If the war between the Portuguese and the Dutch is very active, that could happen.
I ,also, would like to read about it.
Lands of Red and Gold
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If the war between the Portuguese and the Dutch is very active, that could happen.
I ,also, would like to read about it.
Hendryk
Banned
Well, since, when we think of urban civilizations that developed without any influence from Eurasia, obviously what we have in mind are the Inca and Aztec ones. Those fared quite poorly against the Spanish due to a combination of highly aggressive moves by the latter, sheer bad luck, and unfavorable endogenous factors. But if one were to take a snapshot of the world in, say, 1500, how would the Aururian civilizations compare with the Precolombian ones, in terms of technological development, social complexity and general sophistication? The Aururians have iron and a wider variety of domesticates, but what are the other differences?
Lower population density, especially relative to Mexico. Much higher proportion of population living in cities.
Another great update!
I'm eagerly awaiting Houtie and the VOCfish's triumphant comeback tour.
I'm eagerly awaiting Houtie and the VOCfish's triumphant comeback tour.
I like your story. It does seem like the austrailian society in this version is akin to the early Greeks or early iron-age. How are they - at what level is - their medicine and concepts of clean is better? With a big capital and love of running water and lots of labor, might thier cities be relativly "cleaner" or not a crowded together as say in London or Paris of that time? (more crowded/dirty conditions in Europe may accellarate/intensify new diseases). They also have had a long tradition of "pain/wound" management (due to their religion). I would think that they would learn quicker because there is an incentive to survive (thus, finding ways to treat wounds best would lead to better survival and more prestige). I think that the middle eastern cultures prior to the 1600s had good doctors, but then that knowledge was lost (or not transferred as well?) If these new austrailians have better levels of medicine (not to mention newer herbs and medicines), that might improve Europe (if the knowledge gets there). However, there is also the uncertainty how hard Europe will be hit with these new diseases (and vice-versa).
I mean, who that is important in Europe might now die (imagine how things could change...) Thanks and keep up the good work.
I mean, who that is important in Europe might now die (imagine how things could change...) Thanks and keep up the good work.
It's certainly possible. It may take a while for the Portuguese to figure out exactly where the Dutch bases are, though. The VOC will be doing its best to keep knowledge of Tiayal to itself. Rumours will inevitably leak out, of course, but obtaining accurate information about the geography of Aururia and the best sailing routes may be harder for the Portuguese (or English) to obtain.
Quite a variety of differences. One is that the Aururians have a much wider trade network; especially with the Islanders, but even before that (thanks to long-range trade in tin to make bronze). This has allowed a wider exchange of ideas and broader knowledge of other cultures. The knowledge of other cultures is important in fostering a sense of political sophistication, too.
Another important difference is literacy. Writing was confined to a small Mesoamerican elite, and used only for limited purposes. Literacy is much more widespread in Aururia, both as a percentage of the population, and in the diversity of uses. The Atjuntja are actually at the lower end of the scale in terms of literacy, but even they keep quite detailed census (and taxation) records and communicate in writing amongst themselves.
Agricultural stability is also another important difference. The Aururians possess an agricultural package and associated knowledge - crop rotation, emus to provide manure for fertiliser - which allowed for long-term agricultural stability. They had some problems working this out originally (a major agricultural collapse around 900 BC), but by now they have developed the necessary knowledge and crop strains to allow for agricultural stability. Which is not to say that they don't have famines, but not the sort of prolonged agricultural collapse which leads to whole societies and urban centres collapsing.
This is something which the New World mostly lacked, by the way. For maize-based agriculture, at least. (The Andean civilizations seem to have been less prone to the problem). The thing about maize as a crop is that it is very high-yielding per acre, which allows for large population densities. The problem is that it exhausts the soil very quickly. Without good crop rotation techniques, or better yet some form of fertiliser (animal or artificial) to replenish the soil, maize-based agriculture is not stable in the long run.
The pattern in Mesoamerica is almost uncanny - rapid development of a large urban population, which lasts for one or a few centuries before the population collapses, and the urban centres are abandoned (entirely or nearly). The people may or may not move somewhere else and reestablish other cultures, but the old urban centres tend not to last. The Olmecs (twice), Classical Maya, Teotihuacan, Monte Alban, Hohokam, Puebloans... This just shows up again and again. The pattern even spread to eastern North America once maize got established there - Cahokians, then many of the Mound Builders went through the same sort of collapse. Maybe not every one of those collapses was due to agriculture alone, but it certainly didn't help.
These agricultural limitations must have had severe effects on the continuity of Mesoamerican culture, although it's hard to work out all the details thanks to limited knowledge of writing. But by contrast the Aururians have an agricultural package which does not produce the same high population densities in an overall region, but which is much less prone to collapse, which promotes long-term agricultural stability.
The agricultural stability means that the Aururian civilizations have, in general, developed more like the Old World than the New World. Which is to say that they have had much more continuity of civilization, and thus developed greater social complexity. In some ways, Aururian civilizations are even more stable than many Bronze/ Iron Age civilizations in the Old World, too. This is because they lack horses and other large migratory domestic mammals. (Emus can be farmed, but are hard to move in long-range herds - they need to be fenced). This means that they lack the whole herder-farmer-nomad dynamic which caused so many migrations and population replacements in the Old World. Once a farming people get established in Aururia, they're likely to stay there for a very long time. Population replacements - even linguistic replacements - are much rarer than the Old World. This has also contributed to the relatively sophisticated civilization in what is otherwise a relatively isolated people.
Related to this is the relatively larger urban populations of Aururia (as Admiral Matt pointed out). They don't have as many people overall, but they have a much higher percentage of city-dwellers and other non-food producing specialists. They history of urban development is both longer - their first major cities were around by 2400-2200 BC, well before anything in the New World - and more stable than the pre-Columbian civilizations. This larger urban population require more political organisation to govern such a society. It also allows for more economic producivity, thanks to the larger food-producing classes. Aururian civilizations - especially the *Murray civilizations and Yadji - have much larger merchant, artisan, scribal social classes etc than anything seen among the Incas or the Aztecs.
Anyway, this has been a long response and somewhat tangential to your original question. Overall, I guess it would be fair to say that the Aururian civilizations have better metallurgy, better literacy, somewhat more advanced technology, and much greater political sophistication.
Things are still patchy, though. The Aururians are rather isolated from the rest of the world, which means that some ideas just plain don't happen, or have happened very late, and some New World civilizations are still on a par from them in some areas. For instance, the Inca road-building was probably as good or maybe even somewhat better than what any Aururians have accomplished, for instance. The Mayan knowledge of astronomy was pretty good, too. The Aururians have been very slow to develop the wheel - Mesoamerica got it first, although the Aururians have done somewhat more with it.
Merci.
I'm eagerly awaiting Houtie and the VOCfish's triumphant comeback tour.
There could be a certain... warm reception.
The technological level is, roughly, early Iron Age or very early Greek. With a couple of areas where they're slightly ahead, such as glassmaking and medicine. Conversely, there are some areas where they are behind; they've never heard of spiral staircases, cranes, watermills, cast iron, matches, or many other things.
