Amboyna massacre
The Amboyna massacre[1] (also known as the Amboyna trial)[2] was the 1623 torture and execution on Ambon Island (present-day Ambon, Maluku, Indonesia) of twenty-one men, including ten in the service of the English East India Company, as well as Japanese and Portuguese traders and a Portuguese man,[3] by agents of the Dutch East India Company (VOC), on accusations of treason.
[4] It was the result of the intense rivalry between the East India companies of England and the United Provinces in the spice trade and remained a source of tension between the two nations until late in the 17th century.
King James I and the Netherlands States General caused the two warring companies to conclude a Treaty of Defence in London in 1619 creating cooperation in the East Indies.
Both parties developed numerous grievances against each other including bad faith, non-performance of treaty-obligations, and "underhand" attempts to undercut each other in the relations with the indigenous rulers with whom they dealt.
In the Amboyna region, local VOC-governor Herman van Speult had trouble, in late 1622, with the Sultan of Ternate, who showed signs of intending to switch allegiance to the Spanish.
These vague suspicions became concrete when in February 1623 one of the Japanese mercenary soldiers (ronin, or masterless samurai in the employ of the VOC[10]) was caught in the act of spying on the defenses of the fortress Victoria.
[13] Torture consisted of having water poured over the head, around which a cloth was draped, bringing the interrogated repeatedly close to suffocation (this is today called waterboarding).
The incident ended any hope of Anglo-Dutch cooperation in the area, a goal that both governments had been pursuing for several years, and marked the beginning of Dutch ascendancy in the Indies.
In the summer of 1623, the Englishmen who had been pardoned and acquitted sailed to Batavia and complained to the Dutch governor-general Pieter de Carpentier and the Council of Defence about the Amboyna affair, which they said was a false accusation based upon a fantasy and that the confessions had been obtained only by severe torture.
The Dutch States General proposed a joint Anglo-Dutch commission of inquiry to establish the facts, but the suggestion was rejected by the English as too time-consuming.
[27] As part of Treaty of Westminster (1654) which ended the First Anglo-Dutch War (1652–1654), a binational arbitration committee was established which ordered that reparations be paid by the VOC to the heirs of the English victims of the massacre.
[28] The East India Company was unhappy with the outcome, and in 1632 its directors published an exhaustive brochure, comprising all the relevant papers, with extensive comments and rebuttals of the Dutch position.
John Dryden wrote a play, entitled "Amboyna or the Cruelties of the Dutch to the English Merchants", apparently at the behest of his patron who had been one of the chief negotiators of the Secret treaty of Dover that caused England's entry into that war.
He conceals from the crew the fact that he has not performed the ceremony demanded by the Japanese of "trampling upon the Crucifix" because, "if the secret should be discovered by my countrymen, the Dutch, they would cut my throat in the voyage."
