On 17 December 1770, a fully loaded junk was sailing within the waters of Hà Tiên (Hexian), an autonomous Chinese creole port polity situated along the present-day Vietnam-Cambodia border. It had departed Longchuan or Long Xuyên (rendered Liong Tshowan in the Dutch records), a subsidiary port on the Cà Mau peninsula. Its destination was the main port and urban centre of Gangkou (Cancao, Kangkhauw, or Kankau in the European sources), or literally translated, The Port. The vessel had eight people onboard. On 20 December, it arrived at the river mouth connecting Longchuan to the South China Sea. But because there was no wind, it could not proceed further. The captain, Oeij Tshing, had no choice but to anchor along the shore and wait for assistance or better conditions. As it turned out, another ship appeared on the horizon the following day. Its captain, Lauw Wo, had first travelled to Siam and then stopped for a time at The Port. He and his crew had planned to proceed onward to Batavia (present-day Jakarta, Indonesia), seat of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) in Asia. As they rounded the Cà Mau peninsula, they encountered Oeij Tshing’s stranded vessel.
At this point, the narratives diverge. According to Oeij Tshing, Lauw Wo and his men seized the eight people and plundered their vessel of its cargo. They then sailed onward to a place called Ke-i Tsoe and set anchor on 25 December, four days later. There, Oeij and two other men, Jong Sieuw and Lee Sien, escaped by jumping overboard and swimming to shore. They caught onto the wreckage of a vessel and floated with it back to Longchuan and obtained transportation back to The Port.
According to Lauw Wo, however, he had discovered Oeij Tshing’s junk in a terrible condition; the craft was sinking, and most of it had already submerged underwater. The eight people onboard were waving and calling out for help. Moved to compassion, Lauw Wo took them in and provided them food and shelter. But his ship could not move anywhere, since no favourable winds appeared. Oeij Tshing grew impatient and he, along with Jong Sieuw and Lee Sien, requested to be brought ashore by boat, where they would locate and board another vessel that could take his crew back to The Port. The remaining passengers stayed with Lauw Wo while awaiting their return. When favourable winds finally started to blow one seamy afternoon, and Oeij and his companions still did not come back, Lauw Wo feared that he would soon run out of food and water. He persuaded the rest of the crew to sail with him to Batavia, where they could easily find a ship bound for The Port. His vessel arrived at Batavia on 5 January 1771.
In the meantime, Oeij Tshing, Jong Sieuw and Lee Sien had made their way to Longchuan and, from there, boarded a vessel back to The Port. They immediately filed a complaint to the Hà Tiên authorities, accusing Lauw Wo of piracy. Mo Tianci or Mạc Thiên Tứ (1718–1780), the military governor of the polity, decided not to try the case locally. Instead, in one of his first official communications with the VOC High Government (Hoge Regeering) in Batavia in early 1771, he turned over the ultimate adjudication to the Governor-General, Petrus Albertus van der Parra (1714–1775). Tianci ordered a Chinese junk captain (nachoda), Fe-i Beengko, to transport the three men to Batavia after an initial interview with his officials. There, they underwent another round of interrogation from the Dutch-appointed leaders of the local Chinese community, including the top-ranked official, the captain (kapitan), and his lieutenants. They also questioned the passengers on Oeij’s ship who chose to stay behind and Lauw Wo and his crew.
The Archives of the High Government at the Arsip Nasional Republik Indonesia (National Archives of the Republic of Indonesia) in Jakarta has preserved detailed documentation of this case. There are complete transcriptions of the interviews translated into Dutch and the ultimate adjudication from the VOC authorities.Footnote 1 Moreover, the repository contains other correspondences related to Hà Tiên, including exchanges between Mo Tianci and the High Government and valuable information and data on trade. These remarkable documents uncover new evidence about the polity’s interactions with Batavia and its Chinese mercantile community.
The scholarly consensus to date has been that the VOC largely ended its involvement in Vietnam and Cambodia during the second half of the seventeenth century, when it closed down all of its trading posts or factories.Footnote 2 The lack of profits caused by fierce competition with Japanese, and later Chinese, merchants and the constant danger from warfare or internal rebellions forced them to leave. However, the flourishing commercial interactions with Hà Tiên uncovered by the eighteenth-century documents in Jakarta show that the Company maintained an indirect presence in the Mekong Delta and Gulf of Siam. In fact, its reliance primarily upon Chinese traders who circulated between both places, just like Batavia did with other ports in the China Seas, yielded much greater benefit and incurred fewer costs than an official presence.Footnote 3
On a broader scale, the discovery provides fresh insights into the political status of Hà Tiên and the role of the Gulf of Siam littoral as a transshipment centre for the junk trade between China and Southeast Asia, and mainland and island Southeast Asia during most of the eighteenth century. These relationships substantiate the prevalent view among scholars of the multilateral nature of Hà Tiên’s connections to the outside world. Yet, they also show how Mo Tianci exploited various political, legal, and commercial institutions in maritime Asia to facilitate his primary aims of economic expansion and security for a multiethnic and multi-confessional realm. In this regard, Hà Tiên demonstrated striking parallels with the VOC’s own efforts at maritime dominance and agricultural colonisation.
The many faces of Hà Tiên
For much of the eighteenth century, the Hà Tiên polity dominated the northern littoral of the Gulf of Siam, extending from Cà Mau south westward to present-day Sihanoukville. This entire area, including its main port of Gangkou (The Port), once belonged to Cambodia, and constituted an important strategic maritime gateway for its commercial centre of Phnom Penh.Footnote 4 During the late seventeenth century, Mo Jiu or Mạc Cửu (1655–1735), a Chinese adventurer and supporter of the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644), settled down in the capital of Oudong. He gained the trust of the Cambodian king and successfully acquired Hà Tiên as his own fiefdom. He developed it into a crossroads for trade in maritime Asia, and recruited large numbers of Vietnamese, Chinese, Siamese, Lao and Khmer migrants to open up its hinterlands.Footnote 5
In 1708, Jiu pledged allegiance to the Nguyễn lord of the southern Vietnamese regime of Cochinchina (Đàng Trong) after his realm was threatened and invaded multiple times by Siam and pro-Siamese elements among the Cambodian elite. The ruler, greatly pleased at this offer of territory, granted Mo Jiu the noble title of marquis and the position of governor of Hà Tiên. His polity became officially known as Hà Tiên Garrison (Hà Tiên trấn or Hexian zhen). The VOC records rendered it as Ho Sjen Tiên, after the Chinese pronunciation. In this manner, Jiu was incorporated into the Cochinchinese hierarchy. After his death in 1735, his son, Mo Tianci, took power. He continued the policies of his father, promoting trade and migration to open up new land on a larger scale. Hà Tiên’s fortunes peaked under his rule, particularly during the 1750s and 1760s.Footnote 6
According to the mainstream scholarly consensus in Vietnam, the centuries-long Southern Advance (Nam tiến) of the Vietnamese, whose population and territory steadily expanded from their original heartland in the Red River Plain around Hanoi, reached its terminus at Hà Tiên. Through their submission to Cochinchina, Mo Jiu and his son were seen as the instruments and facilitators of this final push toward the realisation of Vietnam’s current borders.Footnote 7 The narrative has subtle detractors within the country, primarily among local scholars in Hà Tiên. Đông Hồ and Trương Minh Đạt, despite being emphatic about their native place being Vietnamese territory, nonetheless tout it as a special land with its unique features and heritage. Hồ argues that the Mo had the full intention of forging a ‘small, independent kingdom’ in Hà Tiên.Footnote 8 Scholars outside Vietnam, such as Keith Taylor, Chen Ching-ho and Ryan Holroyd, concur, highlighting its contingency of becoming a separate state, like its neighbours in mainland Southeast Asia.Footnote 9
Others point out that the vassalage to Cochinchina, while important, only constituted one of the multilateral connections that Hà Tiên maintained across maritime Asia. As Liam Kelley and John Wong show, the Mo constantly negotiated their allegiances to maximise their interests and legitimacy at any given time in a complex and volatile environment.Footnote 10 Likewise, Claudine Ang believes that Mo Tianci, in particular, became an essential mediator between Cochinchina, Cambodia, Siam, other Southeast Asian states, and Qing China (1644–1912), giving them an incentive to keep him around.Footnote 11 Building upon their excellent perspectives, I argue that he and his father, while enjoying de facto independence, never intended to forge a formal state out of their polity. Instead they aimed to create what Melissa Macauley calls ‘non-statist forms of territoriality…focused on territorial access, commodity production, and commerce.’Footnote 12 They wanted to build a framework able to transcend political boundaries and other barriers to ensure Hà Tiên’s smooth operation as a trading hub in maritime Asia. To this effect, the Mo preferred to integrate into the established hierarchies of their neighbours, and selectively and pragmatically adopt their institutions.
