In the second half of the 17th century, the international competition for the control of valuable commodities from Southeast Asia left only a few players.
Anthony Reid, a researcher on the history of Southeast Asia, in his book Charting the Shape of Early Modern Southeast Asia (1996) notes various interesting things that made the spice hunt to the eastern archipelago of the archipelago in the 15th century soared.
Around 1390, every year, cloves that enter Europe reach about 6 metric tons. While the nutmeg is about 1.5 metric tons. A century later there was a surge in capacity. Cloves jumped to 52 metric tons, while nutmeg 26 metric tons.
The records were obtained from Venetian traders who bought them in markets in Egypt and Beirut. It was Muslim traders who carried these commodities across the Indian Ocean. After entering the Red Sea, the commodity was carried through the Nile to the Mediterranean.
The record was of course only a small part of the Southeast Asian trade that flourished at that time. The 15th century was a time of increasing population and international trade. Not only to the Mediterranean, but also to its biggest market, China.
The second reign of the Ming Dynasty under the Yongle Emperor (1403-22) was a period that was instrumental in increasing the clove and pepper trade. The increasing supply of spices in the Chinese market at that time made the salaries of royal employees and Ming dynasty soldiers paid with pepper and agarwood.
Admiral Zheng He’s great voyage, whose historical records are scattered across the two Oceans, occurred during this time. Ironically, this great voyage was actually carried out at the time of the emergence of the Emperor’s policy to prohibit Chinese merchants from going to sea freely. The policy is called Haijin or no sea.
The prohibition is a prohibition to go to sea freely. Going to sea on one’s own initiative and expense is not permitted. As a consequence the Ming Dynasty formed the largest ‘national’ shipping fleet in history. This fleet was led by Zheng He with the main mission of eradicating pirates and port rulers who rebelled against Ming Dynasty rule.
The Renaissance and the Need for Spices
After the collapse of the Cordoba dynasty in Andalusia, the important notes of Muslim scholars were studied carefully by Europe. One of them is Al Kanun fit Tib by Ibn Sina. Books of medical baboons, written in the era of the Fatimid dynasty, were studied in the Venetian Catholic monasteries. One of the chapters in the book of Ibn Sina describes important plants that are useful for medicine and health.
As is well known, after the Reconquesta era, Europe experienced the Renaissance or the Age of Enlightenment. One of them is the development of medical science and medicine. As a result, there was a high demand for spice plants which for the previous two hundred years could only be obtained from the hands of Islamic traders.
This is what made the Iberian sailors, still with the spirit of Reconquesta, circle the Cape of Good Hope in search of the origins of exotic spices in the lands of the Indies. This is also what then allowed them to get to the “new continent” America.
The history of spice commodities in the 15th century, until now, still requires a more in-depth study. Most of the historical sources that exist at this time still need to be studied carefully.
The period of a century after that in the early 17th century is relatively clearer. This period was when the Dutch and the British competed with the Portuguese and the Spanish competed with the old players such as the Arabs, Persians, Indians, Japanese, and Chinese for pepper, cloves, nutmeg, cinnamon, agarwood, pine resin and oil, silk, calico, to deer skin.
Colonial Monopoly
When the Portuguese took control of Malacca, historians note this period as the bearer of the next change. The distribution of spices from the archipelago in the east to the big market in the west had to follow the will of the rulers of the Straits.
The development of kingdoms in Southeast Asia that challenged Portuguese rule in the Straits of Malacca marked an era of ‘big change’ that was taking place in three parts of the archipelago.
The Kingdom of Aceh Darussalam, the Kingdom of Demak NCO, and the Kingdom of Ternate are carriers of the anti-colonial spirit that will determine the direction of the times several centuries afterward. This era also marked a major change in the structure of society in several regions of the archipelago which previously still referred to the heritage of the Hindu-Buddhist kingdom.
In the second half of the 17th century, the international competition for the control of valuable commodities from Southeast Asia left only a few players. Japan withdrew from the competition and was marked by the Tokugawa Decree in 1635. Gujarat, Persian, and Arab-Hadrami traders who had competed for hundreds of years felt that European power in Southeast Asia was too strong. Slowly they withdrew from direct confrontation.
At its peak, Portugal, which became the regime for guarding the fortress of power, was defeated by the emergence of the Verenigde Ost Indische Company or VOC which came with a more modern capital and naval organization in 1641.
It was during this period that a monopoly emerged, which the VOC had previously carried out on nutmeg in 1621. In the 1650s, cloves were also subject to a monopoly.
Various products other than the two precious spices are actually still able to drive the climate of competition. But the power and wealth of the VOC was so dominant that many traders no longer saw it as a lucrative share.
Until subsequent periods, the VOC, which became the richest private company of all time, implemented a policy of monopoly and forced cultivation that changed the color of world trade. Until the 18th century, new products emerged from Southeast Asia on a scale that was always larger than ever before. Some of them are sugar, coffee, and tobacco.
In this period the real actors were the combination of the power of European capital and the power of workers from China. At this time, opium or opium has become one of the most traded commodities with Southeast Asian valuable commodities.
Silk, cotton, and calico products, which were previously the mainstay of big players in the Indian Ocean, have become less competitive. It was during this period that the VOC’s greatest wealth was generated.
