The Trade of the English East India Company in Cambodia, 1651–1656

D. K. Bassett

doi:10.1017/S0035869X00120532

The Trade of the English East India Company in Cambodia, 1651–1656

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 March 2011

D. K. Bassett

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Cambodia was a kingdom in which the English East India Company took only a limited and spasmodic interest in the seventeenth century so that little attention has been devoted to its activities there. References to the Company's Cambodian settlement in the 1650s have usually been erroneous or misleading. Dr. John Anderson made the first serious mistake when he wrote of an English factory in Cambodia between 1654 and 1659, and later English writers, particularly E. W. Hutchinson, have followed him. Dutch historians also have been affected: H. P. N. Muller, in his preface to De Oost-Indische Compagnie in Cambodja en Laos, cites Anderson as his authority for stating that in 1656 the Dutch Company bought the English factory established two years previously. As we shall see, servants of the English Company were sent to Cambodia from the presidency at Bantam in 1651 and withdrawn by order of the directors in 1656; the Englishmen in Cambodia after that date were private traders using the Company's name for their own ends. The episode now to be recounted was therefore an isolated incident with no long-term consequences, but with some intrinsic interest.

Type: Articles
Information: Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society , Volume 94 , Issue 1-2 , April 1962 , pp. 35 - 61

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0035869X00120532 [Opens in a new window]
Copyright: Copyright © The Royal Asiatic Society 1962

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References

^{page 35 note 1} Anderson, J.: English Intercourse with Siam in the Seventeenth Century (London, 1890), pp. 88–9Google Scholar.

^{page 35 note 2} Hutchinson, E. W.: Adventurers in Siam in the Seventeenth Century (Royal Asiatic Society, London, 1940), p. 36Google Scholar.

^{page 35 note 3} Muller, H. P. N.: De Oost-Indische Compagnie in Cambodja en Laos, 1636–1670 (Linschoten Vereeniging, No. XIII, The Hague, 1917), p. liGoogle Scholar.

⁴ Moreland, W. H.: Peter Floris: his Voyage to the East Indies, 1611–1615 (Hakluyt Soc., London, 1934), p. 80Google Scholar.

^{page 36 note 1} Serious plans for the resumption of trade with Japan and the opening of trade with China were not put forward in London until 1657–58, after the Company had received an encouraging new charter of monopoly from Lord Protector Cromwell.

^{page 36 note 2} The irrepressible Thomas Smethwick tried to lure the directors once more into the discredited Japan trade in 1633 and 1635 but was sharply rebuffed as an idle dreamer.

^{page 36 note 3} Anderson misinterpreted both English activities in Cambodia and subsequent trade in Siam (1661–64) as official enterprises undertaken with the sanction of the directors. He thus pre-dated by several years the true revival of English interest in general Far East trade, which began only after the second Anglo-Dutch war. Vide infra.

^{page 37 note 1} Foster, W. (ed.): English Factories in India, 1642–1645 (Oxford, 1913), p. 229Google Scholar.

^{page 37 note 2} Foster, W. (ed.): English Factories in India, 1646–1650 (Oxford, 1914), pp. 168–170Google Scholar.

^{page 37 note 3} Hall, D. G. E.: Europe and Burma (London, 1945), p. 33Google Scholar.

^{page 37 note 4} The Dutch Company, abandoned its first factory in Cambodia in 1622, having reopened it in 1636. The Dutch chief factor, Pieter de Begemortes, was murdered with his subordinates in 1643 and the Dutch retaliated by sailing up the Mekong to bombard Pnompenh in June, 1644.

^{page 37 note 5} Foster, W. (ed.): English Factories in India, 1646–1650, p. 184Google Scholar.

^{page 38 note 1} Op. cit., pp. 184–5.

^{page 38 note 2} Quoted by president Baker in: Madras to Company, 11th November, 1653, O.C. 2348.

^{page 38 note 3} Bantam to Company, 3rd January, 1649/50. O.C. 2139. Bantam to Company, 11th January, 1649/50. Java Records, iii, Pt. II, p. 2.

