Farewell


On retro blogs nowadays you can often see photo galleries of Soviet cities in the 70s and 80s which, with their faded colors, sterile compositions and of course shabby scenes intend to suggest only an amazement from the distance or at most a relief like “thanks to God we are over this”.


Valkorn, that is Moscow-based designer and photographer Vladimir Korneev, who often delights his readers with vintage photo galleries – for example a few days ago he uploaded a brilliant one on the introduction of Кока-Кола and Фанта to the city in the early 80s – recently also published a series on Moscow as it looked thirty years ago.


The pictures are fairly accurately dated on the one hand by the poster of the 1980 Olympics in Moscow and on the other hand by Maslyakov’s 1974 Brezhnev poster (“the preservation of peace is one of the main tasks of our state”) whose few examples which, out of forgetfulness, were left on the streets even after 10 November 1982 were surely far from such good conditions.


These images, however, are absolutely not as sterile and banal as we are accustomed to from those years. No doubt, they reflect the shabbiness of the city and its inhabitants as well as the pressing atmosphere of the period, but they also include a shade of that loving and ironic attention which makes Russian photography so attractive – true, not around 1981 but rather in our days.









And no wonder. Because these pictures were taken not in 1981 but thirty years later, in 2009, for the film The Farewell affair which, starring Kusturica, treated one of the greatest spy scandals of the Cold War with an extreme faithfulness in all physical details. Valkorn’s Russian readers invariably confess in their commentaries that until the last images they thought they were looking at real archive photos. This, of course, on a second view changes the meaning of the pictures, and particularly the meaning of this mysterious, distinctively Russian attention to the subject of the picture. It is not the Moscow photographer of the early 1980s who sees his city so awkward and nevertheless so lovable, but the contemporary photographer who portrays the city of the early 80s in a key as he would photograph it now. I wonder how he would have photographed it back then.

Each picture is really living when enlarged, but these latter ones just absolutely so.


Bear ceremony


The traditional bear ceremony of the closest linguistic relatives of us Hungarians, the Khantis and Mansis living along the Siberian Ob river, has more than one purpose. They primarily try to placate the spirit of the bear slain, to turn away from themselves the suspicion of his murder, and to make him believe that he fell victim to a simple accident. However, ethnography has probably never recorded any case when the Khantis and Mansis held a ceremony to drive away the bear.


Nevertheless, this is exactly what happened the day before yesterday in Moscow. The Nezavisimaya Gazeta announced already in late January that the “Fair Russia” which defines itself as a leftist party – and which tries to make itself appear as the opposition of the Kremlin, while many consider it a creature of the Kremlin itself, and it is a fact that the party and its leader, chairman of the upper house of the Russian parliament Sergei Mironov has always firmly supported Presidents Putin and Medvedev – intends to nominate as a candidate for the parliamentary elections of 13 March in the Khanti-Mansi autonomous territory (also called Yugria) a local electrician called Dmitry Stalin. However, the Council of Elders of the two ethnic groups have protested in an open letter addressed to the Kremlin not only because of the Russian – that is, not indigenous – origins of the candidate, but also because they regard it as an ugly trick against the purity of the elections that in the middle of the nostalgia for Stalin growing all over Russia the Fair Russia tries to gain an unfair advantage with the name of the candidate.


The secretary of the ethnic organization “Saving Yugria” has already said that they would hold a demonstration with tents and shaman dances in Moscow, in front of the Russian parliament. According to the MariUver Finno-Ugric blog in the previous weeks they already held a number of similar demonstrations in the largest cities on the way from Yugria to Moscow, * but the Russian blogs published photos only on the spectacular performance of the day before yesterday in Moscow. The best photos could have been taken by Ilya Varlamov, a constant witness to all Moscow demonstrations, had he not been in delay. Nevertheless, even so he was able to publish some well-captured moments of the end of the event. The main part of the demonstration – as well as the already almost ritual police searching – was documented with some good pictures by Alexandr Basalaev and Vasily Ivanov.









It is not yet known whether the ceremony will cause the party to withdraw its candidate of such a big name. And it also indicates the lack of transparency of Russian internal politics that according to the MariUver blog the “Saving Yugria”, organizer of the demonstration, has been since 2008 a member of the local advisory board of the ruling party. Anyway, the spectacular presentation and its coverage at least call attention to these small Ob-Ugric peoples which are seriously threatened by assimilation.



