Indian Antiquary Vol 48

Author(s): Richard Carnac Temple, Devadatta Ramkrishna Bhandarkar
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 234

230 THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
DECEMBER, 2019 - Hinduised Buddhists, the Menangkabaus succumbed to Islam in the fourteenth century. There is nothing of prominent historical note in pre-Islamic days elsewhere in the land of the Malays.
Malay history now enters on its last phase, the struggle between the maritime nations of Western Europe for the spice trade and the power necessary to secure it. The Portuguese came first into Sumatra in 1508, when Malacca, on the Peninsula hard by, was the chief port for pepper. In 1511 Affonso d'Albuquerque occupied Malacca, and sent out a party of explorers into the Archipelago. This led to the discovery of the Philippines by one of them, Francisco Serrão, who after being wrecked, accidentally made his way to Mindanao in 1514. In the same year the Portuguese established themselves in Ternate. In 1519 the Spaniards sent an expedition under Ferdinand Magellan to claim the Moluccas and thus discovered Borneo. By 1529 the spheres of the rival powers were settled, the Spaniards getting the Philippines and the Portuguese governing the Moluccas from Ternate. In 1546 Francisco de Xavier, the Spanish missionary (1506-1552), appeared on the scene, and the subsequent attempts to forcibly Christianise the people led to a bitter animosity against the Portuguese, who thus contributed to their own ultimate downfall. Finally, from 1530 to 1640 Portugal and Spain were united under the latter.
Meanwhile, the French pirates from Dieppe between 1527-1539 and English competitors under Drake (1579), Lancaster (1591), and Middleton (1604) began to dispute the trade with Portugal and Spain, and in 1595 the Dutch arrived, partly to revenge themselves on the Spanish for their misdeeds in the Netherlands, and partly to break the Spanish-Portuguese monopoly in the spice trade and to "corner" pepper. In 1602 the Dutch East India Company was formed, and by 1604 it was already stronger than the Portuguese on the seas, enabling its representatives to force the Portuguese to an armistioe in 1808. In 1609 Pieter Both was the first Governor-General with his capital at Jákatra (1611), which was named Batavia in 1619.
In 1600 the English East India Company arose, and the acute rivalry thus created with the Dutch purported to end in the Treaty of Defence (1620) by which the Dutoh and English Companies atranged to co-operate. This arrangement'was never properly kept, and the Dutch" massacred " the English at Amboyna in 1623, an act which roused ill-feeling for a long while and was not redressed till 1654 under Oliver Cromwell. The Treaty lapsed in 1637, and thereafter for various reasons Dutch power steadily increased, until the English retired from all points, except Benkulen in Sumatra, in 1684.
The Dutch East India Company was now completely in the ascendant, and ruled the country solely in its own interests. Individual Dutch families became enormously rich at the cost of the Malay population, but in spite of rebellions, which their conduct caused, the Dutch became supreme rulers in the Archipelago by 1740. The gravest abuses, however, continued, until, because of them and of English competition in the spice trade from India, the Company was brought down in 1798, and superseded by a Council of the (Dutch) Asiatic Poseessions.
The Napoleonic wars induced the English in 1810 to conquer Java and much of the Archipelago, and Sir Stamford Raffles became administrator of the Dutoh Malay Possessions under the British East India Company (1811-1816), carrying out many much-needed reforms. In 1816 they were ceded back under the Treaty of Vienna (1814). This led to the formation of the British Settlements in the Straits : Singapore in 1819, Malacoa finally in 1824, and