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.

Local access dig.pdf. [Clulow-Amboina 1623.pdf]

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