Frederick William, Elector of Brandenburg, reconfirms the…

The VOC ship Waeckende Boey (Watch Buoy) is repaired and sails north, where it is wrecked again on the coast of Java; the four survivors walk overland to Jepara.

The Dutch are aggressive competitors of the English and have meanwhile expanded their monopoly of the spice trade in the Straits of Malacca by ousting the Portuguese in 1640–41.

With reduced Portuguese and Spanish influence in the region, the EIC and VOC enter a period of intense competition, resulting in the Anglo-Dutch Wars of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

In 1657, Oliver Cromwell had renewed the charter of 1609, and brought about minor changes in the holding of the company.

The restoration of monarchy in England further enhances the EIC's status.

In an act aimed at strengthening the power of the EIC, King Charles II grants the EIC (in a series of five acts around 1670) the rights to autonomous territorial acquisitions, to mint money, to command fortresses and troops and form alliances, to make war and peace, and to exercise both civil and criminal jurisdiction over the acquired areas.

Relations between the Dutch and the Ayutthaya kingdom, or Siam (modern Thailand), had worsened under the reign of the brutal usurper Prasat Thong, following whose demise Narai, a younger son, had in 1656 deposed his elder brother Chai to assume the throne.

The Dutch, shortly after Narai’s ascension, had exacerbated matters by the capture of a ship carrying goods belonging to the Thai King’s royal monopoly.

Domestic policies in King Narai's reign are to be greatly affected by the interference of foreign powers, most notably the Chinese to the north, the Dutch to the south, and the English who are making their first forays into India to the west.

Thai policies revolve around either directly countering the influence, or creating a delicate balance of power between the different parties.

Portuguese Brazilians had reconquered New Holland (Dutch Brazil), and with the end of the First Anglo-Dutch War in May 1654 the Dutch Republic had begun,  to demand its return.

Portugal had acceded to the demand under threat of the Dutch fleet.

The Grand Pensionary of Holland, Johan de Witt, in close corporation with his uncle Cornelis de Graeff, didn't agree with these strong-arm tactics because he thought that commerce was more important than the possession of territories.

Therefore, a peace treaty is signed on August 6, 1661, at The Hague whereby New Holland is sold to Portugal for the equivalent of sixty-three tons of gold; the Dutch thus formally recognize Portuguese sovereignty over Recife, formerly known as Mauritsstad.

Under the threat of invasions of Lisbon and northeastern Brazil, Portugal is to pay an annual installment for four decades.

In addition, Portugal cedes Ceylon and the Moluccas (Spice Islands) to the Dutch Republic and makes certain concessions related to the sugar trade.

The Anglo-Dutch conflicts have proved useful for the VOC for driving out its competitors, the EIC, from the Indonesian archipelago, by force of arms.

According to the Treaty of Westminster ending the First Anglo-Dutch War of 1652–1654, Pulo Run, the only English factory in the Spice Island, should have been returned to England.

The first attempt in 1660 had failed due to formal constraints by the Dutch; after the second in 1665, the English traders are expelled in the same year and the Dutch destroy the nutmeg trees, excluding the English from the clove trade.

The East India Company sends William Hedges to Shaista Khan, the Mughal governor of Bengal, in 1682 to obtain a firman, an imperial directive that will grant England regular trading privileges throughout the Mughal Empire.

However, the company's governor in London, Sir Josiah Child, interferes with Hedges's mission, causing Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb to break off the negotiations.

The Dutch are reaping spectacular profits from the opium trade.

Buying opium cheap in India and selling high in Java has gained the Dutch East India Company a four hundred percent profit on shipments in the 1670s.

Opium, moreover, proves to be an essential trade good that attracts Asian merchants to Batavai, by 1681 representing thirty-four percent of the cargo on Asian ships sailing from here.

The peace is in many respects also strange, for rather than settling Java into a calm "traditional" existence, it provides the setting for ongoing social and cultural ferment as Javanese reassesses not only their past but also their present.

The literary reflections of this crisis have been insufficiently studied, but works ascribed to the Surakarta court poets Yasadipura I (1729-1803) and his son Yasadipura II (? -1844), for example, suggest that efforts to reexamine and revitalize old histories fail, not least because the ability to read them accurately had been lost, and that attempts to understand the Java—and "Javaneseness"—of their own day lead frequently to searing critiques of their own social hierarchy and customs, as well as those of foreigners and Islam.

This sort of questioning and restlessness is not necessarily fatal, however, and might under different circumstances have permitted a continuation of the equilibrium already achieved or even conceivably have led to a kind of Javanese renaissance and a different, more advantageous relationship with the Dutch, but changes in the larger world determine otherwise.

The last in a series of Anglo-Dutch wars cost the Netherlands, including the VOC and its far-flung interests, dearly in the early 1780s.

Nearly half the company's ships are lost, and much of their valuable cargoes; enormous debts accumulate, which, despite state loans, cannot be repaid.

While the company certainly is burdened with other fiscal and administrative problems, among them a high level of corruption among its employees, the British war seems to have been the critical factor in its fiscal collapse.

In 1796 the VOC is placed under the direction of a national committee until the end of 1799, when it is liquidated, its debts and possessions absorbed by the Dutch government.

The VOC and the court of Mataram, at the same time rivals and allies, are by the mid-eighteenth century exhausted by war.

The dying ruler, Pakubuwono II (r. 1726-49), with his kingdom still threatened by rebellion from within and his court deeply divided over the proper course for the future, cedes Mataram to the company, perhaps thinking in this way to save it.

The treaty is of little importance because it cannot be enforced and the VOC is incapable of ruling Java, but it is followed in 1755 by the Treaty of Giyanti, which imposes a different solution.

Mataram is to be ruled by two royal courts, one at Surakarta (also known as Solo) and one at Yogyakarta, out of which the junior courts of Mangkunegaran (1757) and Pakualaman (1812), respectively, later evolve by apportioning appanage rights among them.

This division produces an extended period of peace lasting well into the nineteenth century, from which the Javanese populace benefits economically.

The courts, particularly that of Yogyakarta, make use of their considerable autonomy and grow in prosperity and power, while the VOC consolidates its control over the Pasisir and pursues its commercial ventures.

Although clearly recognized (and often resented) as the paramount power, the company interests itself in the courts' affairs and plays a role in choosing who reigns but refrains from meddling too deeply.

It is a strange conquest.