Merchant-Diplomats Struggling for Recognition: Sino-Dutch Encounters, 1655–1795

• In Event: Economics, History, and International Politics

Abstract

The Dutch East India Company (VOC) and other chartered companies feature centrally in the scholarship on Europe’s early modern encounters with Asia. The relative ease with which the Dutch accommodated themselves to rules of the Chinese tribute system is commonly attributed to the fact that, as a chartered company rather than a state, the VOC was less constrained by systemic rules governing inter-state relations in Europe than others. In a literature that focuses predominantly on economic and cultural exchange, the diplomatic aspects of early Sino-Dutch relations have received very little attention. Focusing on diplomatic relations instead, the ambiguous status of chartered companies like the VOC as members of a European states system raises an important question: to what extent can the VOC be considered a European diplomatic agent in early modern Sino-European encounters? This paper re-examines the diplomatic aspects of Sino-Dutch encounters, specifically attempts to negotiate over status with the Qing government in Beijing. Building on recent scholarship on company-states in world history, I argue that rather than being completely free of European systemic constraints, Dutch envoys constantly struggled between their role as merchants on the one hand and their role as diplomatic agents informed by European diplomatic practices on the other hand. Dutch quests to negotiate diplomatic relations as a foundation for trade with China resulted in several embassies to Beijing that were characterized by disputes over rules governing the different systems of Europe and East Asia. This analysis contributes to explaining variation in the outcomes of early modern Sino-European encounters and has implications for contemporary US-China competition over shaping the international order as well as encounters between other types of systemic configurations.

Author

• Frieder Dengler, American University