Maritime Southeast Asia, 1600–1660

Alauddin Riayat Syah, an old soldier who had taken Aceh's throne in 1589, ruled the pepper port at the mouth of the Straits. In 1599 his men seized the Dutch navigator Frederik de Houtman when a Dutch visit ended in a fight. In 1601, the Portuguese of Melaka being enemies of both, he freed him, let the Dutch trade and sent two envoys to the Netherlands.

Frederik de Houtman spent about two years in Aceh's prison and used them to learn Malay. Back in Amsterdam he published in 1603 the first Dutch–Malay and Dutch–Malagasy dictionary, with an appendix fixing more than 300 southern stars. He came east again with the company's first great fleet and in 1605 became the first Dutch governor of Ambon, until 1611.

James Lancaster, commanding the English East India Company's first fleet, reached Aceh in June 1602 with a letter from Queen Elizabeth and made an alliance with the sultan. Alauddin named two noblemen to treat with him. One was a revered religious leader, the 'chief bishop of the realm', who questioned him in Arabic before the sultan granted the English leave to trade.

Shamsuddin al-Sumatrani, a Sufi writer in the line of Hamzah Fansuri, was among the most eminent scholars at the court of Alauddin and later of Iskandar Muda. Historians generally identify him with the 'chief bishop' who bargained with Lancaster, though Lancaster gave no name. Whether he held a formal office such as shaykh al-Islam is uncertain.

Ali Riayat Syah, Alauddin's second son, had been made co-ruler of his aged father. In April 1604 the old sultan was deposed, or by another account gave way through illness, and Ali took the throne. His short reign brought drought and famine, and a quarrel with his brother in Pidie that put their nephew Perkasa Alam, the future Iskandar Muda, in Ali's prison.

Senapati, born Sutawijaya, had built the inland kingdom of Mataram in central Java from the fief granted to his father, and turned against Pajang, the court that had raised him. He died in 1601 at Jenar. His successors would carry Mataram's wars from the rice lands of the interior to the trading ports of Java's north coast.

Mas Jolang, Senapati's son by his principal queen, had nearly been killed as crown prince fighting his mother's brother, the rebel Adipati Pragola of Pati. He reigned from 1601 as Panembahan Hanyakrawati until he died in a hunting accident in the Krapyak forest in 1613, which gave him his posthumous name, the one who died at Krapyak.

Ratu Mas Adi, born Dyah Banawati, was a daughter of Pangeran Benawa of Pajang, so her marriage tied Mataram's new dynasty to the older royal house it had displaced. Her son Raden Mas Jatmika, also called Rangsang, was about twenty when his father died; he would reign as Agung.

Banten, the great pepper port of west Java, had a child sultan: Pangeran Ratu was five months old when his father died in 1596 on an expedition against Palembang. Regents governed for him. When Lancaster sailed on from Aceh in 1602, this regency let the English open their company's first trading house in the islands at Banten.

In March 1602 the Dutch merged their rival trading companies into one, the United East India Company, the VOC, with the right to make treaties, build forts and wage war in Asia. From now on its fleets came not as separate trading voyages but as the arm of a single company, with Aceh, Banten and the spice islands as their first ports of call.

Olivier van Noort, a Rotterdam captain on the first Dutch voyage round the world, reached the Philippines in late 1600 with his two remaining ships and preyed on the shipping bound for Manila from a berth near Corregidor. His voyage belonged to a private company of the years before the VOC.

Antonio de Morga, a judge of Manila's Audiencia who had never seen battle, was given a makeshift fleet. On 14 December 1600, off Fortune Island, his overloaded San Diego rammed Van Noort's Mauritius, then sank with perhaps 350 men; Morga swam four hours to an islet. The Spaniards took the second Dutch ship, and Van Noort sailed home. In 1609 Morga published his history of the islands.

Steven van der Hagen led the company's first great fleet. In February 1605 he anchored in Hitu bay on Ambon, where a Portuguese fleet had just punished the islanders for their dealings with the Dutch. On 25 February the Portuguese fort surrendered without a shot, the company's first territorial possession in Asia. He left Frederik de Houtman as its governor.

Cornelis Matelief came for Melaka itself. In May 1606 he signed a treaty with Johor and besieged the city with Johor's men; in August a Portuguese fleet from Goa relieved it, and off Cape Rachado he lost two ships and drew off. He sailed east, and on 26 May 1607 signed a contract with Ternate's new sultan.

Tepil was the son of the old kapitan Hitu, the Muslim chief of Ambon's north coast, whom the Portuguese had just killed with his family for siding with the Dutch; Tepil had fled to Seram. Once the fort fell in 1605 he came back as kapitan Hitu, and for the next twenty-eight years he stood by the company.

Saidi Berkat, sultan of Ternate since 1583, welcomed the Dutch. In 1605 his war boats helped Van der Hagen's men storm the Portuguese fort on Tidore, Ternate's rival across the strait. The Dutch left too small a garrison behind, and the Spaniards of Manila answered.

Mole Majimu, sultan of Tidore since 1599, held to his kingdom's old alliance with the Iberians; his father had been murdered by a sultan of Ternate. In 1606 he joined the Spanish expedition against Ternate with some 600 men.

