The Second Dutch Expedition to the East Indies was an expedition that took place from 1598 to 1600, one of the Dutch forays into the East Indies spice trade that led to the establishment of the Dutch East India Company. It was led by Jacob Cornelius van Neck.
During the 16th century, the Portuguese dominated the spice trade, but after the first Dutch expedition to Indonesia under Cornelis de Houtman, the backers of that expedition decided that the time was ripe for further forays into the Indonesian spice market. The company behind the first expedition, the Far-distance Company, and the recently established New Company for Voyages to East India joined forces and between them managed to raise nearly 800,000 guilders, the most money that had ever been raised in the Netherlands for a private venture. [1]
In 1592 the cartographer Petrus Plancius published a series of charts showing, in exact detail, the route to the Indies, [2] which was the spark that instigated the first Dutch expedition to Indonesia. Plancius was interested in the new venture, and pored over the accounts of the first expedition in order to write a set of sailing directions for the expedition.
Admiral Jacob van Neck was chosen as the leader, with Vice-Admiral Wybrand van Warwyck and arctic explorer Jacob van Heemskerck as his lieutenants. [3] Also aboard was Willem Janszoon. [4] On May 1, 1598, the fleet sailed from Texel. [3]
The fleet was composed of eight vessels: the Mauritius and the Hollandia, which had sailed with the first fleet, as well as the Amsterdam, Zeelandia, Geldria, Utrecht, Vriesland and a smaller ship, the Overeyssel. [5] These last five were all named after Dutch provinces. [4]
The fleet made excellent time at first, rounding the Cape of Good Hope in only three months. [3] However, soon after reaching the Cape the fleet was hit by heavy storms, and was split into two parts. [3] Van Neck with three ships quickly recovered and landed on the East coast of Madagascar in order to replenish supplies, [3] while the other ships under Warwyck could not land on Madagascar due to the storm. [6]
After seven months of sailing in all, Van Neck and his three ships reached the trading city of Bantam on November 25. [6] The Bantamese received the Dutch eagerly, because they had recently fought with the Portuguese and destroyed three of their ships, so they hoped to gain protection from any vengeful Portuguese fleets by forging an alliance with Van Neck. [7] Within one month he had filled all three ships full of spices. [6]
The other ships, meanwhile, landed on the island of Do Cerne, which they renamed Mauritius in honor of Maurice of Nassau. [8] They left a rooster and seven hens on the island, and also planted many seeds, including some orange and lemon trees. [8] They then sailed for Bantam, which they reached on December 30, prompting a joyous New Year celebration on the part of Van Neck's men. [6]
Van Neck quickly filled one of the four ships brought by Warwyck with spice and then sailed for home with it and the other three that he had already filled. [8] He reached Amsterdam in July 1599, the journey having taken half as long as the de Houtman expedition. [9] The crew were paraded through the streets behind a troupe of trumpeters as all the bells in the city tolled, then given as much wine as they could drink, while Van Neck was presented with a golden beaker. [7] Van Neck brought back with him nearly one million pounds of pepper and cloves, as well as half a ship of nutmeg, mace, and cinnamon. [10]
Before he sailed for Amsterdam, Van Neck sent the remaining four ships east to the Spice Islands in order to obtain more spices. On their voyage they encountered no trouble except on the coast of Madura Island, where the king of Arissabaya, in revenge for an earlier Dutch attack, captured several sailors and extracted a ransom for them. [9] They reached Ambon Island in March 1599, but there were not enough cloves available, so it was decided that Warwyck would sail north, to Ternate, while Heemskerck would head for the Banda Islands. [11]
Warwyck reached Ternate without incident, and in celebration fired off so much ammunition that the very ground shook. [12] They were received well, primarily because the king of Ternate was at war with neighboring Tidore, and was happy to have military assistance. [13] Warwyck filled his ships with spices and then headed home, picking up some more pepper at Bantam before reaching Amsterdam in September 1600. [13]
Heemskerck, however, who reached Great Banda in mid-March, 1599, received a chilly welcome from the indigenous inhabitants, who were unhappy due to bad past experiences with the Portuguese, and because a nearby volcanoes had been active recently, foretelling evil. [13] He eventually succeeded in winning the compliance of the natives, and left behind twenty-two men to stockpile nutmeg so that future Dutch fleets would be able to purchase it without trouble. [13] He reached home in May 1600. [13]
The expedition was considered a tremendous success, netting a 400% profit for its backers. [14] [15]
Abel Janszoon Tasman was a Dutch seafarer and explorer, best known for his voyages of 1642 and 1644 in the service of the Dutch East India Company (VOC).
Cornelis de Houtman was a Dutch merchant seaman who commanded the first Dutch expedition to the East Indies. Although the voyage was difficult and yielded only a modest profit, Houtman showed that the Portuguese monopoly on the spice trade was vulnerable. A flurry of Dutch trading voyages followed, eventually leading to the displacement of the Portuguese and the establishment of a Dutch monopoly on spice trading in the East Indies.
Dirk Hartog was a 17th-century Dutch sailor and explorer. Dirk Hartog's expedition was the second European group to land in Australia and the first to leave behind an artefact to record his visit, the Hartog Plate. His name is sometimes alternatively spelled Dirck Hartog or Dierick Hartochszch. Ernest Giles referred to him as Theodoric Hartog. The Western Australian island Dirk Hartog Island is named after Hartog.
Jan Pieterszoon Coen was an officer of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) in the early 17th century, holding two terms as governor-general of the Dutch East Indies. He was the founder of Batavia, capital of the Dutch East Indies. Renowned for providing the impulse that set the VOC on the path to dominance in the Dutch East Indies, he was long considered a national hero in the Netherlands. Since the 19th century, his legacy has become controversial due to the brutal violence he employed in order to secure a trade monopoly on nutmeg, mace and clove. During the last stage of the Dutch conquest of the Banda Islands, Coen depopulated the islands to such a degree that of around 15,000 original residents, only 1,000 remained by the end, with the rest dead, exiled, or taken as slaves.
