Amboina, 1623 : fear and conspiracy on the edge of empire / Adam Clulow.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Introduction : the Company and the colony -- With treaty or with violence -- "We cannot exist without slaves" -- Dangerous and difficult to govern -- The English serpent -- The trial -- The war of the witnesses -- The long aftermath in Europe and Asia -- Epilogue : the fearful empire.

"In 1623, a Japanese mercenary called Shichizō was arrested for asking suspicious questions about a Dutch East India Company castle on Amboina, a remote set of islands in what is now eastern Indonesia. He was tortured until he confessed that he had joined a plot orchestrated by a group of English merchants to seize control of the fortification and ultimately to rip the spice-rich islands from the Company's grasp. Two weeks later, Dutch authorities executed twenty-one alleged conspirators, sparking immediate outrage and a controversy that would endure for centuries to come. In this book, Adam Clulow presents a new perspective on the Amboina case that aims to move beyond the debate over guilt or innocence. He argues that the case was driven forward by a potent combination of genuine crisis, imagined threat, and overpowering fear that propelled the rapid escalation from suspicion to torture, that gave shape and form to the sprawling plot, and that pushed it forward to a bloody conclusion. Based on a detailed analysis of archival records, letters, and contemporary legal documents, this book is a masterful reinterpretation of a trial that has divided opinion for centuries"-- Provided by publisher.

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The Company and the Shogun : the Dutch encounter with Tokugawa Japan / Adam Clulow.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 301-324) and index.

Introduction: Taming the Dutch -- 1: Diplomacy. Royal Letters from the Republic ; The Lord of Batavia ; The Shogun's loyal vassals -- 2: Violence. The violent sea ; Power and petition -- 3: Sovereignty. Planting the flag in Asia ; Giving up the Governor -- Conclusion: The Dutch experience in Japan.

"The Dutch East India Company was a hybrid organization combining the characteristics of both corporation and state that attempted to thrust itself aggressively into an Asian political order in which it possessed no obvious place and was transformed in the process. This study focuses on the company's clashes with Tokugawa Japan over diplomacy, violence, and sovereignty. In each encounter the Dutch were forced to retreat, compelled to abandon their claims to sovereign powers, and to refashion themselves again and again -- from subjects of a fictive king to loyal vassals of the shogun, from aggressive pirates to meek merchants, and from insistent defenders of colonial sovereignty to legal subjects of the Tokugawa state. Within the confines of these conflicts, the terms of the relationship between the company and the shogun first took shape and were subsequently set into what would become their permanent form. The first book to treat the Dutch East India Company in Japan as something more than just a commercial organization, The Company and the Shogun presents new perspective on one of the most important, long-lasting relationships to develop between an Asian state and a European overseas enterprise."-- From publisher's description.

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