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Jan Compagnie in the Straits of Malacca, 1641–

1795. By Dianne Lewis. Athens, Ohio: Ohio
University Center for International Studies,
Monographs in International Studies, Southeast
Asia Series No. 96, 1995. Pp. 160.

Peter Borschberg

Journal of Southeast Asian Studies / Volume 27 / Issue 02 / September 1996, pp 425 - 426
DOI: 10.1017/S002246340002124X, Published online: 11 August 2011

Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S002246340002124X

How to cite this article:

Peter Borschberg (1996). Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 27, pp 425-426
doi:10.1017/S002246340002124X

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Book Reviews 425

of being an enemy agent was a prelude to the social revolution which swept away the
Malay rulers in March 1946. Fusayama has some poignant details about the crisis
which overcame these would-be nationalists as they attempted to ride the tiger of the
revolution.
This memoir will be most widely appreciated, however, as a Japanese view of the
Indonesian revolution in Sumatra. A supporter of the revolution, Fusayama himself was
caught in many dilemmas as he watched it turn against his own people. The quiet
cooperation he sought behind the backs of the Allied Military Administration was put
under terrible strain by cruelties on both sides, and he left Sumatra with the knowledge
that the relationship had soured into hatred. He was therefore overjoyed when the Sumatra
veterans began to make nostalgic trips, and to be welcomed warmly by some of their
former clients and pupils in Sumatra. "I felt an unspeakable contentment that the love
between the Japanese and Indonesians ... was no illusion" (p. 145). He himself returned
in 1974 in connection with a dental conference, and in 1979 and 1990 as a guest of
grateful Indonesian comrades.
These emotive visits encouraged him to publish this memoir in Japanese in 1981, and
then to translate it himself into English. In about 1988 Fusayama visited the English
military historian Louis Allen at his home in Durham, and it was Allen who recommended
the memoir to Cornell for publication. How much the text has been edited by others is
not made clear. It is in adequate if not elegant English, and the difficult task of rendering
names from Japanese into correct romanization has been well done (I noted only two
mistakes in the names of estates, Malihat for Marehat and Herbetia for Helvetia). There
are a number of precious line sketches and photos of the period, presumably from
Fusayama's own collection. Saya Shiraishi provides a poignant brief introduction which
whets our appetite for the many other fascinating stories which might be told by Japanese
about their Sumatran adventure.

Australian National University Anthony Reid

Jan Compagnie in the Straits of Malacca, 1641-1795. By DIANNE LEWIS. Athens,

Ohio: Ohio University Center for International Studies, Monographs in International
Studies, Southeast Asia Series No. 96, 1995. Pp. 160.

This book represents a revised edition of the author's Ph.D. thesis accepted by the
Australian National University in 1991. Chapters 2 and 5 have been previously published
as articles.
The title links the present work with extant accounts of the Dutch East India Company
(VOC) by other authors, such as notably Boxer and Raychauduri. The period under
review spans from the Dutch seizure of Malacca from the Portuguese in 1641 until the
VOC had emerged as the truly dominant power in the Straits of Malacca by 1795.
As the author makes clear to her readers from the onset, she accentuates not so much
the history of the once commercially vibrant port city, as Malacca's historical place
within the Straits as a whole. In this sense, the present work is not designed as a chapter
in the vast annals of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) but as a contribution to the
history of the Malay world. In order to appreciate the work of Dr. Lewis more fully, it
426 Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 27, 2 (1996)

is useful to first establish and elaborate on some of the basic tenets expounded in the
course of her work.
The riches of Malacca, both real and legendary, have long dominated the annals of
history. Yet the European conquerers — first the Portuguese and later the Dutch — failed
to appreciate fully that Malacca as a center of commerce and trade owned less to its
strategic location in the Straits than to the authority exercised and prestige enjoyed by its
rulers. The Portuguese and specifically the Dutch can be held responsible for seriously
disrupting the economic and political fabric of the Malay world, and for preventing the
emergence of a central Malay power in the region. In this sense the VOC held the various
regional powers such as Johor, Aceh, Siak and later the Bugis "in check", though Dutch
Malacca itself failed to assert itself as an economic and military hub in the region.
The latter was conditioned to a large extent by the very policies of the VOC itself. The
directors and shareholders of the company were primarily concerned with making profits.
In addition to this, Batavia's status as the central entrepot of the VOC would ensure that
Malacca would never be permitted to re-emerge as a serious competitor to Batavia.
During the greater part of Dutch rule Malacca failed to return a profit for the company.
Commercial reasoning would have dictated that such a drain on the coffers of the VOC
be abandoned in order to cut costs. But the true value of Malacca was no longer measured
by profitability, but in terms of its truly strategic location in the Straits. Malacca's surpluses
in the final years of Dutch rule (1768-83) were not the result of effective VOC policies,
but of decisions cast largely by politicians in London and in The Hague.
If the primacy of Batavia contributed to the commercial marginalization of Malacca,
the profiteering and monopolistic trade practices ensured that the alienated Asian traders
would market their produce in rival centres. The cost of asserting the rights of exclusive
trade by force far exceeded the benefits gained by suppressing smuggling and illegal
commercial activity. Circumvention of the VOC's trade monopoly was common, and
even the Company itself was quite willing to "bend the rules" on a regular basis.
While many of the arguments which Dr. Lewis expounds in the course of her book
cannot be deemed a novelty to historians of the Malay world or the VOC, she never-
theless sheds new light on a host of known problems and places them in perspective. As
the book also represents a revised version of her dissertation originally passed in 1972,
it is specifically worth highlighting that Dr. Lewis has incorporated relevant English-
language publications which have been published over the past two decades. In view of
these considerations, I am of the opinion that Dr. Lewis has furnished us with a useful
work which can serve either as an introductory text or enrich historians of the Straits
region.

National University of Singapore Peter Borschberg

Java Under the Cultivation System. By ROBERT VAN NIEL. Leiden: KITLV Press,
1992. Pp. 244. Bibliography, Index.

This book contains ten essays on the Cultivation System in Java by the eminent American
scholar Van Niel, written over a period of almost twenty-five years. The Cultivation
System was a most remarkable system of colonial exploitation, which set a large proportion