REVIEW

A little history and a lot of blood

New book traces first confrontation between Europe and mainland Southeast Asia
By Chris Baker, Bangkok Post, 16/02/2009

http://www.bangkokpost.com/print/11757/a-little-history-and-a-lot-of-blood

This is a nice, old-fashioned history book about kings, ships, great men and, most of all, blood. Its subject is a hitherto unknown incident in the murky history of Cambodia in the 17th century. But its significance and interest is much larger. Alfons van der Kraan claims it was the first confrontation between European might and local rulers in mainland Southeast Asia. It marks the point where European inquisitiveness about Asia turned to downright arrogance.

The confrontation involved two men. Ramadhipati became king of Cambodia in 1642 by murdering the former ruler, his cousin, slaughtering most of the rest of his family, and ordering a bloody purge of the nobility.

The Dutch had already set up a nice little operation in Cambodia to buy deerskins for trading to Japan. Shortly after the bloody succession, two Dutchmen were killed in the Cambodian capital of Oudong by Portuguese rivals. One was shot with poisoned arrows and the other run through with a sword. The Dutch complained to the king, who was not interested in these quarrels. In anger, the Dutch seized a Chinese junk leaving the Mekong on its way to Japan with a cargo of skins owned by the Portuguese. The king became enraged and demanded that the Dutch pay compensation. The Dutch countered that the Dutch and Portuguese were at war and thus the seizure was a legitimate act of war. They told the king he had no power over them on the sea "where the Netherlanders, next to God, are master".

Not surprisingly, the Cambodian king was not impressed by a legalistic argument about a conflict half a world away. The Dutch then tried something more practical. They offered the king a bribe to forget about the compensation. It worked.

Now enter the second protagonist, Anthony van Diemen. He had become governor-general of the Dutch Asian headquarters in Batavia (Jakarta) in 1636. He had overseen a massive expansion in Dutch trading, launched famous expeditions of exploration to the southern seas, and made his masters an enormous profit. Other rulers around Asia thought of him as a king just like themselves. And seemingly he did too. When he heard of the Cambodian incident, his reactions were a fascinating mixture of Europe's growing racial arrogance and the self-regard of Asian rulers. The first thing he thought about was face.

Van Diemen would not be bested by some inferior ruler. He mounted an expedition on a scale out of all proportion to the original incident or the value of Dutch business in Cambodia. Like an Asian ruler, he bribed Dutch troops to man the expedition by offering them half the booty. He also tried to tempt King Prasat Thong of Siam into the venture, and sent fake letters to sow dissension within the Cambodian court. He instructed the expedition leader, "You are to burn and destroy, without sparing anyone."

The punitive expedition with four ships and 350 men sailed up the Mekong in 1644. They landed and bought 25 large horses so that they could ride into the capital in style to deliver Van Diemen's missive demanding compensation. But Van Diemen had made two extraordinary errors. He had written a missive detailing the earlier bribe. This was to be read out in audience before the Cambodian nobility, to shame King Ramadhipati. But first it had to be translated into Khmer, and probably the translator leaked the contents to the king. The grand Dutch horse-borne procession never made it to the palace. They were slaughtered to a man in Oudong market square. Cambodian forces also massacred the Dutch trading post and captured one of the ships by first sending a boat full of beer, waiting a few hours, then going in with the sword.

Van Diemen's second mistake was strategic. The heavy and well-armed Dutch ships were formidable on the high seas, but in a narrow river the ships were clumsy and their weapons difficult to manoeuvre. The remains of the expedition had to fight their way back down the river with heavy losses. Over a third of the Dutch expedition forces lost their lives. So did a thousand Cambodians, including several high nobles.

On learning of this unmitigated disaster, Van Diemen's first thought was revenge. He began planning an even larger expedition, and lured Prasat Thong to cooperate in return for Siamese domination over Cambodia. But before the expedition could be launched, Van Diemen sickened and died.

Thereafter, the affair tailed away in anticlimax. The Dutch patched up a truce for the sake of trade. The Cambodian king was overthrown by his predecessor's surviving sons with Vietnamese backing. But the incident was significant in many ways. The Dutch dropped ideas of overthrowing rulers on the Southeast Asian mainland. Cambodia fell into the orbit of Vietnam rather than Siam.

As history, the incident confirms the viciousness of court politics in the region in that era, known from the Van Vliet's near-contemporary account of Siam. The incident also shows how important it was for mainland rulers to keep their capitals some distance from the sea and up winding rivers. Not until steam succeeded sail in the late 19th century did they fall to European gunboat diplomacy.

Finally, the book shows how much good stuff is still lying waiting in the Dutch archives. Alfons van der Kraan has dug out the details and told the tale with great verve. In particular, the account of the Dutch expedition's embattled escape down the river reeks of gunpowder. The book reproduces a beautiful contemporary sketch of the battle drawn on ricepaper.