^{page 39 note 1} Bantam to Madras, 3rd June, 1650. Java Records, III, iii, p. 30.

² No contemporary documents mention this and the voyage was revealed only by a fortunate back-reference in June, 1655 (Bantam to Madras, 22nd June, 1655. O.C. 2487).

^{page 39 note 3} Browne entered the service of the Company in January, 1646, as purser of the Dolphin, was reappointed to that post in October, 1647, and later served as a factor in Bantam presidency, rising to be purser-general by January, 1650. From 1651 to 1656 he was the chief factor in Cambodia, returning to England in December, 1657. In 1658 he was chosen as chief factor of the Company's proposed factory in Japan but was dismissed when the project collapsed. In February, 1664, Browne took up the post of agent at Bantam, dying at Batavia in July, 1665.

^{page 39 note 4} The mate of the Francis, John Edwards, confirmed the lateness of the voyage when he recalled in 1655 that the vessel had great difficulty in crossing the bar at the mouth of the Mekong (O.C. 2487).

^{page 39 note 5} A Relation of the Situation and Trade of Camboja, etc., probably December, 1664. Java Records, iv, pp. 4–5.

^{page 40 note 1} Madras to Company, 14th January, 1651/52. O.C. 2246.

^{page 40 note 2} Captain of Roebuck to Company, 31st July, 1652. O.C. 2277. After this Bantam became an agency in charge of Baker's nephew, Frederick Skinner, who was in turn responsible to the presidency at Madras.

^{page 40 note 3} Cambodia to Bantam, 1st January, 1653/54. O.C. 2351.

^{page 40 note 4} Bantam to Madras, 15th February, 1652/53. O.C. 2284.

^{page 40 note 5} Madras to Surat, 5th February, 1652/53. O.C. 2311.

^{page 40 note 6} The staff of the factory included Henry Hogg, Jasper Howard, Henry Grey, and Edward Lester, the surgeon; another Englishman, Bartholomew Gidleigh, died on 1st November, 1652.

^{page 41 note 1} Cambodia to Bantam, 17th January, 1654/55. O.C. 2443.

^{page 41 note 2} Cambodia to Bantam, 1st January, 1653/54. O.C. 2351. Benzoin was usually graded at this time in descending order of quality into the “head”, “belly”, and “foot” varieties.

^{page 41 note 3} Bantam to Madras, July, 1653. O.C. 2284.

^{page 41 note 4} Agent Skinner received a detailed report from Browne in a letter of this date sent on the Dove. (Vide: Bantam to Company, 20th December, 1653. O.C. 2355.)

^{page 41 note 5} Bantam to Madras, July, 1653. O.C. 2284.

^{page 42 note 1} Loc. cit.

^{page 43 note 1} Contract for benzoin, 26th June, 1653. O.C. 2334.

^{page 43 note 2} Cambodia to Bantam, 1st January, 1653/54. O.C. 2351.

^{page 43 note 3} Called by Browne “Bastian de Bolome”, but reference to his departure for Cambodia, together with his correct name, appears in the Dagh Register, Batavia, 1653, p. 115.

^{page 43 note 4} Cambodia to Bantam, 1st January, 1653/54. O.C. 2351.

^{page 43 note 5} Loc. cit.

^{page 44 note 1} Cambodia to Macassar, 19th November, 1653. O.C. 2350. Also Cambodia to Bantam, 15th February, 1653/54. O.C. 2351.

^{page 44 note 2} Cambodia to Bantam, 1st January, 1653/54. O.C. 2351.

^{page 44 note 3} Loc. cit.

^{page 44 note 4} Cambodia to Bantam, 16th October, 1654. O.C. 2423. The Dutch description of the English factory when they bought it in 1656 was not complimentary. It was denounced as poor and uninhabitable, with walls of mat and bamboo; the godown was constructed only of “mud and dirt”. Vide the report of Hendrick Indijck to Batavia, 10th March, 1657 (N.S.), in Muller, H. P. N.: De Oost-Indische Compagnie in Cambodja …, p. 362Google Scholar.

