Abstract
Abstract This article analyses how the Dutch colonial state in Ambon in the early nineteenth century tried to reestablish relations with local regents, making use of already existing protocols that were produced during the period of the Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie (1602–1799). Engaging in colonial diplomacy was very important because the demise of the voc (1796) and two short periods of British rule in Ambon (1796–1803 and 1810–17) had shaken Dutch rule to its foundations. To reestablish its legitimacy with these local rulers, the colonial state made use of diplomatic protocols, documents and rituals which had been drawn up and negotiated by the voc. This article will focus on comparing the so-called “Instruction for the Regents,” which was drawn up in 1771 by a voc administrator, with one that was reissued in 1818 by the colonial state and will analyze a number of rituals and protocols which played an important role in defining the relationship between the governor and the regents.
Highlights
His surprise was triggered by the observation the regents all carried sticks with golden and silver knobs with a sign not of the Dutch monarch or a different symbol of the Dutch state, as he expected, but of the Dutch East India Company, the trading company which had ruled over the Moluccas from the middle of the seventeenth century onwards, but which had gone bankrupt at the end of the eighteenth century.[1]
The instructions for the regents were first issued on 11 January 1771 by Governor Johan Abraham van der Voort, who had been the highest regional official in Ambon between 1770 and 1775. These instructions were not prefaced by an explanation as to why the colonial authorities deemed it necessary to write up a list with obligations for the local regents, but in another document, written for his successor, Van der Voort seemed to suggest that this was done because the colonial government had been confronted in the late 1760s with some opinionated, Ambonese regents who were considered to have become too independent of the voc.[39]
This article has argued that colonial officials in Ambon in the early nineteenth century used regulations and rituals that had been created during the period of the voc to re-establish relations with local regents
Summary
When the botanist Caspar Reinwardt visited the Moluccan Islands in 1821, he made observations about the incredible biodiversity of these islands, and noted his surprise about an object that some of the local regents. We have little insight into how interactions between the colonial state, established in the early nineteenth century, and local rulers in the Indonesian archipelago were shaped by such already existing diplomatic cultures This lack of interest in the continuities between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries is part of a broader phenomenon in research about Dutch imperial history, which is that the periods of the voc and the colonial state are rarely studied in unity. This article argues that it is fruitful to look at the transition from the trading company to the colonial state and that this will enrich our understanding how colonial diplomatic cultures came about It will do so by analyzing how colonial officials in the early nineteenth century made use of regulations and rituals that were produced by the voc to reestablish its relations with local regents. It will explain that this relationship was determined by formal instructions, but that it was shaped by all kinds of rituals, such as the exchange of gifts, which were taken over from the voc
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