Dissolving

Roman bridge above the Wadi al-Murr near Mosul, Iraq. Photo by the German archaeologist
Max von Oppenheim researching the ancient city of Tell Halaf, 1920s.
First publication: National Geographic, November 2009

Roman bridge, Eski Mosul, with policeman on the right. Cat. Stein LHAS Photo 23/1 (38)
Photo by the Hungarian-British archaeologist Aurel Stein reconstructing the route
of Alexander the Great in Persia, 1930s. First publication: the Aurel Stein site
of the Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences
prepared by us, April 2008.

¿Pirata, corsario o filibustero?


MARE LIBERUM
SIVE
DE IURE QUOD BATAVIS
COMPETIT AD INDICA-
NA COMMERCIA
DISSERTATIO


CAPUT I


Iure gentium quibusvis ad quosvis libe-
ram esse navigatione

Por la Ley de las Naciones, la navegación es libre para cualquier persona

Mi intención es demostrar breve y claramente que los holandeses —es decir, los súbditos de los Países Bajos Unidos— tienen derecho a navegar a las Indias Orientales tal como están haciendo ahora, y a entablar comercio con las gentes de allí. Voy a basar mi argumentación en el siguiente axioma, bien específico e impecable, de la Ley de las Naciones Unidas, definido como norma primaria o primer principio y cuyo espíritu es por sí mismo evidente e inmutable, a saber: Cada nación es libre de viajar a cualquier otra nación y comerciar con ella.
El mismo Dios así lo dice usando la voz de la naturaleza; y en la medida en que no es su voluntad que la naturaleza provea a todos los lugares de todas las necesidades de la vida, Él ordena que unas naciones sobresalgan en un arte y otras en otro.


¿Por qué es ésta Su voluntad, sino por haber querido que las amistades humanas se engendren a partir de las necesidades y de los recursos compartidos, pues de otro modo, considerándose las personas por completo autosuficientes, se harían por tal razón asociales? Así, mediante un decreto de justicia divina se logra que un pueblo deba satisfacer las necesidades de otro, en orden, según dice el escritor romano Plinio, que lo que se haya producido en un lugar cualquiera se muestre como destinado a todos.

CAPUT II

Lusitanos nullum habere ius dominii in eos
Indos ad quos Batavi navigant
titulo inventionis

Los portugueses no tienen derecho de soberanía, a título de
descubrimiento, sobre las Indias Orientales
donde los holandeses viajan.

Los portugueses no son soberanos de aquellas partes de las Indias Orientales adonde los holandeses navegan, es decir, Java, Ceilán y la mayoría de las Molucas. Esto se prueba por el argumento incontrovertible de que nadie es soberano de una cosa que nunca ha poseído y que nadie ha ofrecido nunca en su nombre. Estas islas de que hablamos, ahora y siempre han tenido sus propios reyes, su propio gobierno, sus propias leyes y sus propios sistemas jurídicos. Sus habitantes permiten que los portugueses comercien con ellos, al igual que conceden a otras naciones el mismo privilegio. Por tanto, desde el momento en que los portugueses pagan peajes y tienen que obtener permiso de los gobernantes locales para comerciar, se prueba suficientemente que no van allí como reyes sino como extranjeros.
CAPUT III



Lusitanos in Indos non habere ius
dominii titulo donationis
Pontificiae

Los portugueses no tienen ningún derecho de soberanía sobre
las Indias Orientales, en virtud del título basado en la
Donación Pontificia

Además, si los portugueses van a utilizar como autoridad para su jurisdicción sobre las Indias Orientales la partición hecha por el Papa Alejandro VI, entonces, ante todo, dos puntos deben ser tomados en consideración.
En primer lugar, ¿deseaba el Papa simplemente resolver las diferencias entre portugueses y españoles?

En segundo lugar, ¿pretendía el Papa conceder a dos naciones un tercio del mundo para cada una?

[Nota del traductor Magoffinat: «The Cambridge Modern History, I, 23-24 tiene una buena página sobre esta famosa bula del 14 de mayo de 1493 (modificada el 7 de junio de 1494 por el tratado de Tordesillas)»].

Imágenes: Yale Law Library
Traducción: Ralph van Deman Magoffinat (On Line Library of Liberty)
Traducción: (idem, Google Books)
ver también: Grotius Exhibit de la Yale Law Library



Sin querer interrumpir la solemne andadura de esta entrada, llegados a este punto nos gustaría saludar y presentar a la benevolencia de los lectores de Río Wang al nuevo autor de nuestro blog, Walter, que inaugura con este espléndido ensayo una serie sobre los secretos de su patria de elección, la fabulosa Singapur. (Studiolum)
Apología