Mudafar, Saidi's son, a boy of about eleven, was proclaimed sultan by Ternate's grandees while hiding on Halmahera. On 26 May 1607 his council signed Matelief's contract: the company would protect Ternate against Spain, and Ternate would sell its cloves to no one else. The Dutch built a fort on the island's east coast, and Ternate was split between the two powers.

Pedro Bravo de Acuña, governor of the Philippines since 1602, sailed from the Visayas in 1606 with more than 3,000 men, Spain and Portugal then sharing one king. On 1 April his troops stormed Ternate. Saidi Berkat fled to Halmahera and gave himself up; Acuña carried him to Manila with most of the royal family, among them the sultan's cousin Hamza.

Raja Bongsu, co-ruler of Johor with his half-brother, had helped the Dutch seize a Portuguese carrack off the Johor River in 1603 and sent Johor's first embassy to the Netherlands. In May and September 1606 he ratified the treaties with Matelief: Melaka was to be taken together, the Dutch would keep it, and Johor would trade with them freely.

Alauddin Riayat Shah III, sultan of Johor since 1597, ruled from Batu Sawar upriver and ratified the same treaties. When the Portuguese blockaded the Johor River in 1608 and 1609, the court made its peace with Melaka in October 1610.

Tun Abdul Jamil, Johor's laksamana or admiral, led the Johor force of some fifty war boats and 3,000 men at the 1606 siege of Melaka. When the Dutch were beaten at sea he had to give up the siege by land, and a second attempt that September failed too.

Iskandar Muda, then the prince Perkasa Alam, Alauddin's grandson, lay in his uncle Ali's prison. When a Portuguese fleet attacked Aceh in June 1606 he asked to lead the defence and threw the landing back. His mother spread money among the orang kaya, and when Ali died on 4 April 1607 he won the palace guard and took the throne that day.

Dato ri Bandang, born Abdul Makmur, a jurist from Koto Tangah in Minangkabau, preached Islam with two fellow scholars among the kingdoms of South Sulawesi. At Gowa and Tallo, the twin kingdoms of Makassar, he found rulers ready to listen.

Karaeng Matoaya, ruler of Tallo and chief minister of Gowa since 1593, took the shahada on 22 September 1605 and the name Abdullah. He told the Dutch that God had given the sea to all men in common, and his port stayed open to every trader. From 1608 he waged wars that brought the Bugis kingdoms into Islam, Bone last, in 1611.

I Mangerangi, set on Gowa's throne as a boy by Matoaya, converted under Dato ri Bandang the same year and took the name Sultan Alauddin. Under him and Matoaya, Gowa built forts around its palace at Somba Opu and declared its seas free to all merchants. He reigned until his death in June 1639.

Pieter Verhoeff brought thirteen ships from Holland with orders to fortify the Banda Islands, the world's only source of nutmeg and mace; among his junior merchants was Jan Pieterszoon Coen. The Bandanese wanted to keep selling to whoever paid best. At a parley in late May 1609 their chiefs lured him into the woods and killed him; 46 Dutchmen died.

Command passed to the skipper Simon Jansz Hoen, with the absent François Wittert recognised as admiral. The Dutch plundered villages and burned boats, finished their fort on Banda Neira, Fort Nassau, and in August 1609 forced a peace: the Bandanese accepted Dutch authority and a monopoly they would not keep.

François Wittert, Verhoeff's vice-admiral, had been sent ahead to Makassar and the Moluccas. Recognised as admiral after Verhoeff's death, he sailed for Manila, seized Chinese junks bound for the city, and on 23 April 1610 was killed when a Spanish squadron caught his ships at Playa Honda.

Pieter Both was named the company's first governor-general in November 1609, with a council, to replace rule by passing admirals. He reached Banten in December 1610 and went to Jayakarta in January 1611 to seek leave for a fort; the company already had a trading post there. He renamed the Ambon fort Kasteel Victoria and strengthened Fort Nassau on Banda.

Ranamanggala, a son of an earlier sultan of Banten, came out of a civil war that split the court from March 1608 to March 1609. At the peace he became mangkubumi and regent for the young Pangeran Ratu. He punished corrupt princes, set new terms for the European traders, and in 1613 had the Dutch trading house pulled down for being built two storeys high without leave.

Wijayakrama, a grandson of Banten's founder, ruled the port of Jayakarta under Banten. In 1610 he let the Dutch open a trading post on the Ciliwung, and he meant to profit from both companies, Dutch and English. Both judged him a man to be kept, like a courtesan, with presents and flattery.

Tun Sri Lanang, born Tun Muhammad, was Johor's bendahara, its chief minister. In 1612, at Raja Bongsu's request and on the sultan's order, he oversaw the editing and compiling of the Sejarah Melayu, the Malay Annals, the story of the Melaka dynasty from which Johor's kings descended. The work reshaped older texts rather than starting afresh.

Juan de Silva arrived as governor of the Philippines at Easter 1609. In April 1610 his squadron surprised Wittert's fleet at Playa Honda while it unloaded captured junks, took the flagship and killed the admiral. He then planned a joint Spanish–Portuguese armada to drive the Dutch from the Moluccas.

Francisco Blancas de San José, a Dominican who reached Manila in 1595, learned Tagalog in Bataan to preach in it. He worked with a Chinese Christian printer, Juan de Vera, to set up a press, and wrote devotional books and a Tagalog grammar for the friars.