Their conception of sanitation is actually pretty comparable to ancient Rome or some earlier civilizations. The Indus Valley civilization had very good sanitation, for instance. Knowledge of sanitation was something that went backwards after the Western Roman Empire - the survivor states of western Europe had pretty poor standards of sanitation when compared to much of the rest of the world. Their cities are also much cleaner, on the whole, which does help to alleviate the spread of new diseases. However, because of its geographic isolation, *Australia doesn't have that many diseases anyway. (Some, but not anywhere near as many as in the Old World).
The western *Australian societies actually have a pretty limited knowledge of medicine. Their knowledge of anatomy, treatment of bleeding and the like is pretty good, but otherwise, not so much. The eastern *Australian societies are better in this respect. Even then, though, what they are mostly good at is not making some of the same basic mistakes which Old World medicine followed, such as bleeding or leeches'r'us.
Some aspects of eastern *Australian medicine were based on the way that medieval Islamic doctors worked, such as having panels to review the work of other doctors, keeping detailed records of symptoms. That was as much a social system as it was knowledge-based - Islamic doctors could be fined or otherwise punished for bad practice. These practices do not really seem to have spread to Europe from the Middle East. Whether they will do better from *Australia... well, time will tell.
There could well be a lot of important people in Europe dying over the next few years. The instalment I'm currently working on (which will be the post after next) is about what happens when *Australian diseases hit the rest of the world. This could get rather macabre, since I have to work out which political and other important social figures survive, and who don't. In a few cases this is being decided by fiat, but in most cases I'm letting luck decide. There's going to be rather a long tally of the fallen.
This means higher chances of cultural survival in the future.
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This means higher chances of cultural survival in the future.
Quite. The widespread use of writing is going to make preserve all sorts of things, from historical knowledge to cultural icons to, well, just about everything really.
The classical Gunnagalic "alphabet" is a mostly syllabic script, with a few stylised logograms. Their writing originally evolved using a single-point stylus in clay, and so they used mostly straight lines, with a few diagonals and no curves. Later writing was no longer confined to clay, but the same basic traditions remained.
All of the eastern "alphabets" are broadly based on the Gunnagalic script, although there's been an increasingly large use of standardised logograms rather than the syllabic script. This is because the Gunnagalic script is, ironically enough, too regular. The syllabic signs correspond very nicely with the syllables in the main Gunnagalic dialect, but don't do so well with the changed syllables in the later dialects. So a lot of standardised logograms have emerged, and some of those use more curves and so forth.
The Atjuntja "alphabet" is also a syllabary, but a much more logical one. It was invented by someone who had seen Gunnagalic writing but couldn't read it, and so invented a new script of his own. It incorporates some symbols from the Gunnagalic script, but used for totally unrelated sounds. It's also proto-alphabetic since a lot of the syllables which start with the same letter look related to each other.
Lands of Red and Gold #24: Of Traders, Treasures and Trailblazers
Lands of Red and Gold #24: Of Traders, Treasures and Trailblazers
“Portugal and Spain held the keys of the treasure house of the east and the west. But it was neither Portugal with her tiny population, and her empire that was little more than a line of forts and factories 10,000 miles long, nor Spain, for centuries an army on the march and now staggering beneath the responsibilities of her vast and scattered empire, devout to fanaticism, and with an incapacity for economic affairs which seemed almost inspired, which reaped the material harvest of the empires into which they had stepped, the one by patient toil, the other by luck. Gathering spoils which they could not retain, and amassing wealth which slipped through their fingers, they were little more than the political agents of minds more astute and characters better versed in the arts of peace... The economic capital of the new civilization was Antwerp... its typical figure, the paymaster of princes, was the international financier.
Convulsions of war and tides of religion unseated Antwerp from its commercial throne, the city besieged and its dissenting inhabitants dispersed. While force of arms might move borders, wealth migrated according to its own dictates, not the whims of princes. As the seventeenth century neared, international commerce continued in Amsterdam from where it had halted in Antwerp...”
- W H Stanhope, “Religion and the Birth of Capitalism”
* * *
Captain-General Frederik de Houtman’s second voyage to Aururia was, for the Dutch, a shining success. A trade agreement had been negotiated, and a valuable collection of sample trade goods had been brought back to guide the Company’s merchants in their pursuit of profit. Better yet, the expedition had brought back a host of information in charts, logs and journals to aid in the planning and conduct of further ventures.
The descendants of the Atjuntja and the other Aururian peoples would not have quite the same view of de Houtman’s voyage. Of course, that was hardly something that Governor-General Coen or the other senior officers of the Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie would concern themselves over. De Houtman and his fellow captains were showered with honours on their return.
Along with the honours, Jan Pieterszoon Coen gave the captains and their crews strict orders not to talk about their new discoveries. All had sworn oaths to the Company and to the United Netherlands, and those oaths had to be obeyed. They were to reveal nothing of this new South-Land, particularly about its wealth, and most particularly its location.
This order lasted about as long as it took the Dutch sailors to reach the nearest tavern.
The Dutch sailors did not intend to tell foreigners the secrets, exactly, but alcohol and secrets rarely go together. Mostly, they talked to other Dutchmen, who in turn repeated rumours to other compatriots. The taverns of Batavia were not the exclusive preserve of Dutchmen; apart from the local Javanese, this was a trading post sometimes visited by Englishmen, and occasionally by the Portuguese [1].
The Dutch sailors did not give detailed directions, but, inevitably, they talked. Within a few months, the Javanese, English and Portuguese knew that the VOC had discovered some fantastical new land somewhere to the south. Or was it to the east? Rumours spread, no two of them the same, about where this new land was and what it contained. The stories spread to Timor, to Malaya, to Surat, and in time to London, Lisbon and Madrid...
* * *
With the prestige secured from his second voyage, de Houtman successfully manoeuvred for command of the third expedition to the South-Land. He obtained appointment to the task of negotiating for the construction of the first Dutch outpost on the South-Land, and overseeing the first trade conducted there.
De Houtman set about his new task with enthusiasm. With a fresh fleet of ships loaded with carefully-chosen supplies, he returned to the South-Land in 1621 to establish a trading post. His chosen site was familiar from two previous visits: the Swan River. Given that he had already secured the permission of the King of Kings, it did not take long for de Houtman to negotiate the local governor’s agreement to set up his new trading outpost.
De Houtman had chosen a site on the south bank at the mouth of the Swan River, at a distance he thought was about fifteen miles from the local garrison-city. He optimistically called the site Fort Nassau [Fremantle], even though his trade treaty stated – and the governor had reiterated – that no fortifications were to be built. His sailors were set to the task of constructing houses and other key dwellings. De Houtman used a few judiciously-chosen gifts to obtain the assistance of some local labourers to speed the process. Fort Nassau was developed into a useable state and declared open after three months, although completing some stone buildings would take over another year.
Atjuntja nobles and merchants (often the same people) had already started to gather before Fort Nassau officially opened. The samples of Dutch trade goods the previous year had attracted a great deal of interest, and de Houtman assured all arrivals that they would be given the opportunity to bargain for similar goods. De Houtman had always been an astute bargainer, and he was in a particularly favourable situation here. In most cases, the Atjuntja merchants bid against each other to obtain the most favoured goods.
Even with his previous experience of the White City, he was surprised by some of the priorities they set. The most highly-prized items were anything which showed great craftsmanship; lacquered goods, richly-decorated textiles, and the like. Steel ingots were worth half their weight in gold, and tin ingots only slightly less valued. Rum and brandy were held in similarly high esteem, especially after de Houtman’s traders generously provided some free samples. Wine, though, they would not accept. Nor, despite his best efforts, could he persuade any Atjuntja to trade lead ingots for anything.
