A Multinational and Its Labor Force: The Dutch East India Company, 1595 - 1795 by Jan Lucassen

A Multinational and its Labor Force:
The Dutch East India Company, 1595 –1795
Jan Lucassen
International Institute for Social History
Abstract
This essay focuses on the emergence of an international labor market connecting Europe
with southern Africa and south and southeast Asia, showing the intertwining of com-
mercialization and proletarianization in the institution that created and coordinated per-
haps the most important international labor market connecting Europe to the Far East.
Introduction1
The VOC (Verenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie) was a major multinational in
every sense of the word at a time when such companies were very rare indeed.2
Major enterprises certainly existed before the nineteenth century. One was the fa-
mous Venice arsenal, although that firm was no bigger than the VOC wharf in
Amsterdam. Careful research reveals that nearly all the few large firms of the an-
cien régime with over 1,000 workers in fact employed only a minority of the num-
ber reported by means of direct management. In answering the question “How
large is ‘large’?” Sidney Pollard concludes that until the early nineteenth century,
firms with a few hundred workers in their direct employ were considered large.3
Comparing the VOC (and its predecessors from 1595 until the company’s
official establishment in 1602) with the other European trading companies con-
firms that the Dutch firm was exceptionally large. In the sixteenth century the
Portuguese dominated, but by the early seventeenth century the Netherlands
had more operations in Asia than all other European nations combined. Al-
though the gap narrowed in the eighteenth century, the Dutch preponderance
continued until around 1750. Even thereafter, however, the VOC remained larg-
er than any of its competitors. By the 1780s the English East India Company did
send out as many ships as the VOC, but the (brief ) surge in French shipping
trade with Asia was truly remarkable during that period. This was possible only
once the monopoly of the Compagnie des Indes was discontinued after 1770.
The absence of the other competitors (the Portuguese, the Danish, the Swedish,
the Southern Dutch, and the Prussians) from this article may appear surprising.
Except for the Portuguese, though, who remained the largest presence until
1630, all these other initiatives, however interesting they were as such, were of
little importance, especially as sources of employment. Altogether, the VOC
International Labor and Working-Class History

No. 66, Fall 2004, pp. 12–39
© 2004 International Labor and Working-Class History, Inc.
A Multinational and its Labor Force 13
transported more persons from Europe to South Africa and Asia than did the
ships from all other European nations combined before 1800.4
The VOC was exceptional not only because of its size. Historians greatly ap-
preciate the relative wealth of papers remaining about this company: an estimat-
ed 25 million pages of historical records, stored on over four kilometers of shelf
space.5 This does not mean that the history of this organization is taken for grant-
ed, as has become clear from the extensive criticism voiced in 2002 at the count-
less congresses, workshops, and exhibitions commemorating the establishment
of the VOC four centuries before.6 Moreover, this quadricentennial commemo-
ration has elicited a wave of publications that seems infinite for the time being.
Obviously not all—but a considerable share nonetheless—concern the role
of the VOC as an employer, which is all the more reason to explore this re-
markable company and its significance with respect to labor history.7 The two
questions I will address are: how did the VOC recruit its employees, and how
did labor relationships develop within the company? The first question concerns
the entire issue of early-modern proletarianization, in which a growing share of
the population became wage dependent. Thus far, most discussions in this field
have revolved around protoindustrialization. The second question concerns the
degree of anonymization in a large company and whether new forms of solidar-
ity and resistance arose. Moreover, the operations of the VOC across three con-
tinents enable global comparisons and amply justify featuring this company in a
special issue on global labor history. The VOC had many types of employees.
An analytical distinction exists between workers recruited in Europe (who orig-
inated from there as well) and those from Asia and South Africa and between
free and unfree labor and between sailors, seamen, and other workers. The Eu-
ropean sailors and soldiers, who sailed to the tropics under similar circum-
stances, have been covered the most extensively by researchers and will domi-
nate this account. The non-European staff has been studied in far less detail.
Much research remains to be done. The problem is that the area where the VOC
operated, to the east of the Cape and to the west of the Straits of Magellan, was
far more legally and culturally diverse than Northwest Europe. After all, the role
of the VOC as a territorial power in many places directly influenced labor rela-
tionships. It made a world of difference whether the VOC wielded exclusive ter-
ritorial power, as was the case in parts of West Java, or was simply granted a tiny
artificial island as a franchise, such as with Deshima in Japan.
1. Labor needs and recruitment in Europe and Asia

The first letter of the abbreviation of VOC was very meaningful.8 The organi-
zation was the result of a state-imposed merge between various voorcompag-
nieën or predecessors that operated as shipping companies between 1595 and
1602 and sent out fifteen fleets comprising sixty-six ships. However spectacular
this may have seemed for those years—the Dutch were the first to break the Por-
tuguese monopoly on Asia—this was only a modest beginning. The VOC sent
over 4,700 ships to Asia before it was replaced in 1795 by what would nowadays
14 ILWCH, 66, Fall 2004
be called a colonial department. After 1795 the Dutch shipping trade with Asia
certainly did not grind to a halt. Nor was it replaced by an entirely free cargo
trade system, although the VOC’s centralized system of recruitment and labor
relationships ceased at that point. This subsequent period, though undeniably of
interest, exceeds the scope of this article.9
Throughout its lengthy existence, the VOC recruited labor in four differ-
ent ways. The largest number of workers was hired at one of the six Dutch of-
fices and subsequently dispatched to Asia.10 About half were recruited at the
Amsterdam office, one quarter at the one in Middelburg, and the others at the
ones in Delft, Rotterdam, Hoorn, or Enkhuizen across Holland. Most were in-
dividual recruits. Only with the soldiers were entire regiments sent overseas at
once. These troops came from Germany, Switzerland, or France.11 Second, em-
ployees were needed back in the Netherlands to work for these six “chambers”
on the wharves, in the warehouses, and at the offices, roperies, and other work-
places. Many additional workers were needed overseas, in addition to the ones
recruited outside Europe. Both free and unfree labor was used. The free Asian
(and African) workers, our third category, consisted primarily of soldiers and
also included artisans, dockers, and the like, as well as in increasing measure to-
ward the end of the eighteenth century, sailors, especially for the intra-Asian
shipping journeys. The unfree workers from Asia and Africa—our fourth cate-
gory—were acquired through purchase or lease of slaves and forced employ-
ment of the local population. As stated above, most of the information available
covers the first category, although the other three are also interesting. From a
global labor history perspective, the third as well as the fourth categories merit
greater consideration than they have received thus far. Pending a more elabo-
rate description of the different types of labor employed directly by the VOC,
the summary below reflects the magnitude of and changes in the work force
(Table 1). The account concerns only those directly employed. In other words,
the countless workers for subcontractors in Europe (free workers) and Asia
(free workers as well as a great many slaves) and military allies are not includ-
ed here.12
1.1 European Staff to Asia

The data are fairly accurate concerning the number of people who boarded over
4,700 ships bound for the East Indies between 1595 and 1795: nearly one million
persons took ship from Europe in those two centuries, which averages 5,000 a
year. We also know that over a third of a million people took ship in Asia on voy-
ages back to the Republic, with the majority reaching Europe. Still, these figures
do not reveal the total number of recruits by the VOC. After all, we do not know
how many men—and nearly all the workers concerned in this article were
men—were fortunate enough to return to Europe or had the courage to sign on
for a second or third voyage. They knew that they were among the lucky few
who survived the adventure. Besides industrious quantitative historians today,
Table 1. Estimates of the number of workers directly employed by the VOC13
1625 1687/1688 1700 1753 1780
Netherlands 2,000 3,000 3,000 3,000 3,000

Europeans en route
Europe-Asia 3,200 6,000 7,000 10,000 9,000
Europeans at sea in Asia 1,555 4,000 3,802 3,054 1,282
Europeans ashore in
Asia and Africa 2,945 11,551 13,481 20,101 15,523
Total Europeans 9,500 24,500 27,500 36,000 29,000
Free Asians:
shore workers ? 3,605 137 534 253
Free Asians: seamen 0 ? ? [1,000–1,500] [2,000]
Free Asians: soldiers ? [7,000?] [10,000?] [12,000?] 5,229
Unfree Asians and
Africans [ca. 4,000?] [ca. 6,000?] [ca. 7,000?] [ca. 7,000] [ca. 7,000?]
Total Asians and
Africans [ca. 6,000?] [ca. 17,000] [ca. 18,000?] [ca. 21,000?] [ca. 17,000?]
Total [ca. 15,000?] [ca. 40,000?] [ca. 46,000?] [ca. 57,000?] [ca. 46,000?]
The high relative increase in the seventeenth and high absolute increase in the eighteenth century are clearly attrib-
utable to European workers overseas. The Asian share of the labor decreased slightly during the eighteenth cen-
tury.
contemporaries, definitely by the eighteenth century, were well aware of the

risks of serving with the VOC. This bad reputation resounds in the Malthusian
saying: “Holland, indeed, has been called the grave of Germany,” which derives
from older German authors. Around the same time that Thomas Malthus wrote,
the well-known German playwright Heinrich von Kleist wrote about the East
Indies: “and from there, as you know, only one out of three men returns.”14
For a long time the prevailing opinion was that few men would be insane
enough to sign on again with the VOC, but the actual data indicate otherwise.
Reviewing the Delft chamber’s shipping wage logs from the eighteenth century
enables an estimate of the numbers who sailed on more than one voyage. De-
termining this information requires more detailed examination of the numbers
that returned. The return rates for recruits from Delft were 30.2 percent for the
soldiers and 60.5 percent for the sailors, respectively. The lower survival rates
for the soldiers were attributable to the far less stringent selection of soldiers and
their extended stays in barracks in Asia, where they were exposed to all kinds
of diseases, as will be discussed below.15 Extrapolating these rates for all soldiers
and sailors from the Netherlands enables us to estimate the share of foreigners
among the seamen and sailors as well (Table 2).
The vast differences between persons from Delft and those from elsewhere,
as noted by K.L. van Schouwenburg, may be attributable to their superior
prospects for advancement on board, since many of the officers came from Delft
16 ILWCH, 66, Fall 2004
Table 2. Seamen and soldiers on outbound and return journeys of the VOC.16
Departed from Arrived in

the Netherlands Rate of return the Netherlands
Seamen from the Netherlands 108,000 60.5 65,500