Tomás Pinpin of Abucay in Bataan joined the Dominican press there as an apprentice in 1609 and within a year ran it. In 1610 he printed Blancas's Arte y reglas de la lengua tagala; his own book teaching Tagalogs Spanish, the Librong pagaaralan, was printed that year by his assistant Diego Talaghay. He is remembered as the first Filipino printer.

In 1613 Iskandar Muda's fleet sacked Johor's capital and carried its royal family to Aceh, with the Dutch traders found there. In 1617 he took Pahang, further up the peninsula, and brought back its sultan, Ahmad, and his small son. Kedah and Perak followed in 1619 and 1620.

Raja Bongsu was married to one of Iskandar Muda's sisters and sent back to rule Johor as Sultan Abdullah Ma'ayat Shah; his half-brother Alauddin had fled and probably died around 1615. In 1618 Abdullah moved to Lingga, won the support of the sea people and the Dutch, divorced his Acehnese wife and went to war with Aceh.

Tun Sri Lanang was among the captives of 1613. When Johor's royal family went home he chose to stay. Aceh gave him the fief of Samalanga, where he served as adviser to Iskandar Muda and his two successors until his death in 1659.

Iskandar Thani was born a prince of Pahang, son of its sultan Ahmad, and was about seven when Aceh carried him off in 1617; the sources call him Raja Mughal. Iskandar Muda saw promise in the boy, adopted him, and gave him the title Raja Bungsu and a palace beside his own.

Agung came to Mataram's throne in 1613, at about twenty, after a half-brother promised the crown had held it for a single day. The company's first envoy to his court, in 1614, found a young man red of face 'like a Turk'. He attacked Surabaya and the east that year and failed, then took Wirasaba in 1615.

Gerard Reynst, an Amsterdam merchant among the company's founders, took over from Pieter Both late in 1614; Both drowned off Mauritius on his way home. Ordered to break the English hold on Banda, Reynst attacked Pulau Ai in May 1615 and was driven off with 27 dead. He died of dysentery at Jayakarta that December.

Laurens Reael, a lawyer and brother-in-law of Arminius, governed the Moluccas from Ternate and was chosen governor-general by the council in June 1616. He held that the company should win by trade and treaty, protested the raids on the islanders, and would act against the English only as far as the law of nations allowed. The directors thought him weak.

Jan Pieterszoon Coen had sailed in Verhoeff's fleet and seen the Banda killings of 1609. Director-general from 1614, he argued that the spice monopoly had to be forced on the English and the islanders alike, and quarrelled with Reael over the English, the Chinese traders and the price of nutmeg. On 25 October 1617 the directors named him governor-general.

John Jourdain, an English factor who had traded at Surat and Mocha, was left in charge of the English company's trade at Bantam. The Dutch, he wrote, threatened to become worse enemies than the Portuguese. In 1616 he sent the ships Swan and Defence to revive English trade at Ai and Run in Banda, whatever the Dutch treaties said.

Nathaniel Courthope landed on Run with the Swan and the Defence on 25 December 1616. The islanders of Run and Ai accepted King James as their sovereign and promised their nutmeg to the English. When the Dutch took one of his ships, he fortified the tiny island with its guns and settled in, with 39 men, for a siege.

The English company opened a trading post at Makassar in 1613, and Danish traders followed in 1618. The port sold rice to the spice islands and bought the cloves and nutmeg the Dutch claimed for themselves. Jourdain called the Makassarese 'the kindest people in all the Indias to strangers'.

Silva's envoys agreed with the viceroy at Goa in 1615 that Portuguese galleons would meet a Spanish armada at Melaka. He sailed in February 1616 with ten galleons and some 5,000 men, the largest European fleet yet seen in those waters. But the Dutch had already destroyed the Portuguese squadron. Silva died at Melaka on 19 April 1616 and the armada went home.

When an English fleet came to Jayakarta in December 1618, Wijayakrama took the English side, and his men joined the siege of the fort Coen had built round the Dutch warehouses. Banten saw a vassal making alliances of his own over a port it claimed.

Ranamanggala would not let his vassal hand Jayakarta to the English. In February 1619 his men seized Wijayakrama and sent him into exile at Tanara, and Banten took over the town. Wijayakrama later tried to win Jayakarta back and died in exile.

In 1618 Coen walled the Dutch warehouses at Jayakarta into a fort. When Dale's fleet fought his ships in the bay, he sailed to the Moluccas for reinforcements, leaving the fort besieged, and took over from Reael there in March 1619. On 28 May he came back; two days later his men stormed Jayakarta and burned it. On its ruins he built Batavia.

Sir Thomas Dale, a soldier who had been deputy governor of Virginia, came out with the English company's fleet and fought Coen's ships off Jayakarta in December 1618. He quarrelled with Jourdain over who commanded the English ships, and the siege of the Dutch fort failed. Dale died at Masulipatnam in August 1619.

Jourdain, back in the east late in 1618 as president of the English council, directed the fighting against the Dutch from Jayakarta. In 1619 he sailed to Patani to set the English factory there in order. On 17 July a Dutch squadron sent by Coen caught his ships; he went on deck to parley under a flag of truce and was shot dead.