El Mare Liberum o Mare Liberum, sive de iure quod Batavis competit ad indicana commercia dissertatio, de Hugo Grotius (Hugo de Groot) 1583-1645, trascendió su tiempo y lugar para convertirse en el fundamento del derecho marítimo. Publicado en 1609, deriva del De Jure Praedae, de 1604, escrito para la Compañía Holandesa de las Indias Orientales (VOC, Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie) con el fin de justificar las agresiones que los holandeses cometían sobre los buques mercantes portugueses, y más en concreto, a causa de la captura de la Santa Catarina, una carraca portuguesa cargada de tesoros, en la entrada oriental del estrecho de Singapur, el 25 de febrero 1603. Las repercusiones de aquel acto fueron inmensas. ¿Fue un acto de corso, es decir, actuaron legalmente los piratas holandeses como corsarios, o no? ¿Era la VOC en realidad una avanzada de los Estados Generales Holandeses en su lucha contra España y por tanto, dada la unión de las coronas, en contra de Portugal?

Consideremos primero los difusos límites entre piratería, corso y filibusterismo:
«… la piratería, el corso y (como una ramificación legal de éste) el filibusterismo representan desde el punto de vista de las definiciones legales europeas actividades muy distintas. La piratería la ejercen personas particulares unidas en una banda al margen de la sociedad y, por tanto, también fuera de la protección de la ley. Los piratas fueron considerados enemigos del pueblo y del Estado. El corso, al contrario, es un concepto estrechamente relacionado con la idea de la guerra justa … Los corsarios operaban bajo una denominada patente de corso o carta de represalia (neerlandés: kaperbrief, commissie van retorsie). Se supone que técnicamente sólo podía expedirse una patente de corso si en realidad antes se habían sufrido daños del enemigo. La patente de corso, por lo tanto, permitía la incautación de bienes de un enemigo (declarado) como una forma de reparación de guerra. Esta lógica limitaba los ataques a los buques que navegaran bajo bandera enemiga (o bajo bandera de cualquier aliado a un enemigo) y exclusivamente en tiempos de guerra … Así estaba diseñado el corso desde un punto de vista legal teórico. La práctica real fue, por descontado, muy diferente, y el corso efectivamente se convirtió en una actividad de proporciones imprevistas y desmedidas durante el final del siglo XVI y principios del XVII
A fines del XVI y principios del XVII, los corsarios europeos estaban autorizados a apresar buques mercantes de un enemigo (declarado) bajo las instrucciones directas y explícitas de su gobierno, autoridades o puerto de origen. Por su parte, un filibustero (neerlandés: vrijbuiter; alemán: Freibeuter; francés: flibustier), término estrechamente relacionado, era alguien que podía haber capturado un buque legitimado por una patente de corso, en un acto de legítima defensa o represalia y respetando las leyes de guerra, pero que luego vendía el botín en el mercado libre sin esperar el veredicto del Tribunal del Almirantazgo local, declarando el buque tomado como «buena —o legítima— presa» y sin ceder a las autoridades de origen la parte correspondiente del botín, el llamado gerechtigheit van het land. No esperar el veredicto ni entregar la parte estipulada —habitualmente un 20 por ciento— a la Junta del Almirantazgo convertía técnicamente el acto de apresamiento en «ilegal», o cuando menos en algo muy problemático desde el punto de vista del gobierno local. En otras palabras, no cumplir con la infinidad de procedimientos y reglamentaciones que en el decurso de los siglos XVII y XVIII se arbitraron colocaba un acto corsario dentro de la piratería.
… los comerciantes que navegaban bajo pabellón español y portugués y que también habían sido víctimas del corso de la VOC a principios del siglo XVII a menudo etiquetaron a los holandeses en Asia no sólo como «rebeldes» en contra de su antiguo señor, el rey de España, sino también ladrones, matones, bandidos y por supuesto ‘piratas’.»

Con tan grandes botines al alcance de la mano, no es de extrañar que se emitieran cada vez más patentes de corso o represalia después de los hechos, con independencia de que los capitanes hubieran sufrido previamente daños; y el rápido aumento del comercio agudizó el problema en la última parte del siglo XVII.
«… La práctica del corso condujo al desarrollo de un tipo particular de ladrón marino que, a diferencia de los corsarios y los guerreros mercaderes de los siglos XVI y principios del XVII, no prometían fidelidad a una sola nación, sino que operaban como ‘freelances’ para un soberano u otro, o para varios a la vez … Este tipo de ladrones de mar sin escrúpulos se hicieron tan peligrosos precisamente porque siempre encontraban el apoyo de alguna nación, y nunca actuaron como enemigos de todas las naciones a la vez.»
‘Even in the remotests corners of the world’. Globalized piracy and international law, 1500-1900”, Kemp (2010) (citado por Borschberg).

