Bryan Hull - Lecture 3 - Colonial trade policies in 17th & 18th century se asia

>> For this lecture we will focus on colonial trade policies in the 17th and 18th century in Southeast Asia. And even more specific than that, we're going to focus on a few ports, Penang, Melaka. We're not going to focus on Singapore because it's not there yet, but I wanted to show you where Singapore was. And Batavia, which will become modern day Jakarta eventually. So let's start with Melaka, in 1511 through 1641 the Portuguese are going to rule this port, prior to that the, Muslim rulers were in this port. It was a port long before the Europeans got there. And, the Portuguese are not going to be so interested in trade, they'll do a little trade. But they're going to be mostly interested in making money. And they make money in a variety of different ways. One way that they make money, is by, instituting passports. There's a Portuguese term for it which I don't remember. And so if you were a boat and you were going through the Melaka Strait, even if you weren't going to stop, I think this is a total rip off. But even if you weren't going to stop you would have to fork over some money for your passport. And they do this throughout Asia, I don't know how many passports you had to buy. So, that sort of formed my passport and then you could just keep going and if you didn't they would obviously try to blow you up and sink you. So it was kind of important to pay. So they made money on passports. The other thing they would do is if for example you were going to export, some delicious nutmeg to Europe you would have to pay, some taxes for that as they left. And then also, if you were importing, something to the region, you would have to pay some additional money for the imports as well. So exports, imports and passports, they had them, they were doing quite well, those Portuguese. Now, in 1641, the Dutch seized or took over, I can't remember which the port from the Portuguese. And before that, a few years before that, Batavia, the Dutch also had built Batavia. So these two ports were very, very important. If you're going to research in depth you could understand the relationship between these two ports but for us it's not so important. Now the Dutch, the Dutch were interested in trading much more than the Portuguese and they were also interested in making a lot of money. So they actually charged more, than the Portuguese. So that nutmeg that we were just talking about, that was upped to 5% tax as it left Melaka. 5% onto the cost. And then, if you think about it, things that were imported were sort of luxury items and they got a 10% surcharge put on them. Now besides those two things, taxing imports and exports, there was an additional thing that those Dutch did, and they would form a monopoly. So, I don't know if you remember this but I, in the second lecture I talked about tin being manufactured throughout Southeast Asia. And the locals, they'd want to sell it at the coast and then it would be exported to China. And the Dutch were interested in controlling that, so they were the only ones who could buy the tin from the locals. They controlled the selling price, or the buying price, I should say. And then because they were the only ones who had it, when they arrived in China, they controlled the selling price to the Chinese as well. So that way they mad maximum profit. They could sell it high, they bought it low. They were the only ones who were doing it and that was the official monopoly. And they were the only, that was a Dutch thing in the area. The other thing they did, and I'm not sure why, it has something, I don't know why they did it. Maybe you could find out for us. There were certain products that the traders would come in and try to sell and then no way, you can't sell that. They were totally banned from even selling within the Melaka Strait. So some products were totally banned. Tax on imports, tax on exports, monopolies and totally banned items as well, by the Dutch. Now eventually the British are going to build, Penang out of nothing, I mean there wasn't a port there to begin with. And they're going to do it for a couple reasons. The first reason they're going to do it is to compete with the Dutch, and they aren't going to do some of the sneaky things that the Dutch did. They're going to charge a lot less. So, for example, if you were growing peppercorns in Indonesia, why would you, wouldn't you find a way to get them over to the British port, because they wouldn't charge you very much as you ship them out compared to the Dutch. So you'd try to find some sneaky ways to get them over there. So that's one thing that the Brits did is to compete, they tried to make this the most popular port as opposed to this one. And, the other thing the British did is they were interested in building ships because as you might remember, I talked about forest products, there's some high density forest that are useful for wood. Maybe some here to, I don't remember. So they could build ships and they could just use them regionally throughout, and they wouldn't have to, you know build them way back in Europe where there wasn't much wood and then, sort of ship them all the way here. So the ship building thing worked. The only other thing I want to say now that I think about it is that back in the British Parliament or whatever it was called at that time. There were some Brits that weren't so convinced this was a profitable port. And so they were skeptical of this as something that should be developed. Okay. So in addition there are 4 things that affect local and global trade dynamics that I want to tell you about so that you can keep them in mind for our discussion. The first is that throughout this time, the colonial powers are going to really get into it at different points. Because they're fighting over who's going to have dominance in the region. So there's fights between these two. Also there are some very well known, very skilled, [inaudible] traders, local traders and they're going to get into it with the colonial powers as well. So there's going to be struggles between the two of them, or these different groups. Some people will form treaties, break the treaties, the Dutch will get mad, got to war, all that sort of thing. Also you have to remember that, back, way back off the map, in Europe, there's some struggles going on between the various colonial powers. That's going to create some tensions, as economic tensions here about what can get traded or how much money needs to be made. So there's wars that are going on off the map that you need to keep an eye on. And also, China, we can't forget about certain policies in China. So sometimes China's going to not be into international trade, they're just going to say nope, we're not interested in trading at all. And they're going to cut off trade to the international world and then sometimes they're going to allow their people to migrate and sometimes they're not. And that's going to affect what goes on here. So for example, let's say that peppercorns are grown here on the Malay Peninsula, and I don't know if they are. But let's just pretend like they are. The Chinese would come down, they would work these peppercorn, sort of forests slash fields. They would work harder and for cheaper money than the natives. They would displace the native population workforce, slowly but surely they'd take over the businesses so the Chinese influx of labor changed the dynamics of the local rulers and people and caused unrest there through their economic infiltration as well. So that's going on. So colonial conflict in the regional, local conflict with colonial powers, what's going on back in Europe and then also what's going on in China, what their policies are as far as migration and trade. Woah, so I think that's enough and I think we've covered a lot so you're well equipped for the upcoming discussions this week. And I look forward to seeing what you have to say.