Jan Struys, a Dutch freebooter in Siam (part 2)
When Struys arrived in Ayutthaya, diplomatic relations between Siam and the Dutch Republic were normal, but that had not always been the case. From the moment that Cornelius Speckx established a VOC depot in Ayutthaya in 1604, the relationship between the two mutually dependent parties had changed considerably. ups & downs.
While most Dutch reports from that time were quite enthusiastic about Siam, contemporary Siamese sources appeared to formulate the necessary reservations about the Dutch actions in the Land of Smiles. They regarded the VOC'ers as rough and rough people who could be arrogant and disrespectful. In December 1636, a few subordinates of the VOC trading post in Ayutthaya were close to being trampled by elephants on the orders of the monarch. After a pleasure boat trip on the Chao Phraya, they had in a drunken stupor entered a temple area - perhaps Wat Worachet - and had started a riot. As if this were not enough, they had also sought confrontation within the crown domain with a few servants of Prince Phra Si Suthammaracha, the younger brother of the king. They were not apprehended without a fight by the royal guard and imprisoned awaiting execution.
A number of restrictions were immediately imposed on the VOC and the trading post was guarded by Siamese soldiers. Jeremias Van Vliet (ca.1602-1663), the VOC representative in Ayutthaya, literally – and to the VOC's dismay – had to bend his knees to normalize the relationship again. Today historians agree that King Prasat Thong had used this incident to put the finishing touches to a long smoldering conflict with Antonio Van Diemen (1636-1593), who had been promoted to governor-general of the VOC in Batavia in January 1645. i to put. After all, Van Diemen had dared to read the Siamese king, in a letter that was read to the public, to the Levites regarding unfulfilled agreements….
In 1642, shortly after Van Vliet left Ayutthaya, Sultan Suleiman of the Siamese vassal state of Songkhla declared independence. Van Diemen concluded in a gesture of goodwill to offer four VOC ships as support for the punitive expedition organized by Prasat Thong, but when push came to shove it turned out that the Dutch, to the anger of the Siamese monarch, had not kept their word… A few months before Struys arrived in Siam, the However, the folds were ironed out again and Prasat Thong had presented the VOC board in Batavia with a lavish gift that included a golden crown and no fewer than 12 elephants. Like Van Vliet in his diaries and reports, Struys also took a rather ambiguous attitude towards the Siamese king. On the one hand, he was in awe of his power and wealth, but on the other, as a God-fearing Protestant, he was appalled by the king's lack of moral sense and cruelty. This was especially evident when he witnessed with his own eyes how Prasat Thong was relentlessly repressive.
On February 23, 1650, Jan Van Muyden, the then representative of the VOC in Ayutthaya, was summoned to attend the cremation of the king's only natural daughter. Jan Struys, together with a number of others, belonged to the VOC delegation and was thus an eyewitness to this special ceremony: 'On the Pleyn, in front of the Court, stood 5 towers of wood, and masts made exceedingly long, of which the middle ones were about 30, and the others squared about the waist, yder about 20 fathoms high; being all because the constige building is no less strange than the multiple gold that was wonderfully wonderful to behold through the ornately painted Lofwerk. In the middle of the largest Tooren stood a very precious Autaar with Gold and Stones inlaid about 6 feet, on which the Corpse of the dead Princess was brought after it had been embalmed in the Court for about 6 months. On this day it was adorned with royal robes and with gold chains, arm-rings and necklaces, as much of diamonds as other precious stones, it was put together. She was also with a very precious golden crown on her head in a coffin of fine gold, a good inch thick: here she does not laugh, but sat about it like one who prays with her hands together and her face raised up to her. Heaven directed.'
After being laid in state for two days, the remains were cremated, but during this process the king was able to determine that the body was only partially charred. He immediately drew the – debatable – conclusion that his daughter had been poisoned and that the toxins in her body slowed down the combustion process. A stunned Struys described what Prasat Thong then did: 'He did not, in a cruel frenzy or that very night, seize all the women who in the life of the princesse were accustomed to serve her and who were daily with her, both large and small, and put them in custody.' Most historians agree that the so-called 'poisoning' of the princess may have been a pretext for the slightly paranoid monarch to wipe out a large number of possible rivals in one fell swoop. Jan Struys was not that explicit, but he suspected a few things.
