Articles

Taiwan Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 6 (2):3-42(2009)

Illicit Trade in South Sumatra: Local Societys Response to Trade Expansion, C. 1760-1800
Atsushi OTA* Abstract
Recent studies have emphasized the expansion of maritime trade in eighteenth-century Southeast Asia and the decline of the Melaka Strait region in the 1780s. These scholars discuss the decline of state centers, but local society developed differently from the centers. The local society of the Lampung region in South Sumatra, the largest pepper-producing region in eighteenth-century Asia, was placed under the weak control of the sultan of Banten and his overlord the Dutch East India Company, but showed strong vitality from c.1760-1800. Although Bugis, Malay, and other raiders frequently attacked cargo ships authorized by the Banten Sultan, the local elites in Lampung sold their pepper to Chinese and other unauthorized traders. These traders created trade networks in Lampung to exchange local products for the China market and imported commodities. While many ordinary people suffered from raiders plundering, some local elites and pepper cultivators benefited from these types of business. Banten Sultan and the Dutch gradually lost their control over Lampung, while the British obtained large amount of pepper from Lampung, via cooperation with local elites in Lampung, Chinese traders, and even Asian raiders. This is how Lampung was incorporated into the expanding Sino-Southeast Asian trade.

Keywords: Lampung, piracy, trade, Banten, Dutch, British, Chinese, Bugis, Malay

The author is currently Assistant Research Fellow at the Center for Asia-Pacific Area Studies (CAPAS), Academia Sinica. Email: ota@gate.sinica.edu.tw Received: Aug. 31, 2009; Accepted: Oct. 5, 2009

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17601800

1780 17601800

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Introduction
Recent studies have emphasized the expansion of the maritime trade in eighteenth-century Southeast Asia, criticizing the conventional view, which characterized the states and maritime trade in the same period as in decline and fragmented.1 Works holding this view, which was dominant until the early 1990s, discussed the decline of the VOC and the collapse of powerful kingdoms such as Melaka and Makassar. Recent studies, on the other hand, have emphasized the role of Asian traders, who were not necessarily strongly connected to states. Some scholars, discussing the increase of the junk trade, have styled the eighteenth century in the South China Sea a Chinese century (Bluss 1999; Reid 1997, 2004).2 Others, focusing on the expansion of the Bugis trade network,3 called the eighteenth century in Malay Waters the Bugis period (Andaya and Andaya 2001: 83). In contrast to the dynamics of Asian traders, scholars have agreed that the role of European actors during the same period was not impressive. They consider the Dutch East India Company (VOC) to have been in the process of gradual withdrawal to its heartland in the Indonesian Archipelago after 1760 (Jacobs 2006: 282). As for the British trade, the consensus is that they did not link their resources to the existing trade networks in the archipelago until they established a foothold in Penang in 1786 (Bluss 1999: 12). This does not mean that Chinese and Bugis traders were active in different
1

This view is typified in such standard texts as The Cambridge History of Southeast Asia (Kathirithamby-Wells 1993: 602-605). There were, however, scholars holding different views. Noteworthy among them are J. C. van Leur who discussed the continuity of Asian trade (1983 [1955]) and Wang Gungwu who emphasized the role of Chinese trade in Southeast Asia (1991, 2004). For the historiographical review of eighteenth-century Southeast Asia and criticisms to it, see Bluss 1999 and Wyatt 1998. The two scholars use the term Chinese century slightly differently. Reid styled the period 1740-1840 as such, while Bluss discusses the period after the lift of Chinese maritime ban in 1683 to the British establishment of Singapore in 1819. The Bugis is a designation of a few ethnic groups that originated in South Sulawesi. After the conquest by the Dutch East India Company of their places of origin in the 1660s, large numbers of them took refuge in many places in insular Southeast Asia, including Riau where the capital of the kingdom of Johor was located (Andaya 1995).

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spaces, nor does it imply that these two groups overwhelmed European and other Asian traders. Many different groups of traders conducted their business in the same locations in an overlapping way, either in a cooperative or competitive manner. Since the particular features of such cooperation and competition, and the patterns of trade varied geographically, scholars have discussed them in various parts of Southeast Asia in their regional contexts. Taking as an example the Melaka Strait region (this is taken in this paper as the coastal region across the Strait down to South Sumatra), one of the core regions in the maritime trade in Southeast Asia, scholars have intensively discussed patterns of trade, and the strategies that states employed to manage that trade (Vos 1993, Lewis 1995; Andaya 1997; Kathirithamby-Wells 1997; Barnard 2003). However, what is yet to be studied is how stateless peoples and local society responded to the changing circumstances created by the developments of trade. Stateless traders, local elites, and ordinary cultivators acted quite differently from states, and their actions had a considerable impact on the ebb and flow of European powers. This paper attempts to discuss how stateless peoples and local society responded to the changing economic and political circumstances during the period from 1760 to 1800 in and around Lampung, a region in South Sumatra placed under the authority of the sultan of Banten in West Java in the sixteenth century. I focus on Lampung because it was the largest pepper-producing region in Asia throughout the eighteenth century (Ota 2006: 17-18, 25), and therefore it had been a place where strong dynamism was going on among various actors such as local elites, neighboring states, as well as Asian and European traders in order to control the pepper delivery. I begin my examination in 1760 when British traders began to exert their influence. In

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this way this paper challenges the above-mentioned established view that the British involvement in the trade in the Melaka Strait region began with the British establishment of Penang in 1786. I end my study in 1800 because Lampung pepper lost its prominence around this time due to the skyrocketing increase of pepper production in Aceh (Bulbeck et al. 1998: 66). This paper focuses on illicit trade, that is, all types of trade conducted outside the Dutch monopoly, which was authorized in the treaty concluded in 1684 between the sultan of Banten, the ruler of Lampung, and the VOC, which became the overlord of the Banten sultan. Nevertheless, Chinese, Bugis, and other Asian and British traders frequented Lampung especially in the period in question, largely in order to collect pepper either in a violent forceful way or in a friendly manner based on a mutual agreement. I will discuss how the interaction between such foreign traders or raiders and local people was linked to developments in the maritime trade in the Melaka Strait region as well as in Southeast Asia as a whole, and how their interaction impacted the emergence of Anglo-Chinese trade cooperation and the decline of Dutch influence. The original terms in my primary sources equivalent to illicit trade are smuggling (sluikerij, smokkelhandel in Dutch), or when it involved violence, piracy (zeeroverij). In this paper I avoid these terms so as not to reproduce the bias of authorities. The authorities the VOC and the sultan of Banten in this case allowed only authorized local traders to conduct trade on the condition that they sell particular commodities exclusively to the authorities at fixed prices. This type of business was, in many cases, not willingly acceptable or even not justifiable for ordinary traders and cultivators. Likewise, different from the connotations in the

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European term piracy, violent actions in the Melaka Strait region were not very politically motivated, but instead were strongly market-oriented, and in most cases were not conducted by full-time professionals. In fact many of them were traders or fishermen who occasionally used violence or threat of violence for their trade, which makes it difficult to divide their activities into violent and non-violent ones. For these reasons I use the term illicit trade to refer to all the above-mentioned unauthorized activities, unless I particularly emphasize the authorities point of view. Likewise, I refer to actions taken under threat or use of violence and those who conducted such actions respectively as raiding (or raid) and raiders (not pirates).