In exchange, de Houtman’s trade ships were laden down with the commodities he had most desired. Gold and silver in abundance. Sandalwood in smaller quantities but, if anything, greater value. Dyes, especially their magnificent indigo. Considerable quantities of their mints and peppers and lesser spices, brought mostly to see if they could be resold for greater value. Yet despite his best efforts, he could not persuade any Atjuntja to offer any kunduri at a price he would accept. Instead, he received many variations of responses which amounted to, “Kunduri is not something we trade, it is something we trade for.”
Still, after de Houtman concluding his trading, he had the ebullient feeling that he had accomplished as much here as in his previous voyage. He left Fort Nassau in the command of a junior officer, and sailed for Batavia. There, he received another hero’s welcome. As de Houtman had expected, Coen was well-pleased with him.
Unfortunately, Coen would not stay pleased for long.
* * *
With trade expanding between Batavia and the South-Land, the rumours of newfound Dutch wealth spread ever further. They caused some consternation in London, where the governor and directors of the East India Trading Company had been considering a delicate situation.
An opportunity had arisen in the Middle East, where Persia had declared war on Spain, and was besieging the Spanish garrison on the island of Kishm, near the vital Spanish-held island of Hormuz. That port had been in Portuguese and then Spanish hands for nearly a century, and offered a gateway to Persia. The Persian commanders had requested English help in capturing Kishm and then Hormuz, and had offered to allow English merchants entry into the valuable silk trade.
Alas, opportunity was balanced by danger, namely, the risk of outright war with Spain. England and Spain had been at peace for nearly two decades, and the Company might find that its pursuit of profit in the Gulf would cause a broader war. The heads of the Company were minded to ignore that risk, trusting to Providence and the good offices of King James I to ensure peace was preserved.
However, now the governor and directors had a new risk to consider: the rising power of the Dutch, and more precisely that of the VOC. The two companies had been rivals in the East Indies for two decades, until they negotiated a recent truce. Now, if the VOC had found a spectacular new source of wealth, could they be trusted to hold to that truce? If not, perhaps it would be better to cooperate with Spain against the Dutch, rather than starting what could become two wars.
The directors considered this dilemma for a few days. In the end, they decided that the immediate opportunity was worthwhile. Trade with Persia would be a valuable new market. Besides, the Spanish were Catholics, and not to be trusted. So they accepted the proposed alliance with the Persians, and decided that they would deal with the consequences when they came.
The planned attack on Kishm Island went ahead two weeks later than originally planned. The English fleet bombarded the fort and quickly forced the Spanish garrison to surrender; the assault sustained very few casualties [2]. Bolstered by this success, the English and Persian forces conducted a joint operation against Hormuz, with the Persians attacking by land while the English scattered the Spanish fleet and bombarding the castle.
Hormuz surrendered on 7 May 1622, and the Persians took control of the island, while the Spanish retreated to a secondary outpost at Muscat. Honouring their agreement, all Christian prisoners were repatriated to England, and plans began for the exchange of English cloth for Persian silk. Spain was outraged, and the Company was forced to pay ten thousand pounds each to James I and the Duke of Buckingham in compensation for the efforts they went to in preserving peace [3].
* * *
Frederik de Houtman was an extraordinary man. An explorer, but also a self-promoter and liar. An astronomer and a visionary, recorder of constellations unknown and charter of lands unvisited by Europeans. A linguist who recorded the first European dictionary of the Malayan language, and an optimist who always trusted that fate would reward him. An opportunist with an eye for the main chance, but whose vision ultimately deserted him.
After his three voyages to the South-Land, de Houtman was eager to return to the Netherlands to describe in person what he had found. And, of course, to receive the adulation he believed he deserved for his discoveries.
Governor-General Coen willingly allowed de Houtman to return home, but was dismayed by what happened when the explorer made it to the Netherlands. De Houtman took the opportunity to describe his triumphs ad nauseum. He was careful enough to present his tales only to those who could be relied upon to keep the details secret: Company lords and officers, the Stadtholder, and other government officials.
Unfortunately, that was the limit of de Houtman’s discretion. To hear him speak, a listener would believe that his actions alone had been responsible for the discovery of the South-Land. And that no-one else had the wit to recognise the opportunities. To add to his misdoings, de Houtman presented a magnificent golden neck-ring to Maurice of Nassau, Prince of Orange, and Stadtholder of Holland, Zeeland, Utrecht, Guelders and Overijssel. This neck-ring was a prize which de Houtman had collected while in the South-Land, but he had retained it rather than giving it to the Company.
De Houtman’s generous gift endeared him to the Stadtholder, but it enraged the Lords Seventeen. Combined with his ever more frequent self-promotion, it ensured that he would never be trusted by the Company again. De Houtman was denied any further commissions, and lived out the remainder of his life in Europe. While he died a rich man, he never again set foot on the South-Land.
* * *
As the years turned, despite de Houtman’s departure, and regardless of the distant battles and manoeuvring in the Gulf, the Dutch were busy shipping goods to and from their newly-discovered land. A few outbound fleets from the Netherlands were ordered to stop at Fort Nassau on their way to Batavia, conducting trade with the Atjuntja merchants. Prices had fallen after the initial novelty – no longer did the Atjuntja value steel as half the worth of gold – but any Dutch ship which stopped to trade at Fort Nassau always left with more valuable cargo than when it arrived.
Fortunately for the Dutch, the Atjuntja and the rest of the world, the long shipping times meant that most diseases were not exchanged between the two peoples. Incubation periods were mostly too short; a disease would burn its way through a ship’s crew either before it reached the South-Land, or before the departing ships made their next landfall at Batavia.
Not all diseases were contained by the ocean barrier, of course. The first venereal diseases had been left behind at Seal Point in 1620 when de Houtman’s expedition visited there. Blue-sleep was an ever-present threat to Dutch sailors when they came ashore; many of them caught the illness. Yet this was a fast-burning disease; while many sailors fell ill and some died from it, it ran through a ship’s crew before they reached the Indies.
The greatest threat awaiting the Dutch in the South-Land was the malady called the Waiting Death. No epidemic of Marnitja had swept through the Atjuntja lands in the last decade before the Dutch arrival, so they were safe, for now.
The isolation of the seas would not last, of course. Eventually an asymptomatic carrier would make the journey, or a fast ship would carry disease to a new shore. If nothing else, some maladies would linger in blankets or textiles and bring Eurasian diseases to the South-Land, or Aururian diseases to the Old World, but that time was not yet.
* * *
While the Company officers were glad of the profitable trade they had found at Fort Nassau, they were eager to discover more. The first visit to the White City had told them that the Islanders lived far to the east, but not the details of how to travel there.
So a few of their officers did some exploration by land along the Atjuntja road network. That was tolerated, up to a point, provided that they did not attempt to trade. Yet they were always watched, and discouraged most strongly from coming by land to the White City or any other place where they might encounter Islander traders. The King of Kings did not wish his two trading partners to contact each other directly, realising full well the problems that this would bring for the carefully controlled Atjuntja internal trade and tribute networks.
