Page 47 - Dutch Ships in Tropical Waters
P. 47
For other regions, like the important pepper ports on Sumatra (areas , and ), the in- crease in shipping is clearly visible during the VOC’s development phase. Shipping to other destinations like the Arabian Sea and the Far East emerged later in the process, but was already in some decline in the last -year period under consideration. The growing importance of the Bay of Bengal (VOC's "vette weide" – the plentiful pastures) is clearly shown, by the numbers of visits and volume amounting to nearly % of total VOC shipping in Asia during the last - year period. Besides developments instigated by trade, other aspects such as a military emphasis on a region are also reflected in Tables . and .. Changes in the arrivals and volumes of shipping to the Strait of Malacca (area ) are indicators of changes in the nature of the shipping. When the VOC intensified its attempts to ban Portuguese shipping through this important link be- tween the Far East and the Indian Ocean around , they sent smaller, well-armed yachts to this region. Table . shows the frequency of arrivals in this region increasing rapidly, but there is a decline in the average tonnage of the ships to around last in the s and the s, and even in the absolute shipping volume arriving in the area (as can be seen in Table .) After , when the situation had stabilised, the average tonnage again increased to values around last in the period between -. Although the general issues can be clearly seen, a more detailed analysis will reveal much more of the way the VOC shipping in Asia developed during the first half of the th century. The quantitative part of this detailed analyses will be given in part two. Table .: Development of VOC intra-Asian shipping to in arrivals at main regions over -year intervals. Table .: Development of VOC intra-Asian shipping to in volume (in last) at main regions over -year intervals. The Dutch expansion in Asia up to