Lampung and the Maritime Trade Eighteenth-Century Melaka Strait Region

in

the

The early history of Lampung is not well known. The inhabitants were called the Orang Lampung, or Lampung people, who spoke the Lampung language with some dialectical differences. The region gradually came under the control of the sultanate of Banten in the course of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In the eighteenth century Lampung was divided under a number of local headmen who wielded power over dispersed settlements. In order to pacify or to gain an upper hand in their incessant conflicts, they sometimes invited outside power holders to intervene (Ota 2006: 14-16, 83-92, 109-115). This sort of situation would have been the background of its rather peaceful annexation to Banten in previous centuries. The Sultanate of Banten, established by an Islamic teacher from North Sumatra in the 1520s, rapidly developed into a powerful kingdom during the sixteenth century.

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Its capital Kota Banten4 grew into an international trade hub, where traders flocked from East Africa, Persia, India, Southeast Asia, China, and Japan in order to buy and sell their commodities. Pepper from Lampung was one of the important items traded by these international traders. The prosperity of Banten, however, spurred a bitter rivalry with the VOC, which had been trying to set up its exclusive trading system ever since the establishment of its headquarters in Batavia in 1619. The VOC conquered several major entrepts in Southeast Asia such as Melaka, and concluded treaties with a number of local rulers, often in return for military assistance, stipulating that the VOC would retain the right of monopoly in important export products such as spices. Banten struggled fiercely with the VOC through both military campaigns and commercial competition throughout the most of the seventeenth century, but it finally fell under the influence of the VOC in 1684 as a result of the latters intervention in a civil war. The VOC obtained the status of the overlord of the sultanate and the monopoly right in the trade of important commodities including pepper. The Dutch maritime trading system, however, was unstable from the outset. The liberalization and institutionalization of Chinese overseas trade, as a result of the Qing Dynastys lifting of its earlier restrictions on overseas trade in 1683 brought a boom of junk trade heading for Southeast Asian ports. The VOC made every effort to induce junks to visit Dutch Melaka and Batavia, but Chinese traders preferred free ports outside the Dutch sphere of influence because they disliked the higher prices and complicated regulations in the Dutch ports. The destruction of the Chinese community

The capital of the sultanate was established on the existing port town called Banten Hilir (Downstream Banten in Sundanese), or in Chinese texts.

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in Batavia, as a result of the large-scale Dutch massacre of the Chinese population in 1740, further discouraged junks from calling at Batavia. Under these circumstances the Dutch decided to expand their China trade by sending their ships directly to China. Another important factor behind this decision was the growing Euro-China trade in the mid-eighteenth century. In the eighteenth century, China tea became a boom commodity in the expanding urban populations in the Netherlands, England, and other European countries. Seeing that tea was steadily reaping higher profits in Europe, the VOC launched the China Commission in 1756 in order to encourage trade in Canton, the only port in Qing China open to Western traders. In a similar move, other Europeans the English East India Company (EIC) and British country traders, among others avidly attempted their regular trade in Canton.5 The EIC rapidly increased its China trade with the establishment of the Canton System in 1760 (Pritchard 1936: 113-141; Zhuang 1993: 1-30). British country traders had also significantly increased the Canton trade since the 1760s (Pritchard 1936: 142, 170, 174).6 Although Europeans traditionally used silver for their trade in China, they looked for alternative commodities in order to stop the outflow of the precious metal. They soon found new types of Southeast Asian commodities that were becoming widely popular in Chinese society during the strong economy of the Qianlong reign: tin, used for rituals and craftworks, food materials such as pepper and birds nests, and edible maritime products like sea cucumber. Acquiring these commodities in Southeast Asia now became an important part of their
5

Apart from these three groups, the Danes, French, Swedes, and Prussians also joined in the Canton trade (Wisset 1802: II, 184-185; Dermigny 1964: IV, 299-301). In English sources, country traders are distinguished from private traders. Country traders were Englishmen residing in India and native Indian merchants who conducted trade between India and China under the English flag under license from the EIC. Private traders were the commanders and officers on the EIC ships who carried out the trade between England and China and between India and China under license from the EIC (Pritchard 1936: 142). However these two groups are not distinguished in both Dutch sources and previous studies. Following this way, this paper refers to country traders including private traders.

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business in order to facilitate their tea trade in Canton. The growing demand for Southeast Asian products in China in turn impacted the states and maritime trade in Southeast Asia. Several states emerged in response to the activities of Chinese and British country traders in search of Southeast Asian products outside the VOC sphere of influence. The first was Sulu, southwest of the Philippine Islands, and Riau, south of Singapore, soon followed it. Riau, the capital of the sultanate of Johor, became the most important trading port in the Melaka Strait region in the 1760s. Although Johor was a Malay kingdom descending from the Kingdom of Melaka, Bugis migrants, who had escaped their motherland in South Sulawesi after their war with the VOC in the 1760s, increased their influence in Riau through their fighting skills and trading network to collect maritime products from the eastern part of the archipelago. The Bugis occupied the hereditary position of viceroy in the sultanate, and contributed to the prosperity of Riau and the establishment of a new trade network connecting India, Southeast Asia, and China (Lewis 1995: 85-96; Vos 1993: 121-125). According to the VOC governor Pieter Gerardus de Bruijn in Melaka (1775-1788), the five most important trade items in Riau were pepper, tin, opium, Indian textiles, and Chinese products. These traded items indicate how Riau functioned as a hub to collect Southeast Asian products for the China market. Tin came from Bangka and the Malay Peninsula, while Bugis traders collected the maritime products from all over the archipelago. English country traders brought opium and arms, while Chinese junks brought tea, ceramics, ironmongery, and silk. In exchange these Chinese and British country traders carried the Southeast Asian

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products from Riau to Canton.7 The continuous growth of Riau as a free port, however, annoyed the Dutch, because it was undermining the Dutch trading system seriously. More and more local traders called at Riau attracted by higher prices and popular products brought by British and Chinese traders, neglecting the monopoly treaties that the VOC concluded with their rulers. Finally, in 1784 the Dutch Navy invaded Riau and successfully subjugated the sultanate. Sultan Mahmud was forced to sign an insulting treaty which allowed the Dutch troops to station in Riau, and compelled the sultan to drive out the Bugis from Riau. Sultan Mahmud continued his fights, and successfully expelled the Dutch from 1787 to 1795. However, abandoned by large part of the residents and foreign traders during the warfare, depopulated Riau ceased to function as a commercial hub. Scholars agree that its prosperity never came back and the surrounding waters fell into decline and confusion, plagued by rampant piracy until the British establishment of Singapore in 1819 (Trocki 1979: 26-27; Vos 1993: 179-182). The decline of the trade centered on Riau is well in concert with the before-mentioned conventional decline theory on eighteenth-century Southeast Asia. However, recent studies have revealed various new dynamics in the maritime trade in eighteenth-century Southeast Asia. Apart from the Chinese and Bugis networks that I mentioned at the beginning, the Iranun trade network centered on the Sulu Islands continued to prosper until the mid-nineteenth century (Warren 2002).8 Bangkok and
7

In addition, traders from Java, Bali, Borneo, Aceh, Siam, Cambodia, Annam, and Cochin China brought rice and food stuffs, which were always in demand in Riau and in Malay coastal towns. Bugis traders went to Java in order to exchange their opium and Indian textiles for rice. Gambier cultivated in Riau was also an important trade item for which to exchange rice from Java (Lewis 1970: 116-118; Lewis 1995: 87-88; Trocki 1979: 17-25; Vos 1993: 121-125). The Iranun (also Ilanun, Illanun, Lanun) is an ethnic group that originated in central Mindanao. After relocating to the Sulu Islands in the late 1760s, they conducted regular piratical raids covering almost the entire Malay Archipelago. I follow the spelling by Warren (Warren 1981: 149, 156).

