1599 Dutch Ships Bombard Bantam
DESCRIPTION
An engraved scene of Dutch ships bombarding "Bantam" (modern-day Banten, Indonesia) appears in this excerpted leaf from the de Brys' German account of the first Dutch voyage to the East Indies.
The caption reads "Wie wir die Statt Bantam beschossen, und die Pinas mit 24. Fusten stritte," or "How we bombarded the city of Bantam, and the pinnace fought with 24 fustas." The text below explains that when the governor would not let the Dutch traders in the city leave with their goods, the ships sailed close enough to fire upon the town and the king's palace to frighten the city into releasing them. Meanwhile the pinnace ran aground on a sandbank while chasing a Javanese ship and the city sent twenty-four fustas, or small boats full of men, against it. The text claims the crew drove them off, sank several, and killed many without losing a man of their own. The reverse carries the caption and text of the next plate, a keyed description of Bantam as the capital of "Iaua Maior" (Java) that lists the royal palace, the mosque, the Chinese quarter, the Dutch trading house, and the bazaar.
The First Dutch Voyage to the East Indies
The Frankfurt engraver Theodor de Bry and, after his death in 1598, his sons Johann Theodor and Johann Israel published two great illustrated series of voyages, the Grands Voyages to the Americas and the Petits Voyages to the East Indies. The third part of the Petits Voyages, issued in German as Dritter Theil Indiae Orientalis in 1599, recounts the first Dutch voyage to the East Indies, which Cornelis de Houtman led from 1595 to 1597. Its account of Java draws on the journal of Willem Lodewijcksz, published at Amsterdam in 1598, and the de Brys re-engraved its views on copper, each with its own caption and passage of text. Houtman's fleet anchored off Bantam, the great pepper port of western Java, in 1596, where traders from China, India, Persia, and Arabia already did business. The voyage lost most of its men and its dealings ashore were often violent, but it proved that Dutch ships could reach the spice islands and opened the way for the Dutch East India Company, founded in 1602.
CONDITION
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