Amboina, 1623: Fear and Conspiracy on the Edge of Empire

In 1623, a Japanese mercenary called Shichizō was arrested for asking suspicious questions about the defenses of a Dutch East India Company fort on Amboina, a remote set of islands in what is now eastern Indonesia. When he failed to provide an adequate explanation, he was tortured until he confessed that he had joined a plot orchestrated by a group of English merchants based nearby to seize control of the fortification and ultimately to rip the spice-rich islands from the Company’s grasp. Two weeks later, Dutch authorities executed twenty-one alleged conspirators, sparking immediate outrage and a controversy that would endure for centuries to come. In this landmark study, Adam Clulow presents a new perspective on the Amboina case that aims to move beyond the standard debate over the guilt or innocence of the supposed plotters. Instead, Amboina, 1623 argues that the case was driven forward by a potent combination of genuine crisis and overpowering fear that propelled the rapid escalation from suspicion to torture, that gave shape and form to an imagined plot, and that pushed events forward to their final bloody conclusion. Based on an exhaustive analysis of original trial documents, letters, and depositions, this book offers a masterful reinterpretation of a trial that has divided opinion for centuries while presenting new insight into global history and the nature of European expansion across the early modern world.

Table of Contents:
List of Illustrations Note to the Reader Acknowledgments Maps of Southeast Asia, Amboina, and the Banda Islands Introduction: The Company and the Colony Part I. Amboina in 1623 1. With Treaty or With Violence 2. We Cannot Exist Well Without Slaves 3. Dangerous and Difficult to Govern 4. The English Serpent 5. The Trial Part II. Remaking a Conspiracy Trial 6. The War of the Witnesses 7. Compensation and Calamity Epilogue: The Fearful Empire Notes Bibliography Index

About the Author :
Adam Clulow is an associate professor at the University of Texas at Austin. He is the author of the prize-winning The Company and the Shogun: The Dutch Encounter with Tokugawa Japan (Columbia, 2014) and the creator of the Amboyna Conspiracy Trial website, which won the New South Wales Premier’s Digital History Prize.

Review :
Clulow won a number of prizes for his first book. He likely will do so again with his second...Amboina, 1623 deserves the widest possible readership. The story is compelling. So, too, is Clulow's argument about the corrosive effect of fears and anxieties on colonial officials without enough back-up and effectively marooned 'on the edge of Empire.' Ambon is one small island in a vast world, and 1623 is just a single year in millennia of history, but this book resonates widely and deeply, an exemplary work of global history. Amboina, 1623: Fear and Conspiracy on the Edge of Empire is a well-written, even intriguing text and should be read both for its clarifying and source-critical treatment of the actual—and long-obscured—events and the fascinating historiographical implications. In this scintillating and deeply researched study, Adam Clulow presents us with a balanced, nuanced, and convincing account of the Amboina affair, its background and its aftershocks...one of the most important books in English on early Dutch imperialism, and a rare good read as well. In a gripping story about fear and loathing in Amboina, Adam Clulow probes a pivotal event in world history to offer fresh insights about the entanglements of European empires in Asia. Meticulously researched and engagingly told, Amboina, 1623 is that rarest of rare things: a scholarly tour de force that is also a page-turner. A true model of globally minded historical scholarship, Clulow’s brilliant new study combines insights derived from his cutting-edge work in the digital humanities with the best traditions of archival research and interpretation. Carefully exploring the Asian context in which the dramatic events of the Amboina trial unfolded, he offers a stunning portrait of the violence, ambition, and anxiety at the heart of European empire. Although one hesitates to use the word ‘definitive’ in connection with the Amboina massacre, which has caused fierce controversy until the present day, Clulow’s analysis of the voluminous documentation generated by the Dutch and English East India Companies is incisive, balanced, and utterly convincing. This scintillating and deeply researched study... is the best and most thorough treatment of Amboina to date.