Soldiers from the Netherlands 390,000 30.2 117,500
Seamen from abroad 212,000 [42.5] [90,000]
Soldiers from abroad 263,000 [19.0] [50,000]
Total 973,000 33.1 323,000
as well.17 They may also have helped keep lower-ranking persons from the same
town as themselves stick together and return together. Those from Delft may
also have helped each other cope with sickness and other adversity.18 If such co-
hesion existed between shipmates from smaller places, then it would have been
far less true for those from Amsterdam or, alternatively, for sailors from small
villages. Van Schouwenburg has stressed the need to differentiate between the
mortality rates and rates of return according to geographic origin, although how
these patterns should be interpreted for the crew as a whole remains to be de-
termined.19
The high mortality rate among the VOC crewmembers may appear sur-
prising, since most were young men. Being at sea was not the primary risk, al-
though it was certainly a considerable one. About seven percent did not survive
the outbound journey as far as the Cape of Good Hope, and another half of this
share died along the rest of the route. Those were the deaths on board, not
counting the cases where ships were wrecked, seized, or sold, or failed to reach
the Cape for some other reason. Altogether, eighty to eighty-five percent of
those embarking in the Republic reached their destination. But arrival at their
destination did not mean the crewmembers were out of danger. In fact, the death
toll was highest during the days and weeks immediately following arrival in Asia.
Nearly 95,000 employees of the VOC died at the hospital in Batavia between
1725 and 1786, for example, an average of over 1,500 a year during a period when
about 6,000 Europeans arrived each year. The return trip was less dangerous
than the outbound journey, as ninety percent survived.20 The poor survival
prospects for European VOC crews bound for Asia correspond with those of
their British counterparts, as observed based on the Bengal Army List: “. . . of
every four Cadets, during the period 1760 –1834, who left the shores of the Unit-
ed Kingdom in order to seek a military career in India, one, and only one, re-
turned to lay his bones in his Mother country.” The figures concerning the civil
servants of the East India Company appointed to Bengal between 1707 and 1775
reflect a similar pattern.21
Van Schouwenburg has examined in what measure those who returned
signed on for a second journey. Based on a small sample, he demonstrates that
among the higher-ranking crewmembers, i.e. those who earned at least fourteen
guilders a month (no more than ten percent of all those on board) half of those
who returned (and this group had a survival rate of seventy-five percent) sailed
for the Indies again within the year.22 Given that seamen were required to sign
on with the VOC for at least three years, and considering Van Schouwenburg’s
observation that half the ordinary seamen from Delft had returned after two
years, this group is reasonably likely to have sailed on Compagnie ships again.23
Van Schouwenburg estimates that very few of the returning soldiers risked their
lives a second time. Presumably, some of the seamen who earned higher wages
and the artisans (largely from the Netherlands) and to a lesser extent the lower-
ranking seamen sailed on two or more voyages. The actual numbers involved
are very difficult to estimate, but the VOC may have sent over 900,000 or near-
ly a million individuals to the East during its years of operation.24
This immense need for workers soon depleted the supply on the Dutch la-
bor market, not so much in numerical terms as because of the major objections
among many inhabitants—especially among those in the maritime districts—to
employment as an ordinary soldier or sailor. Which factors are likely to have en-
couraged proletarians nevertheless to sign on or, conversely, to have discouraged
them from signing on with the VOC? Wages were low (108 guilders a year
around 1650), although food and lodging were included. Overall, earnings
matched those of an unskilled laborer ashore (206 guilders around that period)
or of a seaman with the navy.25 Such laborers did not earn enough to support a
wife and children, unless these family members worked as well. This was stan-
dard practice, and one out every five ordinary VOC sailors may have been mar-
ried.26 Other comparative disadvantages included the extended stay away from
home and the high mortality rate. All these drawbacks, however, were offset by
continuous employment for at least three years. There was also the opportuni-
ty for additional income through private trade and in some cases a share of the
proceeds. Career advancement was another very real prospect: each person who
died had to be replaced immediately and on site. Those who signed on from out-
side Holland and Zeeland were attracted by the wages: in the East of the Nether-
lands, wages were half those paid in the West, and the discrepancy grew further
eastward. The prospect of sailing to the Orient as an ordinary sailor or soldier
had the strongest appeal among young, single men from abroad. Since wages
aboard the VOC ships compared favorably to those ashore for the higher-rank-
ing officers and the artisans, these positions were more likely to be filled by
Dutchmen.
Ketting has recently demonstrated that in the late sixteenth century nearly
all those on board came from the seaside districts (especially from the towns
there). The activities of the Compagnie increased so much, as did the need for
soldiers, that the tight labor market of the Republic soon became insufficient in
the course of the seventeenth century. While the absolute number of crewmem-
bers from Holland or Zeeland did not diminish, their relative share did. During
the 1640s the area of recruitment expanded to include Flanders and Brabant in
the South and Northwest Germany and Denmark in the North. Later on, Nor-
way and inland Germany were added, thereby expanding the VOC labor re-
18 ILWCH, 66, Fall 2004
cruitment pool to include nearly all of Western Europe.27 Only the numbers re-
cruited from the British Isles remained low. How many of the approximately
140,000 foreigners who survived their VOC expedition according to the estimate
above returned to their native soil or remained in the Netherlands is unknown.28
The international labor market that emerged in the Republic was not the
work of the VOC alone and was not even exclusively attributable to the ship-
ping trade in general.29 Throughout the maritime districts, labor from elsewhere
was in demand to varying degrees and would remain so into the nineteenth cen-
tury. In shipping many foreigners worked for the navy, while smaller numbers
found employment on the trading vessels bound for the West Indies and the
Mediterranean. The general principle governing recruitment into the maritime
services of the Dutch Republic appears to have been that the larger the ships
and the longer the voyages were, the lower the remuneration was and the high-
er the percentage of foreigners employed. Half the male labor market in the
western core parts of the Republic depended on foreigners.30
This pattern of recruiting labor primarily through free immigration was
fairly unique in early modern Europe.31 This situation may have contrasted the
most sharply with the one in Eastern Europe, where unfree labor prevailed, and
was somewhat less pronounced with respect to the large tracts of land in France
and the Western part of Germany, where people tended to work in small-scale
industry and agriculture. In most other countries in maritime Western Europe,
such as Spain, the Southern Netherlands, and England, the demand for labor
was generally filled by the domestic labor market, even when large numbers were
required for colonial settlement, as held true for Spain and later for England.
Enough free farmers and city dwellers could be lured away from their tradi-
tional occupations. At the height of the expansion in the eighteenth century,
England recruited increasingly from Ireland and Scotland. Labor recruitment
and proletarianization, however, were largely limited to the British Isles. In
maritime Southern Europe, such as in Portugal and the Ottoman Empire, not
enough free labor was available, and unfree workers were used extensively as
well. Although this practice also occurred in the Venetian Republic, the situa-
tion there was most comparable to that of its rival in the North, which recruit-
ed countless free workers across great distances. The Dutch Republic is thus
associated with a specific model of proletarianization, not primarily through
protoindustry and not at all through unfree labor, but through its achievement
of an international labor market. Everything described thus far concerns pro-
letarianization in Europe. The repercussions in Asia and Africa will be addressed
below.
1.2 Local staff in the Netherlands

In this article about global labor history, we will not dwell extensively on the
VOC staff employed ashore at the different chambers.32 This is not to suggest
that their numbers were negligible; the enterprises were large by contemporary
standards. In Amsterdam the VOC was the largest employer, while the second
largest was the navy, which employed 1,200 people there in 1781 (i.e. during the
war).33 At its peak, the VOC is unlikely to have employed more than 3,000 peo-
ple in the Netherlands, mostly on various shipping wharves. During the seven-
teenth and eighteenth centuries 1,450 new ships were built, averaging seven a
year. Most ships built in the eighteenth century measured between 700 and 1,000
tons. The Amsterdam Chamber was obviously at the vanguard with its massive
wharves and employed approximately 1,500 in the eighteenth century. The fol-
lowing approximate breakdown holds true for the middle of that century. The
head office in the city center (the “Oostindisch Huis”) had a staff of 180, dedi-
cated primarily to keeping records and processing personnel and goods. The
same number worked in the warehouses, including the ones on Rapenburg. By
far the largest contingent, however, was on the Oostenburg wharf, where in ad-
dition to the staff of 180, 1,100 workers were employed.34 The origins of the
workers are unknown. To the extent that a cosmopolitan population such as the
one in Amsterdam may be described as native (in the seventeenth century this
rate was less than forty percent, while in the eighteenth century it was just over
fifty percent), most VOC workers in Amsterdam are likely to have been born
there, and sons probably succeeded their fathers in the Compagnie.35 The role
of the VOC in the labor markets in the towns of Holland with VOC chambers
did not end here. The VOC purchased food, clothing, and other necessities from
third parties. As a result, the importance of the VOC for the labor markets in
Holland and Zeeland was far greater than the actual number of employees might
suggest.
1.3 Local staff overseas: free labor

A comprehensive list of the VOC staff overseas is impossible to provide at this
time, except for the workers recruited in Europe (see the many question marks
and estimates in Table 1). Europeans who survived the outbound journey and
the first critical weeks following their arrival usually served at one of the many
VOC sites from the Cape to Japan or on a ship in between. After all, Europeans
who signed on with the VOC did so for at least three years.
This did not, however, fill the needs of the VOC, neither ashore or at sea,
although European personnel was preferred and was in some cases cheaper.36
In the course of the seventeenth century, workers were recruited from Asia and
Africa in increasing measure. Most recruits were free labor, which is the cate-
gory addressed in this subsection. The stock boys and other workers at the trad-
ing posts differed from the seamen and soldiers.
In its quest for local staff, the Compagnie drew a different distinction be-
tween Europeans and Asians than we might expect: the “Europeans” in Table
1 included Asian-born descendants of Compagnie employees who were of Eu-
ropean or mixed European-Asian heritage. Around 1700, Asian-born “Euro-
peans” are believed to have accounted for one sixth of all persons employed
there, i.e. about 2,500 persons. In 1786 on Ceylon, which had a fairly large “Eu-
ropean” community, fully two thirds of the civil servants were from the East In-
20 ILWCH, 66, Fall 2004
dies and Ceylon, as were half the soldiers.37 One factor contributing to this sit-
uation was the VOC prohibition on bringing back Asian women on the return
journeys. Europeans who wished to stay with their Asian wives thus had no
choice but to remain in the tropics.38 Aside from the “full” Asian and African
employees discussed below, there were many mestizos and even—albeit in very
small numbers indeed, due to the minimal numbers of European women immi-
grants admitted by the VOC—Asian-born persons with two European parents.
Since the sources do not always note this distinction, the information below is
based on impressions.
The Asian and African employees ashore are difficult to quantify. As ap-
parent from Table 1, the figures fluctuated so much, e.g. between 1687/88 and
1700, that their accuracy is questionable. Europeans almost seem to have been
included in some figures but not in others. At any rate the numbers were mod-
est, especially when divided among the dozens of sites where the Compagnie op-
erated. Nor were the Asian seamen very numerous, although they did increase
toward the end of the eighteenth century. In Batavia (now Jakarta) many arti-
sans were probably Chinese; in the shipbuilding yards alone, hundreds of Chi-
nese ship’s carpenters were employed in the eighteenth century. Despite the high
wages they demanded, they were hired for lack of Europeans.39 Generalizing
about the extent of free Asian labor employed by the VOC is difficult, since the
prevalence of free labor varied from one region to the next. Over time, the Com-
pagnie’s preference for Europeans, Eurasians, and Asians reflected its needs.40
Seamen
Before describing Asian seamen with the VOC, we should consider that the
shipping industry was already vast before the Dutch and even before the Por-
tuguese entered the scene. Far from disappearing afterwards, the trade appears
to have increased. Presumably, the Europeans took over the broad network with
larger ships, while the Asians set up a more intricate network of smaller ships
with their own crews. In 1774 –1777, for example, the VOC accounted for only
fifty-one percent of the shipping volume at fifteen Javanese ports. Javanese and
Chinese operated most of the other half. These 8,000 Asian captains probably
employed 65,000 to 70,000 men, including eighty-five percent Javanese, who
worked as fishermen for part of the year as well. The labor market for Asian sea-
men was therefore substantial.41
In the seventeenth century Asian seamen were rarely reported as working
for the VOC, except for the crews on the hongi expeditions, which will be re-
viewed in the discussion about the Asian soldiers. For the voyage from Batavia
to Cochin in 1669, 134 Ambonese and other Indonesian seamen were recruited,
despite the objection that indigenous seamen were unreliable. If they did not
like a situation, they simply abandoned ship.42 Another example concerns an ex-
pedition to Pondicherry, equipped from Negapatnam in 1693. The crew consist-
ed of 1,579 sailors and soldiers, including 592 Asians. By 1690 there were com-
plaints that half the sailors were indigenous on ships departing from Bengal, and
that they demanded high wages into the bargain. Many indigenous sailors were
recruited on Ceylon as well.43
In the eighteenth century, the rising mortality rate among the Europeans
led to such a severe shortage of sailors and soldiers that Asians were accepted
as crew members for the return voyages. At least this is suggested by the prohi-
bition that was apparently deemed necessary 1715.44 While the practice took a
while to become widespread, Asians were certainly indispensable on the intra-
Asian voyages from the 1740s onward.45 In 1744 an official indigenous corps of
Christian sailors and soldiers was established. Especially at the VOC sites in In-
dia, groups of Muslim and other seamen, known as lascars and supervised by
their own foremen, were recruited. The pattern became so prevalent that a hos-
pital for Moors opened in Batavia in 1751. In 1756 following a trial period, Chi-
nese seamen (many of whom lived on Java) were allowed to sign on. More spe-
cific statistical data are available for the years 1784 –1793 (Table 3).
Table 3. Asian seamen employed by the VOC, 1784–179346
Intra-Asian voyages
Ships returning to
Chinese Javanese Indians Total the Netherlands
1784 1,023 – – 1,023 100

