligence is John Keegan, Intelligence in War: Knowledge of the Enemy from Napoleon to Al-Qaeda (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2003). Keegan spends the entire first chapter of his book on various forms of pre-Napoleonic intelligence gathering.
- 8.
David Kahn, “An Historical Theory of Intelligence,” in Intelligence Theory: Key Questions and Debates, ed. Peter Gill, Stephen Marrin and Mark Phythian (London: Routledge, 2009), 4–15.
- 9.
Croxton, “The Prosperity of Arms is Never Continual,” 983; Kahn, “An Historical Theory of Intelligence,” 5–6.
- 10.
Idem, 5–8.
- 11.
Croxton, “The Prosperity of Arms is Never Continual,” 984–985, 988–998; Storrs, “Intelligence and the Formulation of Policy and Strategy in Early Modern Europe,” 493–519.
- 12.
Donagan, War in England 1642–1649, 94–114.
- 13.
Creveld, Command in War, 19.
- 14.
Tonio Andrade, “The Company’s Chinese Pirates: How the Dutch East India Company Tried to Lead a Coalition of Pirates to War against China, 1621–1662,” Journal of World History 15, no. 4 (2005): 417; Claudia Schnurmann, “‘Wherever profit leads us, to every sea and shore…’: The VOC, the WIC, and Dutch Methods of Globalization in the Seventeenth Century,” Renaissance Studies 17, no. 3 (2003): 483.
- 15.
Leonard Blussé, “De Chinese nachtmerrie, een terugtocht en twee nederlagen,” in De Verenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie tussen oorlog en diplomatie ed. Gerrit Knaap and Gerke Teitler (Leiden: KITLV Uitgeverij, 2002), 210.
- 16.
Willem P. Groeneveldt, De Nederlanders in China. De eerste bemoeiingen om den handel in China en de vestiging in de Pescadores (1601–1624) (’s-Gravenhage: Nijhoff, 1898).
- 17.
The edition I used is Godefridus J. Hoogewerff, Journael ofte gedenckwaerdige beschrijvinghe van de Oost-Indische reijse van Willem Ysbrantsz. Bontekoe van Hoorn (Utrecht: Oosthoek, 1930).
- 18.
Croxton, “The Prosperity of Arms is Never Continual,” 989. Presumably, for the same reason it is hard to find information in the VOC archives on the military strength of the Company at any given time, as its employees had to take into account that correspondence could be captured by enemies, like the Portuguese, at sea. See Tristan Mostert, Chain of Command: The Military System of the Dutch East India Company 1655–1663 (M.A. thesis, University of Leiden, 2007), 57, http://vocwarfare.net/thesis/.
- 19.
Groeneveldt, De Nederlanders in China, 59–60.
- 20.
Groeneveldt, De Nederlanders in China, 78.
- 21.
Groeneveldt, De Nederlanders in China, 110.
- 22.
Groeneveldt, De Nederlanders in China, 66.
- 23.
Charles R. Boxer, Fidalgos in the Far East 1550–1770: Fact and Fancy in the History of Macao (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1948), 79.
- 24.
Andrade, “The Company’s Chinese Pirates,” 427; Groeneveldt, De Nederlanders in China, 86, 167.
- 25.
Groeneveldt, De Nederlanders in China, 86, 89.
- 26.
Groeneveldt, De Nederlanders in China, 108–109.
- 27.
Groeneveldt, De Nederlanders in China, 100.
- 28.
Groeneveldt, De Nederlanders in China, 114–115. A useful parallel can be drawn here to the Portuguese practices in Macao where, by the early seventeenth century, the institution of the jurubaças came into existence. This class of cultural mediators of mixed Sino-Portuguese descent or specially trained indigenous Chinese who had converted to Christianity functioned as interpreters, communicated with Chinese authorities, and were involved with the governance (census and surveillance) of the large Chinese population of Macao. Surveying the rules governing this institution, one detects an enormous Portuguese preoccupation with ensuring the loyalty of these men. They were compelled to “take an oath on the Holy Gospels and swear allegiance to Macao.” They also received a relatively high salary as a monetary incentive to perform their function reliably. In return, they were subjected to laws and to severe punishments if they did not perform well. During negotiations between Ming officials and the jurubaças they were also supervised by Portuguese with some knowledge of the Chinese language in order to verify what both groups had communicated to each other. With these measures, the Portuguese obviously sought to control and ensure the loyalty of the go-betweens. See Mario G. Valadez, “Between Linguistic Walls and the Third Space: The Jurubaças’ Identity and Their Role in Sino-Portuguese Negotiations after the 1622 Dutch Attack,” Revista de Cultura 25 (2008): 26–29, 31.
- 29.
Leonard Blussé, “The Dutch Occupation of the Pescadores 澎湖群島 (1622–1624),” Transactions of the International Conference of Orientalists in Japan 18 (1973): 35; Groeneveldt, De Nederlanders in China, 104.
- 30.
Groeneveldt, De Nederlanders in China, 109–113.
- 31.
