A remonstrance of the Directors of the Netherlands East India Company,

presented to the Lords States Generall of the united Provinces, in defence of the said Company, touching the bloudy proceedings against the English Merchants, executed at Amboyna. Together, with the Acts of the Processe, against the sayd English, and the Reply of the English East India Company, to the said Remonstrance and Defence. Published by Authority. London : printed by John Dawson, for the East India Company, 1632. Three parts in one volume, small quarto, modern panelled calf in period style, spine in compartments with gilt decoration and lettering; pp. [8], 29, [1 blank]; [2 separate title-leaf], 38; 47; [1]; with a full-page woodcut depicting the torture of one of the English merchants at Ambon, bound in at the end of the preliminaries (in effect, as a frontispiece to the first part); main title with woodcut armorial device, woodcut initials, head- and tailpieces; some mild browning, a fine copy.

Together, the three parts of this work provide a summarised account of the so-called Amboyna (or Ambon) massacre, a watershed event that occurred at a time of growing rivalry between the English and Dutch East India Companies over control of the lucrative spice trade. In early 1623, at the Dutch garrison of Fort Victoria on the island of Amboyna in the Moluccas, the local Dutch governor ordered the arrest of ten English merchants suspected of plotting to take over the garrison; they confessed, under torture, and were executed in February 1623. The English reacted by branding the event a massacre.

This volume is sometimes found bound with another that was published in London the same year, which also presents the controversy from an English perspective, A True Relation of the Unjust, Cruell, and Barbarous Proceedings against the English at Amboyna in the East-Indies, by the Netherlandish Governor and Councell there. Both publications helped fuel a rising tide of anti-Dutch sentiment; it would not be long before animosity would give way to open hostility with the outbreak of the First Anglo-Dutch War in 1652.

Rare, especially in such fine condition.

STC 7450a