Sakurai Yumio and Kitagawa Takako speak of Hà Tiên as a polity with ‘two faces: one for the Khmer people and another for the Chinese, as well as two faces for internal and external affairs.’Footnote 13 The Mo, John Wong shows, primarily governed their long-term Chinese and Vietnamese residents through a militarised chain of command derived from Cochinchina.Footnote 14 But the Mo never broke off their ties to the Cambodian court, and maintained the original political and social structure of the Khmer in their realm.Footnote 15 In fact, Tianci deepened this connection. Since at least the early 1740s, he took on the title of Samdech Preah Sotoat, denoting the status of a minor royal relative, possibly achieved through marriage or adoption.Footnote 16
In 1758, Tianci intervened in a succession struggle and helped place Ang Tan (1740–1777, r. 1758–1777) on the throne in Oudong. The young man made him an adoptive father and, as a reward for his assistance, he became viceroy (uparaja). It was how the Dutch addressed Tianci in one of their letters to him in 1772. Transcribed from a Chinese transcription of the original Khmer, it read: ‘Sam Liet Pa Soe Tjetto Gie Moho Palet Bok’ [Samdech Preah Sotoat Sri Maha Uparaja Mo].Footnote 17 As viceroy, he appointed his own officials and acquired an appanage of five provinces.Footnote 18 This territorial addition gave him control over practically all of Cambodia’s coastline along the Gulf of Siam and much of the South China Sea.
One of the recent acquisitions was Longchuan, where Oeij Tshing and his crew set sail. Since 1758, it had become a circuit (dao) of Hà Tiên, periodically patrolled by a military company. Many other minor inland and coastal ports like Longchuan dotted the Gulf of Siam littoral and Mekong River Delta. It was, Li Tana shows, a water world of swampy marshlands connected by a maze of rivers and canals to the sea, where travel depended heavily upon water transportation. Oeij Tshing’s vessel apparently followed the pattern of ships in the area, stopping at one place to unload its cargoes and take on new goods before sailing onward to another destination.Footnote 19 Ultimately, he would end up in the main urban centre of Hà Tiên: The Port, which connected to the broader world of maritime Asia. The items carried onboard his vessel reflected this mix of local and long-distance trading networks. They included rice, wax and water buffalo meat, which could be found in plentiful quantities in the Gulf of Siam littoral and Cochinchina. Others, such as cloth, Spanish silver coins and copper items, had their origins in China, Japan and the Indian Ocean or European colonies of Southeast Asia.Footnote 20
The composition of the eight-person crew reflected the complex multiethnic makeup of Hà Tiên. Oeij Tshing captained the vessel and travelled together with his brother, Lo Hoet, and Lo Hoet’s daughter, Khoen Sing. They, along with Jong Sieuw and Lee Sien, were either Qing Chinese or Chinese creole. It is not clear whether any of them owned the junk or whether they pooled together the capital to purchase one, but its cargo space was consigned to different individuals. Oeij owned the largest proportion, most likely also on behalf of his relatives. Five of the six other people onboard had their own cargo spaces. In addition, there were goods belonging to four more individuals who did not travel together with the junk.Footnote 21
Two of the crew members onboard were women. Lang Kaij and Lang Tshauw conducted business on their own account. Like elsewhere in Southeast Asia, women were heavily involved in markets and the circulation of goods, and were often passengers onboard ships.Footnote 22 In fact, Lang Tshauw was one of the largest stakeholders in the junk cargo. Lang Kaij, on the other hand, was doing business at Longchuan when her husband sent her a letter, carried by her son to her, informing her that he had received a prestigious appointment to serve under Fingkijie, undoubtedly an important general or official. She then boarded Oeij Tshing’s ship for The Port along with her son, the only one who did not consign anything on the junk.Footnote 23
Lang Kaij was undoubtedly Cochinchinese. When Lauw Wo spotted Oeij Tshing and his stranded passengers, he released a barge from his junk and, together with some of his crew, boarded Oeij Tshing’s vessel. Lauw Wo’s servant struck up a conversation with Lang Kaij in the Cochinchinese languages (Coechimse taalen), ostensibly referring to dialects of southern Vietnamese. According to him, he and everyone else came from The Port and gave her their exact residence: the house of Fe-i Kat by Tan Leeng Bridge, one of the densely packed shophouses overlooking the canals that cut through the city centre. They were ‘sailing to lands below the winds’ (na de beneede windse plaatsen te steevenen) or island Southeast Asia. They then asked to purchase some food, including bakasam, a type of fermented meat, and betel.Footnote 24
Lang Tshauw may have been Cochinchinese as well. In later conversations with Oeij Tshing, she mentioned to him that ‘there is a God, after all,’ and ‘we must keep God in all our pursuits.’Footnote 25 It appears from this reference to a single deity and the tone of her moralisation that she was Catholic. And Vietnamese formed the predominant Catholic population in Hà Tiên. Mo Tianci forged close ties with the Spanish Franciscans and eagerly welcomed them to his realm, precisely because they attracted large numbers of Cochinchinese believers. In Hà Tiên, the French missionary Nicolas-Jacques-Gervais Levavasseur claimed, they could freely practice their faith without fear of the volatile policies and successive rounds of persecution that they had to endure back home.Footnote 26 The large number of Cochinchinese migrants provided a necessary demographic boost in a frontier zone where, Li and van Dyke show, manpower was scarce and expensive.Footnote 27 They were primarily recruited to open up the land, especially the cultivation of rice and other grains. The Franciscans founded a principal church, Santa María y San José, at The Port in 1735. A network of parishes and congregations across Hà Tiên and Cambodia proliferated as the number of converts grew. The Franciscans, in fact, preceded the better-documented establishment of the French seminary at Hòn Đất during the 1760s.Footnote 28
Curiously, language differences did not occur strictly along ethnic lines. Lauw Wo’s servant was himself Chinese. Lauw Wo, too, introduced himself to Lang Kaij in Vietnamese and further told her that he knew her husband.Footnote 29 Evidently, both men had extensive dealings with the Cochinchinese, married their women or were the creole offspring of such unions. They at least felt comfortable speaking the language. Oeij Tshing, on the other hand, was either a Qing sojourner or someone whose family more strictly adhered to a traditional Chinese upbringing. He ‘understood nothing of the conversation being held’ (niets van het gehouwden gesprek verstond). Later on, Lang Kaij had to explain to him what they had been talking about. Lang Tshauw, too, could communicate with Oeij Tshing directly. The two women evidently picked up Chinese through marriage or business, which often went together.