Souw Beng Kong, a Fujian-born merchant who had been headman of the Chinese at Banten, sided with the company. Coen asked him to move to the new capital, and he came with some 170 Chinese families. Appointed in 1619 the first Kapitein der Chinezen of Batavia, he held the post seventeen years, settling migrants and running the town's Chinese trade.

For four years Courthope held Run with his small garrison, short of food and water, and turned down every chance to leave. In October 1620 he sailed by night towards Lontor; the Dutch, warned by a spy, were waiting. Hit in the chest, he leapt into the sea and was never seen again. The English left Run soon after.

Early in 1621 Coen brought nineteen ships, over 1,600 Dutch soldiers and 286 Japanese mercenaries, and took Lontor in March. Confessions of a plot were tortured out of the orang kaya, and on 8 May 44 of them were beheaded. Of perhaps 15,000 Bandanese about 1,000 remained; the rest were killed, starved, enslaved or driven away. Company planters took over the nutmeg groves, worked by slaves.

In 1619 Iskandar Muda married his daughter, Putri Sri Alam, still a small girl, to the Pahang prince, then about nine. The couple lived in a palace called Sri Warna beside the sultan's own. Twenty-two years later she would reign over Aceh as Safiatuddin.

Alonso Fajardo de Tenza took over the Philippines in July 1618 from the Audiencia that had ruled since Silva's death. A Dutch fleet blockaded Manila from October 1618 to May 1619 and left when he had readied his ships. His government sent soldiers after the gold mines of the Cordillera, and soon had risings to put down in the Visayas.

Buisan, ruler of Maguindanao on Mindanao, led the Muslim raids on the Spanish Visayas: in 1602 his 145 war boats struck Mindoro and southern Luzon, and in 1603 he raided Leyte and drew some of its chiefs into alliance. He died in 1616 or 1619, by different reckonings.

Muhammad Kudarat, Buisan's son, won the datus' support for his succession, although custom favoured a candidate from Lanao, which then broke away. His reign, dated from about 1616 or 1619, lasted until 1671. He sold rice and Visayan captives to the Dutch and played them against the Spaniards.

Pieter de Carpentier, a merchant from Antwerp who had taken part in the conquest of Jayakarta, succeeded Coen on 1 February 1623 when Coen sailed home. He built up Batavia, with a town hall, a school and an orphanage, and governed until September 1627.

Herman van Speult, the company's governor of Ambon since 1618, distrusted the English merchants who shared the trading post. In February 1623 a Japanese soldier in the company's pay was caught studying the defences of the castle and questioned under torture; the confessions, and those of the English that followed, grew into a plot to seize the fort.

Gabriel Towerson led the English merchants on Ambon. On 9 March 1623 he and nine other men of the English company were beheaded, together with Japanese soldiers and a Portuguese; twenty-one died in all. In England the 'Amboyna massacre' became a grievance against the Dutch for decades.

Tamblot, a babaylan or native priest of Bohol, told the islanders in 1621 that a diwata, a spirit, would help them drive out the Spaniards if they left Christianity and built it a shrine. Villages around Loboc and Baclayon went over to him, and his followers built a stronghold in the hills.

Juan de Alcarazo, alcalde mayor of Cebu, landed on Bohol on New Year's Day 1622 with some fifty Spaniards and a thousand Filipino troops. In a fight in pouring rain his musketeers routed Tamblot's men and took the stronghold; a second rising six months later was crushed the same way. Some leaders were hanged, and captives were sentenced to ten years' slavery.

Bankaw, datu of Limasawa on Leyte, had welcomed Legazpi in 1565 and been baptised. Old now, he renounced Christianity after Tamblot's rising, built a shrine to a diwata with his son Pagali, a babaylan, and raised six towns. Alcarazo, sent by Governor Fajardo, crushed them too, and Bankaw's head was set on a bamboo stake as a warning.

Agung took Java's north-coast ports one by one, and Madura in 1624, after which he styled himself Susuhunan. Surabaya, the strongest, held out until 1625, when it surrendered after five years of war. In the west only Banten and the Dutch at Batavia remained outside his power.

Pangeran Pekik, son of Surabaya's ruler Jayalengkara, was a prince and a Muslim scholar. Surabaya's surrender turned him from the heir of Agung's strongest enemy into a subject prince of Mataram, and Agung chose to bind him to the court rather than destroy him.

Ranamanggala gave up the regency in January 1624, ill, and Pangeran Ratu, now in his late twenties, governed Banten himself. Ranamanggala died in May 1626, telling the sultan, by Banten's tradition, that Banten must never befriend the Dutch.

Abdul Jalil, born Raja Bujang, a son of Johor's Sultan Alauddin, had been set over Pahang with Portuguese recognition in 1615, until Aceh's invasion of 1617 drove him to Lingga. When his uncle Abdullah died in the Tambelan islands in March 1623, still hunted by Aceh, he became sultan of Johor.

Hamza, Saidi Berkat's cousin, had spent twenty-one years a captive in Manila, baptised as Pedro de Acuña after the governor who had taken him. Allowed home in 1627 as Spain's friend, he was chosen sultan by Ternate's council when Mudafar died that June. He returned to Islam, turned on his former captors and kept the Dutch alliance.

