1623 - Commerce

Commerce

Dutch governor-general Jan Pieterzsoon Coen leaves for the Netherlands in February, and Dutch East India Company agents at Amboina proceed promptly to end English East India Company efforts to trade with the Spice Islands, Japan, or Siam. Believing that the English merchants plan to kill him with help from Japanese mercenaries and overwhelm the Dutch garrison as soon as an English ship arrives to support them, Governor Herman van Speult has ordered the arrest of the alleged conspirators early in the year. They admit guilt under torture, 10 rival English traders are executed in February along with 10 Japanese and a Portuguese, and what the English will call the Amboina Massacre brings to a halt all attempts at Anglo-Dutch cooperation in the region. Coen is forbidden to return to the Indies pending an investigation (see 1627), but hereafter it will be the Dutch who control the East Indies.

English traders in Japan abandon their commercial station at Hirado (see 1613).

Pilgrim Fathers in the Plymouth colony assign each family its own parcel of land, forsaking the communal Mayflower Compact of 1620 (see Virginia, 1611). Given new incentive, women and children join with men to plant corn and increase production.