What a glorious thing it would have been, if when the Dutch and English had appeared in America and the Indies, they had come there too as Protestants and Reformed Christians! If they had protested against the cruelties and aggressions of the popish Spaniards and Portuguese—if they had reformed all their rapacious practices, and remedied their abuses—if they had, indeed, shown that they were really gone back to the genuine faith of Christ, and were come to seek honest benefit by honest means; to exchange knowledge for wealth, and to make the Pagans and the Mahomedans feel that there was in Christianity a powder to refine, to elevate, and to bless, as mighty as they professed. But that day was not arrived, and has only partially arrived yet, and that through the missions. For anything that could be discovered by their practice, the Dutch and English might be the papists, and the Spaniards and Portuguese the reformed. From their deeds the natives, wherever they came, could only imagine their religion to be something especially odious and mischievous.
The Dutch having thrown off the Spanish yoke at home, applied themselves diligently to commerce; and they would have continued to purchase from the Spaniards and Portuguese, the commodities of the eastern and western worlds, to supply their customers therewith;—but Philip II., smarting under the loss of the Netherlands, and being master of both Spain and Portugal, commanded his subjects to hold no dealings with his hated enemies. Passion and resentment are the worst of counsellors, and Philip soon found it so in this instance. The Dutch, denied Indian goods in Portugal, determined to seek them in India itself. They had renounced papal as well as Spanish authority, and had no scruples about interfering with the pope’s grant of the east to the Portuguese. They soon, therefore, made their appearance in the Indian seas, and found the Portuguese so thoroughly detested there, that nothing was easier for them than to avenge past injuries and prohibitions, by supplanting them. It was only in 1594 that Philip issued his impolitic order that they should not be permitted to receive goods from Portuguese ports,—and by 1602, under their admirals, Houtman and Van Neck, they had visited Madagascar, the Maldives, and the isles of Sunda; they had entered into alliance with the principal sovereigns of Java; established factories in several of the Moluccas, and brought home abundance of pepper, spices, and other articles. Numerous trading companies were organized; and these all united by the policy of the States-general into the one memorable one of the East India Company, the model and original of all the numerous ones that sprung up, and especially of the far greater one under the same name, of England. The natives of India had now a similar spectacle exhibited to their eyes, which South America had about the same period—the Christian nations, boasting of their superior refinement and of their heavenly religion, fighting like furies, and intriguing like fiends one against another. But the Portuguese were now become debauched and effeminate, and were unsupported by fresh reinforcements from Europe; the Dutch were spurred on by all the ardour of united revenge, ambition, and the love of gain. The time was now come when the Portuguese were to expiate their perfidy, their robberies, and their cruelties; and the prediction of one of the kings of Persia was fulfilled, who, asking an ambassador just arrived at Goa, how many governors his master had beheaded since the establishment of his power in India, received for answer—“none at all.” “So much the worse,” replied the monarch, “his authority cannot be of long duration in a country where so many acts of outrage and barbarity are committed.”
The Dutch commenced their career in India with an air of moderation that formed a politic contrast with the arrogance and pretension of the Portuguese. They fought desperately with the Portuguese, but they kept a shrewd eye all the time on mercantile opportunities. They sought to win their way by duplicity, rather than by decisive daring. By these means they gradually rooted their rivals out of their most important stations in Java, the Moluccas, in Ceylon, on the Coromandel and Malabar coasts. Their most lucrative posts were at Java, Bantam, and the Moluccas. No sooner had they gained an ascendency than they assumed a haughtiness of demeanor that even surpassed that of the Portuguese; and in perfidy and cruelty, they became more than rivals. All historians have remarked with astonishment the fearful metamorphosis which the Dutch underwent in their colonies. At home they were moderate, kindly, and liberal; abroad their rapacity, perfidy, and infamous cruelty made them resemble devils rather than men. Whether contending with their European rivals, or domineering over the natives, they showed no mercy and no remorse. Their celebrated massacre of the English in Amboyna has rung through all lands and languages, and is become one of the familiar horrors of history. There is, in fact, no narrative of tortures in the annals of the Inquisition, that can surpass those which the Dutch practised on their English rivals on this occasion. The English had five factories in the island of Amboyna, and the Dutch determined to crush them. For this purpose they got up a charge of conspiracy against the English—collected them from all their stations into the town of Amboyna, and after forcing confessions of guilt from them by the most unheard-of torture, put them to death. The following specimen of the agonies which Protestants could inflict on their fellow-protestants, may give an idea of what sort of increase of religion the Reformation had brought these men.