Ngarolamo, Mole Majimu's only son, succeeded when the old sultan died on 23 May 1627. Headstrong and unpopular with Tidore's grandees, he soon forbade his subjects to sell cloves to the Spanish captain and negotiated with Hamza, who wanted his daughter in marriage. The Spaniards began to suspect him of leaning to the Dutch.

Coen came back as governor-general in September 1627. He held Batavia through both of Agung's sieges, but cholera broke out in the besieged town, and on 21 September 1629 he died, most likely of it.

Jacques Specx, the merchant who had founded the company's trade with Japan at Hirado in 1609, took over as interim governor-general at Coen's death. He held the post until 1632, governing a capital that had survived two sieges but had won the company no hold on Java's interior.

Bahureksa, the first regent of Kendal, was named Agung's commander against Batavia on 26 August 1628. His fleet sailed up asking leave to trade and began landing troops, while an army came overland. The assaults failed against the walls. Bahureksa died at Batavia: of wounds, with two of his sons, by Kendal's account.

Dipati Ukur, Mataram's governor of the Priangan uplands, marched his men on Batavia overland in 1628. Driven off on 21 October, he would not go back to face Agung; he hid in the mountains north of present-day Bandung and turned against Mataram. His rising lasted into the 1630s, until he was caught and, by one account, executed in 1632.

By December 1628 Agung's army was starving, and he sent executioners after the commanders who came back. In 1629 he tried again, with rice stored in hidden depots at Karawang and Cirebon. Dutch spies found and burned them; disease spread in the camps as in the town, and his army withdrew. He never attacked Batavia again.

In 1629 Iskandar Muda sent some 236 ships and 19,000 men to take Melaka, and they besieged the city from June. In October a Portuguese relief fleet trapped the armada in the Duyon River, and Johor's ships came to help the Portuguese. By Portuguese count not one Acehnese ship came home; the admiral was caught in Pahang early in 1630.

Nuno Álvares Botelho reached Melaka on 21 October 1629 with the Portuguese relief fleet. He shut the Acehnese armada in the river mouth and, with Abdul Jalil's Johor ships beside him, destroyed or captured it. The defeat ended Aceh's great campaigns of conquest.

Shamsuddin al-Sumatrani died on 25 February 1630, a few months after the armada was lost. Raniri's Bustan al-Salatin records his death directly after its account of the Melaka disaster, which led some later writers to claim he fell in the campaign; the text does not say so.

In 1633 Agung married Pangeran Pekik to his sister, Ratu Pandansari, binding Surabaya's royal house into his own. He then sent Pekik, a descendant of the saint Sunan Ampel, against Giri, the holy town whose people would not submit; it was subdued three years later. Pekik's daughter married Agung's son, the future Amangkurat.

The company blockaded Banten to force a pepper monopoly, attacking the junks and Moluccan boats bound for its port. In November 1633 the quarrel became war. In January 1634 a Dutch fleet closed the bay, and Banten broke the blockade by setting fire to the ships at night. Peace came only in 1639. Meanwhile his embassy had sailed for Mecca in 1633.

Hendrik Brouwer, who in 1611 had found the fast route to the Indies on the westerlies of the far south, became governor-general in April 1632 after talks with the English in London. He governed until 1636, through the war with Banten.

Hamza used Tidore's quarrels. In April 1634 he brought his nephew Gorontalo over to Tidore, where the grandees and the Spanish captain accepted him as sultan, and Ngarolamo was driven out. Hamza gave the deposed king and 200 followers a home on Ternate, keeping both sultans of Tidore in his debt, to the annoyance of the Dutch.

Gorontalo, of the rival branch of Tidore's royal house, had lived at the Ternate court since about 1616 and was better respected than Ngarolamo. Enthroned in 1634 with Hamza's help and the Spanish captain's approval, he stayed dependent on Ternate; the Dutch noted that both sultans sent envoys to Manila.

Tepil, the company's ally since 1605, died in 1633, and his son Kakiali became kapitan Hitu. Hitu's cloves were reaching Makassar's buyers instead of the company. In 1634 a new Dutch governor arrested Kakiali and other chiefs, setting off a rising; for years guerrillas fought from the hills of Hitu.

Juan Niño de Tabora, governor since 1626, died in July 1632, and the Audiencia ruled until Juan Cerezo de Salamanca arrived as interim governor in August 1633. At the Jesuits' request he began a stone fort at Zamboanga, at Mindanao's western tip, on 23 June 1635, to stop the raids from Maguindanao and Sulu.

Antonio van Diemen became governor-general in January 1636. In 1637 he sailed to the Moluccas with seventeen ships, took the smugglers' fort of Luhu on Hoamoal, restored Kakiali as kapitan Hitu and made new contracts with Ternate. In 1639 his government made peace with Banten, and in May 1640 Batavia resolved to take Melaka.

Iskandar Muda died on 27 December 1636 and his son-in-law, the Pahang prince, succeeded as Iskandar Thani. After a poisoning plot in 1637 some 400 people were put to death, by one visitor's count. He refused to join the Dutch against Melaka once Johor was in the alliance.

Nuruddin al-Raniri, a scholar from Rander in Gujarat, arrived in 1637 and became the sultan's mufti and then shaykh al-Islam. He condemned Hamzah Fansuri and Shamsuddin al-Sumatrani as heretics and had their books burned. In 1638 he began the Bustan al-Salatin, the Garden of Kings, a seven-part history of the world and of Aceh's kings.