Duyfken, also in the form Duifje or spelled Duifken or Duijfken, was a small ship built in the Dutch Republic. She was a fast, lightly armed ship probably intended for shallow water, small valuable cargoes, bringing messages, sending provisions, or privateering. The tonnage of Duyfken has been given as 25-30 lasten.
Willem Janszoon, sometimes abbreviated to Willem Jansz., was a Dutch navigator and colonial governor. Janszoon served in the Dutch East Indies in the periods 1603–1611 and 1612–1616, including as governor of Fort Henricus on the island of Solor. During his voyage of 1605–1606, he became the first European known to have seen the coast of Australia.
Pieter Dirkszoon Keyser was a Dutch navigator and celestial cartographer who mapped several constellations on the southern celestial hemisphere.
Jan Huygen van Linschoten was a Dutch merchant, traveller and writer.
Francisco Serrão was a Portuguese explorer and a possible cousin of Ferdinand Magellan. His 1512 voyage was the first known European sailing east past Malacca through modern Indonesia and the East Indies. He became a confidant of Sultan Bayan Sirrullah, the ruler of Ternate, becoming his personal advisor. He remained in Ternate where he died around the same time Magellan died.
Jacob van Heemskerck was a Dutch explorer and naval admiral. He is generally known for his victory over the Spanish at the Battle of Gibraltar, where he ultimately lost his life.
Willem Janszoon captained the first recorded European landing on the Australian continent in 1606, sailing from Bantam, Java, in the Duyfken. As an employee of the Dutch East India Company, Janszoon had been instructed to explore the coast of New Guinea in search of economic opportunities. He had originally arrived in the Dutch East Indies from the Netherlands in 1598, and became an officer of the VOC on its establishment in 1602.
Thirteen ships of the Dutch East India Company and its pre-companies have been named Amsterdam.
Jacob Corneliszoon van Neck was a Dutch naval officer and explorer who led the second Dutch expedition to Indonesia from 1598 to 1599.
The First Dutch Expedition to the East Indies was an expedition that took place from 1595 to 1597. It was instrumental in opening up the Indonesian spice trade to the merchants that eventually formed the Dutch East India Company, and marked the end of the Portuguese Empire's dominance in the region.
António de Abreu was a 16th-century Portuguese navigator and naval officer. He participated under the command of Afonso de Albuquerque in the conquest of Ormus in 1507 and Malacca in 1511, where he got injured. Departing from Malacca in November 1511 with four ships, in an exploratory voyage to the 'Spice Islands' of Maluku, he led the first European expedition to reach Timor and the Banda Islands, in Indonesia, in 1512.
Sir Henry Middleton was a sea captain and adventurer. He negotiated with the sultan of Ternate and the sultan of Tidore, competed against Dutch and Portuguese interests in the East Indies but still managed to buy cloves. He had two brothers, John Middleton, the eldest who was captain of EIC galleon Hector and director of EIC. David Middleton was also a mariner working for EIC.
Simon de Cordes was a Dutch merchant and explorer who after the death of Admiral Jacques Mahu, became leader of an expedition with the goal to achieve the Indies, which was replaced for Chile, Peru and other kingdoms. The fleet's original mission was to sail along the west coast of South America, where they would sell their cargo for silver, gold or pearls and to head for Japan only if the first mission failed. In that case, they were supposed to obtain silver in Japan and to buy spices in the Moluccas, before heading back to Europe around Cape of Good Hope. Their goal was to sail through the Strait of Magellan to get to their destiny, which scared many sailors because of the harsh weather conditions. The first major expedition around South America was organized by a voorcompagnie, the Magelhaen Company. It organized two fleets of five and four ships with 750 sailors and soldiers to "devaluate the Spanish". It resulted in utter disaster, 80% of the men died during the journey and the investors made no profit. No full account of the voyage is in existence, but details can be gathered from an unofficial journal kept by Potgieter, a surgeon, letters from William Adams (pilot) and from the facts gleaned by Oliver Van Noort's squadron.
The Dutch conquest of the Banda Islands was a process of military conquest from 1609 to 1621 by the Dutch East India Company of the Banda Islands. The Dutch, having enforced a monopoly on the highly lucrative nutmeg production from the islands, were impatient with Bandanese resistance to Dutch demands that the Bandanese sell only to them. Negotiations collapsed after Bandanese village elders deceived and murdered the Dutch representative Pieter Willemsz. Verhoeff. Under the command of Jan Pieterszoon Coen the Dutch resorted to a forcible conquest of the islands, which became severely depopulated as a result of Coen’s massacres, forced deportations, and the resulting starvation and disease.
The invasion of the Spice Islands was a military invasion by British forces that took place between February and August 1810 on and around the Dutch owned Maluku Islands also known as the Spice Islands in the Dutch East Indies during the Napoleonic wars.
The Old Company was a pre-company of the Dutch Republic and originated from the Company of Verre and the New Company, from Amsterdam, in 1598. The directors were Dirck van Os, Jan Hermansz, Jan Janss Carel (Kaerel) and Geraerdt (Gerrit) Bicker. Directors with a smaller share of the investment were: Vincent van Bronckhorst, Symon Jansz Fortuyn, Geurt Dircxz, Cornelis van Campen, Jacob Thomasz Van den Dael, Elbert Simonsz Jonckheyn, Petrus Plancius, Syvert Sern, Jan Poppe, Geurt Dirckss and Pieter Hasselaer. The Old Company and the (New) Brabant Company would merge in 1601 and become the United Amsterdam Company.
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