Also on the barge with Lauw Wo and his servant were eight Mohammedans, a reference to Malay, Cham or other sailors from the Malay Peninsula or Indonesian archipelago.Footnote 30 They formed another major constituency in Hà Tiên and are relevant for understanding its connection with the VOC and Batavia. European expansion and colonisation in island Southeast Asia starting from the fifteenth century had contributed to a broad dispersal of its people to ports across maritime Asia, including the Hà Tiên area. As Philipp Bruckmayr argues, a pan-Malay diaspora network took shape, forged chiefly through a shared belief in Islam. There were other, more ethnically specific networks from island Southeast Asia, such as the Cham, Javanese, the Minangkabau of Sumatra and the Bugis from Sulawesi, but they could simultaneously affiliate with the broader Malay identity.Footnote 31
The Gulf of Siam coast became a crucial destination for many of these groups during the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Scholars have pieced together from the VOC archival records detailed information regarding Hà Tiên’s trade with the Malay Peninsula and Sumatra, in particular the sultanates of Palembang and Johor, based on the Riau islands south of Singapore. According to Barbara Watson Andaya and Reinault Vos, tin from mines on the nearby island of Bangka and pepper from the highlands enjoyed great demand in China. However, direct private trade in these strategic items violated the monopoly of the VOC, which banned ships from carrying them without its licenses. Hà Tiên, lying midway between Guangzhou and island Southeast Asia, emerged as an emporium where they could be conveniently smuggled and transferred to northward-bound vessels.Footnote 32 The port polity was itself a major supplier of rice in both directions.Footnote 33 Kwee Hui Kian further points out that Cambodian cloth was exported in huge quantities to the straits zone, where it readily beat the more expensive South Asian variety. On Bangka and Riau, a large concentration of tin miners, mostly Chinese migrants and agricultural labourers, created a captive market for these items.Footnote 34
Because grain and cloth proved crucial for the smooth functioning of the local economy, the Company had to permit vessels from the straits zone to travel directly to Hà Tiên and other ports along the Gulf of Siam, although they were not allowed to proceed further to the north. They were also forbidden from carrying tin and pepper onboard. This regulation proved almost impossible to enforce. Determined ships could easily outrun the Dutch patrols and, if discovered, still sneak through inspections by hiding these items amid other goods.Footnote 35 Accordingly, Malay, Minangkabau and Bugis traders included Hà Tiên as a key node in their networks.Footnote 36 Mo Tianci organised and outfitted an entire company of soldiers from island Southeast Asia, called the Đồ Bà Company (đội), and placed them under one of their own commanders.Footnote 37
Notwithstanding the semi-legal exchanges with the straits zone, Hà Tiên also directly dealt with Batavia. Mo Tianci came to define Hà Tiên as a Malay port principality that was partially integrated into the colonial order established by the VOC over island Southeast Asia. In his letter to Governor-General van der Parra regarding Oeij Tshing’s case, he called himself ‘the governor’ of ‘my negeri, which my father has passed on to me.’ This Malay term implies a particular type of polity consisting of a major port centred upon a river enclosure. Indeed, Hà Tiên also had a Malay name: Kuala, or river mouth.Footnote 38 According to Carl Trocki, the negeri, which the Dutch translated as landschaap, oversaw a hierarchy of minor ports and interior hinterlands. It associated with similar centres within a broader network of trade and communication lanes stretching across maritime Asia.Footnote 39
Like other major emporia in island Southeast Asia, such as Johor and Palembang, Chinese merchants played a crucial role in Hà Tiên’s long-distance commerce. Despite the Mo clan’s Ming loyalist platform, Tianci actively welcomed Qing subjects to his shores. As a 1772 memorial by Li Shiyao, Governor-General of Guangdong and Guangxi, states, ‘there are many people from the Middle Kingdom making their living at The Port.’ The differences were striking in the hairstyle, dress and calendars utilised by each community. One glaring example was the Manchu queue that the newer arrivals sported, in sharp contrast to the Ming loyalist descendants, who left their hair long. The Qing subjects might simply come and trade and depart when finished with their tasks. They could also stay for a prolonged period of time or settle down permanently, even if their stated goal was to return to the homeland someday. As Li’s memorial points out, the place ‘has always had a large population of sojourners.’Footnote 40 In contrast to the original creole population, the Qing subjects in almost all cases identified with the current dynasty. When they passed away, they had the characters for ‘Imperial Qing’ or ‘Great Qing’ inscribed on their tombstones if they chose to be buried in Hà Tiên.Footnote 41
The documentation on Lauw Wo points to a third group of Chinese. Regardless of whether he was a Qing subject or creole, he appears to have spent time between Hà Tiên and Batavia. He maintained a residence in the former but seemed to have a high degree of familiarity with the island Southeast Asian world. Certainly, the Mohammedan sailors accompanying him frequently travelled between both places.Footnote 42
Toward the Qing subjects and other frequent Chinese travellers to Batavia, Mo Tianci adopted the VOC’s method of governance. He organised them into a distinct group and allowed them to govern themselves according to their own customs and regulations. In a missive to a Siamese official in 1772, Governor-General van der Parra identifies one Lin Houqua as ‘lieutenant of the Chinese’ at The Port before the 1770s.Footnote 43 More incredibly, he was the grandson of Lin Jiguang (Lim Tjipko), one of the most powerful and longest-serving captains of the Chinese at Batavia, whose term lasted from 1755 to 1774.Footnote 44 Lin Houqua lived with his entire family at Hà Tiên, including his mother, wife, children and extended relatives.Footnote 45 Moreover, Mo Tianci adopted Qing conventions in his official letters to the VOC authorities, just like what the Chinese community leaders did at Batavia. He dated them in the name of the reigning emperor, Qianlong (1711–1799, r. 1735–1796). Here is one example: ‘Written in the year Gengyin (Kei-ien), Qianlong (Khi-en Lijong) 35: the 25th of the 12th month,’ or 10 February 1771.Footnote 46
Although Mo Tianci’s first official contact with the High Government only occurred in July 1769, he enjoyed a close working relationship with the Chinese community leaders of Batavia long beforehand. The city served as a secondary source of Chinese and Japanese products, including silk, copper, gold thread and tobacco. Many varieties of Indian and Javanese cloths, Javanese tobacco and sugar and opium could also be procured. In exchange, natural resources from the Gulf of Siam coast, including tree extracts; medicinal plants; and dried animal hides, horns and meat enjoyed great demand in Batavia.Footnote 47 In particular, ‘dried, salted, or pickled fish’ and other seafood formed a daily fixture in the city’s fish market. According to the Attachments of the Daily Resolutions of Batavia in 1771, Jan Taijko, a Chinese tax farmer with close connections to the captain, oversaw its operations. He owned a fleet of junks that made frequent trips to Siam and Cambodia to purchase the preserved seafood.Footnote 48 Cambodian cloth and rice supplied the city’s vicinity, which became specialised in sugar cultivation.Footnote 49
Crises and opportunities
The presence of relatives of the Batavia captain in Hà Tiên ensured that it would be treated as an integral part of the VOC’s sphere of influence. Their intervention likely constituted an important reason why Hà Tiên’s semi-legal trading relationship with the strait polities could flourish in spite of the Company’s monopolistic restrictions. Moreover, judging from how the Chinese leaders interrogated Oeij Tshing, Lauw Wo and their crews, they must have already established a mature procedure for adjudicating legal disputes without the need to go through the Dutch, especially given the constant flow of ships and merchants back and forth. What factors, then, prompted Mo Tianci to address the Governor-General and request his intervention on a formal level in this particular case?