The embassy to Mecca brought back what Pangeran Ratu wanted: in 1638 the sharif of Mecca recognised him as Sultan Abu al-Mafakhir, the first ruler in the archipelago to hold the title officially, and his son as junior sultan. Agung sought the same honour and received it in 1641.

Abu al-Ma'ali Ahmad, the crown prince, was named sultan muda, junior sultan, beside his father in 1638. He did not live to reign: he died of an illness in 1650, a year before his father, so the throne would pass to his own son, Pangeran Surya.

Alauddin died on 15 June 1639, and his son Malikussaid succeeded as sultan of Gowa. His reign, to 1653, saw Makassar at its height: a free port where Portuguese, English, Danish and Asian traders bought the spices the Dutch claimed, and a power that pressed its neighbours in South Sulawesi.

Karaeng Pattingalloang, Matoaya's second son, became Gowa's chief minister in 1639 and ruler of Tallo in 1641. He spoke Portuguese like a man of Lisbon, read Spanish and Latin, collected European books, and in 1644 paid a shipload of sandalwood for a great globe from Amsterdam's mapmakers. Against Dutch demands, he kept the port open to all.

Sebastián Hurtado de Corcuera, a veteran of Flanders, took over the Philippines on 25 June 1635. He clashed at once with Archbishop Hernando Guerrero over a murderer seized from church sanctuary and hanged, and the archbishop laid an interdict on the city. In May 1636 Corcuera exiled Guerrero to Mariveles island and let him back within a month on humiliating terms.

On 13 March 1637 Corcuera landed at Lamitan, Kudarat's stronghold, with some 800 men and took it with its cannon. Kudarat escaped to the Lake Lanao country, where he urged the datus not to sell themselves into Spanish servitude, and the Maranao soon took back the fort the Spaniards had left there.

Muwallil Wasit, a Brunei prince who had ruled Sulu since about 1610, known to the Spaniards as Rajah Bongsu, had married his daughter to Kudarat in 1632. When Corcuera attacked Jolo in January 1638 he held his fort for three months with 4,000 men and allies from Borneo and Makassar, until disease forced him back to Tawi-Tawi. A Spanish garrison held Jolo until about 1645.

Ngarolamo, living poor on Ternate, opened talks with the Spaniards to regain his throne. Hamza and his council, with Gorontalo's knowledge, decided on his death: in July 1639 he was put on a boat, supposedly bound for a new home at Jailolo, and shot on the way by Tidorese musketeers.

Weeks later, on 10 August 1639, a Spanish officer came over from the Gamalama fort to talk with Gorontalo about prisoners; one of his men stabbed the sultan, whom the Spaniards suspected of plotting with Ternate against them. Gorontalo's son Golofino escaped to the royal fortress.

Saidi, Ngarolamo's son, was brought secretly from Ternate and, after a dispute with Golofino's party, became sultan in 1640 as Spain's candidate; Golofino fled to Ternate. Saidi promised the Spaniards troops, cloves and freedom for missionaries, and by their account kept none of it, managing Tidore's clove trade in his own interest.

Tun Abdul Jamil, who had led Johor's men at Melaka in 1606, led them again: in August 1640 some forty Johor war boats and 1,500 men landed before the city with the Dutch. After Melaka fell he became the sultan's most trusted man, with a bendahara's powers in practice, and in time put his own sons in high office.

Iskandar Thani died on 15 February 1641. After three days of disturbances Aceh's grandees enthroned his widow, Iskandar Muda's daughter, as Sultana Safiatuddin, the first of four queens to reign. Under her Aceh gave up its hold on Johor and Pahang and kept the tin of Perak, while the great chiefs took much power back from the throne.

Raniri stayed at court in the first years of Safiatuddin's reign, but in 1643–44 a Minangkabau scholar, Sayf al-Rijal, challenged him and won support at court. After the dispute, in 1644, Raniri left Aceh for Rander; he died in India in 1658.

Hunger and disease wore down both sides at Melaka, and three Dutch commanders died in turn. Minne Caertekoe held the command at the end but was sick when about 650 Dutch soldiers stormed the citadel on 14 January 1641. The governor, Manuel de Sousa Coutinho, surrendered, and Portuguese Melaka passed to the company after 130 years.

Before he died on 19 April 1645, Van Diemen had the council name Cornelis van der Lijn his successor, against the directors' rules. Van der Lijn, a cautious administrator, built on Van Diemen's gains, made peace with Banten, Mataram and others, and in September 1646 signed the company's first treaty with a Javanese king.

Kakiali, restored, fought on. In 1641 the Dutch destroyed a Makassar fleet bringing him help and buying cloves, and he and his men held out in the hills of Hitu at Wawane. A Dutch campaign broke them early in 1643, and on 16 August 1643 Kakiali was killed in his sleep by a Spanish deserter, Francisco de Tairo, bribed by the company.

Gerard Demmer governed Ambon for the company from 1642 to 1647. He enlarged its forts, paid Kakiali's murderer, and pressed the war on into the mountains, where the last Hitu fighters gathered at Kapahaha.

Telukabessy, born Ahmad Leikawa, led the Hitu resistance after Kakiali's death from Kapahaha, a fortified rock in the hills of Leihitu, where captains whose own strongholds had fallen gathered. Gowa sent three Makassarese captains to help him against the Dutch fleets.