1785 992 1,320 382 2,694 100
1786 957 1,109 258 2,324 100
1787 950 905 178 2,033 100
1788 929 788 147 1,864 100
1789 982 613 139 1,734 250
1790 965 435 157 1,557 450
1791 1,068 313 241 1,622 250
1792 ? ? ? 1,401 800
1793 ? ? ? 1,404 100
In the long run, Asians became indispensable on the returning vessels. In

1781 the VOC decided to take non-Europeans on board at all five ports from
where ships departed directly for Europe: free Christians in Coromandel, Mus-
lims in Bengal, Muslims on Ceylon as well, Macao Portuguese in China, and Ja-
vanese and Chinese in Batavia. On board the return fleet of 1792 at the Cape
were 233 lascars, 101 Javanese, and 504 Chinese seamen, in addition to 579 Eu-
ropean ones, which meant that a majority of fifty-eight percent was not from Eu-
rope! The number of Asians appears to have increased steadily to an average of
twenty-five in the late 1780s and thirty to forty in the final years of the Com-
pagnie. These data suggest that around 1790, when about fifteen large ships de-
parted from Asia each year, at least 1,000 Asian seamen were en route between
22 ILWCH, 66, Fall 2004
TABLE 4. Asian seamen per ship between Asia and Europe, 1784–179447
Average number per ship
Europe-
Asia-Europe Asia Total (reconstruction)
Average Number of
Chinese Javanese Indians Total Chinese per ship large ships Asian crew
1784 ? ? ? ? 2.4 5 15 100

1785 ? ? ? ? 13 15 7 100
1786 ? ? ? ? ? 10? 10 100
1787 ? ? ? ? ? 10? 11 100
1788 ? ? ? ? ? 10? 8 100
1789 26 ? ? 26 ? 25 11 250
1790 ? ? ? ? 26 25 17 450
1791 26 ? ? 26 21 25 11 250
1792 25 5 12 42 ? 40 19 800
1793 ? ? ? ? 29 35 5 100
1794 ? 37 ? ? 37 35 10 350
the Netherlands and Asia in one direction or the other. This is indeed a mini-
mum, as it is very likely that Asians also sailed on the many smaller vessels.
Soldiers
While the demand for Asian seamen was strongest in the eighteenth century, the
need for soldiers arose far earlier. Regardless of how many soldiers the Com-
pagnie tried to lure in Europe, territorial expansion in Asia forced the VOC to
recruit additional soldiers on site. Forced was indeed the key word, as the VOC
was suspicious of these Asian soldiers and feared they would copy tricks from
the Europeans to use against them when the time came.48 There were three pos-
sible ways to obtain indigenous soldiers. The first was to hire them individually
or as groups of individuals, the second was to recruit entire units at once, often—
as was also the case in Europe—led by an aristocratic commander or a sover-
eign, and, third, the VOC could meet its needs by entering alliances with Asian
rulers. In this article I focus on the first and second categories. This does not
mean that the last category was unimportant. On the contrary: during the first
Javanese War of Succession (1704 –1708), the VOC had 100 Europeans and
2,500 indigenous troops and no fewer than 10,000 Javanese and Madurese troops
as allies.49 Employment of the latter, however, was not subject to the staff poli-
cy of the Compagnie.
Despite countless examples of recruitment of Asian soldiers, starting with
the Japanese in 1612, few statistical conclusions can be reached at this time.
These would require a complete account of all available material, as has been
compiled for the European seamen and is well under way for the Asian seamen.
In a fundamental article about this issue, Remco Raben notes that the VOC
records do not enable scholars to infer how many Asian soldiers worked for the
VOC. In his view, though, there must have been hundreds of thousands.50 I will
therefore merely provide several examples, which will at any rate make clear
that Raben is probably right. On Ceylon, for example, many non-European sol-
diers served the Compagnie from the various ethnic groups on the island, as well
as from India and Indonesia. Back in 1639, 252 Asian soldiers were sent to Goa
and Ceylon.51 Once the Portuguese had been driven out, the island became the
main supplier of cinnamon, and the numbers of soldiers soared (see Table 5).
Table 5. Origin of soldiers deployed directly by the VOC on Ceylon52
Europeans Eurasians Muslims Sepoys Total
1680 3,400 ? 5,000 ? 8,400

1765 4,842 190 3,030 3,418 11,480
1786 1,583 264 1,192 See under 3,039
Muslims
1794 2,000 ? 200 lascars 2,000 Easterners 4,200
(see also and sepoys
next column)
Table 5. Key:
Eurasians: called Topases (Christians of mixed Portuguese-Ceylonese or Indian descent) in 1765, called
Landskinderen (persons born into the country) in 1786
Muslims: called Lascars in 1680, called Easterners or free Moors (Tamil-speaking Muslims originating from
India; according to Raben from Indonesia as well) in 1765, called Muslims in 1786, two companies of lascars
in 1794
Sepoys: from the Indian subcontinent in 1765; lumped together with the Muslims in 1786; twenty-four com-
panies of Easterners and Sepoys in 1794.
On Java, the hub of the VOC in Asia, many indigenous troops were em-
ployed directly by the VOC as well.53 Seventeen companies of indigenous sol-
diers were stationed in Batavia, including one comprising free indigenous indi-
viduals (mostly freed slaves originating from India) and the other sixteen
probably recruited as entire companies at once. Altogether, there were proba-
bly about 2,500 men in 1685, primarily from Ambon.54 These examples will have
to suffice.
The biggest difference between soldiers recruited individually or as army
units concerned the terms of employment. While the VOC bore sole responsi-
bility for remuneration of the individually recruited soldiers, it shared this task
with the aristocratic or sovereign commander for those recruited as army units.
The contract that the Compagnie signed with the Sultan of Ternate in the late
1770s for 300 soldiers to be stationed on Sulawesi stipulated that the sultan
24 ILWCH, 66, Fall 2004
would receive eight guilders a years for each soldier, and that the Compagnie
would provide them with food and uniforms.55
Wherever the VOC had territorial sovereignty, it was in a position to re-
cruit soldiers directly. These soldiers would be paid in cash, in kind or through
the provision of farmland, as happened around Batavia and on Ceylon from 1678
onward in lieu of direct payment.56
However many Asian soldiers may have worked for the VOC, other po-
tentates surpassed the importance of the VOC in the course of the eighteenth
century. Sepoys were recruited by the French and British rivals in far greater
numbers. In Bengal the EIC had 25,000 sepoys in 1768 and 40,000 in 1784. Con-
temporary Indian sovereigns successfully modernized their armies as well at the
time.57
1.4 Unfree labor overseas