Hà Tiên had its own legal system, which came under the oversight of a military commander. According to the tombstone inscription of one individual who served in this role, the title was punishment official (tixing), derived from a Ming bureaucratic office. French missionary narratives recount that he supervised two judges responsible for trying criminal cases and handling litigation. Perhaps they were the individuals mentioned in the Dutch records as Tscheiwan Kauw Kei Sien Tik Tsoe and Tscheiwan Sieuwhabien Hoeij Lâm. These were transcriptions from either Chinese or Vietnamese, but it remains unclear what were their corresponding titles or names. The document called them grandees (groote) of Hà Tiên. Oeij Tshing and his two crewmates, Jong Sieuw and Lee Sien, provided their testimony and accusations before them. The brief descriptions of the officials and their task appear to identify them as the two judges. The missionary accounts indicate that they would keep Mo Tianci informed of the progress of each case. Ultimately, he was the one who decided and signed off on the sentence.Footnote 50
There was also an entire unit of jailers. They staffed Hà Tiên’s prisons, with the main one located west of the city centre. Their buildings were intentionally constructed to inflict the greatest degree of discomfort upon their occupants. Half-naked prisoners were entirely exposed to the elements and for the full view of the public. Interrogations often took place under torture, while serious offenders wore a heavy cangue around their necks. The severest penalties, reserved for cases of sedition and rebellion, included decapitation and exile to distant frontiers.Footnote 51
Yet, incredibly, in 1770, Mo Tianci relinquished the tremendous powers of life and death at his disposal. He also chose not to work through Batavia’s Chinese community. Instead, he directly turned over the handling of Oeij Tshing’s charges to the VOC. The reasons for this decision must be viewed in terms of Tianci’s strategic goals for his polity.
The later half of the eighteenth century was a volatile period in maritime East Asia. Although the busy traffic and bustling exchange of the South China Sea and Gulf of Siam had always generated fertile ground for piracy, a confluence of factors contributed to a major increase in its frequency and scale. For one, Cochinchinese expansion into Champa and the Mekong Delta had occurred too rapidly, and the court in Huế proved unable to quickly establish stable, workable institutions to administer its territorial acquisitions. Overextended commanders on the frontiers had no choice but to recruit destitute Viet, Cham and highlander groups to settle the land and fight as mercenaries in campaigns against Cambodia and Siam.Footnote 52 As can be imagined, there were few barriers for these marginal elements to wreak havoc on the seas. During the 1740s, Big-bellied Đức, a Cochinchinese from Quy Nhơn, had terrorised shipping in the waters outside of Longchuan. He even had the audacity to attack Mo Tianci’s tribute ships sailing home from Huế in 1747. It took a coordinated effort between Hà Tiên, the Cochinchinese garrison in Saigon, and the Cambodian governor at Bassac to defeat him.Footnote 53
During the 1760s, Myanmar forces invaded Siam and, in 1767, successfully occupied and laid waste to its capital of Ayutthaya. The disintegration of the ruling house proceeded in tandem with the steady influx of Chinese migrants from Chaozhou. In response to the invasion, they became militarised and threw their support behind Taksin (1734–1782, r. 1767–1782), a nobleman and himself the son of a Chaozhou father and a Siamese mother.Footnote 54 From 1767 to 1769, a massive band of Chaozhou pirates gathered under the leadership of Huo Ran, who established a base on Koh Kong, an island along the Cambodian-Siamese border. He and his ships raided north-south traffic between China and island Southeast Asia and also kidnapped Siamese war refugees on the adjacent shore and held them for ransom. Fearing that Huo would serve as the vanguard of a potential Siamese invasion against Hà Tiên, Mo Tianci launched a full-scale naval expedition that killed him and exterminated his base.Footnote 55
These major episodes were accompanied by a dramatic uptick in smaller-scale predation. A French missionary wrote in 1768 that ‘Malay and Cochinchinese pirates cover the entire gulf.’Footnote 56 Different bands from the multiple areas of instability were also increasingly coming together in multiethnic teams. Every year, during the southern monsoon, Hà Tiên had to organise regular patrols to seek out and destroy their hideouts on the numerous islands scattered along the coast.Footnote 57
Meanwhile, the route southward from the Gulf of Siam to the Strait of Melaka was also severely impacted by instability and warfare on the Malay Peninsula and Sumatra. On the one hand, there was rivalry between the Minangkabau of Siak and the sultanate of Johor. At the same time, struggles occurred among factions within these polities. In Johor, the Bugis won over the Malays and had emerged as the power behind the throne by 1760. In Siak, Raja Alam (1714–1779, r. 1761–1779) and his brother, Raja Mahmud (r. 1723–1760), had engaged in a protracted conflict for the leadership since the death of their father, Raja Kecil, in 1746. Eventually, with the aid of VOC forces based at Melaka, Alam emerged victorious. Mahmud’s son, Raja Ismail, forged a base on the Tudju archipelago, off the eastern coast of Sumatra.Footnote 58
During their decades-long conflict, Johor and Siak and their internal factions had all competed to enlist the support of the nomadic sea peoples (Orang Laut). Besides plundering ships of their cargoes, they had, Andaya shows, long engaged in the practice of seizing the passengers and selling them into slavery. The involvement of Malay, Minangkabau, and Bugis political actors caused predation in the straits to grow to such alarming levels that it frequently disrupted trade for prolonged periods of time. A letter from the VOC authorities at Melaka to Batavia in 1755 remarked that, as a result, ships from Hà Tiên and elsewhere in the water world had been unable to proceed beyond present-day Singapore for the past two years.Footnote 59 In 1762, Raja Ismail even planned to militarily conquer Hà Tiên with his sea people allies. A group of 500 Minangkabau residents in The Port, probably soldiers in the Đồ Bà Company, had initially proposed the idea and offered him their full support. They promised Raja Ismail that if he attacked, ‘we will desert to you.’ He and his fleet were already sailing northward when a request from the Malay faction in Johor to fight the Bugis convinced him to abandon the offensive.Footnote 60
It is not clear whether Mo Tianci was ever aware of Ismail’s intentions, but his response to Big-bellied Đức and Huo Ran demonstrates that large-scale piracy could become an existential matter for his regime, and he treated it with utmost seriousness. Unlike the Gulf of Siam, Mo Tianci could not directly combat piracy in the Company’s sphere of influence. By referring Lauw Wo’s case, he hoped to work together with the Dutch in cracking down on the illicit networks and imposing a safer and more predictable environment for trade.