Thus, the Dutch land explorations gave them some grasp of the geography of the Atjuntja dominions, but did not let them explore any further trade. Some inland regions were also expressly off limits, such as the vicinity of Star Hill or the main gold mines at Golden Blood. To build new trade networks, they would have to venture along the seas.
In 1622, Governor-General Coen ordered the first voyage be sent to explore past the Atjuntja dominions in pursuit of new trade markets. Pieter Dirkzoon was named captain of the Leeuwin, with the yacht Nijptang accompanying, and given orders to explore the southern coast of the South-Land. He was instructed to explore east past the White City, in the hope of reaching the Islander homeland and determining whether it was worthwhile establishing direct trade with this barely-known people.
Mindful of the Atjuntja watchfulness, Dirkzoon led his two ships from Batavia to Fort Nassau, where they resupplied before steering well south of Cape Hasewint [Cape Leeuwin]. His ships stayed out at sea until they had passed what they judged to be the easternmost Atjuntja dominion, Red Eye, then turned north.
As it happened, Dirkzoon was correct in his navigation, and he brought his ships close to the shore at what were no longer Ajuntja lands.
Unfortunately, these lands were uninhabited for good reason. The endless westerly winds gave the Dutch ships great speed, but the coast they faced was the bleakest that any of them had ever seen or heard of. This barren stretch of coast consisted of seemingly-endless sea cliffs, imposing bulwarks of stone which reached 300 feet high or more, stretching from horizon to everlasting horizon. Above the cliff-tops was nothing at all but featureless emptiness; no trees, no rivers emptying, nothing but hundreds of miles of unwelcoming hostility.
The coast was ever-intimidating, never approachable. Besides the fierce winds pushing them against the cliffs, the seas themselves were a threat. Immense wind-driven swells broke endlessly upon the sea-cliffs, slowly eroding their bases, with force that would shatter even the largest ship to driftwood and splinters in an instant.
In an unusual display of originality, since new lands were normally named after high-ranking Company officers, Dirkzoon christened this endless barrenness as Kust van de Nachtmerrie [Nightmare Coast].
With such an unwelcoming and dangerous coast, Dirkzoon could not keep his ships constantly in sight of the shoreline. To do so risked disaster, since a gust of wind or more than usually potent set of swells would destroy his ships in a heartbeat. Thus, while he maintained enough sightings of the cliffs to know that they continued, he missed the one small break in the cliffs which marked a lonely Islander settlement that the locals so aptly christened in their own language as Isolation.
Dirkzoon kept on, doggedly persistent, until his expedition reached a point where the sea cliffs turned to the south-east. This was the worst possible direction, since it would force the ships ever further away from Batavia. His orders had anticipated sailing around the South-Land and back up to tropical latitudes, where he could return to Batavia in relative safety.
Alas, he now faced seemingly endless sea-cliffs stretching away in the wrong direction. For all Dirkzoon knew, the bleakly featureless cliffs stretched all the way to the South Pole. While he knew that the Islanders lived here somewhere, he did not know how far, or how friendly they would be. With dwindling supplies, hostile seas, and the prospect of a very slow voyage back west against the wind, he was minded to turn back.
Decision time came when the two ships reached a couple of small islands off the coast. The seas calmed enough to allow a few boats to venture ashore and confirm that these islands were uninhabited. The sailors replenished their supplies of fresh water from the islands, but otherwise found that these isolated rocky outposts had nothing to commend them.
While Dirkzoon’s ships lingered at these two islands, a rare shift in the wind saw the breeze come from the east. This fortunate change was enough to convince Dirkzoon to turn back; he might not get another such opportunity. So he ended his exploration and brought his two ships back to Batavia, where he provided them with charts and descriptions of bleakness, but not the new trading markets which Coen had sought [4].
* * *
With the failure of Dirkzoon’s 1622 expedition, Coen and the VOC decided to focus other priorities, rather than further exploration. War had broken out with Spain-Portugal in 1621. The Company concentrated its efforts on protecting its Far Eastern holdings and seizing other places of known value, rather than diverting valuable ships for another costly, challenging, and probably fruitless expedition. Instead, in accordance with their treaty, they built a second trading post near the Atjuntja garrison-city of Seal Point, which they called Fort Zeelandia. Being nearer to the salt-harvesting regions, this new outpost saw greater trading in salt, but otherwise its goods were similar to Fort Nassau.
Coen knew that the South-Land contained other nations and markets. However, he had also learned that gold and sandalwood, the most valuable goods of the South-Land, were what the Islanders came to Atjuntja lands to trade for. They would not find these goods if they ventured further east. The only known trade goods from further east were kunduri and gum cider. Gum cider was of little value to the Company. Kunduri was spoiled in Coen’s eyes for another reason: when he had first tried smoking it, he had inhaled so much of the stronger substance that it had caused him to vomit. He had refused to try kunduri again, and decided that it was worthless. While some other Company officers had sampled the drug and now savoured it, Coen was too stubborn to change his mind.
Thus, over the next four years, Coen ordered that Company ships focus on the known rewards of gold, sandalwood and sweet peppers [5]. This provided valuable capital for supporting Company activities elsewhere in the Orient, particularly for building new ships and recruiting mercenaries for garrisons and raids. The wealth of Asia beckoned; Coen hoped to monopolise shipping between the nations. The commodities of the South-Land were merely building blocks in the corporate edifice he wanted to construct.
The Company only decided to change its policy when it received direct word from the Islanders. In late 1625, a Nangu trading captain named Yuma Tjula discreetly arranged for some Djarwari labourers returning to their homeland to pass on an invitation to the commander of Fort Nassau. This gave the Dutch enough of a description of the southern coast of the South-Land to know how to sail to Islander-held territory.
With this inspiration, the Lords Seventeen commissioned a new expedition of discovery. They sent three ships, under the command of François Thijssen in the Valk, to make contact with the Islanders. Unlike his predecessor, Thijssen was given explicit orders to explore further east, to find a way around the expected edge of the South-Land and return to Batavia by a more northerly route.
So, in 1626 and 1627, François Thijssen commanded an expedition which some would later claim to make him the greatest European explorer of Aururia. Even those who did not give him that rank placed him a close second behind Frederik de Houtman.
Thijssen did not visit set out from Fort Nassau as his predecessor had done, by came directly from Europe via Mauritius. Knowing that the winds were more reliable in higher latitudes, he sailed well south of Cape Hasewint, and did not turn north until he judged he had neared the longitude where Dirkzoon had turned back.
Thijssen had, in fact, gone further east than he intended, and by the time he sailed north he made landfall near the tip of what would come to be called Valk Land [Eyre Peninsula, South Australia]. He followed the coast until he reached the Mutjing city of Pankala, where he and his sailors were the first Europeans to contact a Gunnagalic people in their own land.
From here, Thijssen charted some of the coast, then crossed over to the Island, where he spent a few days at Crescent Bay before sailing on to Jugara on the mainland. Here, among many other accomplishments, he became the first Dutchman to visit the kingdom of Tjibarr, and the first to trade for a significant quantity of kunduri [6].
Due to warnings from both Tjibarr and the Islanders, he avoided any efforts to contact the Yadji. Instead, he sailed further south, where he explored much of the south and east coasts of an island which would later be named for him, although he called it New Holland [Tasmania]. Here, he became the first European to contact the Kurnawal, and the first to be utterly confused by attempts to translate their allusion-laden poetry.