^{page 44 note 5} Charges against Browne, 18th February, 1656/57. O.C. 2617.

^{page 45 note 1} Cambodia to Bantam, 1st January, 1653/54. O.C. 2351.

^{page 45 note 2} Bantam to Company, 10th January, 1653/54. O.C. 2355.

^{page 45 note 3} Tutenague, known to the Dutch as spiaulter, has sometimes been identified as copper and sometimes as zinc; it appears to have been an alloy of both these metals.

^{page 46 note 1} Cambodia to Bantam, 15th February, 1653/54. O.C. 2351. Agent Skinner gave tentative approval to Browne's timber project in April, 1655, before he knew the Cambodian factory was to be withdrawn.

^{page 46 note 2} Cambodia to Bantam, 16th October, 1654. O.C. 2423.

^{page 46 note 3} Bantam to Cambodia, 14th April, 1655. O.C. 2462.

^{page 46 note 4} Cambodia to Bantam, 16th October, 1654. O.C. 2423.

^{page 46 note 5} Hogg to Browne, 20th September, 1654. O.C. 2412. This village or river was known to the Dutch as “Tjarcedau” or “Tiaersedauw” and was reached by sailing south of Pnompenh along the eastern branch of the Mekong (or “groote revier” as distinct from the western or “ombequaame” branch, i.e. the unnavigable branch) as far as “Mosquito cut”; here one crossed over into the lower half of the western stream known to the Dutch as the “Sundingsche revier” (sandy ?). Vide: Muller, H. P. N.: De Oost-Indische Oompagnie in Cambodja en Laos, pp. 376, 428 and mapGoogle Scholar.

^{page 47 note 1} It would be difficult to locate these towns with any certainty if the only clue was the coincidence in the English and Dutch names of the first village visited by Hogg (Chirsidoe). “Passack,” for example, would seem, by implication, to be on the lower reaches of the Mekong, but it could conceivably be Bassack which was the first notable trade centre in Laos. The description which Quarles Browne wrote of the commerce of Cambodia and Laos in 1664 provides the solution to the problem. Browne then pointed out that the wax-producing areas of Cambodia were near the mouth, of the river and he named them as “Chersedone”, “Bussacke”, “Cherflinge”, “Samding”, and “Preterpong”. From the same account it appears that Bassack in Laos was also known to him as a source of hides and buffalo-horns and his location of Bassack in the uppermost reaches of the country distinguishes the town from the “Passack” or “Bussacke” on the lower Mekong where Hogg traded. Vide: “Relation of Camboja” etc. Java Records, iv, pp. 4–7.

^{page 47 note 2} Hogg to Browne, 20th September, 1654. O.C. 2412.

^{page 47 note 3} Cambodia to Bantam, 16th October, 1654. O.C. 2423.

^{page 48 note 1} Cambodia to Bantam, 16th October, 1654. O.C. 2423. For Browne's formal protest against Thomas Lever, the chief factor at Jambi, in the matter of the benzoin vide: Cambodia to Jambi, 30th December, 1654. O.C. 2437.

^{page 48 note 2} Cambodia to Jambi, 16th October, 1654. O.C. 2422, and to Bantam of same date. O.C. 2423.

^{page 49 note 1} Cambodia to Bantam, 16th October, 1654. Loc. cit. The location of the “King of ffyers Country” or the reason for this unusual title are both beyond the competence of the present writer.

^{page 49 note 2} Loc. cit.

^{page 49 note 3} Cambodia to Bantam, 17th January, 1654/55. O.C. 2443.

^{page 50 note 1} Loc. cit.

^{page 50 note 2} Loc. cit.

^{page 50 note 3} Bantam to Cambodia, 14th April, 1655. O.C. 2462.

^{page 50 note 4} Loc. cit.

^{page 51 note 1} Company to Madras, 20th February, 1653/54. Letter Book I, p. 240.

^{page 51 note 2} Company to Bantam, 30th June, 1654. Letter Book I, p. 260.

