| Amboyna Massacre |
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The Amboyna massacre was the torture and killing in 1623 of twenty men, ten of which in the service of the British East India Company , by agents of the Dutch East India Company . It was the result of the intense rivalry between the East India companies of England and Holland in the Spice Trade . The Dutch East India Company (VOC) established a trading post at Amboyna ( Ambon Island ) in the Molucca Islands in 1609 by driving out the previously established Portuguese factors. The British East India Company established a factory (trading station) nearby at Cambello in 1615 . In 1619 the British and Dutch signed a Treaty of Defense which allowed England to have one-third of the spice trade to two-thirds for the Dutch. However, Dutch officials in the East Indies gave no heed to this peace pact and armed conflict continued. Eventually, the British attacked the Dutch at Batavia and drove them out. Thereupon, the Dutch at Amboyna suspected that the British were about to attack them and assassinate their governor. The Dutch were in command of the fort ("castle") Victoria on Amboyna in 1623 when a rumour reached them that the Japanese mercenary soldiers ( Samurai ) that the Dutch East Indian Company had hired, plus several Englishmen were conspiring to take over the fort. To find out the truth, they tortured several Japanese and Englishmen. Torture consisted of having water poured over the head, round which a cloth was draped. This was the usual torture in the Dutch Indies at the time. If the suspect did not confess after that, burning candles were held under his arm pits. According to Dutch records all suspects confirmed that they were guilty as charged, with or without being tortured. Since the accusation was treason, all the accused, ten Englishmen, nine Japanese and one Portuguese, were sentenced to death. On March 9, 1623 they were beheaded. The head of the English captain Gabriel Towerson was stuck on a pole for all to see. In the summer of 1623 some Englishmen complained in Batavia to the Dutch governor-general about the Amboyna affair, which they said was a false accusation based upon a fantasy, to which the confessions were gotten by atrocious torture only. At first it seemed like the whole business did not get very much attention, or at least not outside the Indonesian area, until a Dutch pamphlet was published, which was translated into English by the English minister in Middelburg, John Winge. This made the government of the Lower Countries, the “Staten Generaal”, rather angry, as they were trying to sort the matter out already, they said. In those publications the details of the affair are probably exaggerated. The stories in them, about the English “victims” having had their limbs blown away with gunpowder, have never been substantiated. Nevertheless, the whole thing grew into a big affair between the king of England and the Dutch government. A special Dutch court was formed to look into the matter. All Dutchmen who had had something to do with the court that sentenced the 20 beheaded men were called back to Holland. The first of them arrived back home in 1625 and was put under house arrest. The judges however took their time. The verdict was not given until 1631: the accusations by the English were refuted, and the Amboyna judges were free to go. Naturally, the English were not happy with this and the whole affair was one of the reasons for the Dutch-English war of 1650-1654. The 1654 Treaty Of Westminster stated among other things that those guilty of the Amboyna affair be punished, and a sum of 300,000 guilders payed to the descendants of the 10 beheaded Englishmen. It is interesting to note that apparently nobody bothered about the 9 Japanese and the one Portuguese who died along with the ten Englishmen. This seems discriminatory, but could equally be because the lack of evidence meant that questions of procedure would be one of the few legally addressable aspects of the affair. For instance, one of the main questions raised seems to have been whether the Dutch had the right to perform any judicial function on Amboyna, leave alone sentence foreign subjects. After the Amboyna Massacre, the British reduced their interest in the East Indies and focused their attention on the continent of Asia , specifically the Indian Sub-Continent . In 1796 and 1810 British forces captured Amboyna, but returned the colony to the Dutch upon cessation of hostilities. REFERENCES
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