It was the first but certainly not the last time that our Dutch freebooter stood in the front row at historical events: 'Not long after that I spoke of the said affair, as frightful spectacle-scenes sincere as no crueler has been met in all my Reysen. The king wanted his daughter to be forgiven, as has already been said, without it being known for sure whether anyone could convince anyone with evidence; however, they wanted to find out quansuys and the following horrible and unjust investigations were carried out for this purpose. The king, according to custom, summoned some great Lords of Hove under some message: when they had come, they were afterwards led away and locked in prison. Thus came a great multitude of innocent people into custody, most all of the greatest persons, as well as Women and Men. Buyten de Stad Judia, in the field of Veldt some pits were made of about 20 feet in the square, these were filled with charcoal and they were kindled and blown up with long Waijers by some soldiers who were ordained thereto.
Some of the accused were then brought before, with their arms braced behind their backs, in the middle of a thick circle. Soldiers were led and disbanded there. Furthermore, she was placed with her legs first in some tubs of warm water so that the calluses would soften loose, which some of the Servants scraped off with knives. This having been done, they were brought to some Heeren Officiers and Heydensche Papen, and were asked there to confess their guilt voluntarily; but sy sulks refusing wierden sy besworen and soo handed over to the soldiers. Dese then forced these disastrous Menschen with their bare and raw-scraped feet to walk through these Brandt-kuylen and over the glowing coals which at that time were being blown up by the Waeyers from the side. Now, being out of the fire, her feet were seized, and when they were found boiled, these wretched ones were held guilty and bound again; but no one walked there without his foot soles being scorched, and thus declares guilty that those who were put to stand this absurd and cruel test, were from that time dead Menschen and did not treat themselves otherwise. though most of them, however — or perhaps they might seem unbothered by luck — flew through the fire at a marvelous speed.
Some fell in there and could crawl out of there again to be killed, it was all right; but otherwise no one reached his hand there being the self forbidden under severe penalty. In sulker joints I have seen some Menschen roasting and burning alive. Now those whom in the narrated manner was counted for criminalh the Soldiers brought down a weynigh from the aforesaid Whirlpool of Fire and bound him there to a stake, and then brought forth a great Oliphant which would furnish the Executioner: for this must The Leser know that one does not find Henker in Siam, but the Elephants serve as executioners here, which is certainly always as good a practice as with the Christians, because one Man tortures and kills the other without difficulty and in cold blood, which is truly very gruesome and sodanigen Man must be much worse than a Beast who will never attack his peers without enmity or nutty hare.
The oliphant then led wesende first made some roaring rounds about the criminals and then took him up with the stake to which he was bound, throwing him up with his snout and then catches him in his protruding y front teeth through the body and again after which he shakes it off and to crush and crumble kicks so that the intestines and all the entrails splash out. Finally some Servants came and dragged the soo sauntered bodies after the River in which they threw themselves, being the road there slippery and slippery of Menschenbloedt; this was the common punishment. But others were lively dug into the earth up to the neck by the roads where people went after the Stadts Poorten. Yder who passed by there was forced to spit on it under corporal punishment, which I just had to do like all the others. In the meantime no one could kill her or give her water and thus these wretched Menschen had to languish miserably with thirst, the Sonne there seeming to be burning all day long and especially at noon. A thousand times they prayed as a great mercy for the dead; but there was not the slightest compassion. This horrible rage and murder lasted for 4 months and thousands of people died there. I myself have killed 50 in one day and once an equal number in one morningh…'
Still impressed by the blind violence that accompanied this wave of purification, Jan Struys and Jan Struys set sail on April 12, 1650, aboard The Black Bear, course to Formosa. He never returned to Siam.
Prasat Thong, rightly described by Struys as tyrannical, died peacefully in his sleep in August 1656. His son Prince Chai was dethroned and killed on the first day after his coronation….
Horrifying report.
Van Vliet also mentioned gruesome punishments.
Such as murdering pregnant women, whose bodies buried in the ground, under the construction piles of important buildings, would generate such evil spirits that the buildings would be protected for a long time.