^{page 51 note 3} Bantam to Cambodia, 23rd April, 1655. O.C. 2473.

^{page 51 note 4} Bantam to Company, 17th July, 1656. O.C. 2552.

^{page 51 note 5} For the various protests and counter-protests see O.C. 2566, 2567, 2568, 2569, 2570, 2571.

^{page 51 note 6} Buckeridge to Browne, 13th November, 1656. O.C. 2580; also Cambodia to Bantam, 17th November, 1656. O.C. 2582.

^{page 51 note 7} Dagh Register, 1656–57, pp. 88, 92.

^{page 52 note 1} Charges against Browne, 18th February, 71656/57. O.C. 2617.

^{page 52 note 2} Bantam to Company, 9th March, 1656/57. O.C. 2620.

^{page 52 note 3} Vide supra.

^{page 52 note 4} Court Minutes, 9th February and 16th February, 1657/58, Vol. 23, pp. 626, 628.

^{page 52 note 5} Court Minutes, 21st and 26th April, 1658. Vol. 24, pp. 100, 101.

^{page 53 note 1} Court Minutes, 20th and 22nd May, 1663. Vol. 24, pp. 626, 627.

^{page 53 note 2} Hogg (at Bantam) to Buckeridge, 3rd February, 1656/57. O.C. 2613.

^{page 53 note 3} Vide Bantam Consultation on Hogg's various petitions in this respect, 5th March, 1656/57. O.C. 2619.

^{page 53 note 4} Hogg to Buckeridge, 3rd February, 1656/57. O.C. 2613.

^{page 53 note 5} Rawlins' Resignation, 31st May, 1657. O.C. 2646.

^{page 53 note 6} Commission to Hogg and Rawlins, 15th May, 1657. Java Records, III, iii, p. 372 f.

^{page 53 note 7} Bantam Diary, 13th August, 1659. Loc. cit., p. 369.

^{page 54 note 1} Loc. cit., p. 377. It is interesting to notice that the factors of the Dutch Company in Cambodia in September, 1657, asserted that the cloth on the Little Fortune belonged to Buckeridge. Vide Muller, H. P. N.: De Ooat-Indische Compognie in Cambodja, pp. 363–4Google Scholar.

^{page 54 note 2} Anderson, J.: English Intercourse, pp. 89–90Google Scholar.

^{page 54 note 3} Bantam Diary, 13th August, 1659. Java Records, III, iii, p. 369.

^{page 54 note 4} Company to Bantam, 3rd February, 1661/62. Letter Book III, p. 79.

^{page 54 note 5} Anderson: op. cit., p. 91.

^{page 56 note 1} It is difficult to determine to which king Browne is referring at this point, but he had no acquaintance with the king of Coohin-China on which to base such a statement and therefore he must have had Rama Thuppdey Chan (1642–59) in mind.

^{page 56 note 2} When Jan Dircksen Galen reopened Dutch trade with Cambodia in June, 1636, he found some difficulty in understanding the intricacies of Cambodia custom in this respect. An inquiry to the shahbandar in charge of the Japanese residents produced an explanation. There were five shahbandars in Lauweck: one was responsible for the Japanese merchants and since the Dutchmen had been recommended to him in Batavia and their ship was later bound for Japan, they bad been placed under his jurisdiction; another shahbandar governed the affairs of the Portuguese quarter; a third shahbandar concerned himself with the Malay and Javanese visitors and the remaining two shahbandars were assigned to the Chinese community. It was through the mediation of the Japanese shahbandar that Galen was ultimately admitted to court. Vide: Muller, H. P. N.: De Oost-Indische Compagnie in Cambodja en Laos, pp. 63–4Google Scholar.

^{page 56 note 3} According to Muller, the order of precedence below the reigning monarch in Cambodia was as follows: the abyorãć, the king who had abdicated his powers; the obbarāć, the heir-apparent, who was the son of the king's brother; and the prah vorãćini, the queen mother or first princess of the blood. The English factors would appear to have placed themselves under the protection of the obbarāć, particularly since Browne stated in 1653–54 that the young king (i.e. crown prince) had taken the Englishmen under his wing during the illness of the reigning or “old” king. Vide: H. P. N. Muller: op. cit., p. lxii, and pp. 13–14 of the present article.

