Page 91 - Chinese and japanese porcelain silk and lacquer Canepa

requesting the help of the burgomaster and city council to establish a store of raw East
Fig. 2.2.1.1 Length of silk satin damask
China, Ming dynasty, sixteenth/early
seventeenth century
Dimensions: 64.1cm x 58.4cm
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Rogers Fund, 1909 (acc. no. 09.50.960)
Schiffart as having consisted of 1,200 bales of raw Chinese silk; chests filled with 295 Levinus Hulsius, Achte Schiffart. Kurze Beschreibung
/ was sich mit den Holländern und Seeländern / in
coloured damask, atlas (a type of polished silk), taffetas and silk; large amounts of gold den Ost Indien / die nechst verlauffene vier oder
fünff Jahre / als Anno 1599. 1600. 1601. 1602 und
thread or spun gold; cloth woven with gold thread; robes and bed canopies spun with 1603 zugetragen / wie sie sich etlich mal mit den
gold; silk bedcovers and bedspreads; and a ‘thousand other things, that are produced Portugesern und Hispaniern geschlagen / davon
etliche Schiff An. 1604. In Holland ancommen / und
in China’. From the total revenue generated at the auction of approximately was daerauff erfolght, Frankfurt, 1605. Mentioned in
295
Borschberg, 2002, p. 38.
3.5 million guilders, the silk alone yielded in excess of 2 million guilders.
296
297
296 According to Boxer, the sum was roughly equivalent
The ‘coloured damask’ may have been of a type similar to an extant length of silk to half of the VOC’s capital base and was more
than double than that of the EIC. Charles Ralph
satin damask with a stylized lotus pattern typical of the late Ming, dating to the Boxer, Portuguese Merchants and Missionaries
sixteenth or early seventeenth centuries, in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New in Feudal Japan, 1543–1640, London, 1986, pp.
14–15. Also mentioned in Borschberg, 2002,
York (Fig. 2.2.1.1). p. 35.
The successful auction of the raw silk, woven silk cloths and silk finished products 297 Mentioned in Ibid., p. 39.
298 Colenbrander, 2013, p. 15.
of the Santa Catarina, as Colenbrander has recently remarked, prompted the VOC to 299 J. G. van Dillen (ed.), Bronnen tot de geschiedenis
begin importing Chinese silk. In the council meeting of 26 November of that same van het bedrijfsleven en het gildewezen van
280
Amsterdam 1512–1672, The Hague, 1929, Vol. 1, nos.
year, it was heard that there were ‘a number of persons engaged in the silk trade here’ 1054 and 1055. Cited in Colenbrander, 2013, p. 27.
90 Silk, Porcelain and Lacquer
Indian silk. They intended to set up mills for the throwing of the silk, but wanted
299
to be sure that there was to be a supply of silk to last two years. In the council meeting
of 19 December, the large sum of 120,000 gilders was allocated for the purchase of
silk, enabling a great many poor people to earn their living thereby. 300 That same
month the burgomasters of Amsterdam gave a Portuguese-Jewish merchant named
Manoel Rodrigues Vega the lease of a house, free of charge, to install a silk factory, in
exchange of teaching this trade to the Dutch. Rodrigues Vega looked for innovative
301
opportunities to invest, not only by owning shares in individual voyages as well as
stock in new companies such as the Vereningde Amsterdamse Compagnie or United
Amsterdam Company and the VOC, but also by venturing into the silk industry. An
302
inventory taken in 1612 following the death of Matthiew de Praet demonstrates that
silk from China was used along other imported silks in the local silk industry. His silk
weaver’s workshop included 10 looms, a warpig mill and gumming frame, and that he
worked with Naples, Chinese and Vincenza silk, ‘orsoij’ silk, organsin silk, and tram
or weft silk.
303
English textual sources indicate that the Dutch were acquiring considerable
quantities of raw silk at Bantam as early as 1608. In December of that year, the
Englishman Gabriel Towerson, chief factor in Bantam, wrote a letter to the EIC
informing that the Dutch ship ‘called the Black Lion laden at Ternata with cloves and
mace, and a few nutmegs, besides 400 bales of raw silk she took in here at Bantam’. 304
In 1614, as mentioned in Chapter I, the States General issued a general
commission to the VOC for privateering against Portuguese and Spanish ships in Asia.
In a letter written by the English Captain Ralph Coppindall to Adam Denton at Patani
in December 1615, he states that ‘the little Jackatra took a Portugall junk laden
305
with ebony, and I think some Chinaman betwixt her and the great ship, for they have
sold great store of raw silks which came in this ship and have such store of made silks
that they sell very good damasks (twice as good as the Orancaya’s) for 2 and 2 ½ tayes
300 bid., p. 199, note 1.
I
301 Richard Ayoun and Haím Vidal Séphila, Los sefardíes per piece’. From a letter written in October 1615 by another Englishman, Richard
306
de ayer y de hoy. 71 retratos, Madrid, 2002 (first Wickham to Sir Tho. Smythe, we learn that the Dutch were also acquiring a variety of
published 1992), p. 175.
302 Herbert Bloom, The Economic Activities of the Jews silks by plundering Chinese junks. Wickham states that ‘The Hollanders go beyond
of Amsterdam in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth all, not only us but all strangers here of late, by reason of the great quantities of raw
Centuries, Williamsport, 1937, pp. 33–35. Mentioned
in Jessica Vance Roitman, The Same but Different? : silk, tafities, satins, velvets and China wares which they steal from the Chinese, having
Inter-cultural Trade and the Sephardim, 1595–1640,
Leiden and Boston, 2011, pp. 129–130, and 135–136. of late robbed many junks, whereby they sell at such rates that none that cometh
303 Colenbrander, 2013, pp. 28–29. truly by their goods can make profit here; besides their great employment which they
304 Frederick Charles Danvers and William Foster, have by reason of their Molluccos for all kind of provisions that they sell and turn all
Letters received by the East India Company from its
Servants in the East. Transcribed from the ‘Original into ready money for the same purpose, their stealing trade supplying them yearly
Correspondence’ series of the India Office records, when other fails’. Dutch plundering of Chinese junks that brought trade goods
307
London, 1896, Vol. I, pp. 4–5.
305 According to Richard Cocks the Jacatra was ‘a small and provisions to Manila continued in the following years. Four Chinese junks were
barque’ from Holland that arrived at Hirado in 1615,
which captured the Portuguese ship on the coast of captured during the period Manila Bay was blockaded by the newly joined fleet of
Japan and brought it to Hirado. Danvers and Foster, admiral Jan Dirksz Lam, between the winter of 1616 and the spring of 1617. In
308
1899, Vol. III, p. 254.
306 bid., p. 245. May of 1618, the VOC ship Oude Son captured one large and six small Chinese junks;
I
307 bid., p. 291. and in May of the following year, the Dutch captured three further large junks near
I
308 Dirk Abraham Sloos, De Nederlanders in de Manila Bay.
309
Philippijnsche wateren voor 1626 [The Dutch in
Philippine Waters before 1626], Amsterdam, 1898, The annual blockades of Manila and the privateering against Portuguese and
pp. 39–40. Mentioned in Cheng Wei-chung, War,
Trade and Piracy in the China Seas 1622–1683, Spanish ships, and Chinese junks, used by the VOC in an attempt to gain access to the
Leiden and Boston, 2013, p. 28. trade in Chinese silk by force, all failed. In 1620, the Gentlemen Seventeen advised
309 For more information on the Dutch plundering
activities, see Ibid., p. 29. Batavia to send two ships to Chincheo, to warn the Chinese of the Dutch blockade
Trade in Chinese Silk 91