As is the case with the Asian soldiers, the quantitative history of the unfree
workers of the VOC has yet to be written, although the doctoral thesis of Rem-
co Raben and the recent article by Markus Vink are a good start.58Again, con-
ditions at the different operations from the Cape to Japan and from Persia to
China varied widely.
As a trading company, the VOC did not aim primarily to organize produc-
tion of colonial products and therefore had little interest in controlling unfree
workers directly in most cases. The Banka tin mines, for example, had long been
run by Chinese combines. There were, however, significant exceptions. In some
places, such as on the Banda Isles in the Moluccas, on the Cape and on the north-
east coast of Java and under certain conditions elsewhere, substantial unfree la-
bor existed under the VOC administration.59
The small Banda Isles were the only place in the world where mace and nut-
meg could be obtained until the early nineteenth century. In 1621 virtually all in-
habitants were massacred or driven out by the VOC, which subsequently estab-
lished a plantation settlement, where the seventy plantations (perken), each
tended by about twenty-five slaves brought in from elsewhere, were entrusted
to retired officers of the Compagnie (perkeniers). The VOC protected its mo-
nopoly by joining forces with rulers of the northern Moluccas to check whether
any nutmeg trees (of which the fruits provided mace and muscat) were secretly
grown outside Banda. Any such trees found were destroyed. Illegal cultivation
of cloves outside Ambon was controlled in the same vein through the hongi-voy-
ages, organized as labor services one month a year. Because the VOC was di-
rectly involved in all aspects of production, including the supply of slaves, this
unfree labor appears in Table 1 as well, although one might argue that they in
fact worked for the perkeniers and only indirectly for the VOC.
On the Cape slaves were used first of all on the farms that provisioned the
ships that replenished their supplies half way between Asia and Europe. Here,
too, the VOC owned hardly any slaves and left this arrangement up to the for-
mer servicemen or settlers who had come directly from Europe for this purpose.
Approximately 60,000 slaves were brought in (originally mostly from India, In-
donesia, and Madagascar, with only a few from black Africa60), averaging a few
hundred a year during just under a century and a half of VOC operations on the
Cape.61 The VOC imported only a small share of them (3,000 throughout the
eighteenth century) for its own use, and the rest were for the “freemen.” Like
the perkeniers on Banda, the freemen were also former servicemen of the VOC.
The difference was that the freemen on the Cape were far more likely to be of
exclusively European heritage. Differing demand for imported slaves between
the Compagnie and the free residents of the Cape colony also surfaced in the
size of their respective slave populations. The slave population of the VOC
peaked in 1789 at 946 but fluctuated throughout the rest of the century from 500
to 750 (including the “bandits,” i.e. criminals or political prisoners). Slaves
owned by freemen, however, increased from 1,000 at the start, through 5,000 in
the middle, to nearly 20,000 toward the end of the eighteenth century. The
freemen also used the labor of the Khoisan, indigenous inhabitants of the Cape
who were deprived of their lands and pasturage and reduced to laborers, whose
circumstances were often worse than those of the slaves.62
In an effort to obtain much-needed wood, the VOC took over the logging
industry on Northeast Java in the last quarter of the seventeenth century, instead
of waiting for what it considered to be overpriced supplies from local rulers. It
later arranged its own supply of other products as well, such as rice.63 The ex-
ploitation became so severe that a major uprising ensued in 1741. Certain seg-
ments of the Javanese population and impoverished Chinese joined forces in a
unique effort against the Javanese, Chinese, and Dutch elites.
At the large VOC settlements, such as those in Batavia and Colombo,
slaves were put to work mainly as servants, artisans, and unskilled workers
(coolies) or farmers. Each year the VOC purchased hundreds of slaves in
Batavia from Asian dealers to have them perform duties for which they were un-
able to recruit Europeans. In 1694 on the small island of Onrust, 215 Compag-
nie slaves (including 133 men, 63 women, and 19 children) worked on the wharf,
as well as 953 others (including 360 women and girls) elsewhere in the city. They
worked under their own foremen (who were also slaves and were known as man-
dadors or mandurs, as were the supervisors of indigenous seamen). In addition,
there were 383 forced laborers, known as chain gang workers, whose duties in-
cluded dredging the city canals. Finally, also in 1694, the VOC hired another 579
slaves (known as coolies) from civilians. The justification for all these unfree
workers—over 2,100 altogether—was, as reported by Van Dam, the high cost
of free labor. He even complained about the cost of the leased slaves.64
The VOC also used slave labor at some of its industries, such as in the gun-
powder mills in Batavia, on Ceylon, in Bengal, and in a few other places where
slaves used niter (saltpeter or potassium nitrate) to produce gunpowder, as well
as in the gold mines on Sumatra. Others besides the Compagnie used slave la-
bor. As was the case on the Cape, these other parties owned far more slaves than
the Compagnie did. In the mid-eighteenth century, Batavia, a city with 20,000
inhabitants inside and 100,000 inhabitants outside its walls at the time, had
26 ILWCH, 66, Fall 2004
30,000 slaves, including 13,000 inside its walls. The Compagnie owned only 1,850
of them. The rest were equally divided between Arab, Indian, and Indonesian
owners on the one hand and European and Chinese owners on the other hand.
In 1779 the total number for Batavia and Ommelanden had even risen to over
40,000, an all-time maximum.65
Overall, direct use of slaves by the VOC (i.e. slaves owned or rented by the
Company) was rather modest compared with the total number of staff, although
slaves still accounted for thirty-five to forty percent of the staff recruited in Asia.
As Vink has demonstrated, the VOC did far more to perpetuate and expand
slavery than the size of its work force would suggest. While Compagnie slaves
numbered in the thousands, the slaves owned by private parties from whom the
Compagnie purchased its monopoly products totalled tens of thousands in the
eighteenth century, especially on the Cape, as well as on Banda and elsewhere
on the Moluccas. These private parties came from various backgrounds: on the
Cape they were of European and on Banda of mixed European-Asian heritage,
in Batavia European slave owners were in the minority, and elsewhere most
slave owners pertained to the local Asian elite. After all, slavery was widespread
in the areas where the VOC operated. The VOC neither invented (although it
may have in fact done so on the Cape) nor abolished the practice but is far more
likely to have caused unfree labor to increase than to decline. This is eminently
clear for Banda, the Cape and northeast Java and may be assumed to hold true
for Batavia as well, although it is less obvious for Ambon.66 The popularity of
slavery spread. At the end of the eighteenth century, coffee cultivation on Java
increasingly came to resemble a system of forced labor.67
Examining the slave shipments provides the clearest indicator of the sig-
nificance of slavery in the VOC-controlled area. While most VOC ships trans-
ported entirely different cargo, Vink estimates that at the end of the seventeenth
century the total annual slave trade amounted to at least 3,730 to 6,430 people,
with slightly more men than women. Until around 1660, they came mainly from
South Asia, later on somewhat more from Southeast Asia (predominantly by
Makassarese and Balinese traders), and toward the end of that century, Mada-
gascar became an important source of supply. Vink infers that “the volume of
the total Dutch Indian Ocean slave trade was therefore fifteen to thirty percent
of the Atlantic slave trade, slightly smaller than the trans-Saharan slave trade,
and one-and-a-half to three times the size of the Swahili and Red Sea coast and
the Dutch West India Company slave trades.”68
2. Working conditions, career, and labor relationships