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Saigon became new centers of junk trade after the 1780s, and kept strong trade relations with Singapore well into the nineteenth century. Taking these developments into consideration, Reid concluded that the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries experienced a noticeable expansion in maritime trade in Southeast Asia (Reid 2004). Do these developments mean that the Melaka Strait region became a backwater in the midst of the growing Southeast Asian trade? What happened to the traders and the region that had been linked to the trade network centered on Riau after the fall of Riau? I discuss these issues in the case of Lampung. Scholarly works that discussed the history of eighteenth-century Lampung were strongly ideologically biased. Colonial studies stated that Lampung suffered from the smuggling perpetrated by Palembang and English traders, and their suffering even increased because of rampant plundering by Asian pirates after VOC control weakened because of the Fourth Anglo-Dutch War (1780-84) (Canne 1862: 516-518; Khler 1874: 125-126; Khler 1916: 8-9; Kielstra 1915: 246-247; Broersma 1916: 24-30). On the other hand, a post-independence handbook on the local history of Lampung published by the local office of the Department of Education and Culture stated that various groups of people fought against the Dutch throughout the eighteenth century, and Bugis seamen (pelaut) sympathetic to the sultanate of Banten attacked VOC ships in cooperation with the rulers of Riau, Lingga, and others, spurred on by their hostility to Dutch colonialism (Bukri et al. 1997/1998: 69-71). It is obvious that colonial studies justified the Dutch rule by emphasizing the evil effects of smuggling and pirates, while the post-independence work was colored with a strong anti-colonial sentiment (Note that the author avoided the term pirates to the Bugis). In any case, it is true that VOC authorities, on whose records colonial scholars

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depended in their writings, were especially anxious about smuggling and piracy, which were noticeable problematic phenomena for the authorities in

eighteenth-century Lampung.

Illicit Trade in Lampung, 1760-1784

The sultan of Banten exerted his influence on Lampung by sending Bantenese officials to supervise local affairs, and by appointing the local headmen as his representatives. The most important purpose for the sultan to intervene in Lampung was to place the rich pepper production under control. Through these Bantenese and local agents, the sultan ordered every able-bodied man older than sixteen in the pepper-producing areas to plant five hundred pepper vines, and to sell the produce exclusively to the sultan via local headmen and authorized traders. In order to ascertain the pepper procurement, the sultan appointed the agents in important pepper-producing areas and pepper-sending ports. Nevertheless, due to the lack of resources, Bantens control of local society was rather limited and the procurement of pepper was always extremely difficult (Ota 2006: 51-53). After the VOC became Bantens overlord in 1684, Lampung quickly became a strategically important region for the VOC because of its pepper. The sultanate (mostly Lampung) supplied forty to eighty percent of all the pepper that the VOC purchased in Asia throughout the eighteenth century (Ota 2006: 17-18, 25). Nevertheless, a considerable part of the Lampung pepper was smuggled to third parties because of the weak control, which was a real headache for the VOC authorities. Before the 1760s the illicit trade of Lampung pepper was mostly recorded in

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the Tulang Bawang region in northeast Lampung, and the Semangka region in the southwest. In Tulang Bawang, pepper cultivators, dissatisfied with the low purchase price that Banten offered and with the repressive attitudes of the Bantenese officials, preferred to sell their pepper to their northern neighbor Palembang.9 The sultan of Palembang had offered higher purchase prices and more favorable transaction conditions since 1730 (Andaya 1993: 197-200). In Semangka, the British were the major illegal pepper buyer. The EIC, which established a factory in Bengkulen on Southwest Sumatra, expanded their influence southward up to the Silebu (Krui) region adjacent to Semangka in 1713 (Kathirithamby-Wells 1977: 27-28), and secretly bought pepper in Semangka.10 The VOC authorities in Batavia protested both the sultan of Palembang and the EIC, and built posts to watch the illegal flow of pepper in Tulang Bawang and Semangka respectively in 1756 and 1762. However, the Dutch control was not tight enough to stop the smuggling effectively.11 Such local leaking of the Lampung pepper, however, changed into more systematic outflow in the 1760s. VOC officials reported that Chinese traders based on Pulau Lagondi (Lagondi Island) in the Sunda Strait regularly smuggled pepper from Silebu to Bengkulen. Every year they sailed to Begnkulen in August and September in order to exchange their pepper for opium, and came back from November to early January.12 Although Silebu was a British-controlled area, the Dutch strongly believed this trade was an illegal collection of the pepper by the EIC, to which the Dutch had

VOC 3214: 17-19, Commander J. Reijnouts in Banten to Batavia, 12 Jan. 1767; ADB 17: 17-18, MvO, Commander T. Schippers to J. Reijnouts, Banten, 31 May 1764; VOC 3762: 22-23, Commander W. C. Engert in Banten to Batavia, 5 June 1787. 10 Corpus Diplomaticum, V: 443, Acte van verband, 6 Feb 1747. 11 VOC 2886: 2nd 114-115, Resident K. Laven in Menggala to Batavia, 3 Oct. 1756; VOC 2996: 1st 57, 77-78, MvO, Resident K. Laven to W. Schoester, Menggala, 20 June 1760; VOC 3064: 1st 13, Commander H. P. Faure in Banten to Batavia, 15 Mar. 1762. 12 VOC 2996: 2nd 5-6, Commander W. H. van Ossenberch in Banten to Batavia, 27 Oct. 1760; ibid.: 2nd 10-11, 3 Nov. 1760.

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right. The residents of Pulau Lagondi, mainly Chinese, were notorious raiders attacking the cargo vessels and coastal villages to plunder their pepper and other commodities in the territory of the sultan of Banten.13 According to a local spy sent by the VOC, the British encouraged them to make raids, by providing them with boats and ammunitions.14 In addition, it seems that a part of the pepper produced in Semangka was brought to the British secretly in the 1760s.15 The chief of the Malay community in Semangka, in reply to a Dutch officials inquiry, reported that the British traders and their agents offered higher prices for pepper than the Bantenese official paid.16 There is little doubt that Chinese traders from Pulau Lagondi and the Malay population in Semangka sold pepper secretly to the British. Why did British traders attempt to obtain increasing amounts of pepper in Lampung? The British traders both the EIC and country traders brought all the pepper they collected in Southeast Asia to China, and the VOC and Chinese traders were also enthusiastic to collect pepper in Southeast Asia for the China market. This is why the pepper trade from Southeast Asia to China deserves examination. A large proportion of the EIC imports to Canton consisted of silver and English woolen cloth (Figure 1), but this does not mean that pepper played only a trivial role in the EIC trade. The silver supply from the New World was unstable, disrupted by the American and European wars. The large amounts of English woolen cloth produced a consistent deficit, as the EIC dumped it in answer to the pressure at home to sell it overseas, and to suppress Dutch and other European competition (Pritchard 1936:
13 14 15

16

VOC 2804: 68, Koopman A. van der Werp in Seram to Batavia, 30 Sep. 1752; VOC 2808: 633r-633v, GM, 31 Dec. 1753. VOC 3653 2nd: 12-14, Resident A. van de Ster in Semangka to Commander N. Meijbaum in Banten, 27 Aug. 1782. VOC 3094: 1st 127-128, Instruction by Commander H. P. Faure in Banten for Lieutenant C. Zigman and P. Veldhuijsen bound for Semangka, 1 Mar. 1763. Although the Malay chief denied that he and his followers sold their pepper to the British, considering their higher purchase prices, it seems reasonable to assume that a part of pepper cultivators or putty chiefs in Semangka sold a certain amount of their pepper to the British. VOC 2938: 1st 14-15, Commander W. H. van Ossenberch et al. in Banten to Batavia, 20 Feb. 2758.

