Jan Pieterszoon Coen

Jan Pieterszoon Coen (born Jan. 8, 1587, Hoorn, Holland [now in the Netherlands]—died Sept. 21, 1629, Batavia, Dutch East Indies [now Jakarta, Indon.]) was the chief founder of the Dutch commercial empire in the East Indies. As the fourth governor-general of the Dutch East Indies, he established a chain of fortified posts in the Indonesian Archipelago, displacing the Portuguese and preventing penetration by the English. His dream of a vast maritime empire stretching from Japan to India never came to fruition, but his energetic administration established Dutch rule in Indonesia, where it remained for four centuries.

Career as merchant

Coen was raised in a strict Calvinist atmosphere. He received his merchant’s training from a Flemish company in Rome, and in 1607 he sailed to Indonesia with the fleet of Pieter Verhoeff as assistant merchant of the United East India Company (informally called the Dutch East India Company), which had received from the Dutch government exclusive shipping and trading rights in the area from the Cape of Good Hope east to South America. While on this journey, Verhoeff and 50 of his men were killed during negotiations with the chiefs of the Banda Islands. Upon his return to Holland in 1610, Coen submitted to the company’s directors an important report on trade possibilities in Southeast Asia. As a result of this report, he was again sent overseas, in 1612, with the rank of chief merchant. In August 1613, after a trip to the Spice Islands (i.e., the Moluccas), he was appointed head of the company’s post at Bantam, in Java, and, in November 1614, he also became director general of the company’s commerce in Asia.

As a merchant and Calvinist, Coen was convinced of the necessity of strict enforcement of contracts entered into with Asian rulers. He often aided Indonesian princes against their indigenous rivals or against other European powers and was given commercial monopolies for the company in return. In this way the Dutch, at the cost of heavy military and naval investment, gradually gained control of the area’s rich spice trade. Between 1614 and 1618, Coen secured a clove monopoly in the Moluccas and a nutmeg monopoly in the Banda Islands. When the sultan of Bantam resisted his attempts to control the pepper trade, Coen transferred his headquarters to Jacatra (present Jakarta) so as to be freer to pursue his aims. In October 1617 he received news of his appointment as governor-general of the Dutch East Indies.

In the meantime, relations had deteriorated with the English, who threatened the Dutch monopoly in the Indies. At the end of 1618 an English force, with a fleet commanded by Sir Thomas Dale, arrived at Jacatra and tried to establish a fort there. An inconclusive naval battle followed in which Coen had only a few ships at his disposal, and these loaded with precious merchandise. He gave orders to defend the Dutch fort as well as possible against the English and the Jacatrans and left for Amboina (Ambon, in the Moluccas) to reorganize his fleet.

Founding of Batavia

Upon his return to Jacatra at the end of May, he found the situation completely changed: in February the sultan of Bantam had suddenly overpowered his Jacatran vassal, had forced the English to withdraw, and had placed the Dutch fort under siege. Coen forced the Bantams out of Jacatra on May 30, burned the city, and on its ruins founded the Dutch city of Batavia. He later gave orders to pursue the English fleet, which had scattered over the archipelago. Coen now had available to him a fortified city in the western part of the archipelago, which soon became the centre of Dutch power in Asia.

Word came to him, however, in March 1620 that the Dutch and English trading companies had reached an agreement in London: each would let the other engage in trading activities in the existing settlements, without interference, and a joint fleet would be outfitted against common enemies. Coen, seeing part of his work destroyed, reacted by defining the company’s “Jacatra Kingdom” as far as the sea south of Java, making it impossible for the English to claim jurisdiction over any Javanese territory whatsoever.

In January 1621, after inviting the English to participate, Coen headed an all-Dutch fleet to the Banda Islands on a campaign of conquest, on the pretext of punishing the Bandanese for disregarding previous commercial agreements. His wholesale slaughter and enslavement of the natives shocked contemporaries as unusually severe and even drew a reprimand from the company’s directors. In 1622 he sent a large expedition to the coast of China but overestimated his strength; from this, however, a Dutch settlement was established on Formosa, resulting in the foundation of a firmer base for profitable trade with Japan and China.

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The Dutch East India Company now maintained settlements—mostly outside their own territory—from Japan to Surat on the west coast of India and, in addition, enjoyed trade relations with Arabia and Persia. Coen thought that the time had come to attract Dutch settlers. Batavia, he hoped, would become an eastern replica of Amsterdam, with colonists handling the inter-Asian trade along the coasts of southern and eastern Asia while the company took care of the long-haul traffic with Europe. In order to urge his plans on the directors, he left for the Netherlands in February 1623; at first he appeared to be successful, but his plans were cut short by the so-called Amboina massacre. Shortly after his departure from Batavia, a few Englishmen in Amboina, suspected of complicity in a plot to take over the Dutch settlement, were questioned, tortured, and sentenced to death by the Dutch factors. This was considered murder in England, and Coen was held morally responsible. Since, in Europe, the English and the Dutch were on friendly terms, Coen was temporarily forbidden to return to the Indies. He went back for the last time in 1627, traveling incognito and accompanied by his wife and a party of other women of good social standing, in an effort to attract Dutch settlers. But Coen’s third visit to Asia had less significance than his previous ones; after many years in the tropics he had apparently lost his old energy. Moreover, his hopes for attracting free Dutch settlers were undermined by the directors’ decision not to grant the colonists free-trade privileges. And, in addition, in Batavia Coen had his hands full with the attacks by the sultan of Mataram, the most powerful ruler on Java. In August 1628 and again in August 1629 a Javanese army besieged the city. During this last siege Coen died suddenly, probably of dysentery.