Letter from the Phrakhlang on behalf of King Somdet Phrachao Seua of Siam (r. 1703-1709) to the Supreme Government in Batavia, circa March 1703, and the answer from Batavia, 27 August 1703

Landscape in Siam (Thailand) with boats, 1687

Introduced Dhiravat na Pombejra (Former Associate Professor Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok)

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The Chaophraya Phrakhlang’s letter of 1703 to Governor-General Van Outhoorn and Council on behalf of Somdet Phrachao Süa, King of Siam,was written when the king had only very recently acceded to the throne.The minister still refers to the previous king’s funeral arrangements. King Süa (r.1703-1709) was the eldest son of King Phetracha (r.1688-1703) and before his accession had been Prince of the Front Palace (chao wang na). Though Siamese chronicle tradition [1] would have it that he was an unacknowledged son of King Narai (r.1656-1688), there is no solid evidence to support this conjecture. He was later to cement his royal power after ruthlessly eliminating his half-brother Chao Phra Khwan and several other leading courtier-officials. [2] The letter dates from a time of mutual dissatisfaction between the VOC and the Siamese court. After the 1688 Siamese “revolution” had overthrown King Narai and ushered in a new dynasty, things had looked promising for the Dutch. In December 1688, they had signed a new treaty with King Phetracha which reiterated all the VOC’s rights in Siam as enshrined in the previous VOC-Siam Treaty of August 1664, including “free trade” in Siam, an export monopoly on deerskins, and extra-territorial rights. Furthermore, it had confirmed the Company’s export monopoly on tin bought at Siam’s southern port town of Ligor (Nakhon Si Thammarat), initially granted in 1671. [3] Much of this letter concerns discussions around and about the renewal of the 1688 treaty, now that a new monarch had come to the throne. The Dutch hoped to secure better trading terms, but the Siamese court was insisting on the old treaty conditions, formally re-endorsed by the Phrakhlang.

Dutch disaffection with their trade and position in Siam had set in soon after 1688, climaxing during King Süa’s reign.Around the time of this letter the VOC’s major problems in Siam concerned their trade in sappan wood, tin and textiles – as well as King Süa’s suspicious attitude towards the Dutch. In 1705 Gideon Tant, who served as opperhoofd(-head of mission) in Ayutthaya between 1699 and 1703, analyzed the obstacles to the company’s trade in detail. [4] In spite of the treaty clause allowing them “free trade” in the Kingdom of Siam, the Dutch were forbidden from buying certain goods from private merchants. Hence one of the most important items for VOC (or just “their”) trade in Siam, the dye wood sappan, could only be bought from the royal warehouses at high prices. Concerning the supposed VOC export monopoly of tin from Ligor, Tant discovered to his dismay that a discrepancy in the texts of the 1688 Treaty led to the Dutch receiving far less tin than they expected, much of it going to the King of Siam instead. This was because in the Dutch version of the treaty, the VOC was to be allowed to export all the tin in Ligor except for what the King of Siam might wish to use for his own activities. The Siamese language version, however, stipulated that “all the tin” in Ligor “belonged to the king and may only be traded by His Majesty’s servants”. [5] The misunderstanding most probably stemmed from the treaty not clarifying that the Siamese kings claimed the right to receive tin from Ligor as tribute tax (suai). The Dutch regularly supplied Indian textiles to the Siamese market, usually printed or “painted” cotton cloth from the Coromandel Coast, Bengal and Gujarat. The persistent problem of the textile trade in Siam, however, was the Siamese crown’s insistence on pricing all the items they bought, even to the extent of buying cloth from the VOC at prices lower than what the Dutch had actually paid for them in India. Any unsold cloth was seized by the crown, making the trade a virtual royal monopoly. [6] The Phrakhlang asks Batavia to replace the VOC opperhoofd Gideon Tant with a more suitable person. Tant was characterized as “a person inimical to the path of mutual friendship and ancient custom”. The minister had become exasperated by the Dutchman’s efforts to obtain a royal audience for the purposes of renewing and renegotiating the Dutch-Siamese treaty. In sharp contrast to the Company’s “golden age” in Ayutthaya during King Narai’s reign (1657-1688), when its servants acted as courtiers at the Siamese court, access to the king was now circumscribed by court protocol. In this letter, the Phrakhlang maintained that the precedent cited by Tant dated from a time when there was a crisis caused by French aggression in Siam, leading the king (Phetracha) to summon both Okluang Aphai Wari (Joannes Keyts) and Okluang Wisit Sakhon (Pieter van den Hoorn) to court in late 1688 to renew the 1664 Treaty. It was therefore against custom to request an audience with the monarch – the Phrakhlang was maintaining that all communication with His Majesty had to go through him. He included in this missive a strong attack on Tant’s competence and integrity, virtually accusing him of corrupt trading practices.

