The growth of the country trade to the Straits of Malacca, 1760–1777
Dianne Lewis’s 1970 article examines how the Dutch East India Company (V.O.C.) failed to prevent the rapid expansion of the European Country Trade through the Straits of Malacca between 1760 and 1777, despite holding treaty rights that nominally excluded foreign shipping from the ports of the Malay states. Lewis argues that the Company’s deliberate policy of non-interference—driven by declining resources and the demonstrated futility of military enforcement—paradoxically served its commercial interests by allowing the Bugis entrepots to flourish, which in turn compelled the Malay states to maintain cooperative ties with Malacca.
Summary
The article addresses a central paradox of Dutch colonial administration in the Straits: the V.O.C. possessed treaties that granted it exclusive rights to the tin, gold, and pepper trades of the Johore territories and prohibited foreign shipping from entering the ports of Selangor, Linggi, Rembau, and other states, yet by the 1770s these provisions were being flouted on a massive scale. Lewis traces how Riau, under the Bugis regent Daing Kemboja, became the principal entrepôt for the growing stream of English private merchants trading between India and China, drawing on supplies of tin from Bangka and Ujong Salang, pepper from Indragiri and Jambi, and smuggled spices from the Moluccas. The Bugis trade network, supplemented by Palembang merchants, Chinese junks, and vessels from Java, Borneo, and the eastern islands, created a commercial ecosystem that the Dutch were structurally unable to disrupt.
Lewis demonstrates that the VOC’s inability to enforce its treaties was not merely a matter of insufficient naval power but reflected a calculated strategic choice. After the costly and inconclusive Bugis war of the 1750s, the Directors at Batavia withdrew from active intervention in local affairs, withdrawing outposts at Linggi and Pulau Gontong and contemplating the disbandment of the Perak factory. The Company’s interests were best served by the status quo: the tin trade from Perak continued to thrive, Malacca’s customs revenues grew substantially as more vessels passed through the Straits, and the Bugis threat to Malay independence actually reinforced Perak’s and Siak’s dependence on the Dutch as a counterweight. The article thus reframes Dutch “passivity” not as weakness but as a rational adaptation to the realities of an increasingly integrated regional trade network.
The narrative is informed throughout by V.O.C. correspondence from the Algemeen Rijksarchief in The Hague, supplemented by the Corpus Diplomaticum, the Plakaatboek, and the Malacca Boomboeken (trade registers). Lewis also draws on the Straits Settlement Records for Francis Light’s 1769 account of Riau, and on Bugis chronicles for the political history of the Johore-Selangor split.
Key Findings
- Private English merchant vessels calling at Malacca rose from no more than ten per year in the first half of the eighteenth century to 26 in 1769, 50 in 1774, and 75 in 1776 (p. 5, n. 28).
- In 1765, approximately 80 Bugis baloes arrived at Riau carrying smuggled spices from the Moluccas, which were sold to Malay and European merchants well below V.O.C. prices and bartered for cloth and opium (p. 3).
- The Batavian government attempted to curb Javanese trade to Riau in 1761 by imposing double tolls on goods from the Straits, renewed a complete prohibition in March 1774, but abandoned it by January 1775 after reports of declining toll revenue at Samarang (pp. 4–5).
- Pepper at Trengganu sold at 12 Spanish dollars per pikul in 1762, against a V.O.C. authorised maximum of 7.39 Rix dollars per pikul, illustrating the price gap that drove foreign merchants to bypass Malacca (p. 9).
- Governor Jan Crans’s 1777 report described Selangor as “most injurious to the Company, on account of the frequent trade there of the English in particular, who mostly take tin from there,” and noted the growing antagonism between Daing Kemboja and the Sultan of Selangor as a factor the Company could exploit after Kemboja’s death (pp. 7, 16).
- The Bugis sack of Kedah in 1770, ostensibly over a debt of twelve bahara of dollars, effectively destroyed the port’s commercial recovery and forced the Kedah ruler to seek external allies, ultimately leading to the cession of Penang in 1786 (pp. 8–9, n. 51).
Conclusion
Lewis concludes that the V.O.C.’s policy of non-interference after 1760 was a rational response to its diminished capacity and the structural realities of the regional trade. By allowing the Bugis entrepots to prosper, the Dutch inadvertently created conditions under which the Malay states—particularly Perak and Siak—remained dependent on Malacca for an alternative market and a counterbalance to Bugis power. The Company’s most pressing commercial interests were thus safeguarded not by treaties or guardships but by the competitive dynamics of the Straits themselves. By 1777, however, the Batavian government had signalled that this tolerance had limits: if the Bugis position threatened the Company’s wider Archipelago trade, the policy of neutrality would be abandoned.
Context
- The article draws primarily on V.O.C. correspondence held at the Algemeen Rijksarchief, The Hague (Kol. Arch. series, Generale Missiven, Batavia to Malacca dispatches), the Malacca Boomboeken, and the Straits Settlement Records (Francis Light papers).
- This study forms part of Lewis’s broader doctoral research on the V.O.C. in the Straits of Malacca (1700–1784) and contributes to the historiography of the Country Trade by situating the growth of English private commerce within the specific political economy of the Malay states rather than treating it as a purely Anglo-Indian or Anglo-Chinese phenomenon.