Trade Of Servants In The Archipelago And VOC Victory In The Banda Islands

The painting by Ailbert Cuyp, painted between 1640-1660, depicts a VOC official in Batavia and his slave. (Rijksmuseum Amsterdam)

JAKARTA - The Lust of the Dutch trading airline, the VOC in control of the entire archipelago is second to none. The power of power is ready to perpetuate anything to seize power. The path of war, let alone. Advances in strategy and weaponry make the VOC confident.

They then conquered many regions. Banda Islands, one of them. The conquest which led to the massacre became a VOC test to show off to its competitors. Even after that, the Banda people who survived were transported and sold as slaves to Batavia.

The spirit of the archipelago as a spice-producing country is able to provoke the world's attention. The Netherlands with the VOC became one of the attracted. The Company tries to start a spice trading business in the archipelago. The results are profitable, but they don't make the VOC satisfied.

Everything changed when Jan Pieterszoon Coen took over the leadership of the VOC. The Governor-General of the VOC, who had served twice (1619-1623 and 1627-1629), began to perpetuate his strategy of the spice trade monopoly.

The path of war is his example. He admits that the VOC has everything to perpetuate the war. The only thing the VOC doesn't have is mentality and courage. Coen broke it down. He has the courage. Likewise, the matter of mentality.

Coen began to seize the entire archipelago which he considered stategis for the spice trade. The Company then conquered Jayakarta, which was later renamed Batavia (now: Jakarta) in 1619.

This success made Coen's guts increase. He also began to target other conquests. Coen is eager to control all spice trade in the Banda Islands. He saw local residents actually working closely with the British and Portuguese.

Coen did not accept it. He chose to take up arms against all of his rivals. Then, the Company could be the only ruler who controls the spice trade in the Banda Islands.

While achieving a surprising success, Coen planned the next stage of his grand strategy, namely to conquer Banda. The beautiful and fertile islands must be seized with a very large military force, and the population who do not want to submit must be destroyed or displaced.

To produce nutmeg and fuli (shell wrapped in nutmeg), he plans to rely on slaves who are brought in as laborers and Dutch people who live there as his supervisors. Actually, there is nothing really new in Coen's plans for Banda. another VOC representatives one day they thought about and even tried to implement some of the plan, "explained historian, penjelas A. Hanna in the book Islands Banda: Colonialism and As a Result in the Pala Islands (1983).

Coen immediately launched the conquest of the Banda Islands. He wanted the Kompeni soldiers to perpetuate a measurable attack. This is because the attack must not be missed. Coen also conveyed his fiery motivation. The assessment was so that the mentality of the Kompeni soldiers became strong.

In fact, the motivation given by Coen was effective. The attack that was perpetuated by the Company paid off. The Kompeni team, which began landing early in the morning on March 11, 1621. They were able to surround the British and Banda.

All of this was done because Coen did not want to cooperate with Banda people who were familiarly leaning with England. The attack then led to a massacre. As a result, the massacre only left 480 people out of a total of 14 thousand people in Banda.

The rest of the Banda who survived were transported by the VOC to Batavia. They were then sold in public as slaves. Human trafficking is hanging. This is because the VOC does not need to spend much money to bring in slaves war offers - as usual from various conflicting areas.

The presence of slaves from Banda was then able to bring the existence of the Company in Batavia. The slaves were able to work in all fields. In fact, beautiful female slaves are no less contested. They were then widely used as prostitutes.

On March 11, 1621, the Banda Islands were filled with thick clouds of mourning. The entire population of Banda was killed by Jan Pieterszoon Coen who was very cruel and did not know the humanitarian period. The Banda Islands are completely empty without a population."

"As already said earlier, those who did not have time to run, if they did not die or are killed cruelly, were arrested and transported as prisoners of war or as slaves to Batavia. That is the resident of Batavia who originally came from Banda," said Sagimun MD in the book Jakarta from the Water Bank to the City of Proclamation (1988).