At the same time, the multiple crises presented a tremendous opportunity for Tianci in political and economic terms. After the fall of Ayutthaya, two Siamese princes, Chao Chui and Chao Si Sang, took refuge in Hà Tiên. Tianci hoped to utilise their descent from the former royal household to rally the nobility in Siam and place one of them on the throne, whom he could control from behind the scenes. He ultimately chose Chao Chui, the elder of the two. Chao Si Sang, whether compelled or out of his own volition, fled to Cambodia, where he received asylum from King Ang Tan. However, the rapid emergence of Taksin on the Siamese side of the gulf, backed by the capital and manpower of the Chaozhou community, threatened Tianci’s plans. Complicating matters further, and completely disregarding the fact that there were surviving relatives of the old ruling house, Taksin proclaimed himself the new king of Siam at the end of 1767. Over the next two years, the relationship between the two steadily degenerated from mutually respectful competition to rivalry to outright hostility.Footnote 61
In 1768, Tianci prepared to launch an expedition against Siam with the aim of toppling Taksin and replacing him with Chao Chui. He put together a massive force consisting of 50,000 men and hundreds of ships. Concurrently, he launched a diplomatic offensive aimed at acquiring support from his major trading partners. His envoys and those of Taksin both showed up at Guangzhou with letters addressed to the Governor-General, Li Shiyao. The Qing authorities, including the Qianlong Emperor, was at first favourably disposed toward Tianci. They viewed Taksin as an upstart and usurper and praised Tianci for his Confucian virtue in supporting the legitimate heirs to the throne.Footnote 62 The Qing, which was at the time engaged in a disastrous conflict of its own with Myanmar on the Yunnan border, hoped to relieve the pressure on this front by backing a restoration movement in Siam.Footnote 63
The following year, in 1769, Taksin became the first to initiate contact with the VOC, forwarding a letter in the name of Phya Phiphat Kosa, provisional head of the Phrakhlang, the ministry responsible for foreign affairs and finance. It announced the change in leadership and invited the Dutch to come back and reestablish their trading post, which they had closed in 1765 after the onset of the Myanmar invasion.Footnote 64 Not to be outdone, Mo Tianci sent his own envoy shortly afterward in the same year with his first official missive to the VOC, and the one that directly led to his subsequent request for intervention in Oeij Tshing’s legal case. Although I could not locate this letter in the archives, I did discover a follow-up jointly written by Chao Chui and Chao Si Sang, the exiled Siamese princes, dated 3 May 1770. The preserved copy is a Dutch translation from a Chinese version.Footnote 65 Tianci or his officials may have translated the Siamese original, or they may have even written it on their behalf.
The content of the missive validates and ties together the more fragmented evidence in the Chinese, Vietnamese and Khmer records of a joint alliance forged between Hà Tiên, the Qing, Cochinchina and Cambodia, with the aim of placing Chao Chui on the throne of Siam. As the Qing records show, Governor-General Li first sent Patrolling Admiral Xu Quan to Hà Tiên in 1767, followed by Zheng Rui in mid-1768, to acquire intelligence on the actual conditions in Siam. Tianci provided them with detailed information and maps. One month after Zheng’s return to Guangzhou in July 1769, Li dispatched another Patrolling Admiral, Cai Han. He carried with him the Qianlong Emperor’s official authorisation for Mo Tianci to punish Taksin for usurping the throne and killing a royal relative.Footnote 66 Meanwhile, the regent of Cochinchina and real power behind the throne, Trương Phúc Loan (d. 1776), offered him the support of troops stationed in Saigon and the Mekong Delta.Footnote 67 Tianci was additionally able to mobilise 10,000 Khmer soldiers from the five provinces under his control as viceroy.Footnote 68
The missive of the two Siamese princes reveals that these three events did not occur in isolation from one another. Throughout 1769, it confirms, Mo Tianci received two emissaries of the Chinese emperor in Beijing (den keijser van Peking), namely, Xu Quan and Zheng Rui. He hosted them together with a representative of the Cochinchinese governor (Cochimsen gouverneur), referring either to the Nguyễn ruler or Trương Phúc Loan, in councils to discuss the situation in Siam. Tianci’s decision to mobilise troops and invade Siam in the name of restoring the old ruling house must have occurred as a result of these deliberations, after receiving the approval of both countries. At the time when the missive was sent, Tianci was still eagerly awaiting Cai Han and news from the Qing emperor, a reference to his edict.Footnote 69
The missive to Batavia further accused the enemy Taksin, a lowlife who had existed ‘in the most impoverished state before the tumult,’ of overstepping his position in Siamese society, betraying and killing the legitimate heir to the throne and enslaving the royal family. Therefore, he did not deserve the throne. They further reminded the VOC that the Company and the Ayutthaya rulers had ‘enjoyed a great friendship from old times.’ It was the former court, not Taksin, who had given the Dutch their trading post in Siam. They would most certainly have it back once Tianci’s expedition had restored the rightful heir to the throne.Footnote 70
Despite the promises of victory and lucrative trading benefits to the VOC, the letters of both Phya Kosa and the princes primarily served the purpose of securing weapons. Taksin already enjoyed a comfortable head start in this regard. He acquired Western cannons from the Dutch and started employing entire units of European soldiers and sailors, as well as others well-versed in Western armaments.Footnote 71 Tianci soon realised that he was lagging behind, especially after his campaign on Siam, which took place in the late spring to early summer of 1769, ended in disaster. His troops got as far as Chanthaburi, some 250 km east of Taksin’s seat of power at Thonburi, before withdrawing as a result of heavy resistance and, more seriously, epidemics that decimated their ranks. Now, Tianci had to bolster the security of his own borders to prevent an imminent counteroffensive from a victorious Taksin.Footnote 72 Of course, the Siamese princes or whoever wrote the letter on their behalf, revealed none of this news to the Dutch, since it would negatively affect the chances of military assistance.