In keeping with his orders, Thijssen sailed further east across a great expanse of sea, until he made landfall on the western coast of the southern island of Aotearoa [New Zealand]. The local Maori king ordered his sailors to depart or be killed, saying that they had no interest in visitors. Thijssen decided that combat was pointless, and withdrew. He sailed up the western coast of Aotearoa, meeting with similar hostility and sometimes violence whenever he made contact with the Maori kingdoms. So he confined himself to mapping the western coast of the two islands (although he believed they were a single island), and sailed north into the Pacific.
Thijssen’s expedition went much further north, visiting Tonga before turning west, sailing north of New Guinea, and returning to Batavia in November 1627. Here, he had a wealth of tales which he planned to tell.
Unfortunately, the world had changed by then.
* * *
“Sire, Your Majesty finds yourself in a situation in which no part of your dominions is not under attack from your enemies, in league and conspiracy so extensive that one can without any exaggeration say that the whole of the rest of the world is turned against Your Majesty alone, in Asia, Africa and Europe.”
- Gaspar de Guzman, Count-Duke of Olivares to Philip IV of Spain (and Philip III of Portugal), 26 July 1625
* * *
[1] Strictly speaking, these Portuguese visitors would have been considered Spanish; those two countries had had a unified crown since 1580. Most of the trade in the East Indies was conducted by the Portuguese, though. At this point, Spain-Portugal and the Netherlands had a truce, and there was still some contact between traders on both sides. (The truce was due to expire in March 1621).
[2] The similar historical attack which happened a couple of weeks earlier was also successful, but one of the (few) casualties was the notable English explorer William Baffin. Baffin had made his name exploring the artic regions of North America, going further north than any before him while searching unsuccessfully for a passage to India. He had recently joined the East India Trading Company, and was present for the assault on Kishm, where he met an untimely end. With the allohistorical delay to the attack, Baffin survives.
[3] This is essentially the same outcome as happened historically, although the historical date for the fall of Hormuz was 22 April 1622.
[4] The progress of Pieter Dirkzoon’s exploration is similar to that of the historical exploration of Francois Thijssen in the ship Gulden Zeepaerdt in 1627; he charted much of the southern coast of Australia but turned back when the coast started to stretch to the south-east. The islands which Dirkzoon discovered are in historical Australia still called the Nuyts Archipelago, which Thijssen named after a high-ranking passenger on his ship.
[5] Sweet peppers are what the Dutch call the various pepperbushes that the Atjuntja cultivate (Tasmannia spp, especially T. lanceolata). The berries of these plants are initially sweet, but with an intense peppery aftertaste. Per weight, they have about ten times the spiciness of common peppers, and they are developing into a profitable spice which the VOC exports to Europe.
[6] Some influential (or, perhaps, influenced) historians would argue that his establishment of trade in kunduri was more important than his contact with Tjibarr.
* * *
Thoughts?
“Portugal and Spain held the keys of the treasure house of the east and the west. But it was neither Portugal with her tiny population, and her empire that was little more than a line of forts and factories 10,000 miles long, nor Spain, for centuries an army on the march and now staggering beneath the responsibilities of her vast and scattered empire, devout to fanaticism, and with an incapacity for economic affairs which seemed almost inspired, which reaped the material harvest of the empires into which they had stepped, the one by patient toil, the other by luck. Gathering spoils which they could not retain, and amassing wealth which slipped through their fingers, they were little more than the political agents of minds more astute and characters better versed in the arts of peace... The economic capital of the new civilization was Antwerp... its typical figure, the paymaster of princes, was the international financier.
Convulsions of war and tides of religion unseated Antwerp from its commercial throne, the city besieged and its dissenting inhabitants dispersed. While force of arms might move borders, wealth migrated according to its own dictates, not the whims of princes. As the seventeenth century neared, international commerce continued in Amsterdam from where it had halted in Antwerp...”
- W H Stanhope, “Religion and the Birth of Capitalism”
* * *
Captain-General Frederik de Houtman’s second voyage to Aururia was, for the Dutch, a shining success. A trade agreement had been negotiated, and a valuable collection of sample trade goods had been brought back to guide the Company’s merchants in their pursuit of profit. Better yet, the expedition had brought back a host of information in charts, logs and journals to aid in the planning and conduct of further ventures.
The descendants of the Atjuntja and the other Aururian peoples would not have quite the same view of de Houtman’s voyage. Of course, that was hardly something that Governor-General Coen or the other senior officers of the Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie would concern themselves over. De Houtman and his fellow captains were showered with honours on their return.
Along with the honours, Jan Pieterszoon Coen gave the captains and their crews strict orders not to talk about their new discoveries. All had sworn oaths to the Company and to the United Netherlands, and those oaths had to be obeyed. They were to reveal nothing of this new South-Land, particularly about its wealth, and most particularly its location.
This order lasted about as long as it took the Dutch sailors to reach the nearest tavern.
The Dutch sailors did not intend to tell foreigners the secrets, exactly, but alcohol and secrets rarely go together. Mostly, they talked to other Dutchmen, who in turn repeated rumours to other compatriots. The taverns of Batavia were not the exclusive preserve of Dutchmen; apart from the local Javanese, this was a trading post sometimes visited by Englishmen, and occasionally by the Portuguese [1].
The Dutch sailors did not give detailed directions, but, inevitably, they talked. Within a few months, the Javanese, English and Portuguese knew that the VOC had discovered some fantastical new land somewhere to the south. Or was it to the east? Rumours spread, no two of them the same, about where this new land was and what it contained. The stories spread to Timor, to Malaya, to Surat, and in time to London, Lisbon and Madrid...
* * *
With the prestige secured from his second voyage, de Houtman successfully manoeuvred for command of the third expedition to the South-Land. He obtained appointment to the task of negotiating for the construction of the first Dutch outpost on the South-Land, and overseeing the first trade conducted there.
De Houtman set about his new task with enthusiasm. With a fresh fleet of ships loaded with carefully-chosen supplies, he returned to the South-Land in 1621 to establish a trading post. His chosen site was familiar from two previous visits: the Swan River. Given that he had already secured the permission of the King of Kings, it did not take long for de Houtman to negotiate the local governor’s agreement to set up his new trading outpost.
De Houtman had chosen a site on the south bank at the mouth of the Swan River, at a distance he thought was about fifteen miles from the local garrison-city. He optimistically called the site Fort Nassau [Fremantle], even though his trade treaty stated – and the governor had reiterated – that no fortifications were to be built. His sailors were set to the task of constructing houses and other key dwellings. De Houtman used a few judiciously-chosen gifts to obtain the assistance of some local labourers to speed the process. Fort Nassau was developed into a useable state and declared open after three months, although completing some stone buildings would take over another year.
Atjuntja nobles and merchants (often the same people) had already started to gather before Fort Nassau officially opened. The samples of Dutch trade goods the previous year had attracted a great deal of interest, and de Houtman assured all arrivals that they would be given the opportunity to bargain for similar goods. De Houtman had always been an astute bargainer, and he was in a particularly favourable situation here. In most cases, the Atjuntja merchants bid against each other to obtain the most favoured goods.