How on earth the idea of the noble savage or the uncorrupted Non-European peoples came about remains a mystery.
Dear Dirk,
It is a widespread and unfortunately persistent myth that we owe the ridiculous idea that civilization and the idea of progress are antithetical to human happiness to the concept of the 'Bon Sauvage' of the French Enlightenment philosopher Jean-Jaques Rousseau. In the French speaking area, this concept was already used in the 16th century by the Breton explorer Jacques Cartier (1491-1557) when he described the Iroquois in Canada and a little later it was the philosopher Michel de Montaigne who used it in describing the Brazilian Tipunamba. In the English-speaking world, the 'Noble Savage' first appears in John Dryden's drama 'The Conquest of Granada' from 1672, so shortly before Struys's book was published. It was given a 'scientific' foundation in the 169 tract 'Inquiry Concerning Virtue' by the 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury in a dispute with the philosopher Hobbes. In my opinion, 'primitivism' with the half-naked, 'noble and brave savage' was mainly an erotic literary invention designed to satisfy a sentimental and romantic female readership in the 18th century…
Dear Lung Jan,
Agree, where I think that Rousseau in particular was the most influential.
Your last sentences surprised me a bit. In my opinion, especially Romanticism played an important role in the 19th century. The insight that our European societies after the industrial revolution had put an end to the harmony of man and nature. etc. Escape, real or in dreams, to another harmonious world. We are still left with those offshoots of that Romanticism.
A good example is Gauguin.
It has often been claimed that eroticism played a role, but you could of course also experience that with all kinds of Classical Greek/Roman statues from the previous period.
With regard to Javanese female beauty, it has been argued that it was attractive to the average VOC sailor, or even the real motivation (especially by female historians).
Then when the mortality rates on these ships - and those due to mortality from tropical diseases - come before your eyes after arrival, that claim does appear in a strange light.
Incidentally, that Joosten intrigues me very much, the man was well aware of Siamese customs and manners and spoke the language fluently. It is sometimes claimed that he was quite intensively confronted with the 'ladyboy' phenomenon. To use an anachronistic term. Little is known about him.
Do you perhaps know some literature on this?
Wonderful, I enjoy reading these kinds of historical contributions.
Well-chosen fragments are easy to read with a little effort.
Thanks to Lung Jan.
Is he a specialist in historical texts?
One caveat about the content, though.
The text fragments deal with the first half of the 17th century and the representatives of the VOC give the impression of looking at the gruesome executions with disgust and disbelief.
Remarkable, because at the same time in the Netherlands and Western Europe similar horrific witch trials and trials were still taking place with torture to force confessions, water tests and other torture, strangulation and burning.
And not from an all-powerful king, a tyrant over his subjects, but from Dutch free citizens against other fellow citizens. Raisonnable people who had the forms of government in their own hands.
So painful. An early example of culture blindness?
Dear mee farang,
Rather, there is history blindness.
As is so often the case, everything is mixed up, witch hunts have hardly taken place in the Netherlands, but there have been in the surrounding countries. Your comparison is wrong.
Of course, the interrogation and torture practices, especially witnessed by us modern humans, were horrific. But, and it must be said, it took place in a developing case law, think of scholars like Coornhert. It's hard to discover that in Prasat Thong's thinking.
And almost always, no matter how difficult, there was a trial and court ruling.
We can hardly place ourselves in the time and thinking of our grandfathers, let alone those of the 17th century or the Middle Ages.
The past is a foreign country, they do things differently there.
Dear Mee Farang,
Jan Janszoon Struys appears from his writings to have been a God-fearing Protestant with a high sense of morality. However, this did not prevent him, as a child of the Eighty Years' War, from repeatedly venting his aversion to the Roman Papists in his writings or from being anything but tolerant of Islam as a former prisoner of the Ottomans. It is rightly pointed out that the VOC itself was not afraid of violence, not only against the indigenous population or European trade competitors, but also against its own personnel. A good example was Joost Schouten, who had preceded Jeremias Van Vliet, mentioned in the text, as chief VOC merchant in Ayutthaya. He was charged with sodomy in 1644 and sentenced to be burned at the stake. As a measure of favor and in recognition of services rendered to the VOC, however, he was strangled before being burned… The diaries of Jeremias Van Vliet clearly show a 'double' morality that the Dutch adopted in relation to Prasat Thong. Van Vliet seems to have been more disturbed by the king's drinking than by his bloodthirsty behavior. For example, he wrote with a slightly disapproving tone that the king took pleasure in carrying out executions himself, but in a report he immediately whitewashed the violence as a 'necessary' means to defend the internal cohesion and security of Siam…
Thank you for your clear and nuanced answer.
