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Some old private letters from the Cape, Batavia and Malacca, 1778–1788. {Comp} P.C. Hoynck van Papendrecht

From Munshipedia, the MBRAS digital historical encyclopedia

Some old private letters from the Cape, Batavia and Malacca, 1778–1788. {Comp} P.C. Hoynck van Papendrecht

P.C. Hoynck van Papendrecht published in 1924 a translation of private letters written by his distant kinsman Reynier Bernardus Hoynck van Papendrecht between 1778 and 1788, covering the latter’s service with the Dutch East India Company at the Cape of Good Hope, Batavia, and Malacca. The correspondence offers a first-hand account of the Company’s administrative decline, the brutal realities of tropical service, and the military conflict with Raja Haji at Malacca in 1784.

Summary

Reynier Bernardus Hoynck van Papendrecht (1753–1787/88) was a Dutch military officer who, after the death of his father in 1774, entered the service of the Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie as an under-merchant. His letters, written primarily in French with some Dutch passages, were preserved by his nephew Cornelis Paulus Hoynck van Papendrecht, a lawyer at Amsterdam, and eventually passed to the author’s family. The editor, who had spent nearly twenty years in Singapore from 1880, first learned of his kinsman through Sir W. E. Maxwell’s 1890s article on Raja Haji’s war with the Dutch, and fulfilled a long-standing promise to the Society by translating the letters (p. 9).

The letters trace Reynier Bernardus’s journey from the Cape in March 1778 through Batavia in June of that year to Malacca in October 1781. At the Cape he describes the Governor’s hospitality and the social life of the European community, while at Batavia he records the lethal climate that killed the majority of European arrivals within weeks, the extraordinary luxury of the Company’s senior servants, and the nepotistic system by which positions were distributed to relations of the “Honourables” of the High Regency (pp. 11–15). By 1780 he had married Maria Paulina Smit, daughter of the Common Councillor and President of the Court of Justice at Batavia, and by 1781 he had secured the lucrative post of Sabandhaar (Collector of Domain Dues and Licence-Master) at Malacca, where he accumulated considerable personal wealth through trade and shipping (pp. 15–18).

The most historically significant content concerns the 1784 war with Raja Haji. Reynier Bernardus served as one of two delegates of the Malacca Council commanding the expedition against Rhio, where the Company’s fleet was defeated and the vessel Malax Welvaart blew up with all hands. He then helped defend Malacca against Raja Haji’s subsequent siege, which was lifted only after the death of the Malay prince, whom the natives regarded as a kramat ideoep (living saint) (pp. 21–22). The letters also reveal the Company’s dire financial state: paper money in circulation at Batavia, ships returning from Bengal and the Coromandel Coast in ballast, and the Malacca Council lending money to the Company at two per cent per month (p. 19).

Key Findings

  • Of 32 soldiers on board the vessel arriving at Batavia in June 1778, only four were alive six weeks later; two out of three slaves from Macassar, Timor, Ternate, and the West Coast of Sumatra died before acclimatisation (pp. 13, 17).
  • The two Administrator posts at Onrust island yielded 100 sacks of smuggled goods per year, each sack bringing a profit of 1,000 ecus, with a recognised bribe of 10 sacks paid annually to the water-fiscal (p. 14).
  • The Sabandhaar at Malacca held concurrent offices including Councillor of Police, Presiding Member of the Board of Justice, first member of the College of Orphan-Masters, and President of the Hospital, and enjoyed more privileges than a member of the Indian Council at Batavia (pp. 18, 20).
  • The expedition against Rhio in 1784 consisted of two ships and four lesser craft, chiefly manned by Javanese and Chinese; the Malax Welvaart blew up with all hands, and the goerab De Snelheid was riddled and condemned beyond repair (pp. 21–22).
  • The Company’s financial distress is evidenced by paper money in use at Batavia, ships returning from Bengal and the Coast in ballast, and the Malacca Council lending to the Company at 2% per month (p. 19).
  • Reynier Bernardus held over sixty slaves, a country-place, and the property Tanjong Kling comprising four villages at Malacca, and let two vessels to the Company for 1,000 guilders (2,500 rixdollars) per month each for two and a half years during the war (pp. 18, 20–21).

Conclusion

The letters constitute a rare private witness to the final decades of Dutch colonial administration in the Straits, documenting both the systemic corruption and financial collapse of the Company and the personal ambition of a young European who navigated its patronage networks to secure a position of considerable wealth and authority at Malacca. Reynier Bernardus’s own claim that his revenues were “not obtained to the detriment of the Company” (p. 20) is, as the editor notes, itself an admission that this was not the general rule. His death at thirty-four, in the latter part of 1787, cut short what had become a comfortable and prosperous existence.

Context

  • The letters were first drawn to scholarly attention through Sir W. E. Maxwell’s article on Raja Haji’s war in the JMBRAS (Journal No. 22), which relied on Netscher’s Twee Belegeringen; the editor notes that Maxwell had wished to see the war’s records supplemented by local traditions, and that private letters written shortly after the events constitute stronger evidence than traditions passed through four or five generations (p. 9, n. 3).
  • The editor explicitly asks Society members to ascertain whether Reynier Bernardus’s grave still exists at Malacca and to communicate any remaining epitaph, indicating that the physical trace of this figure had already become uncertain by 1923 (p. 24).

References