involved in crossing the Indian Ocean, these stops were more frequent (and influential) than one might suspect. When the first Dutch ships, a fleet of four vessels, arrived in the ocean in 1595, they spent several months replenishing their stores in southwestern Madagascar and along the east coast of the island. After loading fresh food and water, the ships sailed to Java and Sumatra.87 This southern route would eventually enable the Dutch to traverse the ocean more quickly than the Portuguese, particularly after they developed other provisioning stops on the way to Southeast Asia.88
Only about ten percent of Dutch trading ships sailing into the Indian Ocean between 1595 and 1630 stopped at the shores of Madagascar, but this small percentage is misleading. Such was the level of Dutch involvement in commerce in the ocean overall that at least thirty-nine ships sponsored by Dutch trading companies stopped at Madagascar during these years. The ships came to anchor in Antongil Bay, St. Luce Bay (Bay of Saint-Lucia), and St. Augustin Bay.89 None of the islanders living in these locations were accustomed to frequent trade with European merchants, so their stays proceeded with predictable consequences—food supplies were in short supply and recognizable trading partners were not always available. For example, the merchants in the 1595 fleet stopped in “St Augustijn” and visited the arid, sparsely populated land beside the bay, home to pastoralists who herded humped zebu cattle along with sheep and goats. The rivers near the bay, the Onilahy and the Fiheraña, would later provide easy transportation for foodstuffs, but Dutch sources provide no indication that there were direct trading connections with the interior during the late sixteenth century.90 The Dutch visitors bartered with the Andriana (nobles, lords) for fish, cattle, fowl, sheep, and fruit. Despite the availability of food, when the Dutch departed after less than a week only 127 out of the 249 men who had boarded in Europe were still alive. The fleet then sailed around to the east coast of Madagascar, where the crews spent one month at Nosy Boraha (Île Sainte Marie) and Antongil Bay.91 Subsequent trading voyages to Madagascar continued to visit these same locations. In 1598, a fleet spent almost a month in St. Augustin Bay, then several more weeks in the Comoros, visiting both Mayotte and Ndzuwani (Nzwani, Anjouan, Johanna).92 The Dutch were pleased to report that only two men died during the 1598 visit to the island.93
Despite occasional visits to St. Augustin Bay, twenty-six of these early voyages halted on the east coast, in St. Luce Bay or Antongil Bay.94 The Dutch later observed that “there was not a single Portuguese on this entire outer coast so that no difficulty need be feared from them.”95 During the early seventeenth century, rice seemed plentiful in eastern Madagascar. The Dutch described vast amounts of rice which the islanders would sell in return for small trinkets and cloth.96 In spite of these positive descriptions, the results from provisioning in eastern Madagascar were mixed. One Dutch commander complained in 1598 that the people around Antongil were at war and there was a lack of food for purchase at the nearby island of Nosy Boraha.97 On this small island, only about sixty kilometers long and ten kilometers wide, the inhabitants were fishermen, skilled in the capture of whales. They exported ambergris (a whale secretion used in perfume production) to the northern port cities of Madagascar, from where it would be sold to African and Arab merchants.98 Apparently the production of foodstuffs for sale was less common on Nosy Boraha.
FIGURE 2.2. A Dutch visit to southeastern Madagascar, c. 1618. Source: Willem Ysbrandsz Bontekoe, Ovrnael ofte gedenckwaerdige beschrijvinghe vande Oost-Indische reyse . . . (Hoorn: Ghedruckt by I. Willemsz, 1646), opposite page 10 (image from Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division).
The challenges the Dutch had faced in eastern Madagascar encouraged them to send ships to St. Augustin Bay the next year, but the islanders now fled from the Dutch merchants and provisions were scarce. This failure forced the Dutch to visit the island of “Anschuan” (Ndzuwani) to the north instead.99 Despite these challenges, Dutch ships continued to visit both coasts of the island and it seems that provisions were usually available, if in somewhat limited quantities.100 For instance, in 1601, the crew of the Zwarte Leeuw was sailing from Antongil Bay, where they had stayed for a few days and sought fresh supplies, when they went aground near Nosy Boraha. They were forced to spend considerable time on the island repairing the vessel, buying food from the island’s residents.101
In spite of the frequency of these early visits, fewer VOC vessels bought food from people in Madagascar after 1620 and interest in the island only revived following the founding of a Dutch settlement on nearby Mauritius. While sailing together in the southwestern Indian Ocean in 1598, a Dutch fleet became separated in a storm near Madagascar. In attempting to return to Madagascar, the vice admiral Wybrand van Warwijck arrived at an uninhabited island that he named Mauritius. Following years of visits to Mauritius for food and water, the VOC finally dispatched a governor and colonists to create an outpost on the island in 1638. During their first occupation, between 1638 and 1658, only a few settlers lived on the island. The Dutch hoped to create a strategic base, not a large populated colony, and made little effort to invest in growing food. At least two ships stopped annually during this phase of colonization to load ebony wood, along with some water, exhausting the limited food supplies on the island.102 The focus on acquiring easy exports of ebony and consuming tortoises, birds, and wild fruits prevented focused agricultural production on Mauritius. Settlers on the mountainous island also complained about unreliable rains, strong winds, and frequent cyclones.103 According to Megan Vaughan, the perennial lack of food on Mauritius was produced as much from mismanagement and the “unruliness” of the Dutch settlers, who eventually included a large contingent of convicts from Jakarta, as from the shortcomings of the natural environment.104
Madagascar was only a short sail from Mauritius so colonial officials tried to establish regular trade between the two islands. The Dutch seem to have viewed Madagascar as a reservoir for both food and laborers; the latter they hoped to purchase to replace the convicts who were currently employed by the company.105 In 1639, Adriaan van der Stel, the commander on Mauritius, was instructed by VOC officials to sail to the east coast of Madagascar and sign treaties with leaders for slaves. The Dutch also signed a treaty with the Portuguese in 1641 in which the Portuguese agreed to recognize the east coast of Madagascar as within the Dutch sphere of influence and promised to restrict their visits to the west coast.106 Van der Stel made a total of three voyages to the east coast of Madagascar in search of rice and slaves.107 In 1641, the commandant sailed to St. Luce Bay where he was apparently successful at obtaining rice, but not slaves. He continued on to Antongil Bay, where he purchased 105 slaves with Spanish reales (silver coins), as well as combs, mirrors, linen cloth, and iron pans.108 In 1642, he signed a treaty with the king “Filo Bucon” that placed the leader and his allies under the protection of the VOC and the United Provinces. In return, the king agreed he would not trade with the French, English, or Danish.109 Shortly after van der Stel returned to Mauritius, half of the slaves he had purchased marooned and disappeared into the forests of the largely empty island, following a pattern that would become common in future years.110 The slaves who did remain under Dutch supervision were kept busy harvesting and moving ebony to the coast.111
When van der Stel finally returned to Antongil Bay several years later in 1644, the king told him that the two Dutchmen left behind had died more than a year earlier (murdered by the islanders, according to French contemporaries, although it seems just as likely that they had died from tropical diseases).112 In addition, the ruler had not adhered to his side of the treaty. Three times the king had assembled slaves for the Dutch. After van der Stel failed to arrive, the king sent the slaves across the island to the northwest ports of Madagascar.113 The islanders also reported that a French ship had recently visited. In an effort to fight this competition, the Dutch continued to pursue a trading partnership with the king.114 Another treaty was signed in 1645 in which the king agreed not to supply slaves to the French or Portuguese, only the Dutch. During a short stay in 1645, van der Stel purchased a hundred more slaves.