Generalizing about the universal working conditions and career opportunities
of the VOC workers as a whole is difficult. This would require a complete cata-
log of all the different working conditions, from shipyard workers in Amsterdam
to slaves on the Moluccas, from scribes in Middelburg to soldiers in Bengal.
Many of these conditions were commonplace: thousands of shipbuilding car-
penters and office clerks were employed in the Republic outside the VOC, hun-
dreds of thousands if not more soldiers were stationed in Asia, and slaves on that
continent are sure to have numbered in the millions. The VOC stood out for its
effort, with due regard for profit and loss on its trade, to exert a central influence
on the working conditions of all its tens of thousands of workers. This applied
the most to the operations and labor relationships aboard its ships, which were
meticulously regulated.
Asians were exceptional amid the countless seamen from all over the world.
Although as we have noted their presence dates back to the mid-seventeenth
century, their number rose to at least 2,000 by the second half of the eighteenth
century and to 2,500 by the end of the century. At first the VOC recruited main-
ly Indians, although later on Chinese recruited in Indonesia dominated, espe-
cially on the long voyages. Indonesians appear to have been the smallest group.
All these Asians sailed primarily between India, Ceylon, Indonesia, and China,
although several reached Amsterdam toward the end of the VOC. A wide gap
separated these people from the Europeans.69 The Asians were recruited by
their own foremen (called “mandadors” by the Javanese and Chinese, “tandels”
by the Indians, assisted by a boatswain, also known as a tandel) in crews of twen-
ty-six and operated under their command on board the ship as well. In Batavia
the VOC recruited Javanese and Chinese through a few central agents, paying
them 7.5 stuivers a month for each recruit. The agents undoubtedly profited
from “their” men in other ways as well. After all, they arranged the wage pay-
ments and in return were required to provide equipment and food and care for
the family members the seamen left behind. From 1788 onward, a single Chinese
entrepreneur had a monopoly on the supply of Chinese seamen to the Com-
pagnie. Not only were the Europeans, Chinese, and Javanese on board the ship
on very bad terms with each other, but the Asians were mistreated by the offi-
cers as well. Desertion was therefore high, especially among the Javanese. The
Compagnie urged better treatment for the crew to avert getting ever more sub-
standard recruits in Asia as well as in Europe.
While Asians alone were a diverse group, to say nothing of Asians and Eu-
ropeans together, the Europeans themselves were far from homogenous. We will
therefore overlook the separate category of the passengers, and similarly at-
tribute no special significance to the artisans. Instead, we will cover the majori-
ty on board: sailors and soldiers. In the 1630s the VOC began its ongoing effort
to recruit large numbers of soldiers. From this point onward, the soldiers were
at odds with the sailors. According to Ketting, these differences became espe-
cially pronounced after 1650. A probable exacerbating factor was that the sol-
diers were recruited increasingly from inland areas, unlike the seamen, who con-
tinued to be recruited mainly from the coastal regions.70
On board the ship, seamen were divided by the steward (the bottelier: the
petty officer responsible for distributing food and drink) into so-called “bins”
(bakken) of seven men each. Rations were distributed according to these units,
and eating utensils and cups were shared by the group. Bins usually comprised
men with similar or related responsibilities. Soldiers and petty officers were
therefore usually assigned to separate bins. Officers dined after the common folk
28 ILWCH, 66, Fall 2004
had finished in the cabin. Assigning a name to each bin is likely to have promoted
cohesion.71 The very smallest unit was the informal but highly essential system
of mates: amid the intensely hostile environment of the ship with its continuous
putrid stench, where creaks and squeaks were heard constantly, and death al-
ways lurked, each sailor tried to find a mate or sometimes a few mates whom he
could trust. If a crewmember fell ill or was on his deathbed, his mate or mates
cared for him.72
Until well into the eighteenth century, the VOC had no fixed provisions for
advancement. Nor was formal training provided, except to navigating officers,
surgeons, sick visitors, and presumably bookkeepers. The only hope of ad-
vancement among the lower-ranking staff was therefore through experience on
board. With the exception of the captain, everybody on board may have started
at the bottom. Most petty officers probably started as ordinary sailors. What
were the prospects for advancement?
Keeping the ship in good working order required dividing all duties and re-
sponsibilities very specifically, if only to prevent hundreds of people from get-
ting in each other’s way all the time in such a small space. Still, seamen could
switch duties, simply because deaths and accidents kept leaving vacancies that
needed to be filled.73
On the outbound journey, some of the thirty to thirty-five officers whose
monthly wages were fourteen guilders or more would have to be replaced by
lower-ranking men. On the return voyage, the likelihood of advancement was
greater still, since only two thirds of the Dutch officers actually returned. Even
though ships made their return voyages with fewer crewmembers and officers,
at least one third of the officers on the return journey probably made the out-
bound journey as an ordinary sailor. Of course this system had a cumulative ef-
fect for officers who signed on for a second or even a third voyage. Ordinary sea-
men who returned to the Netherlands and were interested in sailing on another
voyage undoubtedly stood a good chance of being promoted. Protection from
one’s superiors was a definite prerequisite, and those who came from the same
place as the officers enjoyed a distinct advantage. As a result, Germans and oth-
er foreigners suffered a disadvantage, as Van Gelder has noted. Germans tend-
ed to have a bad reputation, the VOC preferred to fill the highest ranks with
Dutchmen, Germans had a poor or nonexistent command of Dutch and to make
matters worse were usually Lutheran or Catholic, whereas the VOC favored
Calvinism.74 Nonetheless, several Germans did well in the VOC, as acting Gov-
ernor-General Thedens, Governor-General Van Imhoff, Indies council member
Dithard van Rheden, and the Cheribon resident Sönke (Seneca) Ingersen have
illustrated.75
The remarks about working conditions for all VOC staff members ashore
in Asia, Africa, or Europe also apply to labor relationships: again, I will focus
on sailors and soldiers on board. The following lines, however, concern the oth-
er VOC personnel.
First I will discuss those working ashore in the Republic. Gawronski has
demonstrated that although over one thousand people were employed on the
Amsterdam wharf, duties were highly decentralized. As soon as the 1,100 work-
ers and 180 staff members crossed the only bridge to the wharf on the artificial
island of Oostenburg, 312 days a year, the masses drifted off into different di-
rections. One example concerns the ship’s carpenters, who used wood and iron-
work from other divisions to build ship frames. The master ship’s carpenters
received assistance from the two master journeymen, as well as from “com-
manders” (commandeurs)—thirteen in 1743, including one woman. These com-
manders received annual wages of 500 guilders, nearly double those of a good
artisan at the time. The commanders in the carpenter’s yard with its three ship-
building berths were supervising the actual ship’s carpenters. In addition, there
were separate groups of drillers and panel builders (for the interior panelling),
each with their own commander. Altogether, there were 350 skilled workers.
The commander and his assistant in charge of the 150 woodchip gatherers were
also indispensable, as they coordinated the supply and disposal of timber.
The relatively favorable position of the VOC carpenters is apparent from
their wages of 300 guilders a year—slightly less than their peers at other
wharves, but then they had steady employment—and from the fact that they
could not be dismissed without due cause. If the work diminished, they received
very decent severance pay and old-age provisions.76 Remarkably, the actual
ship’s carpenters were allowed to join the ship’s carpenters’ guild, even though
they were definitely not independent masters. The same held true for the admi-
ralty wharf. This guild offered good social provisions as well.77
Whenever social turmoil arose, the Amsterdam ship’s carpenters, including
those of the VOC, were a prominent pro-Orangist force and opposed the urban
regents as such. They took this stand in 1748, as well as in 1787 and in 1813. On
20 December 1787 they marched through the city in large groups rigidly segre-
gated by specialization, numbering 4,000 altogether.78 The conduct of the ship’s
carpenters ashore may very well have affected the situation on board the ships.
After all, several artisans accompanied each ship, including a few ship’s carpen-
ters. They are unlikely to have cast their traditions overboard the moment they
boarded the ship.
The workers in Asia were not automatically equivalent to the work force
in Europe or to the crews on the ships. The abundance of slaves in the Batavia
shipyards was not the only difference. Even though we know very little about
the Asian shore work force, we should not presume that they were unable to
protect their own interests when confronted with supremely powerful foreign-
ers. The wonderful study by Ravi Ahuja about the successful organization of the
indigenous crew of the ships that sailed back and forth between the East India-
men on the roadstead and the Madras harbor provides convincing evidence of
the contrary.79 The same holds true for the defiance of unfree VOC workers.80
This is even highly worthwhile with respect to the emergence of labor relation-
ships in each of these remote regions. The question is how they influenced each
other, especially considering the European staff. We will start by discussing la-
bor relationships concerning this category of workers before addressing the far
broader issue of international and interethnic solidarity.
30 ILWCH, 66, Fall 2004
Organizations of seamen during the shipping era have already been cov-
ered extensively in the historiography with important implications for labor his-
tory. Herman Ketting has based his exemplary study about the men who sailed
on the VOC ships in the first half of the seventeenth century on these organiza-
tions. Many authors have questioned in what measure seamen were comparable
to other workers. As large numbers of seamen were necessary and moreover had
to work together in close quarters well before the Industrial Revolution—at
least this is what has been presumed, most recently by Rediker and Line-
baugh81 —one would expect the first signs of alienation and consequently of col-
lective action among these workers. The lack of any leeway whatsoever through-
out the voyage meant that seamen lived, according to the terminology of Erving
Goffman, in “total institutions,” such as military camps, prisons, or even clois-
ters. Aubert and Arner have added that the place of work of the sailors was phys-
ically isolated from the family, that the turnover rate was much higher than on
land, that positions on board were extremely graded and specialized, and that
upward occupational mobility was formal and based on qualifications and
skills.82
The early rise of class consciousness is subject to two critical reservations.
The Spanish historian Pablo E. Pérez-Mallaína has observed that merchant navy
seamen in the Middle Ages and later received a share in the proceeds of the voy-
age and were therefore coparticipants rather than wage workers. Accordingly,
they operated alongside rather than under the captain, which is manifested in
part by their frequent recourse to the court in the event of wage disputes. Even
assuming that they became true proletarians in increasing measure from the sev-
enteenth century onward, they did not necessarily acquire a sense of class con-
sciousness. Rodger argues that class consciousness was nonexistent in the Geor-
gian navy, simply because such awareness did not yet exist ashore either. Other
scholars (e.g. Weibust, inspired by Homans) argue that sailors managed to cope
with the countless frustrations by rituals, rather than by protest.83
Marcus Rediker and Peter Linebaugh express an entirely different view.
Following the run-up in the mid-seventeenth century, they mention countless
forms of resistance during the eighteenth century that culminated toward the
end of that century in a strong sense of class consciousness among seamen, al-
beit in a very specific setting. In the Atlantic region, they noted a “multiethnic
class,” “not yet racialized,” which included all insurgents, from rebellious slaves
to textile workers in England, associated through constant migrations and of
course through the travelling proletarians par excellence: seamen. Their mani-
festations of protest, which according to Linebaugh and Rediker included not
only mutiny but even piracy, have therefore received special consideration.
Ketting has also wondered to what extent the labor relationships of the sea-
men with the VOC were more comparable to the ones on Spanish ships in the
sixteenth century, as described by Pérez-Mallaína than they were to the ones on
eighteenth-century ships, as interpreted by Linebaugh and Rediker. He observes
that the dichotomy deepened on board and writes of an “opposition culture”
there but denies that a sense of class existed.84
Ketting attributes the undeniable dichotomy between the common folk and
the officers to various factors.85 The length of the journey meant that justice and
its dispensation could not wait until those concerned had arrived back on land.
So the process occurred while at sea, and mild and severe corporal punishment
and even death sentences were carried out en route. The provost marshal be-
came the anonymous executor of a centrally devised system of order and disci-
pline in an organization of unprecedented size. In some cases the three eldest
sailors became involved in the court cases. In addition, all those on board could
be forced to participate in the public floggings.86
The VOC prohibited the traditional baptism at sea and other “rituals of re-
bellion” (term from Max Gluckman) and replaced them with celebrations to be
initiated exclusively by the those in charge of the ship. Rather than the carniva-
lesque conduct that might victimize superiors as well, additional food and drink
was distributed. The soldiers did not willingly forego these privileges, although
the days were over in which the “most respective” on board were “lawlesse and
witlesse” for three days in the words of an English seaman of 1615. Around 1640
the berths were replaced with hammocks, thereby greatly improving the visibil-
ity of the lower decks and facilitating supervision of the seamen by their superi-
ors.
Ketting has analyzed the courts convened aboard ships to determine
whether conflicts and conflict management reflected what he refers to as the ris-
ing polarization on board.87 Based on the records of 400 trials, he concluded that
incidents justifying a trial occurred an average of once every four weeks on each
voyage, and that “labor and authority” were called into question once every
eight weeks. Considering the circumstances and the composition of those on
board, this frequency appears rather low, even though unofficial reprimands (in-
cluding a single blow, which superiors were authorized to mete out with im-
punity) are omitted from the registers. Most disputes (forty-five percent) were
personal. When they got out of control, those concerned would pull knives, pri-
marily to leave a permanent, visible scar on their adversary. Among the thirty
stabbing incidents where the attackers were identified, twenty-six cases con-
cerned settlement of a grievance between the common folk, involving forty-sev-
en seamen and five soldiers. Only once was a knife pulled on an officer and only
three times on a petty officer.88 Both these incidents and the many cases of theft
from others on board reveal that mutual solidarity was rare. The figures report-
ed for theft from others on board (twelve percent) are an absolute minimum, as
a theft charge required catching the perpetrator in the act or extracting a con-
fession.89 Approximately the same share of cases (thirteen percent) concerned
theft from the Compagnie, usually food or drink. Finally, labor disputes (thirty-
five percent) concerned orders issued arbitrarily, disagreements as to whether
the work performed was satisfactory, problems adjusting to the pace of work
based on the waiting system, and the amount of the rations. Collective actions
were rare. They either involved refusing to work or going on strike or seizing
control (temporarily or permanently). Altogether, at least fifty such actions ap-
pear in the records.90
32 ILWCH, 66, Fall 2004
According to the data available, at least 250 Europeans were involved,