Even with his previous experience of the White City, he was surprised by some of the priorities they set. The most highly-prized items were anything which showed great craftsmanship; lacquered goods, richly-decorated textiles, and the like. Steel ingots were worth half their weight in gold, and tin ingots only slightly less valued. Rum and brandy were held in similarly high esteem, especially after de Houtman’s traders generously provided some free samples. Wine, though, they would not accept. Nor, despite his best efforts, could he persuade any Atjuntja to trade lead ingots for anything.
In exchange, de Houtman’s trade ships were laden down with the commodities he had most desired. Gold and silver in abundance. Sandalwood in smaller quantities but, if anything, greater value. Dyes, especially their magnificent indigo. Considerable quantities of their mints and peppers and lesser spices, brought mostly to see if they could be resold for greater value. Yet despite his best efforts, he could not persuade any Atjuntja to offer any kunduri at a price he would accept. Instead, he received many variations of responses which amounted to, “Kunduri is not something we trade, it is something we trade for.”
Still, after de Houtman concluding his trading, he had the ebullient feeling that he had accomplished as much here as in his previous voyage. He left Fort Nassau in the command of a junior officer, and sailed for Batavia. There, he received another hero’s welcome. As de Houtman had expected, Coen was well-pleased with him.
Unfortunately, Coen would not stay pleased for long.
* * *
With trade expanding between Batavia and the South-Land, the rumours of newfound Dutch wealth spread ever further. They caused some consternation in London, where the governor and directors of the East India Trading Company had been considering a delicate situation.
An opportunity had arisen in the Middle East, where Persia had declared war on Spain, and was besieging the Spanish garrison on the island of Kishm, near the vital Spanish-held island of Hormuz. That port had been in Portuguese and then Spanish hands for nearly a century, and offered a gateway to Persia. The Persian commanders had requested English help in capturing Kishm and then Hormuz, and had offered to allow English merchants entry into the valuable silk trade.
Alas, opportunity was balanced by danger, namely, the risk of outright war with Spain. England and Spain had been at peace for nearly two decades, and the Company might find that its pursuit of profit in the Gulf would cause a broader war. The heads of the Company were minded to ignore that risk, trusting to Providence and the good offices of King James I to ensure peace was preserved.
However, now the governor and directors had a new risk to consider: the rising power of the Dutch, and more precisely that of the VOC. The two companies had been rivals in the East Indies for two decades, until they negotiated a recent truce. Now, if the VOC had found a spectacular new source of wealth, could they be trusted to hold to that truce? If not, perhaps it would be better to cooperate with Spain against the Dutch, rather than starting what could become two wars.
The directors considered this dilemma for a few days. In the end, they decided that the immediate opportunity was worthwhile. Trade with Persia would be a valuable new market. Besides, the Spanish were Catholics, and not to be trusted. So they accepted the proposed alliance with the Persians, and decided that they would deal with the consequences when they came.
The planned attack on Kishm Island went ahead two weeks later than originally planned. The English fleet bombarded the fort and quickly forced the Spanish garrison to surrender; the assault sustained very few casualties [2]. Bolstered by this success, the English and Persian forces conducted a joint operation against Hormuz, with the Persians attacking by land while the English scattered the Spanish fleet and bombarding the castle.
Hormuz surrendered on 7 May 1622, and the Persians took control of the island, while the Spanish retreated to a secondary outpost at Muscat. Honouring their agreement, all Christian prisoners were repatriated to England, and plans began for the exchange of English cloth for Persian silk. Spain was outraged, and the Company was forced to pay ten thousand pounds each to James I and the Duke of Buckingham in compensation for the efforts they went to in preserving peace [3].
* * *
Frederik de Houtman was an extraordinary man. An explorer, but also a self-promoter and liar. An astronomer and a visionary, recorder of constellations unknown and charter of lands unvisited by Europeans. A linguist who recorded the first European dictionary of the Malayan language, and an optimist who always trusted that fate would reward him. An opportunist with an eye for the main chance, but whose vision ultimately deserted him.
After his three voyages to the South-Land, de Houtman was eager to return to the Netherlands to describe in person what he had found. And, of course, to receive the adulation he believed he deserved for his discoveries.
Governor-General Coen willingly allowed de Houtman to return home, but was dismayed by what happened when the explorer made it to the Netherlands. De Houtman took the opportunity to describe his triumphs ad nauseum. He was careful enough to present his tales only to those who could be relied upon to keep the details secret: Company lords and officers, the Stadtholder, and other government officials.
Unfortunately, that was the limit of de Houtman’s discretion. To hear him speak, a listener would believe that his actions alone had been responsible for the discovery of the South-Land. And that no-one else had the wit to recognise the opportunities. To add to his misdoings, de Houtman presented a magnificent golden neck-ring to Maurice of Nassau, Prince of Orange, and Stadtholder of Holland, Zeeland, Utrecht, Guelders and Overijssel. This neck-ring was a prize which de Houtman had collected while in the South-Land, but he had retained it rather than giving it to the Company.
De Houtman’s generous gift endeared him to the Stadtholder, but it enraged the Lords Seventeen. Combined with his ever more frequent self-promotion, it ensured that he would never be trusted by the Company again. De Houtman was denied any further commissions, and lived out the remainder of his life in Europe. While he died a rich man, he never again set foot on the South-Land.
* * *
As the years turned, despite de Houtman’s departure, and regardless of the distant battles and manoeuvring in the Gulf, the Dutch were busy shipping goods to and from their newly-discovered land. A few outbound fleets from the Netherlands were ordered to stop at Fort Nassau on their way to Batavia, conducting trade with the Atjuntja merchants. Prices had fallen after the initial novelty – no longer did the Atjuntja value steel as half the worth of gold – but any Dutch ship which stopped to trade at Fort Nassau always left with more valuable cargo than when it arrived.
Fortunately for the Dutch, the Atjuntja and the rest of the world, the long shipping times meant that most diseases were not exchanged between the two peoples. Incubation periods were mostly too short; a disease would burn its way through a ship’s crew either before it reached the South-Land, or before the departing ships made their next landfall at Batavia.
Not all diseases were contained by the ocean barrier, of course. The first venereal diseases had been left behind at Seal Point in 1620 when de Houtman’s expedition visited there. Blue-sleep was an ever-present threat to Dutch sailors when they came ashore; many of them caught the illness. Yet this was a fast-burning disease; while many sailors fell ill and some died from it, it ran through a ship’s crew before they reached the Indies.
The greatest threat awaiting the Dutch in the South-Land was the malady called the Waiting Death. No epidemic of Marnitja had swept through the Atjuntja lands in the last decade before the Dutch arrival, so they were safe, for now.
The isolation of the seas would not last, of course. Eventually an asymptomatic carrier would make the journey, or a fast ship would carry disease to a new shore. If nothing else, some maladies would linger in blankets or textiles and bring Eurasian diseases to the South-Land, or Aururian diseases to the Old World, but that time was not yet.
* * *
While the Company officers were glad of the profitable trade they had found at Fort Nassau, they were eager to discover more. The first visit to the White City had told them that the Islanders lived far to the east, but not the details of how to travel there.
So a few of their officers did some exploration by land along the Atjuntja road network. That was tolerated, up to a point, provided that they did not attempt to trade. Yet they were always watched, and discouraged most strongly from coming by land to the White City or any other place where they might encounter Islander traders. The King of Kings did not wish his two trading partners to contact each other directly, realising full well the problems that this would bring for the carefully controlled Atjuntja internal trade and tribute networks.