On 25 June 25 1770, the VOC sent replies both to Tianci and the two princes, along with presents of Bengali cloth and four carbine rifles, three pistols and six matchlock muskets (snaphaan). The gifts would indicate that the Company had responded positively to the overtures, and started to sell armaments to Hà Tiên, although the exact quantities remain unclear. The only clue thus far comes from a letter to Tianci from Governor-General van der Parra in 1771. It mentioned that the junk captain, Fe-i Beengko, had still not picked up four cannons with balls weighing six Dutch pounds (3 kg) each, worth altogether 1,025 rijksdaalders.Footnote 73 Tianci probably procured much more than this amount. His subsequent letter to Batavia, dated 10 February 1771, and requesting the High Government to handle Oeij Tshing’s charges of piracy, must have aimed to boost the scale of this trade. It could further highlight his integration into the larger VOC network and thereby obtain a greater level of trust and more favourable terms. Under ideal circumstances, Tianci could even persuade the Dutch to abandon Taksin and wholly support him.
Besides the geopolitical dimension, economic ties with Batavia had grown extremely profitable during the 1760s as a result of the Myanmar invasion of Siam and the subsequent destruction of Ayutthaya. In fact, Hà Tiên reached unprecedented levels of prosperity, largely at the expense of Siamese ports, such as Bangkok and Chanthaburi, which had been significant competitors in for the export of rice and natural resources. Because of the devastation to agriculture and manpower and disruptions to routine life, the price of grain was dear in the country. In an ironic twist of fate, the former rice exporter now became a major consumer. For this reason, Lauw Wo and his crew carried mostly rice during their initial journey to Siam. After realising huge profit margins, they headed to The Port of Hà Tiên, where they could place the remainder into the hands of other willing middlemen and also for a good price. Hà Tiên’s own hinterlands, which encompassed the western Mekong Delta, produced large quantities of rice in its own right. Much of it was exported to Siam from the mid-1760s.Footnote 74
Likewise, Batavia, where Lauw Wo’s ship planned to sail next, had, in the years of the Myanmar invasion, transformed from a net rice importer into a major exporter. Figures from the Daily Registers (Dagregisters) of Batavia reveal that throughout the 1760s, the number of ships travelling from Batavia to Siam and Cambodia, including Hà Tiên, almost doubled, from an average of 8.4 a year in the previous decade to 15.3. By far, rice made up the largest part of their cargoes. In 1769, an unprecedented 18 vessels headed for Siam alone, importing 475 kojang (around 855,000 kg) of Javanese rice.Footnote 75 The following year, the number had increased to an even more staggering 34, which carried 682.5 kojang (1,228,500 kg) of rice. In fact, these figures are an underestimate, since the data for 1767, when Ayutthaya fell and 1768 remain missing.Footnote 76
To balance out the voracious grain imports, Siam apparently engaged in a frenzied selling of its natural resources. The number of ships travelling from there and Cambodia to Batavia increased to 15.3 from 6.6 in the 1750s. In 1770, 12 ships from Siam and eight from Cambodia imported 4,912 piculs (294,720 kg) of sappanwood into Batavia, compared to a few hundred to 1,000 in most years. Onboard these vessels were also 35 slaves, who were probably taken as prisoners of war.Footnote 77 The trafficking of humans proved to be extraordinary for Siam, where, Puangthong Rungswadisab shows, labour was scarce and warfare revolved around the capture and possession of manpower.Footnote 78
Ships affiliated with Hà Tiên or included stops at its ports benefited greatly from the exchange of rice, resources and labour and represented a substantial proportion of the traffic to and from Batavia during this time. For Siam, even the haemorrhage of precious goods proved insufficient to balance its trade. As a result, the devastated kingdom had to pay high prices for rice in silver. In 1768, for instance, Taksin procured grain from Hà Tiên vessels at three to five baht of silver per thang (20 L), considered by contemporary records to be an exorbitant rate.Footnote 79 Unsurprisingly, a massive outflow of specie resulted, and much of it ended up in Hà Tiên. Oeij Tshing and Lee Sien carried 20 baht of Siamese silver with them on their ship.Footnote 80
Besides Siam, another important source of silver was the Hong merchants of Guangzhou. They, in turn, would either obtain it at Guangzhou from the Swedish East India Company and other European joint-stock firms or merchants or from the Spanish in Manila. The Hong merchants regularly sent junks to Hà Tiên and other ports in the Mekong River Delta and Gulf of Siam coast during the 1760s and 1770s. They used silver to procure Southeast Asian products that could be reexported for the European market. Wax, for instance, could go into candles or seal ships, while tin went into the production of canisters for tea, a high-value export product in Europe.Footnote 81 Oeij Tshing’s junk certainly capitalised on the booming demand. His cargoes contained a total of 126 catties (72.6 kg) of wax and 191 pieces of Spanish silver coins.Footnote 82
Given the enormous profitability of the routes between Hà Tiên and Siam and Batavia, it is certain that ships travelling on them would become the targets of piratical attacks. Viewed in the broader context, Lauw Wo acted suspiciously like a pirate. In particular, the eight Mohammedans who formed part of his crew were armed with short guns (korte geweeren) strapped onto their waists. Moreover, he did not carry any goods onboard at the time of his encounter with Oej Tshing. He claimed to have originally travelled from Batavia with his ship laden with rice. He had sold most of it in Siam before heading back to The Port, where he discharged the remaining cargo of rice and water.Footnote 8 Indeed, one of Oeij Tshing’s key accusations against Lauw Wo and his crew was that they plundered his vessel of rice, a total of 811 barrels.Footnote 84 Therefore, Mo Tianci’s diplomatic overtures to Batavia sought to lock in their mutually beneficial economic ties while eliminating the downside risks. They would include piracy and an overly intimate relationship with Taksin.
Litigation and resolution
Mo Tianci’s letter to Governor-General van der Parra, dated 10 February 1771, requested the VOC to prosecute Lauw Wo and his crew. He demanded that they receive the appropriate punishment and arrange for the defendants and captives to be repatriated back to his polity. He forwarded along a transcript of testimonies from Oeij Tshing, Jong Sieuw and Lee Sien, conducted prior to his departure before the two Hà Tiên officials. Afterward, he dispatched Fe-i Beengko to transport them to Batavia. There, all of the parties involved underwent questioning. Apparently, each person was kept separate from one another and presented their testimonies on an individual basis. A secretary of the Chinese community, Lim Tshun Kong, translated the missives from Hà Tiên and the interviews into Dutch for the High Government.Footnote 85
Lauw Wo denied the charges of piracy and claimed that he approached Oeij Tshing’s ship simply to save the stranded crew from the imminent submersion of their craft. His servant, moved to compassion at the sight, had persuaded him to take action, for ‘we are smarter than the beasts, and we, too, earn our bread from the sea.’ Lauw Wo also had no intention of plundering the vessel. According to him, the woman passenger Lang Tshauw had voluntarily invited his sailors to dive into the water and salvage whatever they could find from the largely sunken ship. The rice onboard had already spoiled. Lauw Wo and his crew only managed to recover some wax and 18 strings of coins, out of an original of 322 strings, with each string consisting of 600 coins. He told his interviewers that they were of no value in Batavia and planned to hand them back to Oeij Tshing’s passengers upon their return.Footnote 86
Surprisingly, Lauw Wo’s version of the story not only received the unanimous backing of his crew, but it also acquired the corroboration of Lang Tshauw and Lang Kaij and her son. Lang Tshauw volunteered that it was she who told him and his crew members to freely take what they wanted from the vessel. She regretted ‘seeing my goods sink in this way’ and go to waste. Similar to Lauw Wo’s account, she claimed that the sailors only salvaged some wax and coins, which ‘were not common in Batavia.’Footnote 87
Lang Tshauw further insisted that Lauw Wo had indeed rescued her and her fellow passengers rather than taken them captive. Oeij Tshing and his two accomplices did not flee but requested to return to shore after waiting in vain for four or five days for the wind to pick up or other vessels to appear. Lauw Wo agreed and ferried them to land on his boat. Oeij Tshing told Lang Tshauw that they would walk in the direction of The Port while looking for help along the way. When they invited her to come along, she adamantly refused. The beachfront of Cà Mau, she described, was utterly desolate and devoid of human habitation and consisted of swampy terrain that causes the feet to sink deep inside. It would take 14 days of arduous trekking before reaching the Hà Tiên centre, and she, ‘being a woman, simply could not hold out.’ Accordingly, she provided them food for the journey, including dried rice with shrimp, as well as six pieces of Spanish silver coins and a gold ring for the hire of a vessel.Footnote 88 She had apparently taken these items with her personally when she went onboard Lauw Wo’s ship.