which was very low compared to the total number on board the ships. These ac-
tions were concentrated in the periods 1611–1616 (on at least four ships), 1628–
1640 (on at least fourteen ships), 1652–1654 (on at least five ships), and 1782–
1790 (on at least six ships). Why acts of collective resistance occurred at twelve
to eighteen-month intervals during these specific periods and far less frequent-
ly at other times remains unclear. In some but not all cases they seemed associ-
ated with periods of war. No rising trend or learning effect is apparent over the
long term. I attribute this primarily to the high turnover rate. In addition, near-
ly all experienced seamen started at the bottom of the hierarchy and worked
their way up to petty officers. An army of inexperienced, heterogeneous seamen
was thus up against experienced, homogeneous officers. Ketting does not be-
lieve that these collective actions reveal class consciousness, considering the em-
phasis on enforcing old privileges. I am struck by how often petty officers and
even officers became involved in the disputes to get even with those of a similar
rank. Moreover, while the actions in the first half of the seventeenth century
were rather violent, this was even more the case for the ones in the second half
of the eighteenth century. Five of the actions in the eighteenth century involved
Asians.91 Considering the circumstances of their recruitment, the absence of
Asians from earlier actions is hardly surprising. Nor is the lack of support they
received from any of the higher-ranking officers remarkable. In fact, the Asian
mutineers were severely punished, even though all those concerned were aware
that their grievances were justified, and received no support whatsoever from
Europeans. On the voyage of the Java from Batavia to the homeland in late
1783, the crew of 143 comprised twenty-five Chinese (who spoke Malay and
were therefore presumably from Java) and twenty-five Javanese sailors. The
Chinese suffered such serious abuse from the officers that they went berserk on
Christmas Eve of all days. In a lightening operation they killed six officers or
their wives and wounded five others. They then swiftly discarded their weapons
and went to sleep in their hammocks as if nothing had happened. Of course they
were caught and thrown overboard without any due process (i.e. against all the
rules). The Javanese they had tried to include in their campaign insisted that they
knew nothing. This carefully prepared campaign raises several questions. Com-
munication between the Chinese and the other sailors on board obviously left
much to be desired. How else could the instigators have cherished any hope of
undisturbed rest in their hammocks after their act? At any rate, this mutiny is
anything but grist to the mill of Linebaugh and Rediker.
Conclusion
This account of recent literature on the VOC, an organization that has had one
and a half to two million in its direct employ altogether and was consequently
the largest multinational of the early-modern period, gives rise to a few conclu-
sions relevant for devising a global labor history.
While the extent to which proletarianization increased in Europe, Africa, and
Asia between 1600 and 1800 remains unclear, the establishment of an interna-
tional labor market by the VOC is indisputable in my view. The debate on prole-
tarianization has been revived since scholars such as Bas van Bavel presented jus-
tified assertions that the extent of proletarianization during the late Middle Ages
and the early modern period was far greater than hitherto assumed. His conclu-
sions are valid only for the Netherlands at this time, but the fact that nearly sixty
percent of the people in the inland farming regions were proletarianized is food
for thought.92 Nonetheless, the VOC, with its eternal demand for labor, is likely
to have promoted rather than to have inhibited proletarianization.
Undeniably, however, the Dutch labor market and its demand for seamen
and within that market in turn the demand for VOC staff was international in the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The VOC certainly boosted international
labor migration within Europe. Whether the same held true for its sites overseas
is less obvious. It was certainly the case in Batavia, on the Cape and perhaps on
the Moluccas and Ceylon as well. At all other sites, however, the VOC was but
one of several operators. Indian and Chinese merchants and entrepreneurs and
their demand for labor, regardless of the actions of the VOC, were probably of
far greater significance, especially in India. Moreover, the European and Asian
segments of the labor market set up by the VOC were hardly integrated with one
another. The Asian labor market did become better integrated: not only did Chi-
nese continue to come to South and Southeast Asia, but the exchange of both
free and unfree workers probably intensified between South and Southeast Asia,
as well as between these areas and South and Southeast Africa.
The labor relationships were less straightforward. At this time we can go
no further than to ascertain that the information available does not confirm the
conclusions of Linebaugh and Rediker regarding the radicalized labor relation-
ships in the Atlantic, and that the approach of Pérez-Mallaína appears more
worthwhile. On our quest for answers, we will need to explore labor relation-
ships in the period 1650 –1795 at least as thoroughly as Ketting has done for the
preceding period. Especially the labor relationships in Asia that directly or in-
directly concerned the VOC, ranging from slaves in Batavia, Ceylon and South
Africa, serfs on the Moluccas under local rulers, Chinese combines on Banka,
soldiers under their own commanders, and sugar mills leased to Chinese to the
firm’s own staff merit separate, detailed studies. A veritable el dorado awaits
global labor historians!
NOTES
1. I am grateful to Ulbe Bosma, Marcel van der Linden, and especially Femme Gaastra,
who provided valuable feedback on a previous version of this article. I also wish to thank Jan
Luiten van Zanden (supervisor) and Christiaan J. Van Bochove (who conducted the research)
for showing me a research report from 2002 about employee arrangements in Asia.
2. An excellent reference to countless aspects of this operation, including archive files and
bibliographies, appears in over 250 VOC sites accessible via the website www.londoh.com.
3. Sidney Pollard, The Genesis of Modern Management: A Study of the Industrial Revolu-
tion in Great Britain (London, 1965), 9; Robert C. Davis, Shipbuilders of the Venetian Arsenal:
Workers and Workplace in the Preindustrial City (Baltimore, 1991).
34 ILWCH, 66, Fall 2004
4. Bruijn and Gaastra, 178 –184. Since then the following additional publications have ap-
peared about Dutch-Portuguese: Ernst van Veen, “De Portugees-Nederlandse concurrentie op
de vaart naar Indië: 1596 –1640,” Tijdschrift voor Zeegeschiedenis 22 [2003] 3–16, and Dutch-
English competition: P. Marshall, “The Place of the Seven Years War (1756–1763) in the chang-
ing balance between Britain and the Netherlands in Asia” TVZ 20 (2001), 15–23. On Prussia,
see D. de Graaf, “De Koninklijke Compagnie. De Pruisische Aziatische Compagnie von Em-
den nach China: 1751–1765” TVZ 20 (2001), 143 –162.
5. The TANAP program (Towards a New Age of Partnership. A Dutch-Asia-South
African Heritage Programme) activities are important in this respect. The website for this pro-
gramme provides the following information: at present the archives cover 1.33 kilometers of
shelf space in the National Archives of the Netherlands (The Hague), 2.5 kilometers are kept
at the National Archives of Indonesia ( Jakarta) under less satisfactory conditions, 322 meters
are in the Cape Town Archives Repository, 310 meters are at the National Archives of Sri Lan-
ka (Colombo), and smaller but nonetheless interesting collections are at the Tamil Nadu
Archives (Chennai, India) and the Oriental and India Office Collections of the British Library
(London) and elsewhere. Worldwide, all these papers are considered so important that they ap-
pear in their entirety on a provisional list of the UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register.
6. Alex van Stipriaanand Ellen Bal, “De VOC is een geloof: Kanttekeningen bij een pop-
ulair Nederlands imago,” Manon van der Heijden and Paul van de Laar, eds., Rotterdammers
en de VOC. Handelscompagnie, stad en burgers: 1600 –1800 (Amsterdam, 2002), 213 –243. For
responses see Marion Peters, In steen geschreven. Leven en sterven van VOC-dienaren op de
kust van Coromandel in India (Amsterdam, 2002), 27–28; and Femme S. Gaastra, The Dutch
East India Company: Expansion and Decline (Zutphen, 2003), 11–12.
7. This article is based only on secondary sources: no new archival research has been con-
ducted.
8. The V in VOC stands for the Dutch word verenigd (united). On the history of the VOC,
see Gaastra, 2003: a translation as well as an edited version of previous Dutch editions.
9. Els van Eyck van Heslinga, Van compagnie naar koopvaardij. De scheepvaartver-
bindingen van de Bataafse Republiek met de koloniën in Azië 1795–1806 (Amsterdam, 1988).
10. In addition to the sample data in Table 1, the non-European workers are likely to have
been in far better health than the European ones, as will be explained below. Turnover was
therefore probably lower among the Asian workers than among the European ones.
11. See Herman Ketting, Leven, werk en rebellie aan boord van Oost-Indiëvaarders (1595–
1650) (Amsterdam, 2002), 219, for the seventeenth and Femme Gaastra, “Sware continuerende
lasten en groten ommeslagh. Kosten en oorlogsvoering van de Verenigde Oost-Indische Com-
pagnie” in Gerrit Knaap and Ger Teitler, eds., De Verenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie tussen
oorlog en diplomatie (Leiden, 2002), 99 –100, and Ibid. 2003, 164, for the eighteenth centuries.
12. Below these categories of workers are discussed at various points. I have not provid-
ed a systematic review of those employed indirectly, both for lack of sources and especially be-
cause the VOC did not set their terms of employment.
13. Table 1. Key: Row 1: Based on the numbers reported for 1790 (Gaastra, 2003, 163),
the other figures are estimates according to the activity on the wharves (Bruijn, Gaaastra, and
Schöffer, 1987, 52). See also Van Gelder and Wagenaar, 1988 and Gawronski, 1996, 43 – 45, 113.
Rows 2 and 3: Gaastra 2003, 80 – 88; Bruijn and Lucassen, 1980, 135 (1687/1688). Row 4: Gaas-
tra 1980a, 201; Gaastra 1980b, 443; Gaastra, 2003, 80 – 88, less the numbers indicated in the next
rows in a few cases; where these figures deviate from Lequin, 1982, Appendix 4, I have used the
latter, as they are more detailed. Row 5: my additions (rounded). Row 6: Gaastra, 1980a, 208;
Gaastra, 1980b, 443; calculated for the eighteenth century based on Lequin, 1982, Appendix 4.
Row 7: see the text and tables 3 and 4 below (these figures are higher than the ones in Lequin
1982, Appendix 4; Generale Missiven XI, 66, 726. Row 8: see the text and Table 5 below (Gaas-
tra, 1980s, 208, Gaastra, 1980b, 443, Lequin, 1982, Appendix 4). Row 9: Raben, 1996, 86 (1,594
company slaves in Batavia alone in 1632); Vink, 2003, 166–167 for 1687/1688 and for other
rough estimates see text below, based on which I assume that the figures in the eighteenth cen-
tury were somewhat but not substantially higher than at the end of the seventeenth century
(Van der Brug, 1994, 35, 152); with the ca. 2,000 slaves of the perkeniers (recruited from for-
mer officers of the Compagnie) on the Moluccas added in all cases. Row 10: rough estimate for
Asians in 1625. Row 11: my additions.
14. Jan Lucassen, “The Netherlands, the Dutch, and Long-Distance Migration in the Late
Sixteenth to Early Nineteenth Centuries” in Nicholas Canny, ed., Europeans on the Move. Stud-
ies on European Migration 1500 –1800 (Oxford, 1994), 159; Roelof van Gelder, Het Oost-In-
disch avontuur. Duitsers in dienst van de VOC (1600 –1800) (Nijmegen, 1997), 49; Ibid. 2003,
490, fn.4. Regarding the cause, especially the spread of malaria after 1733 due to digging fish
ponds, see P.H. van der Brug, Malaria en malaise. De VOC in Batavia in de achttiende eeuw
(Amsterdam, 1994).
15. K.L. Van Schouwenburg, “Het personeel op de schepen van de Kamer Delft van de
VOC in de tweede helft van de achttiende eeuw” TVZ 8 (1989) 179–186; “Het personeel op de
schepen van de Kamer Delft van de VOC in de eerste helft van de achttiende eeuw” TVZ 7
(1988) 76–93. According to van Schouwenburg’s calculations, in the period from 1700 to 1794,
614 of the 2,035 soldiers from Delft returned, whereas 5,050 of the 8,340 seamen from Delft re-
turned. Altogether, 4,711 Delft residents did not return, according to the ships’ wage logs. See
also Van der Brug, 1994, 186 –188; Van der Heijden, 2002, 181.
16. Table 2. Key: Column 2: total in Bruijn, Gaastra, Schöffer, 1987, 170; distribution ac-
cording to Bruijn and Lucassen, 1980, 80 (respective percentages 11.11, 40.03, 21.84, and 27.02).
Column 3: percentages for the Netherlands equivalent to the ones for Delft in the eighteenth
century (Van Schouwenburg, 1988 and 1989), which in Column 4 yields 140,000 returning for-
eigners; the difference between soldiers and sailors here is analogous to the one for the Nether-
lands (Bonke, 1999, 192–193). Column 4: my figures based on the percentages in Column 3.
17. Jan Kees Beers and Cees Bakker, Westfriezen naar de Oost. De kamers der VOC te
Hoorn en Enkhuizen en hun recruteringsgebied, 1700 –1800 (Hoorn, 1990), 60; Perry Moree,
“Gezagvoerders op VOC-schepen van de kamer Rotterdam in de achttiende eeuw,” in Manon
van der Heijden and Paul van de Laar, eds., Rotterdammers en de VOC. Handelscompagnie,
stad en burgers (1600–1800) (Amsterdam, 2002), 136 –160.
18. I am grateful to Femme Gaastra for these useful suggestions.
19. As ships’ wage logs for ship’s crews are released, research will become easier in this
field. See the Internet site http://voc.mindbus.nl/, which will be at the National Archive in The
Hague in the future.
20. J.R. Bruijn, F.S. Gaastra, and I. Schöffer, Dutch-Asiatic Shipping in the 17th and 18th
Centuries (The Hague, three volumes, I [1987], II [1979], III [1979]), 161–172; Frank Lequin,
“A New Approach to the History of the Dutch Expansion in Asia: the Personnel of the Dutch
East India Company in the XVIIIth Century” Journal of European Economic History 8 (1979),
435; Ingrid Dillo, De nadagen van de verenigde Oostindische Compagnie 1783–1795. Schepen
en zeevarenden (Amsterdam, 1992), 99 –102.
21. Lequin, 1979, 435. British survival rates later improved considerably. See Van der
Brug, 1994, 188; Philip D. Curtin, Death by Migration: Europe’s Encounter With the Tropical
World in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge, 1989).
22. Van Schouwenburg, 1988, 89 – 90 (the sample is for 1729 and concerns thirty-three per-
sons).
23. Van Schouwenburg, 1988, 86 and Id., 1989, 183.
24. This rough estimate of the duplicates is based on the following assumptions: Ten per-
cent of all those on board were officers. Of the sixty-five percent who returned, half signed on
again, which yielded ca. 30,000 persons; of the remaining ca. 200,000 seamen, half returned, and
one-third of that group signed on for another journey, which would be another 30,000 persons.
Allowing for a few returning soldiers and persons making three or more voyages might amount
to 75,000 persons altogether.
25. Ketting, 2002, 59 – 61.
26. Ketting, 2002, 52– 54 reaches this conclusion about the years 1630–1650. On later pe-
riods, see Manon van der Heijden, “Achterblijvers. Rotterdamse vrouwen en de VOC (1602–