Thus, the Dutch land explorations gave them some grasp of the geography of the Atjuntja dominions, but did not let them explore any further trade. Some inland regions were also expressly off limits, such as the vicinity of Star Hill or the main gold mines at Golden Blood. To build new trade networks, they would have to venture along the seas.
In 1622, Governor-General Coen ordered the first voyage be sent to explore past the Atjuntja dominions in pursuit of new trade markets. Pieter Dirkzoon was named captain of the Leeuwin, with the yacht Nijptang accompanying, and given orders to explore the southern coast of the South-Land. He was instructed to explore east past the White City, in the hope of reaching the Islander homeland and determining whether it was worthwhile establishing direct trade with this barely-known people.
Mindful of the Atjuntja watchfulness, Dirkzoon led his two ships from Batavia to Fort Nassau, where they resupplied before steering well south of Cape Hasewint [Cape Leeuwin]. His ships stayed out at sea until they had passed what they judged to be the easternmost Atjuntja dominion, Red Eye, then turned north.
As it happened, Dirkzoon was correct in his navigation, and he brought his ships close to the shore at what were no longer Ajuntja lands.
Unfortunately, these lands were uninhabited for good reason. The endless westerly winds gave the Dutch ships great speed, but the coast they faced was the bleakest that any of them had ever seen or heard of. This barren stretch of coast consisted of seemingly-endless sea cliffs, imposing bulwarks of stone which reached 300 feet high or more, stretching from horizon to everlasting horizon. Above the cliff-tops was nothing at all but featureless emptiness; no trees, no rivers emptying, nothing but hundreds of miles of unwelcoming hostility.
The coast was ever-intimidating, never approachable. Besides the fierce winds pushing them against the cliffs, the seas themselves were a threat. Immense wind-driven swells broke endlessly upon the sea-cliffs, slowly eroding their bases, with force that would shatter even the largest ship to driftwood and splinters in an instant.
In an unusual display of originality, since new lands were normally named after high-ranking Company officers, Dirkzoon christened this endless barrenness as Kust van de Nachtmerrie [Nightmare Coast].
With such an unwelcoming and dangerous coast, Dirkzoon could not keep his ships constantly in sight of the shoreline. To do so risked disaster, since a gust of wind or more than usually potent set of swells would destroy his ships in a heartbeat. Thus, while he maintained enough sightings of the cliffs to know that they continued, he missed the one small break in the cliffs which marked a lonely Islander settlement that the locals so aptly christened in their own language as Isolation.
Dirkzoon kept on, doggedly persistent, until his expedition reached a point where the sea cliffs turned to the south-east. This was the worst possible direction, since it would force the ships ever further away from Batavia. His orders had anticipated sailing around the South-Land and back up to tropical latitudes, where he could return to Batavia in relative safety.
Alas, he now faced seemingly endless sea-cliffs stretching away in the wrong direction. For all Dirkzoon knew, the bleakly featureless cliffs stretched all the way to the South Pole. While he knew that the Islanders lived here somewhere, he did not know how far, or how friendly they would be. With dwindling supplies, hostile seas, and the prospect of a very slow voyage back west against the wind, he was minded to turn back.
Decision time came when the two ships reached a couple of small islands off the coast. The seas calmed enough to allow a few boats to venture ashore and confirm that these islands were uninhabited. The sailors replenished their supplies of fresh water from the islands, but otherwise found that these isolated rocky outposts had nothing to commend them.
While Dirkzoon’s ships lingered at these two islands, a rare shift in the wind saw the breeze come from the east. This fortunate change was enough to convince Dirkzoon to turn back; he might not get another such opportunity. So he ended his exploration and brought his two ships back to Batavia, where he provided them with charts and descriptions of bleakness, but not the new trading markets which Coen had sought [4].
* * *
With the failure of Dirkzoon’s 1622 expedition, Coen and the VOC decided to focus other priorities, rather than further exploration. War had broken out with Spain-Portugal in 1621. The Company concentrated its efforts on protecting its Far Eastern holdings and seizing other places of known value, rather than diverting valuable ships for another costly, challenging, and probably fruitless expedition. Instead, in accordance with their treaty, they built a second trading post near the Atjuntja garrison-city of Seal Point, which they called Fort Zeelandia. Being nearer to the salt-harvesting regions, this new outpost saw greater trading in salt, but otherwise its goods were similar to Fort Nassau.
Coen knew that the South-Land contained other nations and markets. However, he had also learned that gold and sandalwood, the most valuable goods of the South-Land, were what the Islanders came to Atjuntja lands to trade for. They would not find these goods if they ventured further east. The only known trade goods from further east were kunduri and gum cider. Gum cider was of little value to the Company. Kunduri was spoiled in Coen’s eyes for another reason: when he had first tried smoking it, he had inhaled so much of the stronger substance that it had caused him to vomit. He had refused to try kunduri again, and decided that it was worthless. While some other Company officers had sampled the drug and now savoured it, Coen was too stubborn to change his mind.
Thus, over the next four years, Coen ordered that Company ships focus on the known rewards of gold, sandalwood and sweet peppers [5]. This provided valuable capital for supporting Company activities elsewhere in the Orient, particularly for building new ships and recruiting mercenaries for garrisons and raids. The wealth of Asia beckoned; Coen hoped to monopolise shipping between the nations. The commodities of the South-Land were merely building blocks in the corporate edifice he wanted to construct.
The Company only decided to change its policy when it received direct word from the Islanders. In late 1625, a Nangu trading captain named Yuma Tjula discreetly arranged for some Djarwari labourers returning to their homeland to pass on an invitation to the commander of Fort Nassau. This gave the Dutch enough of a description of the southern coast of the South-Land to know how to sail to Islander-held territory.
With this inspiration, the Lords Seventeen commissioned a new expedition of discovery. They sent three ships, under the command of François Thijssen in the Valk, to make contact with the Islanders. Unlike his predecessor, Thijssen was given explicit orders to explore further east, to find a way around the expected edge of the South-Land and return to Batavia by a more northerly route.
So, in 1626 and 1627, François Thijssen commanded an expedition which some would later claim to make him the greatest European explorer of Aururia. Even those who did not give him that rank placed him a close second behind Frederik de Houtman.
Thijssen did not visit set out from Fort Nassau as his predecessor had done, by came directly from Europe via Mauritius. Knowing that the winds were more reliable in higher latitudes, he sailed well south of Cape Hasewint, and did not turn north until he judged he had neared the longitude where Dirkzoon had turned back.
Thijssen had, in fact, gone further east than he intended, and by the time he sailed north he made landfall near the tip of what would come to be called Valk Land [Eyre Peninsula, South Australia]. He followed the coast until he reached the Mutjing city of Pankala, where he and his sailors were the first Europeans to contact a Gunnagalic people in their own land.
From here, Thijssen charted some of the coast, then crossed over to the Island, where he spent a few days at Crescent Bay before sailing on to Jugara on the mainland. Here, among many other accomplishments, he became the first Dutchman to visit the kingdom of Tjibarr, and the first to trade for a significant quantity of kunduri [6].
Due to warnings from both Tjibarr and the Islanders, he avoided any efforts to contact the Yadji. Instead, he sailed further south, where he explored much of the south and east coasts of an island which would later be named for him, although he called it New Holland [Tasmania]. Here, he became the first European to contact the Kurnawal, and the first to be utterly confused by attempts to translate their allusion-laden poetry.