Pero quizá corremos el riesgo de proyectar sobre los territorios del sureste asiático lo que es esencialmente un marco jurídico europeo
«‘Piratería’ era un término esencialmente europeo … Posteriormente sirvió para criminalizar unas actividades políticas o comerciales en el sudeste asiático que las poblaciones marítimas indígenas venían considerando hasta entonces como parte propia de su forma de gobierno, de su adaptación cultural-ecológica y de su organización social … una forma de interacción dinámica entre el asalto —merompak (malayo) o magooray (iranun)— y la inversión en el comercio marítimo de bienes de lujo, que era una característica importante de la economía política de la costa de los estados malayos. En efecto, la incursión o el asalto marítimo se entendía como una ampliación del comercio y de la competencia local-regional, y un mecanismo básico para la formación del estado, la recaudación de impuestos y los procesos de integración —forzada y voluntaria— y diseminación de las poblaciones a finales del siglo XVIII en el mundo del sudeste asiático».


La ruta marítima de la seda

Pero regresemos al acontecimiento que condujo a la redacción del Mare Liberum y a lanzar a la fama en los Consejos y Parlamentos de Europa al joven jurista Grotius (aunque más tarde fue acusado de traición a la patria y condenado a cárcel y exilio).

Durante gran parte del siglo XVI, los portugueses habían ampliado, apoyados en cierto secretismo, la rica vía comercial China - Estado da Índia.

El Pequeño punto rojo – una encrucijada clave

La ruta portuguesa entre Macao y el Estado da Índia pasaba por los estrechos de Singapur y Malaca hacia el puerto comercial de Melaka (en español, Malaca). Malaca había sido ganada por Afonso de Albuquerque al Sultán Mahmud Shah en 1511, y era un importante puerto donde esperar el paso del monzón, efectuar reparaciones y aprovisionarse de nuevos suministros. Las carracas portuguesas, escasamente armadas y con pesadas cargas, como los grandes mercantes de hoy, viajaban en convoy acompañados de los juncos chinos durante las tres semanas que duraba el viaje entre Macao y Malaca.

Vista general: de Macao a Goa

El camino más corto, a través de los estrechos, era muy peligroso tanto por estar plagado de piratas locales del archipiélago de Riau, como por los bajíos, los bancos de arena y las rápidas corrientes de los canales. Era difícil trazar bien la ruta, y siempre estaba el riesgo de quedar varado. La depredación de los piratas locales había tomado un giro más serio a principios del siglo XVII con la llegada de comerciantes y corsarios holandeses. La rivalidad diplomática en los tribunales de Johor y Aceh era intensa, y los holandeses recién llegados se esforzaron en desplazar a los antiguos titulares. La rivalidad comercial es una cosa; la depredación armada, otra.


25 de febrero de 1603: apresamiento de la Santa Catarina

El Reino de Johor se encontraba obligado, en principio, por un tratado portugués, pero los holandeses tenían una fuerte presencia allá, y el hermanastro del Rey, Raja Bongsu, estaba dispuesto a establecer alguna alianza con ellos. Es probable que los johoreanos advirtieran a las carracas portuguesas cuando se aprovisionaban de agua dulce en la isla de Tioman, antes del último tramo hasta Malaca.

Las carracas a final del siglo XVI eran buques de gran tamaño: la Santa Catarina desplazaba 1500 toneladas, marcaba 32 pies en vacío y no era fácil de manejar. El paso a través del estrecho sería aún más arriesgado de noche, incluso con luna llena, y a la luz del día requería de un piloto experimentado y familiarizado con las mareas y los puntos problemáticos. Quedaba poco margen para el error: los chubascos repentinos, entonces como ahora, reducían la visibilidad a cero.

De la isla de Tioman al río Johor River – Una trampa dispuesta

Tal vez por un chivatazo de los johoreanos, el Witte Leeuw y el Alkmaar del almirante Jacob van Heemskerk, unos barcos mucho más pequeños, aguardaban apostados en el estuario de Johor. En la madrugada del 25 de febrero de 1603, van Heemskerk fue informado de que se había avistado una carraca anclada de la flota chino-portuguesa. El Witte Leeuw y el Alkmaar rodearon la Santa Catarina antes de que pudiera huir y usaron casi todas las horas de luz para desarbolar a cañonazos sus velas y aparejo. Solo hubo un contendiente. Antes de caer la noche el capitán portugués Sebastião Serrão izó la bandera blanca y se ofreció a entregar el barco a cambio de asegurar la llegada de la tripulación y el pasaje a Melaka. Jacob van Heemskerk aceptó la rendición y de inmediato tomó algo de la carga como medida de precaución. Prevaleció el protocolo europeo y en marzo el Consejo de Melaka agradecía a van Heemskerk haber mantenido su palabra, aunque se señalaba con un punto de acidez que los holandeses habían sido afortunados al dar con tan valioso buque, y que debió caer en sus manos solo gracias a un «secreto e insondable juicio de Dios». El gobernador de Malaca, Dom Fernão de Albuquerque agregó que la defensa de la carraca se había visto obstaculizada por las muchas mujeres y niños a bordo, y que si van Heemskerk hubiera topado con uno de sus buques, el resultado sin duda hubiera sido distinto. Como vemos, una curiosa mezcla de guerra y formalidad