^{page 57 note 1} Presumably a corruption of the Malay “adat kapal”—a law or regulation affecting shipping, but here used for a customs charge.

^{page 58 note 1} Peter van Dam refers to the coin known as fimg or fonnes in his Beschryvinge van de Oostindische Compagnie, II, i (Hague, 1931), pp. 346–7, 835 (glossary)Google Scholar.

^{page 58 note 2} The mass (Malay = gold) was a coin current also in Acheh and Macassar. In Macassar it was made of gold, as it was also in Acheh, but in Cambodia it appears to have been made of silver.

^{page 58 note 3} The Spanish silver real of eight, imported to Asia from Mexico either via Manila or via Europe, and valued by the English Company at 5s. throughout most of the seventeenth century.

^{page 58 note 4} From the Malay daching.

^{page 58 note 5} In theory the denominations of weight were 100 catties = 1 pikul, 3 pikuls = 1 bahar, 1 bahar = 400 lb., but there appear to have been slight variations from port to port.

^{page 58 note 6} Javanese and Malay hasta (from Sanskrit) a measurement from the top of the middle finger to the elbow.

^{page 58 note 7} Namrack—an easily-flowing black lacquer used for furniture and ornaments. Dam, P. van: Beschryvinge, II, i, p. 826 (glossary)Google Scholar.

^{page 58 note 8} Seed of the Cardamomon minus, fragrant smelling spice. Op. cit., I, i, p. 730.

^{page 59 note 1} ? Malay buah kěras candle-nut.

^{page 59 note 2} The orange-red flower of the Carthumus tinctorius, used as a dyestuff for cotton goods, as a medicine and as a substitute for saffron in the colouring of spices. Op. cit., II, i, p. 816.

^{page 59 note 3} The rhinoceros, or some animal resembling it, was not unknown in the southern area of Laos at this time. In September, 1641, when Gerrit van Wuysthoff was making his famous journey up the Mekong from Lauweck to Vientiane, some of his companions landed about sixteen miles south of Bassack and shot a “renoster”; the animal was not as near to death as the Dutchmen hoped, because a search on the following day failed to discover the carcase. Muller, H. P. N.: De Oost-Indische Compagnie in Cambodja en Laos, pp. 163–4Google Scholar.

^{page 59 note 4} Gunnies (Hindustani guni) coarse sack or sacking made of jute.

^{page 60 note 1} English cloth of a coarse, narrow type, woven from long wool.

^{page 60 note 2} In 1641, while on his way from Lanweck to Vientiane, Gerrit Tan Wuysthoff identified “Huijloun” as the centre where the most important types of silk cloth were made and exported to Siam, Tongking, Annam, and Cambodia. Since “Huijloun” was only six miles down river from Vientiane, Browne must have been aware only of the silk towns near the Laotian-Cambodian frontier. Vide: H. P. N. Muller: op. cit., p. 170.

^{page 60 note 3} These were the wax towns which Henry Hogg visited in September, 1654. Vide supra, p. 47.

^{page 61 note 1} In 1641 Van Wuysthoff and his compatriots found the river banks immediately south of Bassac and the islands in the Mekong itself “extraordinarily full of deer”. Vide: H. P. N. Muller, op. cit., p. 163.

^{page 61 note 2} When he incorporated in his memorandum this advice to avoid the middlemen of Lauweck by dealing direct with the producers, Browne clearly recalled his own efforts to develop such an “inland trade” in 1654.

^{page 61 note 3} When Van Wuysthoff found so many deer on the islands of the Mekong in 1641, it was the month of September and the Dutchman's standard observation on the weather was: “The whole night until mid-day [there was] continual rain.” Vide: H. P. N. Muller: op. cit., p. 163. Presumably, the flooding which led to these animals being marooned as described by Browne had already begun.

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