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152-157, 180-182). Dissatisfied with this situation, the EIC decided to use more Southeast Asian commodities for their tea trade. Tin from the Malay Peninsula and Bangka or pepper alternated in first or second place among the Southeast Asian products taken to Canton. The entire quota of the EIC imported pepper in Canton came mostly from its factory in Bengkulen (Kathirithamby-Wells 1977: 184-186). The EIC pepper trade produced a 12.7 per cent profit in the period from 1775 to 1795 (Wisset 1802: II, 184-185; Pritchard 1936: 157-160). British country traders mostly carried raw cotton from Bombay and opium from Bengal (which presumably occupied a large part of the other Asian goods in Figure 2) to Canton.17 Nevertheless, they still collected various Southeast Asian products to sell in Canton. Apart from the two Indian products, pepper occupied the second place below tin, followed by camphor, woods (mainly sandalwood), and sharks fins in this order (Pritchard 1936: 175). Their ships picked up pepper in free ports outside the Dutch sphere of influence, such as Aceh, Banjarmasin, and Riau (Bulbeck et al. 1998: 80).18 They were reluctant to purchase pepper at the EIC factory in Bengkulen, where the price was higher than elsewhere (Kathirithamby-Wells 1977: 186).

17

18

The share of opium in the British country trade is available only in the nineteenth century. In 1805, cotton and opium that country traders brought from the British settlements in Asia amounted to respectively 9,452,619 and 3,294,570 Rupees out of the 15,060,577 Rupees of all the import (Milburn 1999 [1813]: 482). According the Milburns data about country trade in Canton in 1805, besides cotton and opium, various tropical commodities such as pearls, sharks fins, and elephants tusks were imported (Milburn1999 [1813]: 482, 484).

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Figure 1
5,000,000 4,500,000 4,000,000 3,500,000 3,000,000 2,500,000 2,000,000 1,500,000 1,000,000 500,000 0

Important commodities brought by the EIC to Canton, 1760-1800 (taels)

Silver Lead and copper Wool Other Indian goods Indian raw cotton Tin Pepper

Source: Pritchard (1936): 391-393, 399

Figure 2

4,500,000
North American goods

4,000,000 3,500,000 3,000,000 2,500,000 2,000,000 1,500,000 1,000,000 500,000 0

Source: Prichard (1936): 401-402 Metals include mainly tin, but contain a little lead.

-6 17 5 66 -6 17 7 68 -6 17 9 70 -7 17 1 72 -7 17 3 74 -7 17 5 76 -7 17 7 78 -7 17 9 80 -8 1 17 82 -8 17 3 84 -8 17 5 86 -8 17 7 88 -8 17 9 90 -9 17 1 92 -9 17 3 94 -9 17 5 96 -9 17 7 98 -9 9

17 64

17 60 -6 17 1 62 -6 17 3 64 -6 17 5 66 -6 17 7 68 -6 17 9 70 -7 17 1 72 -7 17 3 74 -7 17 5 76 -7 17 7 78 -7 17 9 80 -8 17 1 82 -8 17 3 84 -8 17 5 86 -8 17 7 88 -8 17 9 90 -9 17 1 92 -9 17 3 94 -9 17 5 96 -9 17 7 98 -9 9

Important commodities brought by British country traders to Canton, 1760-1800 (taels)

English goods Other Asian goods Cotton Metals Pepper

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Figure 3 Total VOC import to Canton, 1751-1790 (Dutch guilders)

1,600,000 1,400,000 1,200,000 1,000,000 800,000 600,000 400,000 200,000 0

Others Silver Tin Pepper

Source: Jacobs (2000): 333

Importance of pepper is more obvious in the VOC China trade. Figure 3 indicates that the VOC gradually replaced their silver exports with tin and pepper in the course of the second half of the eighteenth century (Jacobs 2006: 137-151). Pepper was indeed a very lucrative commodity, which brought the VOC a 200 percent profit on average in the second half of the eighteenth century (Liu 2005: 4-5). This is the reason that the VOC made every effort to secure the Lampung pepper, preventing it from being smuggled out, especially by British traders, its largest rival. All of the pepper that VOC imported to Canton was first collected in Batavia from various producing regions in Southeast Asia, in which Banten Sultanate was the largest supplier.

-5 17 3 71 -7 17 3 89 -9 0

17 51

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Figure 4 Pepper import by Western traders to Canton, 1770-1798 (pikuls)

35,000
Others Prussian Danish French Dutch English country traders EIC

30,000

25,000

20,000

15,000

10,000

5,000

0
17 7 17 0 7 17 1 7 17 2 73 17 7 17 4 7 17 5 76 17 7 17 7 7 17 8 7 17 9 8 17 0 8 17 1 82 17 83 17 8 17 4 8 17 5 8 17 6 8 17 7 8 17 8 8 17 9 9 17 0 9 17 1 9 17 2 9 17 3 9 17 4 95 17 9 17 6 9 17 7 98

Source: Wisset (1802): II, 184-185.

The result was that the EIC, British country traders, the VOC, and other European traders together imported 15,000 to 20,000 pikul of pepper in the last three decades of the eighteenth century (Figure 4). Considering the fact that before 1770 the VOC was almost the only European trader to supply pepper to China (Kathirithamby-Wells 1977: 218; Bulbeck et al. 1998: 78-79), it is remarkable that China began to import large amount of pepper from European traders in the second half of the eighteenth century. Apart from European traders, a number of Chinese traders also collected key commodities in Southeast Asia for the Chinese market. Southeast Asian agricultural production of pepper, gambir (an astringent extract from gambir trees used in dyeing

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and tanning), cotton, and rice increased markedly in the eighteenth-century for the purpose of export to China (Reid 2004: 26-28). In addition, tin and maritime edible products, especially sharks fins and tripang (sea cucumber), were major Southeast Asian products sought after in the China market. Although Chinese traders did not leave any statistical data, pepper seems to have been an important trade commodity. In the mid-eighteenth century, pepper was grown on a large scale by overseas Chinese settlers in plantations, notably in Brunei and Terengganu, to satisfy the demand in China. Chinese traders sent the produce of these plantations to China (Bulbeck et al. 1998: 80-81; Jacobs 2006: 146-151). Teochiu agriculturalists in Siam also began planting pepper in the late eighteenth century (Reid 2004:26). Pepper and gambir were the only two agricultural products for which Chinese migrants opened new plantations in eighteenth-century Asia. For British country traders, who supplied between 30 and 80 percent of pepper in Canton among European traders (Figure 4), Riau became increasingly important as a port to collect pepper and other products for the China market. The VOC governor De Bruijn in Melaka stated that before 1784 some 5,000 pikul of pepper were brought to Riau every year (Harrison 1953: 57, 60). James Scott, an English country trader, recalled in 1785 that 10,000 pikul of pepper were taken by British country traders, predominantly from Riau (Bassett 1989: 643). Considering that the total amount of the pepper that the British private and country traders brought to Canton was 5,000 to 10,000 pikul (Figure 4), it is obvious that Riau held a dominant position in their pepper trade in Southeast Asia. De Bruijn mentioned that pepper in Riau was brought there from Palembang, Jambi, Indragiri and other places in Sumatra, but the bulk of it from Borneo (Harrison

