Page 166 - Dutch Asiatic Shipping Volume 1

shipping, after 1750 this rule was obviously evaded, until in the end it was officially abolished. T o begin with they may have been mainly so-called 'Moorish' sailors, recruited in India. In any case the AMSTERDAM (3437) in 1749 on her voyage to Asia appears to have had five Ceylonese on board, who must first have come to the Republic on a homeward ship. But in 1756 the Hoge Regering in Batavia decided in view of 'the more and more increasing shortage ... of ... sailors' to engage on ships in the intra-Asiatic trade a number of Chinese per ship, and in 1778 it proceeded to place a few Javanese on each ship as well. After the Fourth Anglo-Dutch War such enlistment was apparently also practised on the homeward ships, and thus indirectly on the outward voyage.1 7 From a mutiny on the homeward bound ship SLOT T E R HOGE (8091) which broke out in 1783 en route from Batavia to the Cape and was put down, we know that among the ship's crew were a number of Chinese, Javanese and Balinese, apart from the twenty Indonesian slaves who were suspected of mutiny and hence thrown overboard. On the return voyage of the JAVA (8086) in the same year another mutiny took place, again between Batavia and the Cape, which took a very bloody course: five Europeans were killed, among them the vice-admiral of the fleet, the first mate and the clergyman's wife. Among the 143 men on board there were no fewer then 25 Javanese and 15 Chinese sailors, the Chinese accused of the mutiny all being put overboard.1 8 In 1791 the hiring of non-Europeans was at last expressly permitted, in spite of the seemingly bad experiences of 1783: in Batavia and Canton Chinese sailors could be recruited, and in Batavia Javanese as well. There was a preference for Chinese sailors because they worked much harder, whereas the Javanese seem to have been needed 'for the furling and unfurling of the sails which the Chinese are reluctant to do'. The extent to which in those final years the Asian sailors played a part in VOC shipping to and from Asia is clear from other data: in 1792 among the 1405 sailors at the Cape there were '579 European, 233 Moorish, 101 Javanese and 504 Chinese men'.1 9
This engagement of natives in Asia so late in the eighteenth century does not in itself prove convincingly the shortage of sailors and soldiers on the Republic's labour market. Mortality among Europeans was high, and wartime conditions between 1780 and 1784 had for Asia long lasting consequences. But data on the origins of VOC personnel on recruitment in the Republic seem to confirm the general scarcity in this recruitment.
Data on places of origin of sailors and soldiers show that the VOC had not only increa- singly to appeal to foreign labour, but also that these foreigners came more and more from the German interior - and were therefore men who most likely had little or no experience of sailing before they were recruited as sailors by the VOC. It is known that in general many foreigners came to the Republic in the seventeenth and eighteenth cen- turies, often as migratory and seasonal labour. The higher wage levels were attractive and the overseas links established by trade and shipping facilitated the import of unemployed men from foreign ports. Already in the seventeenth century many experienced seamen from Scandinavia,North Germany and the Baltic ports enlisted with Dutch ships - some of them ending up on V O C ships too.2 0 When however in the course of the seven-
17 Ceylonese on the AMSTERDAM cf. Marsden, The wreck of the Amsterdam, 268. Other data: Bruijn, 'Personeelsbehoefte', 229-231 with references (230 note 28) to evidence in Van der Chijs. Nederlandsch-lndische Plakaatboek. Also Jörg, Porcelain, 334, n. 11.
18 Bruijn & V an Eyck van Heslinga, Muiterij, 128-147.
19 See note 19. Figures on native VOC personnel in Lequin, Het personeel, II, 415.
20 Cf. Hart, Geschrift en getal, 193-208 and Steenstrup, 'Scandinavians in Asian waters'.