El contenido de la carraca lo transportó a Europa el almirante holandés van Heemskerk. El regreso tuvo algunos incidentes, y una vía de agua hizo que un buque tuviera que ser varado y usado para reparaciones. Con el retraso corrió la voz de la existencia del rico convoy, y se despertó cierto temor de que el inglés o el francés trataran de obtener su presa en el Canal.

El cargamento de la Santa Catarina se hizo legendario:
«1200 fardos de seda china cruda; cofres llenos de damasco teñido, atlas (un tipo de seda brillante), tafetanes y seda, grandes cantidades de hilo de oro o de oro hilado; ropas tejidas con hilo de oro; cobertores y doseles de cama de oro hilado, sábanas y colchas de seda, telas de lino y algodón, unas sesenta toneladas de porcelana incluyendo platos "de todo tipo y especie" cantidades enormes de azúcar, especias, goma, almizcle (también llamado bisem), camas de madera y cajas, algunas de ellas bellamente ornamentadas con oro, y "otras mil cosas más de las que se producen en China"» (Borschberg).
Comerciantes de toda Europa asistieron a la subasta en Amsterdam. La venta rindió 3.500.000 florines, la mitad del capital base de la VOC. Con todo y su carácter extraordinario, una carga así no era inusual. No es de extrañar, pues, que los holandeses estuvieran decididos a jugar todas sus bazas para ganar un acceso sin trabas al Este.

Los portugueses presionaron por todas las vías legales y diplomáticas a su alcance. El joven jurista Hugo de Groot (Grotius) fue contratado por la VOC y enseguida preparó el caso de la defensa al que nos hemos referido. El Consejo del Almirantazgo holandés se pronunció a favor de la VOC, marcando el inicio de la dura rivalidad entre holandeses y portugueses en las Indias Orientales. ¿Estaba van Heemskerk encargado de atacar a la marina mercante portuguesa, o fue un acto de corso sancionado una vez transcurrida la agresión? ¿Podían ser exclusivamente los Estados Generales quienes emitieran patentes de corso? ¿Era la VOC en realidad una procuración de los Estados Generales en asuntos de guerra? La decisión de la junta del almirantazgo holandés la conocemos, pero el concepto de Mare Liberum ciertamente no era aceptable para todos, ni para los portugueses ni para los ingleses. Lo que está claro, es que la subasta de los contenidos de la Santa Catarina reveló las grandes riquezas de China, y la hegemonía virtual de los portugueses en el sudeste asiático llegó a su fin.

(Peter Borschberg, un especialista en el conflicto luso-holandés, tiene un estudio académico —pero asequible— del incidente de la Santa Catarina).

Posdata

Cuatro siglos más tarde, los estrechos de Malaca y Singapur siguen constituyendo una de las rutas marítimas más transitadas del mundo. A pesar de que los buques cuentan de proa a popa y durante todas las horas del día y de la noche con las más modernas ayudas a la navegación y hay patrullas de seguridad armadas, la región sigue siendo un activo eje de la piratería.

Volveremos a estas regiones, pero acabamos por ahora esta introducción con la conmovedora solicitud del capitán Sebastião Serrão, un casado de Goa, al Almirante Jacob van Heemskerk. Serrão, que lo había perdido todo y había quedado varado lejos de casa, pidió humildemente a Heemskerk que le enviara «un pedazo de fieltro», «con el que poder coserse, él mismo, ropa nueva»
Para él sería no sólo un gesto de amistad, sino una limosna y un recuerdo de la miserable condición en que había sido capturado y más tarde puesto en libertad. (Borschberg).
No sabemos si su solicitud fue atendida. El 25 de febrero de 2011, nosotros ofrecemos esta entrada a la memoria del capitán Sebastião Serrão.

Pirate, Privateer or Freebooter?


