Trade in the Straits of Malacca in 1785: a memorandum. . Harrison
Brian Harrison translated and published in 1953 a memorandum dated 15 June 1785, written by P.G. de Bruijn, Governor of Malacca, to the Governor-General and Council of the Netherlands Indies at Batavia. Set in the immediate aftermath of the Dutch military expulsion of the Bugis from Riau in 1784, the document argues that Malacca must urgently replicate the lucrative trade that had previously centred on Riau before the Bugis could re-establish a rival exchange port elsewhere in the region.
Summary
De Bruijn’s memorandum is a detailed commercial proposal structured around the five principal commodities that had made Riau a thriving entrepôt: opium, tin, pepper, piece-goods, and China goods. He provides specific price data for each article as traded at Riau, then projects the profits Malacca could capture by replicating those transactions. For opium, he estimates 1,200 chests annually at a profit of 50 Spanish dollars per chest, yielding 60,000 Spanish dollars; for tin from Bangka, 20,000 piculs at 3 Spanish dollars per picul, also yielding 60,000 Spanish dollars; and for pepper, 5,000 piculs at 2–3 Spanish dollars per picul, yielding 10,000–15,000 Spanish dollars (pp. 58–60). He additionally proposes liberalising the cloth trade for Malacca residents, which he estimates would generate 300,000 Rix-dollars in imports and 30,000 Rix-dollars in customs revenue alone (p. 60).
The memorandum is underpinned by a strategic urgency: De Bruijn warns that the Bugis, though expelled from Riau, retained much of their wealth and would inevitably create a “new Riouw” at Sukadana, Pahang, or elsewhere, drawing trade away from Trengganu and Kedah and rendering the enormous military expenditure of 1784 a total loss (p. 56). He anticipates and systematically rebuts five likely objections from Batavia—smuggling to Java, disruption of Company cloth procurement in India, competition with Batavia’s tin and pepper supplies, and reduced junk traffic to the capital—arguing in each case that the goods would simply flow to uncontrolled ports rather than to Company establishments (pp. 61–62). His final request is for immediate authority to implement all measures simultaneously, plus an additional 50,000 Spanish dollars in working capital beyond the 75,000 already requested for normal operations (p. 62).
Key Findings
- Riau’s pre-1784 trade in opium, tin, pepper, piece-goods, and China goods generated substantial profits for the Bugis, who had become “so rich and powerful” that Raja Haji plotted to capture Malacca itself (p. 56).
- Tin from Bangka was traded at Riau at 13–14 Spanish dollars per picul (purchase) and 15–16 (sale), with annual volumes of 20,000–30,000 piculs; the Company’s exclusive agreements with Rembau, Selangor, and Perak fixed prices at 32–38 Spanish dollars per bahar but were routinely circumvented by smugglers (pp. 57, 59).
- De Bruijn projects total annual revenues and profits of at least 300,000 Rix-dollars for Malacca if all proposed measures were adopted, a figure he presents as recoverable within a short timeframe (p. 61).
- The Company’s cloth trade on the Malayan coast was structurally uncompetitive because private English traders had access to weaving villages and could supply cheaper, more fashionable goods than the Company’s standardised Indian imports (p. 60).
- De Bruijn explicitly requests that no opium or piece-goods be shipped to Batavia, the East Coast of Java, or Cheribon, acknowledging the sensitivity of these restrictions while arguing that surveillance at a Company post would be more effective than at uncontrolled ports (pp. 58, 61).
- The memorandum was composed in the Castle at Malacca and is preserved in the Algemeen Rijksarchief, The Hague, in the VOC correspondence series (V.O.C. 3594, Overgekomende Brieven, 1786, Vol. XXV) (p. 62, footnote).
Conclusion
De Bruijn’s definitive historical takeaway is that the 1784 military victory at Riau was commercially meaningless unless Malacca immediately absorbed the trade that had made Riau prosperous; without such a transfer, the Bugis would simply relocate their commercial infrastructure, and the Company would have spent enormous sums to gain a fortress with no economic return. The memorandum thus represents a rare instance of a VOC colonial governor articulating a coherent, quantified commercial strategy for a peripheral post, grounded in the specific price structures and supply chains of the Straits of Malacca in the 1780s.
Context
- The document is held in the Algemeen Rijksarchief (National Archives of the Netherlands), The Hague, in the VOC series, and was published with the permission of the Director of the Rijksarchief (p. 62, footnote).
- Harrison’s editorial note situates the memorandum within the broader geopolitical shift of the 1780s, noting that it was the English—not the Bugis—who founded Penang as a new trading centre shortly after the memorandum was written (p. 56).