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1953: 57). Concerning the pepper supply from Sumatra, however, this information is hard to believe, as pepper production in the above-mentioned places had already declined before the 1760s (Andaya 1993: 161-174, 214; Ota 2006). Only Banjermasin in Borneo maintained a good amount of production until the early 1780s. However, as this region had already been incorporated into the Dutch maritime trading system, there was no other option to collect the pepper produced in these regions but by way of smuggling in defiance of the VOC monopoly. In fact in Banjarmasin, Chinese and British traders were always on the lookout for contraband in various neighboring ports (Noorlander 1935: 50-51, 57-59, Bijlage 7). This situation was virtually the same as in Lampung. The strong demand for pepper in China and the lack of sufficient sources of supply for British country traders explain why the British eagerly attempted to collect pepper in Lampung since the 1760s. Unfortunately no source precisely shows that the Lampung pepper secretly collected by British traders was brought to Riau. However, considering the concentration of country traders pepper business in Riau and China, it is reasonable to consider that most of the Lampung pepper collected by British traders was sent to Riau, and ultimately to China.

Illicit Trade in Lampung, 1784-1800

After 1788, the pepper-growing areas in Lampung suffered from an increasing number of maritime raids. In the year, it was observed that raiders stayed around all the coasts of Lampung, and assaulted the cargo ships carrying pepper to Banten.19 Table 1 indicates that the number of raids which took place on the east and south coasts of Lampung and their offshore jumped up in the 1790s.
19

MCP 4: 211-215, report by Rovere van Breugel, 5 May 1788; VOC 3776: 4539r, GM, 30 Dec. 1788.

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Table 1 Raiding in and near Lampung, c.1760- c.1800 East coast of Lampung
Period Raids* 1760-69 (10) Raider Captured item Place** Tulang Bawang (7), others (4) Johorese (2), Chinese (1), pepper (1), 4 ships (2), money unknown (7) 1770-79 (13) 1780-89 (6) unknown (13) unknown (6) 37 bh pepper (1), a ship (1) (1), rice (1), rattan (1) Tulang Bawang (4), unknown (9) Tulang Bawang (1), other (1) unknown (4) Palembang (3), Iranun 1790-99 (47) (1) those from Siak (1), unknown (41) 1686.5 bh pepper (17), 173 Tulang Bawang (9), Puti (13),

people (6), 81 ships (15), money Penet (5), Nibong (2), (2), rice, food (4), weapons and Sekampong (4), Sumur (3), ammunition (3), damar (1) others (4), unknown (11)

1800-03 (7)

unknown (7)

necessities (1), houses to stay (1) Tulang Bawang (1), Puti (4), Sekampong (1)

South coast of Lampung

Period Raids 1760-69 (6) Raider Captured item Place Lampung Bay (1), Silebu (1), Krui (1), on the sea (2), others (2), unknown (2) 14 bh pepper (2), 13 people (1), Keizer Eiland (2), Semangka (2), Lampung Bay (1), Pulau Lagondi (1), others (7). unknown (10) Chinese (2), Johorese (1), 120 bh pepper (2) Bantenese (1), unknown (2) 1770-79 (18) Chinese from Riau (1),

those who stay on Pulau 5 ships (1) Lagondi, Subuko, Kilowang (1), those who stay on Keizer Eiland (1), unknown (15) 1780-89 (7) Those from Riau (1), unknown (6) (1) 37 bh pepper (2), 1 ship (1)

Semangka (1), Pulau Besi (1) others (2), unknown (6)

English (assist raiding, by arranging ships for raiders in Silebu) (1)

**

Number of times of raiding. The total of place-names can be more than the number of raids because some raiding occurred in different places.

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1790-99 (58)

Iranun (3), Johorese (1), 994 bh pepper (13), people (5), those from Siak (1), 14 ships (9), money (2), rice

Pulau Besi (4), Pulau Sagame (1), Pulau Lagondi (3), Prinsen Eiland (4), Krakatau Eiland (1), Kalianda (1), Telok Betung (4), Semangka (3), around Merak (2), around Anyar (4), around Caringin (1), others (7), unknown (20)

Chinese (3), Johorese and and necessities (4), weapons Chinese (1), those from Siak and Chinese (1), those from Pekalongang (1), unknown (47) and ammunition (5), rattan (1), damar (1)

1800-04 (4)

unknown (4)

pepper (1), people (1), rice (1)

Prinsen Eiland (1), Telok Betung (1), unknown (2)

Sources: Overgekomen brieven en papieren series in the archives of the Dutch East India Company (VOC), Nationaal Archief, The Hague.

The most important target of plundering by the raiders was pepper. Raiders not only incessantly attacked cargo vessels offshore, but they also plundered pepper-producing areas and riverine ports in inland regions. For example, in September 1790 a raiders fleet consisting of twenty-eight heavily armed ships made an attack on a local convoy of eighteen ships laden with pepper and dammar (a dye material) on the east coast of Lampung. A trader who escaped the detention reported that the fleet was under the authority of the Raja of Siak on the east coast of Sumatra. They divided their fleet into two: one sailed up through the Penet River while the other one moved up through the Puti River. Both groups plundered several villages and traffic nodes along the river, and kidnapped a number of people.20 Next to pepper, people were an important object of plunder. In the largest case recorded, raiders took 130 people plus ten ships laden with 300 bahars (1 bahar is about 180 kg) of pepper as their booty in one attack on Sekampong in 1795.21
20 21

ADB 30: no pagination, report by Jurragan Mas Sudin, Banten, 27 October 1790. CZOHB 120: 77, Commander F. H. Beijnon in Banten to Batavia, 4 May 1795.