MARE LIBERUM
SIVE
DE IURE QUOD BATAVIS
COMPETIT AD INDICA-
NA COMMERCIA
DISSERTATIO


CAPUT I


Iure gentium quibusvis ad quosvis libe-
ram esse navigatione

By the Law of Nations navigation is free to all persons whatsoever

My intention is to demonstrate briefly and clearly that the Dutch – that is to say, the subjects of the United Netherlands – have the right to sail to the East Indies, as they are now doing, and to engage in trade with the people there. I shall base my argument on the following most specific and unimpeachable axiom of the Law of Nations, called a primary rule or first principle, the spirit of which is self-evident and immutable, to wit: Every nation is free to travel to every other nation, and to trade with it.
God Himself says this speaking through the voice of nature; and inasmuch it is not His will to have nature supply every place with all the necessaries of life, He ordains that some nations excel in one art and others in another.


Why is this His will, except it be that He wished human friendships to be engendered by mutual needs and resources, lest individuals deeming themselves entirely sufficient unto themselves should for that very reason be rendered unsociable? So by the decree of divine justice it was brought about that one people should supply the needs of another, in order, as Pliny the Roman writer says, that in this way, whatever has been produced anywhere should seem to have been destined for all.

CAPUT II


Lusitanos nullum habere ius dominii in eos
Indos ad quos Batavi navigant
titulo inventionis

The Portuguese have no right by title of discovery to
sovereignty over the East Indies to which the
Dutch make voyages

The Portuguese are not sovereigns of those parts of the East Indies to which the Dutch sail, that is to say, Java, Ceylon, and many of the Moluccas. This I prove by the incontrovertible argument that no one is sovereign of a thing which he himself has never possessed, and which no one else has ever held in his name. These islands of which we speak, now have and always have had their own kings, their own government, their own laws, and their own legal systems. The inhabitants allow the Portuguese to trade with them, just as they allow other nations the same privilege. Therefore, inasmuch as the Portuguese pay tolls, and obtain leave to trade from the rulers there, they thereby give sufficient proof that they do not go there as sovereigns but as foreigners.
CAPUT III



Lusitanos in Indos non habere ius
dominii titulo donationis
Pontificiae

The Portuguese have no right of sovereignty over the
East Indies by virtue of title based on the Papal
Donation

Next, if the partition made by Pope Alexander VI is to be used by the Portuguese as authority for jurisdiction in the East Indies, then before all things else two points must be taken into consideration.
First, did the Pope merely desire to settle the disputes between the Portuguese and the Spaniards?

Second, did the Pope intend to give to two nations, each one third of the whole world?

(footnote by translator Magoffinat: “The Cambridge Modern History, I, 23-24, has a good paragraph upon this famous Papal Bull of May 14th, 1493 (modified June 7, 1494, by treaty of Tordesillas)”).

Images: Yale Law Library
Translation: Ralph van Deman Magoffinat (On Line Library of Liberty)
Translation: (idem, Google Books)
see also: Grotius Exhibit from the Yale Law Library



Not wanting to disrupt the solemn upbeat of this post, at this point we would like to greet and to recommend to the benevolence of the readers of Río Wang the new author of our blog Walter who introduces with this splendid essay his series presenting the secrets of his chosen homeland, the fabulous Singapore. (Studiolum)
Apologia

“Mare Liberum” or “Mare Liberum, sive de iure quod Batavis competit ad indicana commercia dissertatio”, by Hugo Grotius (Hugo de Groot) 1583-1645, transcended its time and place to become the foundation for maritime law. Published in 1609 it derived from “De Jure Praedae” of 1604, written for the Dutch East India Company (VOC, Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie) to justify the predations of the Dutch on Portuguese merchant vessels, in particular the capture of the Santa Catarina, a treasure-laden Portuguese carrack, at the eastern entrance to the Singapore Strait on February 25th 1603. The repercussions were immense. Were the Dutch acting legally as privateers or as pirates? Was the VOC a proxy for the Dutch States General in their struggle with Spain and thereby, through the joint crown, with Portugal?