Then, Lang Tshauw came up with more damning evidence. She had visited Fe-i Beengko’s ship and conversed with Oeij Tshing before her interrogation. Oeij Tshing had told her about what he had reported before the two Hà Tiên officials and advised her to synchronise her story with his. She should tell the Chinese community leaders that their vessel was plundered and destroyed by a Batavia junk. Lang Tshauw refused, hence her mention of her gratitude to Lauw Wo and how her belief in God prevented her from tarnishing his reputation. A Chinese sailor onboard the junk of Fe-i Beengko that transported Oeij Tshing to Batavia provided partial verification of Lang Tshauw’s narrative. He did not catch the earlier part of their conversation. However, he overheard Lang Tshauw’s reply, ‘It is true that our vessel has been broken [on its own]. Thanks be to the captain for saving our lives. We cannot even repay his kindness. We must remember God in all things when making judgments.’ According to the sailor, Oeij Tshing remained silent.Footnote 89
Even Oeij Tshing’s own brother Lohoet and niece Khoen Sing failed to completely back up his narrative. They agreed with him that the sailors on the barge with Lauw Wo and his servant were armed, and they had ordered the passengers onboard their ship but did not tie them or limit their freedom in any way. Moreover, Oeij Tshing’s junk carried weapons, too. Lohoet and his daughter said nothing about what happened afterward, whether the three men jumped overboard or were ferried to shore on boat, and whether Lauw Wo’s crew plundered their ship.Footnote 90
It is possible, judging from these testimonies, that Oeij Tshing fabricated the story of a pirate attack to shift the blame for the heavy losses sustained from the sinking of his ship onto his rescuers. He could then seek redress and compensation from Lauw Wo or the VOC authorities. This motivation could explain why he tried to persuade Lang Tshauw and perhaps others, including his brother and niece, to maintain consistency in their narratives up to the tiniest detail, with the promise of compensation for everybody at a level higher than their original cargo value. If such was his intention, Oeij Tshing utterly failed to establish any clout over his crew and adopt a unified voice before their interrogators.
The VOC authorities felt the same way. In a reply to Mo Tianci dated 25 June 1771, Governor-General van der Parra dismissed Oeij Tshing’s accusations, finding them ‘to be devoid of all truth.’ The High Government had based its judgement upon the testimony of the majority of the eyewitnesses that the leaders of the Chinese community at Batavia had interviewed. It decided not to pursue the charges against Lauw Wo and his men for piracy. Oeij Tshing, Lang Tshauw, and the rest of the crew would be repatriated to Hà Tiên together with the junk captain Fe-i Beengko.Footnote 91
Despite the ruling against Oeij Tshing, it is still possible to piece together an entirely different version of events favourable to him. In fact, an important detail emerges among the testimonies of the Batavia-based personnel that potentially damages their credibility. Recall that as both Lauw Wo and Lang Tshauw had insisted, the coins fished up by the sailors had no value in Batavia. Yet, they did not appear to be telling the truth. As Li Tana shows, Hà Tiên and Cochinchina were major production sites for coins made of copper and adulterated zinc that circulated throughout maritime Asia, especially in the VOC’s sphere of influence. Although they had no official legal status from the Dutch East India Company, they were widely accepted in island Southeast Asia. For instance, they were used to purchase slaves in Bali and even circulated in Batavia itself as small change and for gambling. Closer to Hà Tiên, the coinage serviced Cambodia and large parts of Siam and Cochinchina.
The testimonies of Lang Tshauw and Lauw Wo contain two other intriguing leads. Soon after the woman went onboard his ship, she told him and his crew that she had the ability ‘to declare orderly people to be pirates.’ After the sailors had salvaged a sizable number of coins and wondered what to do with them, Lauw Wo suggested using the money to ‘buy off this woman.’Footnote 92 These exchanges imply that Lauw Wo and his crew had originally intended to plunder Oeij Tshing’s vessel. Perhaps they only meant to seize the cargo, especially since the ship was damaged beyond repair and almost submerged anyway. At the same time, they probably treated him and his fellow passengers with decency and humanity. Oeij Tshing may have later played up the coercion involved in the experience of captivity and exaggerated the escape of himself, Jong Sieuw and Lee Sien for dramatic effect. Nonetheless, their departure to shore, even if voluntary, would certainly make Lauw Wo worry about being reported to the authorities. In the end, after Lang Tshauw’s threat, Lauw Wo likely made a deal with the captives to distribute what his sailors had fished up to serve as compensation. In exchange, they would shield him and his crew members from the law.
Concluding remarks
Oeij Tshing’s accusations of piracy against Lauw Wo and the interviews of both men and their crews, conducted in Hà Tiên and Batavia, have been preserved in the collection of the VOC High Government at the Arsip Nasional. I have examined them in combination with several other documents in the same repository, including exchanges between Mo Tianci and the Siamese princes with the High Government; other missives; and trading figures derived from the Daily Registers. Collectively, they provide valuable insights into the character and activities of the Hà Tiên polity during the 1760s. They go beyond the body of well-studied Vietnamese and Chinese sources on Tianci’s interactions with Cochinchina, Cambodia, and the Qing; and his rivalry with Taksin over the Siamese throne. Most importantly, they contain valuable new information on Hà Tiên’s ties with Batavia. Although constituting an important component of the maritime Asian trading network, this topic has never previously received any systematic treatment.
Tianci’s official exchanges with the VOC High Government only began in 1769. Concern about the obstruction of trade from rampant predation on the seas certainly served as a motivating factor. Moreover, events in Siam, especially the fall of Ayutthaya and the emergence of Taksin, prompted him to reach out for weapons and better terms of trade to solidify his economic and political position in the troubled kingdom. His decision to let the Company adjudicate Oeij Tshing’s case formed part of an overall effort to win over its trust and support.