La Maddaremmeng, king of Bone, forced a strict Islam on his nobles and freed their slaves; his own mother led them to ask Gowa for help. Malikussaid's army, with Wajo and Soppeng, beat Bone on 8 October 1643 and took more than 30,000 prisoners, and La Maddaremmeng was carried off to Gowa.

In November 1643 Gowa put a Bone noble of its own choosing, Tobala, in the deposed king's place. The people of Bone instead named La Maddaremmeng's younger brother, La Tenriaji, as their ruler without Gowa's knowledge.

Diego Fajardo Chacón, nephew of the earlier governor Alonso Fajardo, took over the Philippines in August 1644. He had his predecessor Corcuera tried and jailed for five years, sent an envoy who made peace with Kudarat, and left the business of government to his secretary, Manuel Estacio Venegas.

Manuel Estacio Venegas, a rich Manila citizen, ruled in Fajardo's name from 1644, punishing enemies, lay and clerical, with prison, confiscation and exile. In 1651 the Augustinian provincial, Jerónimo de Medrano, persuaded Fajardo to investigate; on 16 September Venegas was arrested and questioned under torture.

Agung died in 1645, and his son, named king that year and crowned in 1646, ruled as Amangkurat. In September 1646 he made peace with the company: trading posts in Mataram, Javanese trade in the Dutch-held islands, a treaty he read as Batavia's submission. He set out to bring the great men of his father's reign to heel.

Tumenggung Wiraguna, one of Agung's great commanders, had cause to fear the new king: in 1637 the crown prince had had an affair with his wife. In 1647 Amangkurat sent him east, ostensibly against Blambangan, to have him killed far from his supporters, and ordered others in the scandal killed too.

Pangeran Alit, Amangkurat's younger brother, had taken Wiraguna's side in 1637. Seeing him killed, he attacked the palace at Plered; the rising failed and Alit died in it. Amangkurat, fearing the clerics who had backed Alit, ordered them and their families massacred: 5,000 to 6,000 people, according to the only account, that of the Dutch envoy Van Goens.

Rijcklof van Goens, a company merchant, went as envoy to Amangkurat's court on repeated missions between 1648 and 1654. His report, the Javaense Reyse, described the king's despotic rule, the place of women at court and the country, and gave Batavia its closest view of Mataram.

In July 1646 the company's troops found a steep path up the rock and took Kapahaha after a bitter fight. Telukabessy got away, but was later taken and hanged at Ambon on 3 September 1646; his men were amnestied, and some joined the company's army. With Kapahaha, Hitu's independence ended.

Imam Rijali, one of Hitu's Muslim leaders, fought in the Kapahaha war beside Telukabessy. He survived the defeat and wrote, before 1657, the Hikayat Tanah Hitu, the History of the Land of Hitu: an account of its origins, its ties with Java, Banten and Gowa, and its wars.

Hamza had used the company to bring the chiefs of Hitu and western Seram to heel, and in 1641 made Majira his governor of Hoamoal at the company's urging. He died on 6 May 1648 without sons. Ternate's grandees wanted Mudafar's son Manilha as sultan; the Muslim clerics wanted his brother Kalamata.

The company insisted on Mudafar's youngest son, Tahubo, raised under Dutch eyes, and installed him as Sultan Mandar Syah. Its commissioner gave him jewels and the pension Hamza had drawn. Ternate's elite resented a king who owed everything to Batavia; he named sons of his Amsterdam and Rotterdam.

In August 1650 the four great houses of Ternate and its chiefs proclaimed Mandar Syah's brother Manilha sultan, and Mandar fled into the Dutch fort. The company would not drop its man. Manilha kept up his claim from Jailolo on Halmahera.

When a Dutch fleet came for Manila in 1646, Fajardo had only two old Acapulco galleons, the Encarnación and the Rosario. He gave command to Lorenzo Ugalde de Orellana, with Sebastián López as admiral; their crews included many Filipino volunteers. In five engagements that year they drove off the Dutch squadrons: La Naval de Manila.

La Tenriaji, backed by Arung Palakka's family of Soppeng, raised Bone against Gowa. Malikussaid sent an army under Karaeng Cenrana with Wajo, Luwu and Soppeng, and at Passempe, from 18 April to 25 May 1646, Bone was beaten again. La Tenriaji was taken prisoner, Bone's nobles were exiled to Gowa, and Bone was ruled as a subject land.

Arung Palakka, then about eleven, was among the Bone and Soppeng nobles taken after Passempe. He was made a servant in the household of Pattingalloang, Gowa's chief minister, and grew up at the court of the kingdom that had conquered his own.

Pangeran Ratu, Sultan Abu al-Mafakhir, died on 10 March 1651. His son Abu al-Ma'ali had died the year before, so his grandson Pangeran Surya succeeded as Sultan Abu al-Fath Abdulfattah, remembered as Ageng Tirtayasa. He built up Banten's own shipping and traded with the English and the Danes in defiance of Batavia.

Majira, Ternate's kimelaha of Hoamoal in western Seram, had helped the company against Hitu. Now the company's demands undermined his authority and trade, and in 1651, with Prince Saidi, Ternate's sea lord, he set the people on to destroy the company's posts: the start of the Great Ambon War.