We consider first the blurred boundaries between piracy, privateering and freebooting:
“…piracy, privateering (and the latter’s legal offshoot, freebooting) represent from the vantage point of European legal definitions quite distinct activities. Piracy is committed by private persons who have banded together and removed themselves from society at large and thus also from the protection of the law. Pirates were deemed enemies of the people and of the state. Privateering, by contrast, is a concept closely associated with the idea of the just war… Privateers operated under a so-called letter of marque and reprisal (Dutch: kaperbrief, commissie van retorsie), but they were technically only supposed to be issued with a letter of marque if they actually had suffered damage earlier by the enemy. The letter of marque, thus, permitted the seizure of goods from the (declared) enemy as a form of war reparation. This logic limited prizetaking to vessels sailing under enemy flag (or the flags of enemy allies) and only during times of war… This was how privateering was designed to work from a theoretical, legal vantage point. Actual practice was naturally quite different, and privateering effectively grew into a practice the full-blown proportions of which could have not been foreseen or anticipated in the late sixteenth or even the early seventeenth century…
The late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries–European privateers were authorized to seize commercial vessels of the (declared) enemy under direct and explicit instructions of their government, ruler or home port. A freebooter (from the Dutch: vrijbuiter; German: Freibeuter), a closely related term, was someone who may have captured a vessel authorized by a letter of marque, in an act of self-defence or reprisal and under the laws of war, but subsequently sold the captured goods on the open market without awaiting the verdict of the local admiralty court, declaring the seized vessel “good prize” and without also ceding to the home authorities their due share of the booty, the so-called gerechtigheit van het land. Failure to await the verdict and surrender this share – customarily 20 percent – to the home Admiralty Board technically rendered the act of prize-taking “illegal”, or at least highly problematic, from the vantage point of the home government. In other words, failure to abide by what in the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries grew into a myriad of procedures and regulations edged an act of privateering into the shadow of piracy.
…traders who sailed under Spanish and Portuguese flags and also had become the victims of VOC privateering in the early seventeenth century often labelled the Dutch in Asia not only as “rebels” against their erstwhile overlord, the King of Spain, but also as thieves, hoodlums, bandits and of course as “pirates”.

With large prizes to be taken, it was not surprising that increasingly, letters of marque were issued after the event, irrespective of whether their captains had suffered damage, and with rapidly increasing trade, the problem was to escalate sharply in the latter part of the 17th century.
“…privateering practice led to the development of a particular type of sea robber, who, unlike the corsairs and merchant warriors of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, was not committed to serve a single nation but operated on a ‘freelance’ basis for one sovereign after another, or for several at the same time… Unscrupulous sea robbers of this kind were so dangerous precisely because they always found the support of some nation or other, and were never the enemies of all nations at once.”
‘Even in the remotests corners of the world’. Globalized piracy and international law, 1500-1900”, Kemp (2010) (quoted by Borschberg).

But are we in danger of projecting what is essentially a European legal framework onto the kingdoms of SouthEast Asia?
“The term ‘piracy’ was essentially a European one… The term subsequently criminalized political or commercial activities in Southeast Asia that indigenous maritime populations had hitherto considered part of their statecraft, cultural-ecological adaptation and social organisation… the dynamic interplay between raiding – merompak (Malay) or magooray (Iranun) – and investment in the maritime luxury goods trade that was a major feature of the political economies of coastal Malay states. In effect, maritime raiding was an extension of local-regional trade and competition, and a principal mechanism of state formation, tax collection and the processes for the in-gathering – forced and voluntary – and dispersion of populations in the late eighteenth century Southeast Asian world.”
A Tale of Two Centuries: The Globalisation of Maritime Raiding and Piracy in Southeast Asia at the end of the Eighteenth and Twentieth Centuries”, James Warren


The Maritime Silk Road

We turn to the event that led to the writing of Mare Liberum propelling the young jurist Grotius to fame in the Councils of Europe (though he was later charged with treason, imprisonment and exile).

For much of the 16th Century, the Portuguese had expanded, under some secrecy, the rich China - Estado da Índia trade.

The Little Red Dot – a crucial crossing

The Portuguese route between Macao and the Estado da Índia that passed through the Singapore and Malacca Straits to the trading port of Melaka. Melaka (English, Malacca) had been captured by Afonso de Albuquerque from the Sultan Mahmud Shah in 1511, and was an important port to await the monsoon change, carry-out repairs and re-provision. The lightly-armed, heavily-laden Portuguese carracks, the bulk-carriers of the day, traveled in convoy, accompanied by Chinese junks, for the three week journey from Macao to Melaka.

Overview: Macao to Goa

The shortest route, through the Straits, was one of real danger, both from the local pirate invested waters of the Riau Archipelago, to the submerged shoals, sandbanks and fast currents of the Straits. Plotting a course was difficult and going aground an ever-present risk. The predation of local pirates had taken a more serious turn at the beginning of the 17th Century with the arrival of Dutch merchants and privateers. Diplomatic rivalry at the courts of Johor and Aceh was intense, and the Dutch newcomers tried hard to undermine the incumbents. Rivalry in trade is one thing, armed predation another.


February 25th 1603: The Capture of the Santa Catarina

The Kingdom of Johor was in principle bound by Portuguese treaty, but the Dutch had also made strong representation, and the King’s half-brother, Raja Bongsu, was disposed to a Dutch alliance. It is likely that the Johoreans had been alerted to the Portuguese carracks as they took on fresh water at the island of Tioman, before the final run to Melaka.

