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2 Growth of SettlementSociety FROM THE MATERIAL PRESENTED thus far, one can see that the categories of actors composing Dutch colonial society were already detennined by the 1640s, and that the laws directing their lives and the institutions giving their lives shape were set by that time. Also detennined by the middle years of the century was the economic system of monopoly and control. It is thus clear, from the first decades of settlement, that the only way for a European man to gain wealth and worldly success was through employment in the civilian ann of the Company. Salaries paid to medium- and low-ranking VOC employees were always notoriously low, and it is well known that many men augmented their incomes through private trading, or 4 'smuggling," as the VOC directors perceived it. Because trading on one's own account was illegal, only those in high positions could engage in it with some assurance of immunity, while their senior positions naturally offered the best opportunities for illegal commerce on a vast scale. The goal of the ambitious man was, therefore, to climb the VOC hierarchy . The political structure of colonial society, too, was settled by the 1640s. The first governors-general were men sent out by the Company's directors for several years and then recalled to the Netherlands. In the very first stage of settlement, of course, all officials came directly from Holland. The third governor -general, Laurens Reael (1616-19), however, began a tradition in recommending his director-general of trade as his successor, a practice that was to be overturned only infrequently by the directors. Coen's death during his second term in office (1627-29) occasioned the development of another practice that shaped relations between Batavia and Amsterdam fundamentally: Indies councillors voted immediately upon a successor (usually the director-general as the most senior councillor and member of the inner group) and then notified Holland of their choice for confinnation. 1 By 1636, with the appointment of Antonio van Diemen as governor-general, all these lines of action were fused in an enduring pattern, the accession to highest office of men with years of experience in Asia. Beginning with Comelis van der Lijn's appointment in 33 THE SOCIAL WORLD OF BATAVIA 1645, moreover, one sees accession by men with years of service in Asia unbroken by leave in Europe. Not until H. W. Daendels's appointment in 1808 is an outsider selected. Consequently, there is a very long period when political control is locally detennined, and when government is virtually immune from immediate direction from the Netherlands on account of the vast distances between Batavia and Amsterdam and the slowness of sea transport. Given that power and fortune were only to be made through senior appointment with the Company and that control of promotions lay largely in Batavia, how was the colonial elite fonned? The answer to that question goes to the heart of the making and development of colonial society. The seventeenth century is a period of search for connecting links between men of good health, longevity, and ability. Material presented in chapter 1 makes it clear that the connections between such men could not be based on birth into noble families in the Netherlands, nor on an "old school" network, nor even on common home city or region. The links between men were arbitrary, so that the Council of the Indies often divided into opposing cliques. This gave the distant directors a measure of power, as one group would lodge allegations of smuggling against the other and the directors would intervene, recalling one party or refusing to confirm the majority choice of the Council. By the second half of the eighteenth century, however, Batavia's ruling clique was virtually independent of direction from Holland; Governor-General Willem Arnold Alting (1780-97), for instance, could expressly oppose the directors in appointing his son-in-law Joannes Siberg as his director-generaL Over the course of time, the ties between men were increasingly based upon family: men promoted their relatives. The rules governing immigration and employment determined the peculiar characteristic of the family system and hence the distinctive nature of colonial society, for VOC policy had settled on marriage of its employees with local women and it denied full opportunities to their sons. Hence the important links between men were based, not on passing position (and access to wealth) from father to son, but on passing it to brothersin -law and other kin by...

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