Page 15 - Export Porcelain and Globakization- GOOD READ

arrangements with the various Muslim Sultanates on Java, Sumatra and Sulawesi, and
on the Indian east and west coast. In addition, they had to share the trading posts
along the spice, textile and porcelain routes with other traders from China, India,
Persia, the Ottoman Empire, Siam, Portugal and England. Surat in India, Jambi on
Sumatra, Banten on Java, Patani at the Malayan Peninsula and Makassar on Sulawesi
are fascinating examples of cosmopolitan entrepots for all kinds of Asian luxury
goods where mainly Muslim rulers have created an open attitude and atmosphere. It
took approximately 60 years until the Dutch had pushed out the Portuguese
competition from most of the Asian trading entrepots (see table 1). At the end of the
Dutch-Portuguese war, Portugal lost Ambon, Malacca, Ceylon and Cochin at the
Indian Malabar coast to the forces of the VOC. Makassar - the entrepot for gold,
diamonds, ivory, sandalwood, pearls and spices had been captured in 1669 by the
Dutch. Banten, the center of pepper trade with a strong Chinese trading community
and with Dutch, English, Portuguese and Danish trading posts, provided exclusive
trading rights to the Dutch in 1682. By then, Batavia – the capital of the Dutch East
Indies – became the top inner Asian entrepot and the point of origin for the cargo of
the VOC fleet to Europe via Sri Lanka or India and Cape Town, to Amsterdam.
Table 1: East-East and East-West porcelain trading routes including ports of
origin, entrepots and destinations from 1550 – 1842

However, the VOC realized profits not only from the long-distance trade between
Asia and Europe but from the high and complementary demand in other parts of
maritime Asia, and from the arbitrage between product prices. In this sense the Dutch
East Asia Company copied an economic pattern the Portuguese had already started –
but they improved it and brought it to a scale never seen before. Jan Pieterszoon Coen
has described this in a letter to the VOC board: “Piece goods [means cotton] from
Gujarat we can barter for pepper and gold on the coast of Sumatra. [...] Sandalwood,
pepper and rials we can barter for Chinese goods and Chinese gold; we can extract
silver from Japan with Chinese goods; piece goods from Coromandel coast in
exchange for spices, other goods and gold from China; piece goods from Surat for
spices; other goods and rials from Arabia for spices and various other trifles – one
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