Carracks at the end of the 16th century were large ships: the Santa Catarina was 1500 tonnes, drew 32 feet unladen, and was not very manoeuvrable. Passage through the straits would be too risky at night even at full moon, and in daylight would require an experienced pilot familiar with tides and landmarks. There was little margin for error: sudden squalls, then as now, could reduce visibility to nothing.

From Tioman Island to the Johor River – Setting the Trap

Perhaps tipped-off by the Johoreans, the much smaller ships, the Witte Leeuw and the Alkmaar of Admiral Jakob van Heemskerk, lay in wait off the Johor estuary. At dawn on February 25th 1603, van Heemskerk was told that a carrack of the Portuguese China fleet had been sighted at anchor. The Witte Leeuw and the Alkmaar engaged the Santa Catarina before it could flee, and for most of the daylight hours, cannon fire raked the sails and rigging of the Santa Catarina to disable her. It was a one-sided battle and before evening the Portuguese captain Sebastião Serrão, raised the white flag and offered to surrender his ship for safe passage for his crew and passengers to Melaka. Jakob van Heemskerk accepted the surrender and immediately took off some cargo as a precaution. European protocol prevailed, and in March, the Melaka Council thanked van Heemskerk for keeping his word, though they acidly pointed out that the Dutch were lucky to encounter this valuable vessel, and that it had fallen into their hands only through a ‘secret and unknown judgement of God’. The governor of Melaka, Dom Fernão de Albuquerque added that the carrack’s defense had been impeded by the many women and children on board, and had van Heemskerk met one of his own ships, the outcome would surely have been different. Truly a strange mix of warfare and formality!

The carrack’s contents were brought to Europe by the Dutch Admiral van Heemskerk. The return was not without incident, and one leaking ship had to be beached and used for repairs. With the delay, word had gone ahead of the rich prize and there was some apprehension that the English or French might try to take the prize in the Channel.

The Santa Catarina’s cargo became legendary:
“1,200 bales of raw Chinese silk; chests filled with coloured damask, atlas (a type of polished silk), tafettas and silk; large amounts of gold thread or spun gold; cloth woven with gold thread; robes and bed canopies spun with gold; silk bedcovers and bedspreads; linen and cotton cloth, thirty last (approximately sixty tonnes) of porcelain comprising dishes ‘of every sort and kind’; substantial quantities of sugar, spices, gum, musk (also known as bisem); wooden beds and boxes, some of them beautifully ornate with gold; and a ‘thousand other things, that are produced in China’” (Borschberg).
Merchants from all over Europe attended the auction in Amsterdam. The sale realised 3.5 million Guilders, half the capital-base of the VOC. Yet extraordinary as this was, the cargo was not unusual. No wonder the Dutch were determined to press their case for unfettered access to the East.

The Portuguese made representations through all the legal and diplomatic channels at their disposal. The young jurist Hugo de Groot (Grotius) was retained by the VOC and in short order prepared the case for the defense to which we have referred. The Dutch Admiralty Board ruled in favor of the VOC, marking the beginning of intense rivalry between the Dutch and Portuguese in the East Indies. Was van Heemskerk empowered to attack Portuguese merchant shipping, or was this privateering sanctioned after the event? Could only the States General could issue the letters of marque? Was the VOC a proxy for the States General in matters of war? The decision of the Dutch Admirality board we know, but the concept of Mare Liberum was certainly not agreeable to all, neither to the Portuguese nor to the English. What was clear, is that the auction of the Santa Catarina’s contents revealed the vast riches of China, and the virtual hegemony of the Portuguese in SE Asia was at an end.

(Peter Borschberg, a specialist in the Luso-Dutch conflict, has a scholarly yet readable study of the Santa Catarina incident).

Postscript

Four centuries later, the Singapore and Malacca Straits remain one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world. Despite ships being almost head-to-tail day-and-night, with all the aids of modern navigation and armed security patrols, the region remains one of active piracy.

We will return to the region, but end this introduction with the moving request of Captain Sebastião Serrão, a casado of Goa, to Admiral Jakob van Heemskerk. Serrão had lost everything, was stranded far from home, and humbly requested Heemskerk to send him ‘a piece of felt’ ‘from which he could sew for himself new clothes’.
He would take this not only as a gesture of friendship, but as alms and in memory of the miserable condition in which he had been captured and later set free. (Borschberg).
We do not know if his request was answered. On 25th February 2011, we offer this post to the memory of Captain Sebastião Serrão.