In keeping with his orders, Thijssen sailed further east across a great expanse of sea, until he made landfall on the western coast of the southern island of Aotearoa [New Zealand]. The local Maori king ordered his sailors to depart or be killed, saying that they had no interest in visitors. Thijssen decided that combat was pointless, and withdrew. He sailed up the western coast of Aotearoa, meeting with similar hostility and sometimes violence whenever he made contact with the Maori kingdoms. So he confined himself to mapping the western coast of the two islands (although he believed they were a single island), and sailed north into the Pacific.
Thijssen’s expedition went much further north, visiting Tonga before turning west, sailing north of New Guinea, and returning to Batavia in November 1627. Here, he had a wealth of tales which he planned to tell.
Unfortunately, the world had changed by then.
* * *
“Sire, Your Majesty finds yourself in a situation in which no part of your dominions is not under attack from your enemies, in league and conspiracy so extensive that one can without any exaggeration say that the whole of the rest of the world is turned against Your Majesty alone, in Asia, Africa and Europe.”
- Gaspar de Guzman, Count-Duke of Olivares to Philip IV of Spain (and Philip III of Portugal), 26 July 1625
* * *
[1] Strictly speaking, these Portuguese visitors would have been considered Spanish; those two countries had had a unified crown since 1580. Most of the trade in the East Indies was conducted by the Portuguese, though. At this point, Spain-Portugal and the Netherlands had a truce, and there was still some contact between traders on both sides. (The truce was due to expire in March 1621).
[2] The similar historical attack which happened a couple of weeks earlier was also successful, but one of the (few) casualties was the notable English explorer William Baffin. Baffin had made his name exploring the artic regions of North America, going further north than any before him while searching unsuccessfully for a passage to India. He had recently joined the East India Trading Company, and was present for the assault on Kishm, where he met an untimely end. With the allohistorical delay to the attack, Baffin survives.
[3] This is essentially the same outcome as happened historically, although the historical date for the fall of Hormuz was 22 April 1622.
[4] The progress of Pieter Dirkzoon’s exploration is similar to that of the historical exploration of Francois Thijssen in the ship Gulden Zeepaerdt in 1627; he charted much of the southern coast of Australia but turned back when the coast started to stretch to the south-east. The islands which Dirkzoon discovered are in historical Australia still called the Nuyts Archipelago, which Thijssen named after a high-ranking passenger on his ship.
[5] Sweet peppers are what the Dutch call the various pepperbushes that the Atjuntja cultivate (Tasmannia spp, especially T. lanceolata). The berries of these plants are initially sweet, but with an intense peppery aftertaste. Per weight, they have about ten times the spiciness of common peppers, and they are developing into a profitable spice which the VOC exports to Europe.
[6] Some influential (or, perhaps, influenced) historians would argue that his establishment of trade in kunduri was more important than his contact with Tjibarr.
* * *
Thoughts?
Great, two merchant powers encounter each other, at last!
They were told during their second expedition that lead is too common to be worthy:
Well, aren't the Dutch stubborn?
They were told during their second expedition that lead is too common to be worthy:
So what? They continued to propose lead to the Aururians... It reminds me anecdots about the GM, which (purportedly) repeatedly tried to sell right-hand-driven cars to the Japanese in the 1960-ies. I think that such blunders on the part of the VOC only increase feeling of genuiness of your narration.
Jugara (according to the map) is situated very close to the Yadji Imperium's borders; it is very important hot spot in the Yadji-Tjibarr conflicts for the Murray's mouth, too. Thus, even if Thijssen didn't contact Yadji officials, he most definitely was detected by Yadji spies. Taking into account the fact that Jugara is a 'free port' of sorts, some of local merchants, with whom the Dutch traded, could be paid agents of the Yadji government. I guess the Yadji would be very interested in exploring new possibilities offered by the Dutch, and next European expedition will be approached by them with some interesting proposals.
*Thirty-Years War comes to Aururia... Or its effects, at least.
Jared, the amount of thought that has so clearly gone into every part of this superlative narrative is incredibly impressive. You are probably in the top 5 or so writers I have ever read, certainly in terms of the amount of detail you present and how fluidly and well you present it. The usual expression is to say someone's words "paint a picture"; this goes far beyond that, into some kind of futuristic virtual reality, able to touch all of the viewer's senses. In short, it is simply not possible to describe how much I enjoy this!
In large part, yes. The Nangu and Gunnagal are both rivals to the Yadji, and don't hold a high opinion of them. The warnings were also partly genuine, though. The Yadji can be quite hostile to outsiders, and it's hard to say how they will react to a whole new nation.
Danke schon.
Yes. It has taken them a little while. Although I've retconned in an initial meeting between some Nangu resident in the White City; I decided that it was unlikely that de Houtman would have no contact at all. This wasn't a particularly productive meeting, though; all the Nangu trading ships had left by then.
Well, aren't the Dutch stubborn?
I figured that the Dutch would be bull-headed in some ways. They have lead that they want to sell, so they're going to try their damnedest to sell it. This is not quite on the same level as trying to sell sand to Egypt, but the VOC will keep trying to push lead for a while in the hope that someone will buy it.
The Yadji priestly hierarchy is certainly aware that the Dutch have visited, and has found out a little about them. The actual Yadji emperor isn't really aware of this event; his grip on sanity was never very firm, and has now slipped more or less completely.
In some ways, perhaps. The Yadji are rather insular, though. They view everything in terms of their own religious hierarchy, where they are the chosen people and everyone else, well, are lesser races. They wouldn't be completely blind to the possibilities of alliance and cooperation - after all, the Yadji want to regain control of the *Murray Mouth - but they may show less initiative about offering those proposals.
The Gunnagal, on the other hand, will have already come up with ten thousand schemes to try to use the Dutch to their own advantage. And many of these schemes will be to advance their own faction within Tjibarr, not about fighting the Yadji.
There will likely be some consequences of the *Thirty Years which affect Aururia. The Dutch are fighting the Spanish-Portuguese at the moment, after all, and England's involvement may turn out to be more than the abortive effort they managed in OTL.
However, I was mostly referring to the effects of Aururian contact on the rest of the world...
Similar to how they acted in OTL, they don't really like outsiders all that much. They go to Aururia to trade, but they really don't like other people coming to visit them. The various Maori kingdoms aren't all that fond of each other, either; it's not just foreigners that they dislike.
Wow. Thanks. I do try to give an impression of what life would have been like for them.
Valdemar II
Banned
Wasn't it for a large part a result of their cannibalism, here where they have had access to significant protein sources for centuries, wouldn't they have a less paranoid dealings with outsiders.
The *Maori here are still cannibalistic (in most kingdoms, at least), although it has evolved into a ritualised form rather than the more large-scale events which were reported in OTL.
However, the *Maori are still quite hostile to outsiders, for a variety of cultural and historical reasons. Partly this is a legacy of their earlier wars. Also, another is that having a much higher population density than most of Aururia - and not having been politically united to the same degree - they are much more able to raid each other. Most of these raids come by sea, with lots of canoeloads of men. This means that the *Maori are quite hostile to any strangers approaching by sea.
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mojojojo
Gone Fishin'
So with more interisting sites in Australia, will the Maori be left alone by Europe longer than in OTL?
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