However, Tianci’s effort built upon solid foundations. Long before the overtures at the official level, Hà Tiên had forged close economic ties with Batavia through the Chinese mercantile community and its influential leaders. Tianci encouraged Qing merchants to settle down in his polity and enacted institutions similar to Batavia in managing them. At the same time, he worked to integrate Hà Tiên into the VOC sphere of influence in island Southeast Asia. He made ample use of Malay and other networks that were active in the trade between the Gulf of Siam coast and the straits zone. He came to define himself before the Dutch as the ruler of another neighbourhood port polity.
The evidence uncovered from the Jakarta archives provides additional substantiation for the multiple identities and faces that Hà Tiên and its Mo leaders put on before different states in maritime East Asia. Sakurai and Kitagawa have spoken about how they became vassals of Cochinchina even as they maintained the Cambodian royal hierarchy among their Khmer subjects.Footnote 93 Ang’s work argues that Tianci forged a literary network bringing together elites from China and Vietnam through the long-distance exchange of poetry. They overlapped with the same commercial routes of the China Seas bringing traders to and from the shores of The Port.Footnote 94 The ambiguity displayed by the Mo leaders, whether as military commanders of Cochinchina, royal relatives of the Cambodian court, model Confucian officials or as the VOC records reveal, rulers of a river mouth polity, served highly utilitarian functions. In a maritime zone riveted by fragmented jurisdictions, mutually hostile states and elites, and constant danger of predation on the high seas, doing so could ensure the security of their realm while removing political and ideological barriers to the smooth operation of business. Ultimately, they wanted to maintain Hà Tiên’s centrality as a crossroads in maritime Asia and profit from it.
In many ways, the Mo resembled the VOC. The primary purpose of the Company was to increase its value for its investors in the trade with Asia. To achieve this aim, the Dutch maintained a far flung network of trading posts stretching from the Cape of Good Hope to Japan. In each of these places, Adam Clulow shows, the VOC engaged in a unique set of relationships with state authorities that was based upon the existing political structure and whether it enjoyed a favourable balance of power. It often resorted to violence, using its powerful ships and weapons to force open markets and obtain more ideal conditions for trade. But in the case of Japan, which had a sophisticated legal system and relative defensive advantage over the Dutch, they integrated into the hierarchy as subordinate vassals of the shogun.Footnote 95
The VOC also opened up colonies in places like Taiwan to achieve the same objectives mentioned by Macauley in the case of Hà Tiên: ‘territorial access, commodity production, and commerce.’Footnote 96 The Company recruited Chinese immigrants to open up the land and provide it with access to their trading networks. In exchange, the newcomers were guaranteed a safe environment for their business, bolstered by legal and military protections. This arrangement, which Tonio Andrade calls co-colonisation, similarly applies to the Mo. They cooperated closely with Qing merchants and recruited land-hungry Chinese and Vietnamese settlers, while enacting policies to protect their livelihoods. Moreover, the Dutch, in their Taiwan colony, maintained control over the island’s aboriginal tribes through a feudal lord-vassal relationship adapted from medieval Europe and organised them into military units.Footnote 97 Likewise, Mo Tianci cultivated an image of himself as a lord of the Khmer and used their hierarchy to raise revenues and recruit troops.
These surprising similarities may not have been entirely coincidental. The Mo likely borrowed institutions and practices from the VOC. Moreover, both organisations flourished during the height of the Chinese century in maritime Asia, characterised by Chinese mercantile preeminence in ports from Japan to Southeast Asia and frontier settlement in their hinterlands. This period marked a transitional phase from the multipolar cosmopolitan environment of the Age of Commerce to the nineteenth-century world of more firmly defined territorial states and European domination of the seas.Footnote 98 The VOC had the backing of the political and military resources of its home country, as well as Dutch sea power on the long-distance routes between Europe and Asia. The Mo were vassals of Cochinchina, one of the most powerful emerging states in mainland Southeast Asia. They further benefited from the Qing Dynasty’s economic influence, huge demand for natural resources and metals, and tributary order. These frameworks ensured that both entities could profitably adopt a flexible stance before different political actors.
However, the state-building process in mainland Southeast Asia, in conjunction with the massive influx of European weaponry, itself a sign of the growing power of Western states in dominating the sea lanes, ultimately led to Hà Tiên’s demise. Around the time that the VOC ruled in favour of Lauw Wo, the fortunes of the port polity went rapidly downhill. Tianci’s failed military adventure in Siam resulted in heavy losses among his troops, an especially heavy blow given the scarcity of manpower in Southeast Asia. Taksin, who had by then overwhelmed his rivals and solidified his hold over the throne, proceeded to launch a devastating counterattack in 1771, leading to a brief occupation of Hà Tiên.
The war came as a severe blow to the Chinese community of Batavia. The lieutenant Lin Houqua fled to Batavia but left behind the rest of his family. A missive written from Batavia to Taksin’s official in 1772 specifically requested Siam’s assistance in locating them. The war further bankrupted the tax farmers in charge of the fish market. Unable to acquire any dried fish for the next few years, Jan Taijko and his successor, Ko Kinko, both accumulated heavy debts. They and their families had to repeatedly petition the VOC authorities for extensions and forgiveness of several months at a time of rents and fees owed to the High Government.Footnote 99
Tianci’s lack of effective European firearms was the immediate reason why he lost, causing him to be outgunned by enemy forces. Perhaps he had written his missives to Batavia in anticipation of this weakness and hoped that the VOC would take his side or at least supply him with sufficient armaments. However, replies from van der Parra and the High Government consisted mostly of diplomatic niceties. As Pombejra has shown, the Company avoided committing to either side in the conflict.Footnote 100 For the VOC, whoever ultimately obtained power over Siam would be on friendly terms with it anyway. The Dutch did supply Tianci with some weapons. But the amount of his purchases was certainly dwarfed by Taksin, who paid much more dearly with sappanwood and other natural resources from his kingdom. Batavia naturally preferred him, the larger consumer, in deals and pricing.Footnote 101
The military balance on the ground in his favour also prevented the Qing and Cochinchina from taking Tianci’s side. Cochinchina dragged its feet in sending troops to aid Tianci despite his earnest pleas. The Qing gradually distanced him as well, as it adjusted to the reality that Taksin had become the unchallenged ruler of Siam. The court’s relations with Taksin improved over the 1770s, and it eventually accorded him formal recognition as a tributary vassal.Footnote 102
In 1773, Siamese forces withdrew from Hà Tiên, and Tianci recovered his realm after a settlement was reached as part of a larger agreement between Siam and Cochinchina over Cambodia. But he paid a heavy price. Besides subjecting himself to greater influence from both powers, he had to hand over Chao Chui and other exiles from Ayutthaya to Taksin, who promptly had them executed.Footnote 103 Tianci also proved unable to fend off a fresh attack from the Tây Sơn rebels in 1777. They seized Hà Tiên in coordination with local Khmer elites. In an ironic twist of fate, Mo Tianci was forced to take refuge with Taksin, his erstwhile enemy, who granted him and his followers a residential quarter in Bangkok. Despite initially welcoming him with open arms, the Siamese ruler soon accused him of plotting to seize the throne. Unable to exonerate himself, Mo Tianci committed suicide in 1780. Although Hà Tiên continued to retain significant autonomy after his death, it would be incorporated, in successive stages, into a newly unified Vietnam under the Nguyễn Dynasty (1801–1945).Footnote 104
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