1750)” in van der Heijden and van de Laar, eds., Rotterdammers en de VOC, 181–212, and
Danielle van den Heuvel, “Bij uijtlandigheijt van haar man. Echtgenotes van VOC-zeelieden,
aangemonsterd voor de kamer Enkhuizen (1700 –1750)” (MA Thesis, Free University of Am-
sterdam, 2003). Wives of officers were better off, as evidenced by letters of one: Perry Moree,
ed., Kikkertje lief. Brieven van Aagje Luijtsen geschreven tussen 1776 en 1780 aan haar man Har-
manus Kikkert stuurman in dienst van de VOC (Texel, 2002).
27. J.R. Bruijn and Jan Lucassen, eds., Op de schepen der Oost-Indische Compagnie. Vijf
artikelen van J. de Hullu (Groningen, 1980); Jan Kees Beers and Cees Bakker, Westfriezen naar
de Oost. De kamers der VOC te Hoorn en Enkhuizen en hun recruteringsgebied, 1700–1800
(Hoorn, 1990); Ketting, 2002, 41– 51.
28. Examples of both appear in van Gelder 1997 (German edition: Das ostindische Aben-
teuer. Deutsche in Diensten der Vereinigten Ostindischen Kompanie der Niederlande (VOC),
1600–1800 [Hamburg, 2004]), and van Gelder, Naporra’s omweg. Het leven van een VOC-ma-
36 ILWCH, 66, Fall 2004
troos (1731–1793) (Amsterdam, 2003). Even Germans who left the service with sufficient sav-
ings often had trouble adjusting and were sometimes unable to, as the local elite refused to tol-
erate ostentatious conduct on the part of a local resident who had left in search of his fortune
and returned as one of the nouveau riche.
29. Karel Davids, “Maritime Labour in the Netherlands, 1570–1870,” in Paul van Royen,
Jaap Bruijn, and Jan Lucassen (eds), “‘Those Emblems of Hell’? European Sailors and the Mar-
itime Labour Market, 1570 –1870” (St. John’s, Newfoundland, 1997), 41–71, features an inter-
esting account of the seamen in the Netherlands.
30. Lucassen, 1994, 165 –169, 183; Lucassen, “Mobilization of labour in early modern Eu-
rope,” in Maarten Prak, ed., Early Modern Capitalism. Economic and social change in Europe,
1400–1800 (London, 2001), 167; Bruijn and Wels, 2003.
31. Lucassen, 2001. For maritime labor see Lucassen, “The International Maritime
Labour Market (Sixteenth-Nineteenth Centuries),” in van Royen, Bruijn, and Lucassen, eds.,
“Those Emblems of Hell?”.
32. Gaastra, 2003, 163.
33. Deurlo, A.J., “Bijltjes en klouwers. Een bijdrage tot de geschiedenis der Amsterdamse
scheepsbouw, in het bijzonder in de tweede helft van de achttiende eeuw,” in Economisch- en
Sociaal-Historisch Jaarboek 34 (1971), 8.
34. B.E. van Bruggen, “Schepen, ontwerp en bouw,” in: Maritieme Geschiedenis der Ned-
erlanden 3 (Bussum, 1977), 57; Roelof van Gelder and Lodewijk Wagenaar, Sporen van de Com-
pagnie. De VOC in Nederland (Amsterdam, 1988); extensive details about Amsterdam in the
eighteenth century appear in Jerzy Gawronski, De Equipagie van de Hollandia en de Amster-
dam. VOC-bedrijvigheid in 18 de-eeuws Amsterdam (Amsterdam, 1996), 43 –130.
35. Deurlo, 1971.
36. F.S. Gaastra, “De VOC in Azië tot 1680,” in Algemene Geschiedenis der Nederlanden
7 (Bussum, 1980A), 207; Remco Raben, Batavia and Colombo: The Ethnic and Spatial Order
of Two Colonial Cities 1600 –1800 (PhD Thesis, Leiden, 1996).
37. F.S. Gaastra, “De VOC in Azië 1680 –1795,” in Algemene Geschiedenis der Nederlan-
den 9 (Bussum 1980B), 445, according to Van Goor, 1978, 16 and 173, fn. 78. The author is not
entirely clear. He writes “In 1786 243 ‘Landskinderen’ were figuring amongst the 306 servants
in the civil ranks. Amongst the 4,435 compagnieservants including the soldiers, 816 were born
in the country. The number of 3,039 soldiers consisted of 1,192 Muslims and sepoys, 264 ‘Land-
skinderen’ and 1,583 Europeans”; Raben, 1996; Ulbe Bosma and Remco Raben, De oude In-
dische wereld 1500–1920 (Amsterdam, 2003).
38. Pieter van Dam, Beschryvinge van de Oostindische Compagnie 7 vols. (Nijhoff, 1927–
1954), vol.1 (1927) 605: (“ . . . [those who] married indigenous women and have consequently
deprived themselves of the opportunity to return or be sent back to the Netherlands”).
39. Van der Brug, 1994, 152; Els Jacobs “VOC-scheepvaart binnen Azië. De Lokhorst als
lokaas, of hoe het standaardwerk Dutch-Asiatic Shipping een Aziatisch complement kan krij-
gen,” in Leo Akveld, ed., In het kielzog. Maritiem-historische studies aangeboden aan Jaap R.
Bruijn bij zijn vertrek als hoogleraar zeegeschiedenis aan de Universiteit Leiden (Amsterdam,
2003), 177, 187.
40. C.R. Boxer, The Dutch Seaborne Empire 1600 –1800 (Harmondsworth, 1973), 239 –
249, 258–259; Johan Talens, Een feodale samenleving in koloniaal vaarwater. Staatsvorming,
koloniale expansie en economische onderontwikkeling in Banten, West-Java (1600–1750) (Hil-
versum, 1999), 212–217, summarizes the debate well and applies it to West Java; on East Java,
see Gerrit J. Knaap, Shallow Waters, Rising Tide: Shipping and Trade in Java around 1775 (Lei-
den, 1996), 163–207. Ibid., 155 for the relationship between coin circulation and wage pay-
ments; Talens, 1999, 227–232.
41. Knaap, 1996, 48, 69; Jacobs, 2003, 185, 191; and Ravi Ahuja, “The Origins of Colonial
Labour Policy in late Eighteenth-Century Madras,” International Review of Social History 44
(1999), 159–195.
42. Van Dam, II-2 (1932) 299. Generale missiven van gouverneurs-generaal en raden aan
Heren XVII der Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie, ed., W.Ph. Coolhaas et al.: Rijks geschied-
kundige publicatiën, grote serie 104, 112, 125, 134, 150, 159, 164, 193, 205, and 235, 10 vols., (The
Hague, 1960–1995), III, 463 – 464.
43. Van Dam, II-2 (1932) 114; Ibid. III (1943) 325. Generale Missiven IV, 690, VI, 242, 627;
VII, 160.
44. The following primarily according to J.R. Bruijn, “De personeelbehoefte van de VOC
overzee en aan boord, bezien in Aziatisch en Nederlands perspectief,” Bijdragen en Med-
edelingen betreffende de Geschiedenis der Nederlanden 91 (1976), 229 –230; Dillo, 1992, 104 –
112, 161–165; Raben, 1996, 100.
45. Generale Missiven XI, 66, 167, 307, 514, 726, 774.
46. Dillo, 1992, 105, 162, based on resolutions of Governor General and Council. Frank
Lequin, “Het personeel van de Verenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie in Azië in de achttiende
eeuw, meer in het bijzonder in de vestiging Bengalen” (2 vols., PhD Thesis, Leiden, 1982), 409,
yields far lower figures based on general muster-roll of the company personnel until 1789, although
Dillo appears more detailed and consequently more reliable in this respect (see also Van der Brug,
1994, 152), although she may also be underestimating the figures, see the critical remarks of Els
Jacobs, Koopman in Azië. De handel van de Verenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie in de 18de eeuw
(Zutphen, 2000), 277, fn. 8, and Jacobs, 2003, 190–191. On the return fleet see Table 4.
47. Based on four ships headed homeward in 1789 and two ships in 1791 (Bruijn, Gaastra,
and Schöffer, III 1979, 522– 566) and reconstructed according to Bruijn, 1976, 230, for 1792, as-
suming that each ship headed homeward averaged seventy seamen to the Cape (Ibid., for 1792
based on nine ships, for which the numbers of seamen are known); also based on one outbound
ship in 1784, three ships in 1785, one ship in 1790, six ships 1791, and three ships in 1793 (Brui-
jn, Gaastra and Schöffer II, 1979, 707–760) and based on three ships in Dillo, 1972, 164, for
1794. Large ships weighing at least 880 tons have been counted according to their country of
origin, while the Pinken, Fluiten, and Hoekers with their far smaller crews have been exclud-
ed. See also Hans Bonke, De zeven reizen van de Jonge Lieve. De Biografie van een VOC-schip,
1760–1781 (Nijmegen, 1999), 60, and on lascars on English ships, Rozina Visram, Asians in
Britain: 400 Years of History (London, 2002), 14 – 33.
48. Van Dam, III (1943) 325; Raben, 1996; Gerrit Knaap and Ger Teitler, eds., De
Verenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie tussen oorlog en diplomatie (Leiden, 2002).
49. Gaastra, 2003, 87. On the reserve troop system, see Remco Raben, “Het Aziatisch le-
gioen. Huurlingen, bondgenoten en reservisten in het geweer voor de Verenigde Oost-Indis-
che Compagnie,” in Knaap and Teitler, 2002, 192–198. See also Talens, 1999.
50. Raben, 2002, 182, 185; Raben, 1996.
51. Gaastra, 1980A, 202; Dirk Kolff, Naukar, Rajput and Sepoy: The ethnohistory of the
labour market in Hindustan, 1450 –1850 (Cambridge, 1990), 4 – 6, 152.
52. Van Dam, II-2 (1932) 350; J. van Goor, Jan Kompenie as Schoolmaster. Dutch Educa-
tion in Ceylon 1690–1795 (PhD Diss., Utrecht, 1978), 17, 162–164 (glossary), 173 fn.78, 85 (but
different figures for 1765 in Raben, 1996, 147); Raben, 2002, 199 –200 (1794: out of fifty com-
panies, twenty-four companies were “easterners and sepoys,” two companies “lascars”). A
company comprised 60 to 100 men (Talens, 1999, 96).
53. Many examples also appear in Raben, 1996 and 2002.
54. Van, Dam I-1 (1927) 605 – 606 (nearly 19,000 rijksdaalders [2.50 guilder coins] were
spent on wages for 652 persons, with an additional 60,000 rijksdaalders for an unspecified num-
ber, yielding a total of ca. 2,500, suggesting that each company comprised approximately 150
soldiers). On the Ambonese, see Raben, 2002, 188 –191.
55. Jacobs, 2000, 30.
56. Van Dam, II-2, 343; Van Goor, 1978, 13; Raben, 1996, 142–147; Generale Missiven IV,
394; VII, 308, 310, XI 181, 281–282, 426, 688.
57. Raben, 2002, 203; In addition, Van der Brug, 1994, 188, reveals that mortality rates
were far lower in British India than in the Netherlands Indies.
58. Raben, 1996, esp. 119 –132; Markus Vink, “‘The World’s Oldest Trade’: Dutch Slavery
and Slave Trade in the Indian Ocean in the Seventeenth Century,” Journal of World History 14,
No.2 (2003), 131–177; Van Stipriaan and Bal, 2002, 232–236).
59. Jacobs, 2000, 25; G.J. Knaap, Kruidnagelen en Christenen. De Verenigde Oost-Indische
Compagnie en de bevolking van Ambon 1656 –1696 (Dordrecht, 1987), 138 –160.
60. On the stereotyping of slaves, see Robert Ross, Status and Respectability in the Cape
Colony, 1750–1870: A Tragedy of Manners (Cambridge, 1999), 34 – 37.
61. Ibid., 6.
62. Pieter van Duin and Robert Ross, The economy of the Cape Colony in the eighteenth
century (Leiden, 1987), 9 –12, 83- 112–125, Ross, 1999, 6 –7.
63. Luc Nagtegaal, Riding the Dutch tiger. The Dutch east Indies Company and the north-
east coast of Java, 1680–1743 (Leiden, 1996), 193 –227.
64. Van Dam III, 201–208, 219 –222; Marijke Barend-Van Haeften, Oost-Indië gespiegeld.
Nicolaas de Graaff, een schrijvend chirurgijn in dienst van de VOC (Zutphen, 1992), 159 –165;
Raben 1996, 119–132.
38 ILWCH, 66, Fall 2004
65. Van der Brug, 1994, 33 – 34. For extensive information about the number of slaves in
Batavia and Colombo, see Raben, 1996, esp. 84 –105.
66. Knaap, 1987, 124 –137; Talens, 1999, 139 for convict labor.
67. Jacobs, 2000, 98, 130, 175, 211. On the other hand, slaves could be freed and might even
pursue a career, see Raben 1996, and Bosma and Raven, 2003, 55 – 59.
68. Vink, 2003, 168.
69. The following is based primarily on Dillo, 1992, 104–112 and 161–165.
70. Van Gelder, 1997, 152; Ketting, 2002, 219, 231–232; Cf. however Bruijn and Lucassen,
1985, 110, where the animosity between soldiers was referred to as “the old passion” by 1639.
71. Ketting, 2002, 140 –144; Van Gelder, 1997, 158; Bruijn and Lucassen, 1985, 116 –117.
72. Ketting 2002, 137–140; Van Gelder, 2003, discusses the friendships of a sailor called
Naporra in detail.
73. The following estimates are based on Van Schouwenburg, 1988 and 1989.
74. Van Gelder, 1997, 56 –70, 184 –189; Bonke, 1999, 66 – 80; Van Gelder, 2003, 146, 220,
226. On the general status of foreigners in the Netherlands, see Jan Lucassen and Rinus Pen-
ninx, Newcomers: Immigrants and their Descendents in the Netherlands 1550–1995 (Amster-
dam, 1997).
75. I am grateful to Femme Gaastra, who shared these examples with me.
76. Gawronski, 1996, 81– 85, 117; Gawronski, “Vals plat en de VOC. Opgravingen op
Oostenburg, Amsterdam,” in Leo Akveld, ed., In het kielzog. Maritiem-historische studies
aangeboden aan Jaap R. Bruijn bij zijn vertrek als hoogleraar zeegeschiedenis aan de Univer-
siteit Leiden (Amsterdam, 2003), 163 –173, 173.
77. Deurlo, 1971, 11–18; Richard W. Unger, Dutch Shipbuilding before 1800: Ships and
Guilds (Assen, 1978), 95.
78. Deurlo 1971, 28, 54 – 65.
79. Ahuja 1999.
80. See above e.g. the uprising on the northeast coast of Java in 1741 and also Raben, 1996,
100, 126, 217, 245; Vink, 2003, 168 –175; Gaastra, 2003, 94.
81. Ketting, 2002, 1– 8 (he refers to Marcus Rediker, Between the Devil and the Deep Blue
Sea: Merchant Seamen, Pirates, and the Anglo-American Maritime World, 1700–1750 (Cam-
bridge, 1989), but not yet to Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker, The Many-Headed Hydra:
Sailors, Slaves, Commoners, and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic (London,
2000); Marcel van der Linden, “Labour History as the History of Multitudes,” Labour/Le Tra-
vail 52 (Fall 2003), 235 –243, and “Notes from an Outsider,” in van Royen, Bruijn, and Lucassen,
eds., “Those Emblems of Hell?”.
82. Gaastra, 1997, 39; Ketting, 2002, 7; the intrinsically sensible objections of Heide Ger-
stenberger, “Men Apart: the Concept of ‘Total Institution’ and the Analysis of Seafaring,” In-
ternational Journal of Maritime History VIII, No.1 ( June 1996), 173–182, to overly automatic
application to the shipping industry of the “total institution” concept does not seem applicable
to the VOC.
83. Pablo E. Pérez-Mallaína, Spain’s Men of the Sea: Daily Life on the Indies Fleets in the
Sixteenth Century (Baltimore, 1998); regarding the VOC, Van Gelder, 1997, 153–157 and Ibid.
2003, 266–274, 298 appears implicitly to support the “rituals” approach.
84. Ketting, 2002, 266 –267; moreover, seamen stopped petitioning the VOC after ca. 1630:
apparently they lost all hope that such action would be effective.
85. Ketting, 2002, 103, 168 –175 and 72, respectively.
86. Van Gelder, 2003, 277.
87. Ketting, 2002, 204 –225.
88. Ibid., 245–251.
89. Ibid., 211–214 has observed that those on board the VOC ships closely resembled
those who sailed on Spanish ships in the sixteenth century in this respect (see Pérez-Mallaína,
1998, 217), while Rediker does not even mention theft; Van Gelder, 2003, 221, 230–231, 274–
275.
90. The statistical foundation for this account is still flimsy: Bruijn and Van Eyck van Hes-
linga, 1980, mention forty-five mutinies in their blurb text and list the ship and year for thirty-
six of them in their book. Twelve occurred before 1650. Ketting 2002, 256, mentions thirteen
for that period, including seven that the preceding authors overlooked! Altogether, over fifty
mutinies are therefore documented. Combining all the data yields eight unidentified ones;
Roeper and Van Gelder 2002, 63 – 67. Sometimes the seamen ashore rebelled as well, e.g. in
1738, 1740, and 1743 in Amsterdam (Van Gelder 2003, 407). On individual acts of vengeance,
see Ketting 2002, 265–266, and, as for 1756, see Van Gelder 2003, 407– 408. On Spain, see Pérez-
Mallaína 1998, 214.
91. J.R. Bruijn and E. Van Eyck van Heslinga, in Muiterij. Oproer en berechting op schep-
en van de VOC (Haarlem, 1980), report the following ships with rebellious Asians: Robo 1705,
Rambang 1722, Slot ter Hoge 1783 (slaves), Java 1783 (Chinese seamen), Haasje 1790 (slaves).
For a detailed description, see the essay by K. Van der Tempel in Ibid., 123–147; Vibeke Roeper
and Roelof van Gelder, In dienst van de Compagnie. Leven bij de VOC in honderd getuigenis-
sen (1602–1799) (Amsterdam, 2002), 245 –247.
92. Bas van Bavel, “Land, lease and agriculture: the transition of the rural economy in the
Dutch river area from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century,” Past and Present 172 (2001).