That's how I can understand.
Morality is a strange thing and always gives way to gain.
Dear Dirk
I'm not mixing anything up. People like Jan Struys and his companions from the VOC were culture blind. They were incomprehensible about what the schizophrenic king of Siam, Prasat Thong, was doing to his subjects (cf: 'as a God-fearing Protestant, dismayed at the king's lack of moral sense and cruelty').
In the same period of time, countless women (and some men) in the Netherlands were mistreated and tortured in an equally cruel and inhumane way and then cruelly executed.
Under the guise of a trial, confessions were forced through torture, in the constitutional state that the Netherlands was then, yes!
Citizens had given other citizens the right to rule over them. Not like in the other European countries where the monarch was in charge.
Those confessions and the way they were obtained are in all the preserved records of all the trials, yes. But they are confessions coerced under torture. And then you confess everything they want to hear from you. Inhumane.
The so-called witches turned in just about everyone they knew, to be able to name names. Thus chains of processes and mass processes arose.
So the records of those trials cannot justify anything, as you would have me believe. They are mock processes.
Incidentally, many more women died during the torture, or committed suicide and there was never a trial!
And the "humane" difference, as I pointed out, is that it takes place in Siam by a random ruler who is paranoid. Something like Louis the Fourteenth.
In the Netherlands it was done systematically by a government that – citizens among citizens – uses a legal system. Common sense people, right?
The persecution of the Jews a few centuries later also followed this civil-judicial approach. The regime enacted laws, which were simply applied.
That seems more inhumane to me than the accidental extreme behavior of a monarch suffering from persecution mania. The paranoid Stalin has thus reduced all his collaborators and opponents, and has killed more people than Hitler.
Nevertheless, a kind of respect for Stalin's 'leadership' continues to be maintained, while Hitler - rightly so! - is maligned. That is political blindness.
I do understand that as a Dutchman you do not want to know that Dutch people were once or still are inhumane and intolerant. Or that they would have committed inhumane acts. That is your right to innocence.
I do, however, conclude that you are misinformed.
In the Netherlands just as many people were prosecuted for witchcraft as in the rest of Europe.
The first 'largest' official witch trial in the Netherlands took place in 1585. Prior to this, several accusations and prosecutions had been made for years and individual trials had taken place.
The last major witch trial took place, not in Roermond in 1622, but in 1674 before the aldermen's bench of Limbricht. The woman, Entgen Luyten, was found strangled in her cell after several interrogations and torture. Explanation: the devil had come to strangle her with a blue ribbon!
Things almost went wrong in Valkenburg in 1778! But the woman could count on pity.
People in the Netherlands were no better than people from Siam.
footnotes
http://www.abedeverteller.nl/de-tien-grootste-heksenprocessen-van-nederland/
https://historiek.net/entgen-luyten-heksenvervolgingen/67552/
https://www.dbnl.org/tekst/dres005verb01_01/dres005verb01_01_0017.php
https://www.ppsimons.nl/stamboom/heksen.htm
Quote: 'Procedural documents of witchcraft trials are bizarre reading material. Judges who sentence people to death for crimes they could not possibly have committed. For three centuries, between 1450 and 1750, judges in the Netherlands fought against witches and wizards.'
Rijckheyt, center for regional history (Brunssum, Gulpen-Wittem, Heerlen, Nuth, Simpelveld and Voerendaal)
http://www.rijckheyt.nl/cultureel-erfgoed/heksenprocessen-limburg
Dear mee farang,
The whole world is now involved!
You apparently miss the essence of my argument, the point is that you should not judge the past with today's knowledge.