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Relatively densely populated pepper-growing areas were an ideal place for raiding, as the raiders could not only capture people but also gather pepper and other forest products such as damar and rattan, food, cargo ships, and other necessities at river traffic nodes.22 Some captive men were sold as laborers in pepper gardens and rice fields,23 while other captives were used as oarsmen in raider ships.24 Ships and weapons were also important prizes, which could be used by themselves or sold to other raiders. In 1795 a raiders fleet consisting of some fifty ships attacked ten pepper-laden ships belonging to the Banten sultan in Puti. After five hours of furious battle, the raiders took the ships with their cargo of 350 bahar of pepper and a large number of weapons, including twenty-seven short guns and thirty-two flintlocks.25 The raiders sent their prize of ships to Mampawa on the west coast of Kalimantan, a notorious meeting place for raiders.26 The ships and weapons would have been sold to other raiders to use for their assaults. In addition, raiders plundered necessities from villages in order to make a living, because they often lurked in secluded insalubrious places along the swampy eastern coast of Sumatra.27 In 1792 a fleet of raiders consisting of thirteen ships and three smaller vessels appeared off the coast of Ratu Jaya in the Puti region, robbed the people of the newly harvested rice, destroyed the whole area by setting fire to it, and kidnapped three women and one man.28

22

23 24 25 26 27 28

ADB 30: no pagination, Commander F. H. Beijnon in Banten to Batavia, 23 Nov. 1790; ADB 30: 73, Resident C. H. Cramer in Menggala to Commander F. H. Beijnon and the Political Council in Banten, 14 July 1792; CZOHB 120: 41-42, Commander F. H. Beijnon in Banten to Batavia, 18 Feb. 1795; ibid.: 58-59, 8 July 1797; RABE 123: 152r-152v, GM 1798, 3 Oct. 1799; ADB 33: 215-216, Commander F. H. Beijnon in Banten to Batavia, 9 July 1798; ADB 35: 280, Commander F. H. Beijnon in Banten to Batavia, 25 May 1804. MCP 4 (4): 211-212, report by Rovere van Breugel, 5 May 1788. JFR 28: 664-665, report by B. B. Macgregor, Deputy Master, Anyar, 11 May 1815. CZOHB 120: 41, Commander F. H. Beijnon in Banten to Batavia, 18 Feb. 1795. ADB 30: no pagination, report by Jurragan Mas Sudin, Banten, 27 October 1790. ADB 34: 5-7, Commander F. H. Beijnon in Banten to Batavia, 7 Jan. 1803. ADB 30: 6, Commander F. H. Beijnon in Banten to Batavia, 21 Jan. 1792.

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Limited information in Dutch records shows that the most often witnessed raiders were the Johorese, that is, the Bugis born in Riau. Other prominent raiders were the Malays, Chinese, Iranun, and Mandarese originally from North Sulawesi. Some of them were known to have come from Riau, and others from Siak, the Bangka Strait, and other places.29 Raiders usually sailed in a fleet consisting of three to some fifty vessels.30 Big ships had even up to 100 rowers each. The largest types of ships were equipped with three-pound cannons in their lower battery and two swivel-guns above.31 Neither the Dutch nor the sultans ships could easily catch up with or even find raiders ships during their policing cruise. Raiders ships could move faster propelled by both oar and sail. It was difficult to spot them, because they lay concealed in their hideaways in small inlets along the Lampung coast and on numerous islands on the Sunda Strait.32 As the Dutch themselves admitted, their inadequate knowledge of the local geography and their lack of specific sailing skills proved to be no match for those displayed by the raiders.33 The maritime raids significantly affected the pepper supply from Lampung. A Dutch report says that during the year and nine months from January 1791 to September 1792 the only period for which information on the scale of raiding for a certain duration is available 6,000 pikul of pepper was lost to the raiders because of attacks on eighteen villages and twenty-three vessels in Lampung and the region of

29 30

31 32

33

CZOBH 118: 39, Commander F. H. Beijnon et al. in Banten to Batavia, 18 Feb. 1793. The largest fleet consisted of fifty-six ships. The core ships in the fleet had three masts. ADB 31: 79-80, Commander F. H. Beijnon in Banten to Batavia, 5 June 1793; CZOHB 118: 21-22, Commander F. H. Beijnon in Banten to Batavia, 20 Feb. 1794. ADB 30: 92-93, report by Raden Tomongon Tilang Barat, a courtier, Banten, 3 May 1791. HRB 1004: 302, report by Commander J. Reijnouts, Banten, 2 July 1766; VOC 3475: 1722v-1723v, GM, 31 Dec. 1777; CZOHB 118: 6, Commander F. H. Beijnon et al. in Banten to Batavia, 20 Oct. 1794. VOC 343: 391, Instruction about Banten, Amstderdam to Batavia, 26 Nov. 1792.

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Sunda Strait.34 Six thousand pikul of pepper in the twenty-one months or 3,400 pikul in a year is equivalent to about thirty-six percent of all the pepper that the VOC obtained from Lampung in the same period. In addition, a large amount of pepper was not carried out from Lampung due to the danger of plundering. For example, 6,000 pikul of pepper was left undelivered in storehouses in Lampung in 1799 and 1800.35 This amount is equivalent to about thirty-seven percent of the pepper delivered to the storehouses in Lampung in the same period. There is little doubt that the sudden increase of maritime violence in Lampung in the late 1780s resulted from the fall of Riau. The Bugis, driven from Riau as a result of the 1784 treaty, sought refuge in Mampawa and Sukadana on the west coast of Kalimantan and other places. A few days after his successful expulsion of the Dutch from Riau in 1787, Sultan Mahmud also left and took refuge on the island of Lingga, South of Riau, with a following of Malays, Bugis, and the two hundred wealthiest Chinese, fearing VOC reprisal. Other groups departed for Pahang and Terengganu (Vos 1993: 165-173, 179-190; Lewis 1995: 99-121). Riau ceased to be a collecting place of Southeast Asian products, but the demand for them in the China market was still strong. In addition, the supply from Banjarmasin, the last major pepper-producing region next to Lampung shrank significantly in the late 1780s (Noorlander 1935: 64-65, 100-101, 114-115, 122-125, Bijlage 7). It was not until 1800 that the pepper production in Aceh increased extraordinarily under the energetic Raja of Susoh, Leube Dapa (Bulbeck et al. 1998: 66). This is how Lampung became the only important pepper-producing region, apart from Chinese pepper plantations in Brunei, Trengganu, and some other places, from which the harvest was almost exclusively
34 35

ADB 30: 113-115, report of the damage by pirates since the end of 1790, Commander F. H. Beijnon in Banten, 30 Sep. 1792. ADB 34: 16-17, Commander F. H. Beijnon in Banten to Batavia, 4 Feb. 1801.

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sold to Chinese traders. It is therefore reasonable that those who lost their place of business in Riau targeted Lampung under weak control to collect pepper in more violent way. It was Lingga that first emerged as such a center of raiding following the fall of Riau. Sultan Mahmud constructed an alliance of raiders from Siak, the Orang Laut,36 and the Iranun through his refuge tour to Malay Peninsula, Bangka, and Sumatra before he finally chose Lingga as a place of asylum, and set up a privateering enterprise there. The raiders attacked both local and Dutch ships, plundered coastal areas, secretly traded tin from Bangka under Dutch control, took captives and sold them into slavery in Lingga and other Malay settlements.37 Siak grew in power in the 1780s and the 1790s as another new trade center to replace Riau. Princes commanded a fleet of raiding vessels, and the captured valuable merchandise, particularly opium, made Siak a market for stolen goods. Timothy P. Barnard argues that they supplemented traditional export items from East Sumatra, such as camphor, bezoar stones, dammar resin, elephant tusks, gambir, rattan, sago, wax, and gold dust. By attacking other ports such as Singgora, Penang, and Perak, they furthered Siak trade by forcing traffic toward Siak-controlled ports (Barnard 2003: 155). My data shows that Siak raiders also attacked Lampung to plunder its pepper. A patrol fleet of the sultan of Banten came across a raiders fleet consisting of eleven ships near Pulau Lagondi, and after a long battle finally defeated them. The leaders of the patrol fleet found that the raiders passed themselves off as those from

36

37

The Orang Laut are a group of Malay people living in the Riau and Lingga Islands, and more broadly in the coasts and offshore islands in the Melaka Strait. They are made up of numerous tribes and status groups, but share some degree of identity and a preference for living on boats rather than on land. Historically they played an important role as guard, warrior, and trader, establishing reciprocal relationships with Malay rulers. See Barnard (2007) and Andaya (2008: 173-201). HMS 437: 152-153, Historical Sketch of the circumstances which led to the settlement of Penang, Francis Light, Penang, c. 1794; Vos 1993: 191-199.