Arnold de Vlamingh van Oudshoorn, a former governor of Ambon, came back to the Moluccas in 1651 to restore order. He fought the rebels with ruthless efficiency, pressed Mandar Syah to give up his rights over Hoamoal and its islands, and in January 1653 forced Manilha and Kalamata to yield to Mandar.

On 31 July 1652 Mandar Syah signed away his cloves: every clove tree in Ternate's lands outside the company's Ambon quarter was to be cut down, and he gave up his governorships there, for 12,000 rijksdaalders a year. The pension secured the king and ruined the provinces that lived on cloves.

Kalamata, a son of Mudafar and an expert in Islamic law, joined Manilha at Jailolo in 1652 and then proclaimed himself sultan. After 1653 he fought on the rebel side, then went to Makassar, where he won Hasanuddin's trust and in 1656 married a daughter of Karaeng Tallo.

In 1652–53 Makassar sent a fleet of forty warships to back the rebels on Seram, and its men fortified Asahudi on the coast. Malikussaid died in 1653.

Hasanuddin, Malikussaid's son, born in 1631, succeeded in 1653. A first war with the company over the spice trade of Ambon brought a Dutch blockade of Makassar's harbour in 1654–55.

Pattingalloang died on 15 September 1654. After his death Hasanuddin declared that he would be his own chancellor, ending the partnership in which Tallo's lords had guided Gowa's kings since Matoaya's day.

Carel Reyniersz, a former governor of the Coromandel coast, succeeded Van der Lijn in October 1650 and died in office in 1653. His years were those of the Ternate revolt and the start of the war in Seram, fought for him by De Vlamingh.

Joan Maetsuycker, an Amsterdam lawyer who had governed the company's Ceylon, became governor-general in 1653 and held the post for twenty-five years. Under him the company finished the clove war, fought Banten and sent its fleets against Makassar.

Rumphius, Georg Eberhard Rumpf, a German who had already sailed for the Dutch West India Company and been a prisoner in Portugal, reached Batavia in July 1653 as a company soldier and Ambon in 1654, serving in De Vlamingh's campaigns. He became an ensign and engineer, then a merchant, and spent the rest of his life describing Ambon's plants and animals.

Sabiniano Manrique de Lara took over the Philippines from Fajardo in July 1653 and governed for ten years. Like those before it, his government built its galleons and fed its garrisons with timber, rice and labour forced from the provinces of Luzon.

De Vlamingh's Dutch, Ternatan and Ambonese force stormed Asahudi in July 1655. Prince Saidi was taken and put to death; Majira vanished, apparently to Makassar. Some 12,000 people of Hoamoal were moved to Ambon, and afterwards cloves grew only on Ambon and three small islands nearby.

Saidi of Tidore died in January 1657. The Dutch governor of Ternate and Mandar Syah backed Golofino, Gorontalo's son, against Saidi's son with munitions and soldiers, and he took the throne as Saifuddin. He promised the company to root out Tidore's clove trees and did; Spain's garrisons in the Moluccas were left besieged and hungry.

Ageng's ships and trade collided with the company's attempt to control the sea lanes. In 1656 war broke out: the company blockaded Banten, and Banten's raiders struck Batavia's shipping and its farms. In 1659 the two made peace, and Banten remained an independent port.

Pekik's grandson Raden Mas Rahmat was Amangkurat's crown prince. When Pekik helped the prince take Rara Oyi, a girl the king meant for himself, Amangkurat suspected a Surabaya plot and had Pekik and his family put to death, in 1659 by the usual dating. The house Agung had married into his own was destroyed by his son.

In April 1659 Hasanuddin told Batavia to stop attacking his vassals and called its monopoly a breach of God's law. Maetsuycker's government answered with 31 ships under Major Johan van Dam against Makassar, the last great port in the east the company did not control.

Hasanuddin had made peace with the company on 2 February 1656. In 1660 Van Dam's fleet bombarded Somba Opu, and when the garrison of the southern fort, Panakkukang, went to help, the Dutch took it. In August Hasanuddin negotiated a peace: no sailing to Banda or Ambon, a war indemnity, and the Portuguese to leave Makassar.

To dig new coastal defences, Gowa called up some 10,000 people of Bone. Tobala, the regent Gowa had set over Bone in 1643, joined them when they fled home and rose. In October 1660 Gowa's army, with Kalamata's men among it, beat the rebels in northern Bone, and Tobala was killed.

Arung Palakka, raised at Pattingalloang's court, led the rising with Tobala. After the defeat he fled with some 400 followers and on 25 December 1660 sailed from Palette to Buton, an exile looking for allies against Gowa.

In 1660 Kapampangan timber cutters, kept eight months at forced labour for the shipyards and paid little for their rice, burned their camp and chose Francisco Maniago, chief of the town of Mexico in Pampanga, as their leader. They staked the river mouths to stop trade and wrote to other provinces. Manrique de Lara negotiated, and Maniago made peace.

Andrés Malong, maestre de campo of Binalatongan in Pangasinan, had helped the Spaniards govern the province's towns. Heeding Maniago's call, he raised Pangasinan in December 1660 and was proclaimed its king. His armies tried to carry the revolt into Pampanga and Ilocos, and Pangasinan was retaken in February 1661.