Jan Huygen van Linschoten (1563–1611) was a Dutch merchant and traveller who spent the years between 1583 to 1587 in the service of the Portuguese archbishop of Goa. During his tenure he collected sea charts, information about profitable products and where to get them, and information about sea routes, all of which he acquired from either the archives of the archbishop or the Portuguese seamen he spoke to in Goa. All this knowledge he compiled and gathered in a book named Itinerario, which would henceforth enable and guide the Dutch forays in Asia. See Andrade, “The Company’s Chinese Pirates,” 421–422.
- 32.
This is the Jiulongjiang (in modern Mandarin), which terminates in the sea near Xiamen.
- 33.
Hoogewerff, Journael ofte gedenckwaerdige beschrijvinghe, 77.
- 34.
Kahn, “An Historical Theory of Intelligence,” 10.
- 35.
On 18 October, for example, the squadron presumably surprised and then trapped a force of sixty to seventy military and civilian junks in a bay near Xiamen, which were subsequently burned. On another occasion, however, the pursuit of a junk with a boat led to the intervention of four war junks supported by a large force of musketeers on the nearby beach. Subsequently the chase had to be cancelled. See Hoogewerff, Journael ofte gedenckwaerdige beschrijvinghe, 80, 91.
- 36.
Storrs, “Intelligence and the Formulation of Policy and Strategy in Early Modern Europe,” 506, 510.
- 37.
Groeneveldt, De Nederlanders in China, 132–133.
- 38.
For a more complete account of the events see Blussé, “The Dutch Occupation of the Pescadores,” and Seiichi Iwao, “Li Tan 李旦, Chief of the Chinese Residents at Hirado, Japan in the Last Days of the Ming Dynasty,” Memoirs of the Research Department of the Toyo Bunko 17 (1958): 27–83.
- 39.
Groeneveldt, De Nederlanders in China, 168–170, 173–175, 177–184.
- 40.
Andrade, “The Company”s Chinese Pirates,” 417–420, 425–426; Patrizia Carioti, “The Portuguese Settlement at Macao: The Portuguese Policy of Expansion in the Far East, in Light of the History of Chinese and Japanese Intercourse and Maritime Activities,” Revista de Cultura 6 (2003): 29–31; Iwao, “Li Tan,” 51–52; Kenneth Swope, “Cutting Dwarf Pirates Down to Size: Amphibious Warfare in Sixteenth-Century East Asia,” in New Interpretations in Naval History: Selected Papers from the Fifteenth Naval History Symposium, ed. Maochun Yu (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2009), 82–84.
- 41.
Carioti, “The Portuguese Settlement at Macao,” 30.
- 42.
John E. Wills, Pepper, Guns and Parleys: The Dutch East India Company and China 1622–1681 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1974), 8.
- 43.
Luís F. Barreto, “Macao: An Intercultural Frontier in the Ming Period,” in History of Mathematical Sciences. Portugal and East Asia II. Scientific Practices and the Portuguese Expansion in Asia (1498–1759), ed. Luís Saraiva (Singapore: World Scientific, 2004), 4; Valadez, “Between Linguistic Walls and the Third Space,” 25.
- 44.
Groeneveldt, De Nederlanders in China, 165–166.
- 45.
Groeneveldt, De Nederlanders in China, 174–175, 177.
- 46.
Groeneveldt, De Nederlanders in China, 193–194.
- 47.
Iwao, “Li Tan,” 51–52.
- 48.
Groeneveldt, De Nederlanders in China, 192–195, 403.
- 49.
Blussé, “The Dutch Occupation of the Pescadores,” 37–39, 42–43; Groeneveldt, De Nederlanders in China, 184; Iwao, “Li Tan,” 53–54.
- 50.
Groeneveldt, De Nederlanders in China, 179–184.
- 51.
Hoogewerff, Journael ofte gedenckwaerdige beschrijvinghe, 102–108.
- 52.
Blussé, “The Dutch Occupation of the Pescadores,” 41; Groeneveldt, De Nederlanders in China, 278; Iwao, “Li Tan,” 54–59.
- 53.
Endymion Wilkinson, Chinese History: A Manual (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000), 536–537.
- 54.
Groeneveldt, De Nederlanders in China, 155–156, 166–167, 180–182, 198–199.
- 55.
Groeneveldt, De Nederlanders in China, 255–257; Blussé, “The Dutch Occupation of the Pescadores,” 36.
- 56.
Blussé, “The Dutch Occupation of the Pescadores,” 41; Groeneveldt, De Nederlanders in China, 278; Iwao, “Li Tan,” 54–59.
- 57.
Tonio Andrade, “Chinese under European Rule: The Case of Sino-Dutch Mediator He Bin,” Late Imperial China 28, no. 1 (2007): 3; Mark Häberlein, “Kulturelle Vermittler und interkulturelle Kommunikation im kolonialen Nordamerika,” in Kommunikation und Medien in der Frühen Neuzeit, ed. Johannes Burkhardt and Christine Werkstetter (München: Oldenbourg, 2005), 352–354.
- 58.
Flüchter and Schöttli, “The Dynamics of Transculturality,” 22.
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Noordam, B. (2015). Military Intelligence and Early Modern Warfare: The Dutch East India Company and China 1622–1624. In: Flüchter, A., Schöttli, J. (eds) The Dynamics of Transculturality. Transcultural Research – Heidelberg Studies on Asia and Europe in a Global Context. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-09740-4_6
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