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Siak, but many of them turned out to be Chinese.38 Their ethnicity is not clear from the Dutch record, but it seems that ethnic distinction among the raiders was not clear, and that migration and mixture of different groups were common. Belitung seems to have developed into another important centre of raiding and trading. Juragan Urip, a Bantenese trader who escaped detention on Belitung after having been abducted in the Java Sea, witnessed no less than 288 ships of Malay, Chinese, and Bugis raiders from Siak, Riau, and Lingga. He heard that the raiders who had captured him intended to attack Banjarmasin in Borneo and Semangka in Lampung. Belitung-based raiders thus included a large part of the Malay Waters in the areas of their activities. As a result traders also visited Belitung in order to buy the booty from the raiders.39 The participation of the Iranun intensified the raiding in Lampung. The Iranun, who had been engaged in raiding from their settlements in West Kalimantan, once helped Sultan Mahmud and contributed to his success in expelling the Dutch from Riau in 1787. However, the Iranun soon left Riau as they had no intention of staying there permanently. After abandoning Riau, one group of the Iranun remained on Lingga, and another group settled in Reteh and neighboring small settlements on the east coast of Sumatra. Each year bands of the Iranun from their Reteh settlements joined their Sulu relations in raiding Lampung (Warren 1981: 156-158). Raiding by the Iranun near Lampung was first recorded in 1791, when they made an attack with forty ships on cargo vessels fully laden with rice destined for Bangka.40 They were feared as the most formidable fleet in the surrounding waters.41
38 39 40 41

ADB 30: 91-93, report by Raden Tomongong Tilang Barat, Banten, 3 May 1791. ADB 30: 43, report by Juragan Urip, escaped captive, Banten, 4 April 1791. ADB 30: 87-88, report by Wetanger Wiro, escaped captive, Banten, 21 Apr. 1791. ADB 33: 78, 82, Commander F. H. Beijnon et al. in Banten to Batavia, 5 Apr.

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Another raiding group coming from outside the Malay Waters was the Mandarese from North Sulawesi. They were most active in the Sunda Strait, and a VOC official stated in 1796 that Mandarese were the most prominent raiders.42 They sometimes worked together with other ethnic groups. In 1795, a Dutch cargo ship carrying provisions to the VOC post at Semangka was waylaid near Pulau Lagondi by a group consisting of Mandarese and Bugis raiders who had a base on the island. The raiders killed all the European crew, plundered the cargo, and set the ship on fire.43 Inter-ethnic cooperation in maritime raids was not uncommon at all. A Dutch record tells that a fleet of Mandarese raiders passed themselves off as tripang fishers, even possessing a Dutch pass to confirm this, although they attacked other ships in occasions.44 The distinction between raiders and fishers was not clear, and raiders often attempted to persuade the authorities that they were not illegal freebooters. This is how the loss of a trade hub after the fall of Riau, and the subsequent political turmoil resulted in the emergence of raiders bases in the Melaka Strait region. The Bugis (a large part of them Riau-born) and Sultan Mahmuds followers who lost their homeland, and migrants such as the Iranun, Mandarese, and Chinese came to these bases, and conducted their raids and trade. These bases and an increasing number of raiders there made attack on Lampung easier.

Local Society and European Powers

Interestingly, from the 1780s when raiding was becoming intensified, the local society of Lampung came to have closer ties with foreign traders. The most noticeable

42 43 44

CZOHB 119: 23, Commander F. H. Beijnon et al. in Banten to Batavia, 24 Dec. 1796. CZOHB 63: 32, GM 1795, no date. CZOHB 119: 23, Commander F. H. Beijnon et al. in Banten to Batavia, 24 Dec. 1796.

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groups of traders were Chinese. Those coming from Bengkulen started to collect pepper directly from various areas of production along the Lampung coast, such as Semangka, Kalambayang, and Seram in Tulang Bawang, in defiance of the Dutch monopoly. They obtained elephant tusks, birds nests, and pepper in exchange for their opium and textiles.45 Chinese traders brought these items and human captives to Bengkulen, Padang, even Aceh, and other ports on the West Coast of Sumatra from the Sunda Strait, in return for opium, textiles, and camphor. Some of them sold these products to junks sailing back to China. Chinese who had bases in Pulau Panjang and Pulau Klapa in the Bay of Banten sailed to the Lampung coast in order to collect pepper, elephant tusks, birds nests, and gold in exchange for opium. They carried these Lampung products to Pulau Seribu off the coast of Batavia, a meeting point for traders.46 Chinese traders penetration in the inland regions of Lampung would have been related to the increasing difficulty of the normal commercial traffic between Lampung and Banten because of the danger of maritime raids. Afraid of raids, shipmasters in Lampung became hesitant to sail to Banten. Chinese traders would have had enough chance to collect local products, some of which, such as birds nests, were the sultans monopoly. In return they supplied Indian opium and textiles, which they gained from the British in Bengkulen. Apart from Chinese traders, the British and Mandarese also made direct contacts with local elites in Lampung. In 1802, two British ships visited Raden Intan, a

45

46

HRB 1005: 11, report by J. de Rovere van Breugel, Banten, no date, 1783; MCP 4 (4): 176-177, report by J. de Rovere van Breugel, Banten, 5 May 1788. Rovere van Breugel 1856: 351-357; MCP 4 (4): 176-177, report by J. de Rovere van Breugel, Banten, 5 May 1788. De Rovere van Breugels reports in 1783 and 1788 in Notes 77 and 78 mention that traders who penetrated inland Lampung were Mandarese. However, as even the report of the same author in 1787 and other Dutch reports show that they were Chinese, the first two reports seem to include a mistake to name the traders.

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member of the elite from Kripang, and bought 2,000 bahar of pepper from him. Raden Intan sold the pepper at nine Spanish mat per bahar, which was higher than the price that sultan had set. The British also brought textiles and opium. The higher purchase price and the gifts would have benefited his followers too. The fact that the Dutch had not sent any ships to collect pepper for three years also would have encouraged him to sell pepper to the British, abandoning his loyalty to the Banten sultan and the Dutch, before it was plundered by raiders. Before his death in 1826, Raden Intan incorporated the Sekampong and Kalianda regions, all the time maintaining a close commercial relationship with the British.47 Aria Kasugian, a member of the local elite in Kalianda, were reported in 1803 to have sold his pepper to Mandarese raiders, which visited Kalianda with twelve ships. The local informant of this news reported to the Dutch that the Mandarese visitors had a close trading relationship with the British.48 The distinction between raiders and traders was not clear. The British established relationships with local elites in Lampung, not only directly but also indirectly through Asian raiders/traders. Probably as a result of local elites shrewd choices of their business partners, Lampung continued to supply moderate levels of pepper: 3,000-4,000 bahar, in the 1780s and 1790s (Ota 2006: 30-31). As this figure shows only the pepper that the VOC received in Banten, considering the pepper sold to foreign traders, Lampung even seems to have increased production in this period in spite of fierce raiding against cargo vessels and coastal villages. Pepper production in Lampung dropped

47

48

ADB 34: 60-62, diary of P. C. Coenraadt and P. A. Braam on their voyage to Lampung, 22 Nov. 1802; ibid.: 77, 10 Jan. 1803; ADB 34: 42-43, Commander F. H. Beijnon in Banten to Batavia, 8 Feb. 1803; ADL 26: 3, J. F. Neef to Commander F. H. Beijnon in Banten, 1 Dec. 1803; MCP 4 (7): 289-290, report by Resident J. de Bruin, Banten, 30 Sep. 1811; MK 2794: 108r, Handelingen en Resolutien van den Gouverneur Generaal in Rade, 23 June 1826, no.11. ADB 34: 243-244, Commander F. H. Beijnon in Banten to Batavia, 14 July 1803.