Although Gideon Tant left for Japan in July 1703 to assume the position of opperhoofd at Deshima and was replaced by Arnout Cleur, Dutch conflicts with the Siamese royal court were to be further exacerbated by the Siamese court’s protocols, leading to the Dutch closing down their Siam factory. Protocol was again at the heart of the conflict. A diplomatic incident occurred in 1705 when the Dutch commissioner Joan van Velsen was snubbed by King Süa’s court. The Siamese were offended that the Governor-General had not replied to the king’s previous letter, and King Süa made his displeasure clear. Van Velsen was intimidated, his every request refused, and in the end he was not even granted a royal audience. As a final insult, the two Persian horses brought by Van Velsen as Batavia’s gifts to the king were taken into the Royal Palace for ten days, then returned to the Dutch in a miserable condition. The VOC had little choice but to leave Ayutthaya, although it was not a total withdrawal. An employee was left in residence at the Company lodge, and another one was detailed to look after the Company’s warehouse “Amsterdam”. [7]

The Phrakhlang refers more than once in this letter to the relationship between the King of Siam with the “Prince of Orange”. This was, on the Siamese side, no mere formality. The Ayutthayan-court had always stressed the importance of direct correspondence with the Princes of Orange (the “King of Holland”), or failing that a bilateral relationship between the two rulers. The Dutch Republic seems to have been an alien concept. Yet all the while Ayutthaya maintained a steady diplomatic contact with Batavia because the Governor-General was seen as a ruler in his own right as well as being in charge of VOC’s affairs in Asia. [8]

The court of King Süa, like that of King Phetracha before it, saw the Dutch East India Company as purveyors of luxury goods (notably Indian textiles), buyers of merchandise from the royal warehouses and finally as facilitators in the kings’ quest for quality Javanese horses. Thus, even allowing for King Süa’s wary attitude towards Europeans and the rise of Chinese influence at the court, there was always a place for the VOC to occupy in the trading world of Ayutthaya. But for the Dutch matters were not so clear. The perennial dilemma of the VOC in its last half century or so in Ayutthaya was whether to leave this troublesome post, or to stay on despite falling profits. [9] The closure of the Siam office in 1705-1706 was to be but a temporary one – by June 1706 the Dutch opperhoofd Arnout Cleur was back in the Company’s riverside residence, a mere musket’s shot away from the walled city of Ayutthaya, carrying on a frustrating and flagging trade.

 

References

Archival sources

• Nationaal Archief, Den Haag. VOC 1691, fols. 61-72, “Relaas van ’t voorgevallene bij de ziekte en overlijden van den Siamse koninck Phra Trong Tham genaamt” by Arnout Cleur, c.1703-1704.

• Nationaal Archief, VOC 1711, fols.1-20, “Berigt […] over den slegten toestant van handel en verdere saken der E. Comp. etc.” [Report on the Company’s trade in Siam] by Gideon Tant, 20 March 1705.

 

Secondary works

• Bhawan Ruangsilp, Dutch East India Company Merchants at the Court of Ayutthaya: Dutch Perceptions of the Thai Kingdom c.1604-1765. Leiden: Brill, 2007.

• Han ten Brummelhuis,Merchant, Courtier and Diplomat: A History of the Contacts between the Netherlands and Thailand. Lochem-Gent: De Tijdstroom, 1987.

• Richard D. Cushman (tr.) and David K. Wyatt (ed.), The Royal Chronicles of Ayutthaya. Bangkok: The Siam Society, 2000.

• George Vinal Smith. The Dutch in Seventeenth-Century Thailand. De Kalb: Northern Illinois University, 1977.

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[1] Richard D. Cushman (tr.) and David K. Wyatt (ed.), The Royal Chronicles of Ayutthaya. Bangkok: The Siam Society, 2000, pp. 300-301.

[2] Nationaal Archief, Den Haag. VOC 1691, fols. 61-72, “Relaas van ‘t voorgevallene bij de ziekte en overlijden van den Siamse koninck Phra Trong Tham genaamt” by Arnout Cleur, c.1703-1704. See also Bhawan Ruangsilp, Dutch East India Company Merchants at the Court of Ayutthaya: Dutch Perceptions of the Thai Kingdom c.1604-1765. Leiden: Brill, 2007, pp.173-176.

[3] George Vinal Smith,The Dutch in Seventeenth-Century Thailand. De Kalb: Northern Illinois University, 1977, p. 45; Han ten Brummelhuis, Merchant, Courtier and Diplomat:A History of the Contacts between the Netherlands and Thailand. Lochem-Gent: De Tijdstroom, 1987, pp. 40-41.

[4] NA, VOC 1711, fols.1-20, “Berigt” on the Company’s trade in Siam by Gideon Tant, 20 March 1705.

[5] Ten Brummelhuis,Merchant, p. 45.

[6] Ten Brummelhuis,Merchant, p. 45; Bhawan, Dutch East India Company Merchants, p. 177.

[7] Bhawan,Dutch East India Company Merchants, pp. 177-178.

[8] Bhawan,Dutch East India Company Merchants, pp. 29-33.

[9] Bhawan,Dutch East India Company Merchants, p. 179.

Dhiravat na Pombejra, “Letter from the Phrakhlang on behalf of King Somdet Phrachao Seua of Siam (r. 1703-1709) to the Supreme Government in Batavia, circa March 1703, and the answer from Batavia, 27 August 1703”. In: Harta Karun. Hidden Treasures on Indonesian and Asian-European History from the VOC Archives in Jakarta, document 20. Jakarta: Arsip Nasional Republik Indonesia, 2016.