“Then John Clark, who also came from Hitto, was fetched in, and soon after was heard to roar out amain. They tortured him with fire and water for two hours. The manner of his torture, as also that of Johnson’s and Thompson’s, was as followeth:—
“They first hoisted him by the hands against a large door, and there made him fast to two staples of iron, fixed on both sides at the top of the door-posts, extending his arms as wide as they could stretch them. When thus fastened, his feet, being two feet from the ground, were extended in the same manner, and made fast to the bottom of the door-trees on each side. Then they tied a cloth about the lower part of his face and neck, so close that scarce any water could pass by. That done, they poured water gently upon his head till the cloth was full up to his mouth and nostrils, and somewhat higher, so that he could not draw breath but he must swallow some, which being continually poured in softly, forced all his inward parts to come out at his nose, ears, and eyes, and often, as it were choking him, at length took away his breath, and caused him to faint away. Then they took him down in a hurry to vomit up the water, and when a little revived, tied him up again, using him as before. In this manner they served him three or four times, till his belly was as big as a tun, his cheeks like bladders, his eyes strutting out beyond his forehead; yet all this he bore without confessing anything, insomuch that the fiscal and tormentors reviled him, saying he was a devil, and no man; or was enchanted, that he could bear so much. Hereupon they cut off his hair very short, supposing he had some witchcraft hidden therein. Now they hoisted him up again, and burnt him with lighted candles under his elbows and arm-pits, in the palms of his hands, and at the bottoms of his feet, even till the fat dropped out on the candles. Then they applied fresh ones; and under his arms they burnt so deep that his inwards might be seen.”—History of Voyages to the East and West Indies.
And all this that they might rule sole kings over the delicious islands of cloves and cinnamon, nutmegs and mace, camphor and coffee, areca and betel, gold, pearls and precious stones; every one of them more precious in the eyes of the thorough trader, whether he call himself Christian or Infidel, than the blood of his brother, or the soul of himself.
To secure the dominion of these, they compelled the princes of Ternate and Tidore to consent to the rooting up of all the clove and nutmeg trees in the islands not entirely under the jealous safeguard of Dutch keeping. For this they utterly exterminated the inhabitants of Banda, because they would not submit passively to their yoke. Their lands were divided amongst the white people, who got slaves from other islands to cultivate them. For this Malacca was besieged, its territory ravaged, and its navigation interrupted by pirates; Negapatan was twice attacked; Cochin was engaged in resisting the kings of Calicut and Travancore; and Ceylon and Java have been made scenes of perpetual disturbances. These notorious dissensions have been followed by as odious oppressions, which have been practised at Japan, China, Cambodia, Arracan, on the banks of the Ganges, at Achen, Coromandel, Surat, in Persia, at Bassora, Mocha, and other places. For this they encouraged and established in Celebes a system of kidnapping the inhabitants for slaves which converted that island into a perfect hell.
Sir Stamford Raffles has given us a most appalling picture of this system, and the miseries it produced, in an official document in his History of Java. In this document it is stated that whole villages were made slaves of; that there was scarcely a state or a family that had not its assortment of these unhappy beings, who had been reduced to this condition by the most cruel and insidious means. There are few things in history more darkly horrible than this kidnapping system of the Celebes. The Vehme Gerichte, or secret tribunals of Germany, were nothing to the secret prisons of the Celebes. In Makásar, and other places, these secret prisons existed; and such was the dreadful combination of power, influence, and avarice, in this trade,—for the magistrates and princes were amongst the chief dealers in it,—that no possibility of exposing or destroying these dens of thieves existed. Any man, woman, or child might be suddenly pounced on, and immured in one of these secret prisons till there were sufficient victims to send to the slave-ships. They were then marched out chained at midnight, and put on board. Any one may imagine the terror and insecurity which such a state of things occasioned. Everybody knew that such invisible dungeons of despair were in the midst of them, and that any moment he might be dragged into one of them, beyond the power or any hope of rescue.
“A rich citizen,” says this singular official report, “who has a sufficient number of emissaries called bondsmen, carries on this trade of kidnapping much more easily than a poor one does. The latter is often obliged to go himself to the Kámpong Búgis, or elsewhere, to take a view of the stolen victim, and to carry him home; while the former quietly smokes his pipe, sure that his thieves will in every corner find out for him sufficient game without his exerting himself at all. The thief, the interpreter, the seller, are all active in his service, because they are paid by him. In some cases the purchaser unites himself with the seller to deceive the interpreter, while in others the interpreter agrees with the thief and pretended seller to put the victim into the hands of the purchaser. What precautions, what scrutiny can avail, when we reflect, that the profound secrecy of the prisons is equalled only by the strict precautions in carrying the person on board?”
The man-stealers were trained for the purpose. They marked out their victims, watched for days, and often weeks, endeavoured to associate themselves with them, and beguile them into some place where they might be easily secured. Or they pounced on them in the fields or woods. They roved about in gangs during the night, and in solitary places. None dare cry for help, or they were stabbed instantly, even though it were before the door of the purchaser.