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significantly only after 1800, when Aceh sharply increased pepper production and started to sell the produce to British and American traders. Some Lampung elites even chose to join in plundering. In April 1793 a raiders fleet consisting of heavily-armed fifty-six ships attacked Kalambayang near Semangka, and plundered pepper, rattan, and birds nests intended to be sent for the sultan. The local informant of this news stated that in this fleet led by the Iranun raider Raja Ali, one of the commanders was Kyai Aria Raksa Jaya, an elite in Kalambayang, who had been banished by the sultan there. During the heavy plundering, the raiders did not do any damage to his family members.49 Plundering, however, did not always bring advantage to local society. On the contrary, local people very often suffered from raids. Raiders not only pillaged pepper, food, ships, and people, their depredations also spelled the ruin of villages. In Puti, a group of raiders destroyed twenty-four villages in 1803,50 and yet another group forced the residents to offer them more than 150 houses in which they could lodge.51 The obvious answer was to go away but people could not always choose to move to another place, because retreat into infertile areas often led to starvation. On Prinsen Eiland, people who withdrew to inland areas to avoid raiding suffered from hunger and finally surrendered themselves to the raiders.52 The VOC was heavily damaged by maritime raids. Not only did they lose the pepper that they were supposed to receive in Banten to the raiders, they also lost their post that they had established in the inland region to watch the production and transportation of pepper. In April 1793 twenty-five pirate ships from Palembang
49 50 51 52

ADB 31: 79-81, Commandeur F. H. Beijnon in Banten to Batavia, 5 June 1793. ADB 34: 42, Commander F. H. Beijnon in Banten to Batavia, 8 Feb. 1803. ADB 35: 280, Commander F. H. Beijnon in Banten to Batavia, 25 May 1804. ADB 34: 109-110, Commander F. H. Beijnon in Banten to Batavia, 8 June 1801.

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sailed up the Tulang Bawang River.53 Seeing their numbers swell to up to forty, Resident Cristiaan Hendrik Cramer of the VOC post in Tulang Bawang decided to desert his post and withdraw. Local people around the post had already fled a few days before. Rumor had it that some of them had fallen under the sway of the pirates.54 Who these attackers were and what their aim was are not clear. In contrast, the British finally led to their obtaining a lions share of Lampung pepper. They went about their trade by contacting various groups of raiders and traders, offering opium, ammunition, and other desired commodities. This gave them an upper hand in the competition with the Dutch. As a result, the EIC and the British country traders were able to convey large amounts of pepper to Canton: accounting in fact for 50 to 90 per cent of all the pepper that was transported by European traders (Figure 4). By that time the VOC had already been declared bankrupt and the Dutch were no longer able to send their own ships to Canton as a result of the Napoleonic Wars (Van Eyck van Heslinga 1988: 147-170).

Conclusion
The illicit trade, which Dutch colonial scholars regarded as the root of all evil, and which some post-independence writers lauded as anti-colonial resistance, in fact was more complex and had a more significant impact in Lampung. The increase in the secret pepper trade since the 1760s was a result of British attempts to obtain as much pepper as possible. Pepper was one of the most important Southeast Asian commodities for the British to facilitate their tea trade in Canton, but major pepper producing regions at that time were either already in decline, or under the Dutch
53 54

ADB 31: 29-30, Commander F. H. Beijnon in Banten to Batavia, 29 May 1793. ADB 31: 76, Commander F. H. Beijnon in Banten to Batavia, 5 June 1793.

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monopolistic trading system. This led the British to attempt to collect pepper secretly, in cooperation with Chinese traders and local elites in Lampung. The increasing raids by Bugis, Malays, Iranun, Mandarese and other Asians after the late 1780s was a result of changes in the economic and political circumstances in the Melaka Strait region. A trading pattern that emerged on Riau from the 1760s to collect Southeast Asian products was disrupted by the Dutch conquest of Riau in 1784. The stateless peoples who were driven out from Riau and the Riau-centered trade network continued their business in a more violent way. The result was the emergence of new centers of raids and trade in Lingga, Siak, and Belitung, and the rampant raids in Lampung after the late 1780s. The fact that the raiding in Lampung largely targeted pepper shows that it was a part of the growing Sino-Southeast Asia trade. As pepper was one of the most sought-after Southeast Asian commodities in Chinas strong economy, a number of raiders headed for Lampung, the largest pepper-producing region in Asia under weak rule. Those who conducted raids also sometimes purchased pepper from local elites when the purchase promised larger amounts and more stable acquisition. Their business often involved violence, but was strongly trade oriented. Along with raiding, the Chinese and Mandarese created extensive networks to exchange Lampung products such as pepper, birds nests, and elephants tusks in return for Indian textiles and opium. Thanks to their business, cultivators were able to grow pepper under the threat of raiding, although authorized Banten traders gradually avoided their risky business to sail to Lampung under the threat of raiders attack. Outside traders higher purchase prices and the desired commodities that they brought must have motivated them to cultivate pepper. As a result, Lampung maintained and

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even increased its pepper cultivation throughout the 1780s and 1790s. The impact of illicit trade on the local society of Lampung was diverse. Local elites and pepper cultivators generally enjoyed the foreign commodities that trade brought, such as Indian opium and textiles, and the more favorable transaction conditions they offered. Some local elites took advantage of their ties with the foreign traders to expand their power. However, large number of ordinary people suffered from raiders plundering. Those who chose to abandon their fields to avoid raiders attacks and fled to other areas also suffered from lack of suitable lands and food. The Chinese and British took the largest advantage of the illicit trade in Lampung. Chinese traders extended their network in inland regions, while the British collected increasingly larger amounts of pepper for the China market. On the other hand, the Dutch, who stuck to their monopolistic trading system, were gradually driven away from the business in the region. It is important to note that the British linked themselves to Chinese and other Asians network starting from the 1760s, using Silebu as their base. Anglo-Chinese cooperation started earlier than conventionally thought, although it was much smaller scale than that conducted in Penang after 1786. The conventional depiction of the 1784-1800 period in the Melaka Strait region, and the 1760-1800 period in Lampung as being fragmented and in decline is incomplete. It is true that local states and the VOC fragmented and fell into confusion, but stateless peoples and people in export-commodity producing regions stepped into that vacuum. The expansion of illicit trade linked Lampung and the Melaka Strait region to the booming Sino-Southeast Asian trade. In so doing, these traders and raiders actions influenced the very ebb and flow of European powers.

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References
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