Edmond Halley, an astronomer and mathematician, is…

Most of the residents of Batavia are of Asian descent.

Thousands of slaves have been brought from India and Arakan, and, later, from Bali and Sulawesi.

To avoid uprisings, it had been decided by the Directors of the VOC that the Javanese should not be kept as slaves.

Chinese people, who make up the largest group in Batavia, most of them merchants and laborers, are the most decisive group in the development of the city.

There is also a large group of freed slaves, usually Portuguese-speaking Asian Christians who were formerly slaves to the Portuguese, made prisoners by the VOC in the many conflicts with the Portuguese.

Portuguese will remain the dominant language in Batavia until late eighteenth century, when the language will slowly be replaced with Dutch and Malay.

Additionally, there are also Muslim and Hindu merchants from India and Malays.

Initially, these different ethnic groups had lived side by side, but in 1688 complete segregation is enacted upon the indigenous population: each ethnic group has to live in their own established village outside the city wall.

There are Javanese villages for Javanese people, Moluccan villages for the Moluccans, and so on.

Each people is tagged with a lead identity tag to identify them with their own ethnic group.

This identity tag will later be replaced with a parchment.

Intermarriage between different ethnic groups has to be reported.

Dutch traders import eighty-seven tons of Indian opium for distribution to Java and the Indies in 1699.

The British ships now sail to the neutral Dutch port of Batavia in what is now Indonesia, where Rogers undergoes surgery to remove a musket ball from the roof of his mouth, and the expedition disposes of the less seaworthy of the two Spanish prizes.

Dealing with the Dutch here constitutes a violation of the British East India Company's monopoly.

A legal battle ensues when the ships of the Rogers expedition finally drop anchor in the Thames River on October 14, 1711, with the investors paying the East India Company six thousand pounds (about six hund4red and sixty-six thousand pounds at 2009 values) as settlement for their claim for breach of monopoly, about four percent of what Rogers has brought back.

The investors have approximately doubled their money, while Rogers has gained sixteen hundred pounds (today perhaps one hundred and seventy-six thousand pounds) from a voyage which has disfigured him and cost him his brother, who had been killed in a battle in the Pacific.

The money is probably less than he could have made at home, and is entirely absorbed by the debts his family has incurred in his absence.

However, the long voyage and the capture of the Spanish ship make Rogers a national hero.

Rogers is the first Englishman, in circumnavigating the globe, to have his original ships and most of his crew survive.

Engelbert Kaempfer in 1712 describes addiction to madak, the blend of opium and tobacco: "No commodity throughout the Indies is retailed with greater profit by the Batavians than opium, which [its] users cannot do without, nor can they come by it except it be brought by the ships of the Batavians from Bengal and Coromandel."

Woodes Rogers writes an account of his journey, titled A Cruising Voyage Round the World.

While Edward Cooke, an officer aboard the Duchess, also writes a book, and beats Rogers to print by several months, Rogers' book is much more successful, with many readers fascinated by the account of Selkirk's rescue, which Cooke had slighted.

Among those interested in Selkirk's adventure is Daniel Defoe, who seeks out Selkirk, and will fictionalize the story as Robinson Crusoe.

While Rogers' book enjoys financial success, it has a practical purpose—to aid British navigators and possible colonists.

Much of Rogers' introduction is devoted to advocacy for the South Seas trade.

Rogers notes that had there been a British colony in the South Seas, he would not have had to worry about food supplies for his crew.

A third of Rogers' book is devoted to detailed descriptions of the places that he had explored, with special emphasis on "such [places] as may be of most use for enlarging our trade". (Little, Brian (1960). Crusoe's Captain. Odhams Press.)

He describes the area of the River Plate in detail because it lies "within the limits of the South Sea Company", whose schemes have not yet burst into financial scandal.

Rogers' book will be carried by such South Pacific navigators as Admiral George Anson and privateering captains John Clipperton and George Shelvocke.

Rogers has encountered financial problems on his return.

Sir William Whetstone has died, and Rogers, having failed to recoup his business losses through privateering, is forced to sell his Bristol home to support his family.

He is successfully sued by a group of over two hundred of his crew, who stated that they had not received their fair share of the expedition profits.

The profits from his book are not enough to overcome these setbacks, and he is forced into bankruptcy.

His wife gives birth to their fourth child a year after his return—a boy who dies in infancy—and Sarah and Woodes Rogers soon permanently separate.

Rogers decides the way out of his financial difficulty is to lead another expedition, this time against pirates.

He leads in 1713 what is ostensibly an expedition to purchase slaves in Madagascar and take them to the Dutch East Indies, this time with the permission of the British East India Company.

Rogers' secondary purpose, however, is to gather details on the pirates of Madagascar, hoping to destroy or reform them, and colonize Madagascar on a future trip.

Rogers has collected information regarding pirates and their vessels near the island on Madagascar.

Finding that a large number of the pirates have gone native, he has persuaded many of them to sign a petition to Queen Anne asking her for clemency.

While Rogers' expedition is profitable, when it returns to London in 1715, the British East India Company vetoes the idea of a colonial expedition to Madagascar, believing a colony is a greater threat to its monopoly than a few pirates.

Accordingly, Rogers turns his sights from Madagascar to the West Indies.

His connections include several of the advisers to the new king, George I, who had succeeded Queen Anne in 1714, and Rogers is able to forge an agreement for a company to manage the Bahamas, which are infested with pirates, in exchange for a share of the colony's profits.

The Bahamas are at this time, according to the Governor of Bermuda, "without any face or form of Government" and the colony is a "sink or nest of infamous rascals". (Little, Brian (1960). Crusoe's Captain. Odhams Press.)

The islands have been nominally governed by absentee Lords Proprietor, who have done little except appoint a new, powerless governor when the position falls vacant.

The Lords Proprietor, under the agreement that underlies Rogers' commission, lease their rights for a token sum to Rogers' company for twenty-one years.

The Dutch East India Company collects a tax in coffee in the Priangen region of west Java and earns vast profits through sales in Europe and America.

Soon becoming the globe's greatest coffee broker, the Dutch company gains thereby a substitute for its substantial share of the China opium trade lost to Britain after 1720.

Jacob Roggeveen, following his discovery and naming of Easter Island, sails to Batavia by way of the Tuamotu Archipelago, ...