It is a fact that living people almost always consider themselves superior to. those in the past.
Perhaps you would have made the same decisions as them at the time.
And if you still like to read, take "Beyond black and white thinking" by Prof. dr. PC bucket in hand.
Uhhh, dear Dirk
I thought that Lung Jan has already brought in the whole / half the world with his article that nevertheless reflects on two continents.
Furthermore, it is NOT a given (Whatever you mean by that? The supreme truth? That of a god perhaps? Came from heaven? From the devil?) that living people 'almost always consider themselves superior to those in the past'.
I am not aware of any scientific study on this.
It's also not because I practice human rights, google on an iPad, or have a high-tech procedure on my heart that I would feel better than an Egyptian from the time of the pharaohs! Physically, of course, because of that surgery!
Man has been the same in his concept, his design, his mind and his body and also his morals for 70 years. If you could put a homo sapiens from 000 years ago in a pilot school, after training he could fly an airplane just as well as pilots today.
The mind of man still works exactly the same.
Furthermore, it is only since the Neolithic Agricultural Revolution (ca. 10 years ago) that good and evil, violence and law have increased steeply exponentially. Well, then came societies, cities, power, wealth and property, rulers and subjects or slaves, domestication, arbitrariness, omnipotence and greed. Equality disappeared.
That's right, it's evolution, just as bad as the climate problem is now.
I think most people in the world do not feel better than their former contemporaries.
You just don't want to see that 'at the same time' throughout world history, good and bad thoughts, deeds, opinions, intentions, decisions (political, social, economic, etc.) coexist. Dialectically united.
Lung Jan's article is just as fascinating, because it shows how in the same time period (17th century) people (Jan Struys and Prasat Thong) were gripped by immorality and moral norms in opposite ways – black and white, plus-minus. But Prasat Thong did not consider himself immoral, any more than an IS fighter does.
And here we come to the point! It is a fact that individuals and entire groups of contemporary people in 2018 feel superior to other people and groups of this time in 2018. That has been and is being extensively scientifically mapped.
(But an IS fighter thinks he is doing very well morally. You and I think he is doing extremely badly. Anno 2018. Everyone's interests count... It always benefits someone.)
The East deals with good and evil much more dialectically, like two branches on one tree. See the yin and yang symbol. It's white and black.
Since Moses, Jesus and Mohammed, we in the West can only see good and bad in an either-or. We judge and condemn without mercy! (The desert religions have served us well. See also social media, real witch burnings.)
Why the east? An example from my own experience:
Countless times when I make a comment about someone in Thailand (I have now unlearned it),
Thai people answer me: Yes, that man may be rude here now, but maybe he is a good father to his children at home… You should not judge.
PS Ah, Professor Piet Emmer… Isn't that the man who is blatantly slammed down in all possible reviews because of oversimplified polarizing thinking, because of a disturbing ego, because of unacceptable (scientific) subjectivity, because of the self-applying of black-and-white thinking. Nice book you gave me!
Read instead: Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens; or Homo Deus… Also e-book.
Dear mee farang,
Every first-year student of history learns that a researcher must deal with historical sources prudently. The dead cannot defend themselves.
It soon becomes comfortable to feel morally superior and to judge all those people.
Your comment on Prof.Dr.PCEmmer is below par. The man is an internationally recognized expert on European expansion and the history of slavery.
The fact that his research does not suit critics says more about the politically correct thinkers who have no arguments other than ad homini.
Bwah, I think all those discussions are pretty much on the ball and not on the man.
That is significant.
His latest book aroused much annoyance, not anger.
You get annoyed when your son is completely wrong but doesn't want to see it...
Everyone describes his 'colonial' thinking as inconsistent and contradictory.
That also means something. No one dared contradict Stalin or Hitler…
So professor-doctor should not be contradicted either.
Are you a student of his?
In any case, I thank you for the fact that we both continued to talk at a level and did not use swear words.
That says a lot about both of us.
Very nice, Lung Jan, that you make this history accessible to us. I also enjoy these stories.
Fortunately, King Prasat Thong did not know what Jan Struys wrote about him, otherwise Jan would have ended badly too. That is no different today.