Portuguese, Dutch and Chinese in Maritime Asia, c. 1585–1800: Merchants, Commodities and Commerce by George Bryan Souza (review)

By the closing of the sixteenth century, the arrival of Europeans in the East opened a new and long-lasting stage of trade between Europe and Asia. Portuguese, English, Dutch, French, Danes, and Swedes all established companies to carry out long-distance trade with Asia through the Cape of Good Hope. Whether affiliated with companies or not, Western traders also engaged in trade connections between different ports in Asia, an activity formerly dominated by Chinese merchants. Portuguese, Dutch and Chinese in Maritime Asia, c. 1585–1800 offers thirteen essays focusing on the roles of Western and Eastern merchants in the changing nature of Asian markets and the development of trade in new commodities. All but one of the essays have been published or presented at conferences between 1984 and 2009, so the book summarizes Souza’s extensive work in this particular field.

Chapter 1 presents the Asian market conditions before the arrival of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) in the early 1600s. The Portuguese conquest of Malacca in 1511 and their trade center in Macau disturbed China’s sphere of influence in the Far Eastern trade. The establishment of the Dutch in Batavia, the decline of Portugal’s empire, and the change of China’s dynasties from Ming to Ch’ing further modified trade patterns in Asia and changed the status quo in existence before European involvement.

The remainder of the book is divided into chapters that focus on merchants (Chapters 2 to 8) and those that focus on commodities (Chapters 9 to 13), allowing for a more encompassing perspective of Asian trade than the usual European- or Asian-centered analysis.

Chapters 2 through 6 analyze the variety of Portuguese roles in Asian commerce. Beyond royal traders and administrators, Portuguese private merchants also participated in country trade, and the crown relied on their success for the continuous supply of goods to bring to Europe (Chapter 2). Although these traders were independent from the royally owned organization, they often helped to finance the defense of colonial cities, such as Cochin and Macau, to protect their own commercial and municipal interests (Chapter 3). The decline of Portugal’s empire after 1600 did not necessarily translate into the decline of Portuguese country trade in the Far East, as demonstrated by the maritime losses of private vessels until 1754 (Chapter 4). Portugal’s presence in the East endured well beyond its golden age; so did royal administrators. Souza reflects on the life of one such administrator from 1681 to 1715, highlighting the impact of an individual’s ancestry, military career progress, and business-oriented behavior on the inner workings of the empire (Chapter 5). The introduction of American tobacco in Asia brought a modest revival of Portugal’s empire and a new institutional setting with commissioned agents—as well as the Jesuits—operating as managers of the crown’s commercial interests (Chapter 6).

The Dutch brought a new impulse to Eastern trade, both inter- and intra-continental. The Dutch East India Company’s (VOC’s) purchase and sale of products from multiple origins across 109 Asian ports denote a policy of price stabilization in the commodities brought to Europe, where demand was steady but elastic (Chapter 7). The involvement of the VOC in the opium trade, together with Chinese, Muslim, and indigenous traders, played an expressive role in the development of business practices (such as the use of grantors and credit purchases) in a market where the Chinese traditionally dominated (Chapter 8).

Chapters 9 through 13 concentrate on the role of particular commodities in the expansion of Asian trade. Chinese zinc and sugar served as the main ballast goods in the 1600s and 1700s; these products were traded in India and Batavia for pepper or cinnamon, which would be partially sold in Manila for American silver, thus illustrating...