A Multinational and Its Labor Force: The Dutch East India Company, 1595 - 1795 by Jan Lucassen

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A Multinational and Its Labor Force: The Dutch East India Company, 1595 - 1795 by Jan Lucassen

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A Multinational and its Labor Force:

The Dutch East India Company, 1595 –1795

International Labor and Working-Class History

1. Labor needs and recruitment in Europe and Asia

1.1 European Staff to Asia

Table 1. Estimates of the number of workers directly employed by the VOC13

1625 1687/1688 1700 1753 1780

Netherlands 2,000 3,000 3,000 3,000 3,000

contemporaries, definitely by the eighteenth century, were well aware of the

Departed from Arrived in

Seamen from the Netherlands 108,000 60.5 65,500

1.2 Local staff in the Netherlands

1.3 Local staff overseas: free labor

Table 3. Asian seamen employed by the VOC, 1784–179346

1784 1,023 – – 1,023 100

In the long run, Asians became indispensable on the returning vessels. In

Average number per ship

1784 ? ? ? ? 2.4 5 15 100

Table 5. Origin of soldiers deployed directly by the VOC on Ceylon52

Europeans Eurasians Muslims Sepoys Total

1680 3,400 ? 5,000 ? 8,400

1.4 Unfree labor overseas

2. Working conditions, career, and labor relationships

According to the data available, at least 250 Europeans were involved,

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