John Company     by Arthur van Schendel, Translated by Frans van Rosevelt Original title: Jan Compagnie Original language: Dutch Original year: 1932 Published by Periplus Editions Pub. Date: October 1999 Format: Paperback, 192 pages Dimensions: 0.56 x 7.97 x 5.16 in. ISBN: 9625935088 List Price: $14.95 Buy online from Amazon.co.uk for £9.51 Buy online from Amazon.com for $14.95 Published by Periplus, Singapore Pub. Date: 1999 Format: 190 pages Not available for ordering Published by University of Massachusetts Press, Amherst Pub. Date: 1983 Format: 190 pages Not available for ordering

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Arthur van Schendel was born in Batavia (present-day Jakarta) and became a leading Dutch novelist between the two world wars. In the 1930s he wrote a series of novels on specifically Dutch subjects, which opened with Het fregatschip Johanna Maria (translated as The ‘Johanna Maria’ in 1935). The historical novel John Company, a rich tapestry of the early years of the Dutch East India Company, was the second volume in this series.


John Company is an epic chronicle of the life and times of its main character, Jan de Brasser from Amsterdam, in the first decades of the seventeenth century. As a soldier in the Company’s service, Jan is stationed for many years in the East, in Bantam, Batavia (modern-day Jakarta), Ambon and Banda-Neira. He then becomes a free burgher and spice merchant, and shows himself — amidst war and violence, treachery and corruption — to be a true, plain-speaking Hollander, an honest trader who opposes injustice and who flourishes because of his fair treatment of every person, whether Jew, Portuguese, Chinese, English or native. After 25 years, Jan de Brasser returns to Amsterdam with the fortune he has amassed. He finds the city in full boom, rapidly expanding, more industrious and especially more prosperous as a consequence of the colonial enterprise and the work of the East India Company.


Van Schendel’s retelling of this great seventeenth-century Dutch legend presents a picture that is rather different from that of Giles Milton in Nathaniel’s Nutmeg (1999), a study of Dutch-English colonial rivalry in the East Indies. Whereas Milton decries the cruelty and injustice of the iron-fisted governor-general Jan Pieterszoon Coen, the Calvinist hardliner who founded the Dutch seaborne empire in the East and slaughtered the Bandanese in 1621, Van Schendel makes the case for fair trade and toleration, giving centre stage to an outsider like Jan de Brasser without even mentioning Coen, and presenting the Company — for all his criticism of its corruption, incompetence and cruelty — as a decisive force in history.

Still, when the order for action came, they went and not because they had sworn to uphold the articles of the Company, but because they belonged together, servant and Company, because they had gone to the Indies to govern and rule. They did not ring the bark or cut down trees because of inhumanity or recklessness, but because there could only be one will and one will only: the control of the United East India Company over the spice trade. Minnema and De Potter were prepared to support this; and not only the Moluccans, but also the Portuguese, the Spaniards, or whoever, had to bow before the will of men such as these, no matter whether they came from the northern or the southern parts of the United Provinces. Nature had so well equipped them with the characteristics of their country — boldness, rebelliousness, and rudeness — that they were considered the scum of their country and indeed, they were anything but gentle. They could and did hit hard, but the Company had sent them out to obtain spices, not to bestow benefactions upon the inhabitants or to admire the land. (p. 82, tr. Frans van Rosevelt)