Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

On Company Business The Rijckloff van Goens Mission to Siam, 1650

1998; Cambridge University Press; Volume: 22; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1017/s0165115300011943

2041-2827

Alfons van der Kraan,

Global Maritime and Colonial Histories

On 13 April 1650 the young Chief ( Opperhoofd ) of the Siam factory of Dutch East India Company (VOC), the Merchant ( Koopman ) Jan van Muijden, arrived at Batavia aboard the flute de Gecroonde Liefde (Crowned Love), with a cargo unusual even by the standards of this thriving stapling port. Aboard were a total of twelve elephants, a gift from the King of Siam and his Mandarins, Oya Sabartiban ( Okya Sabartiban ) and Oya Berckelang ( Okya Phrakhlang ), to Governor-General Cornelis van der Lijn and the four Councillors of the Indies present in Batavia at the time, one of whom was the Director-General and second-in-command François Caron. When Van Muijden stepped ashore, he presented Van der Lijn and the Councillors with a letter from Prasat-Thong, the King of Siam, in which the King requested several precious diamond rings for himself and for his Mandarin, Oya Sabartiban, ‘various curiosities from the Netherlands and elsewhere’, military assistance against his rebellious subjects in Cambodia and on the Malay peninsula, and an end to the all-too-frequent molesting by Company ships of Chinese and Portuguese vessels en route to Siam.