One of the ablest servants of the 17th-century Dutch East India Company, became a serious cropper when his fellow countrymen discovered his ‘crimes against nature’, as Peter Murrell explains.
Replica lodge of the Dutch trading opst of Ayutthaya, where Schouten worked.The
Dutch East India Company (Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie, or VOC)
had many energetic and able servants in its ranks in the 17th century,
but few could match the achievements of Joost Schouten. He excelled as
trader, administrator, diplomat, writer and courtier. Yet when he is
remembered today it is not so much for any of his accomplishments as for
his trial and execution for sodomy. These sensational events occurred
in Batavia (now the Indonesian capital, Jakarta) in 1644 and from there
the shock waves rippled out to other Dutch outposts. VOC justice was
never famous for its leniency and Schouten’s drama-filled final days
showed how high personal standing and powerful connections counted for
little next to the implacable, God-fearing disgust with which
homosexuality was viewed at that time.The sexual behaviour of its employees was always a problematic area for the Company. Established in 1602 and soon to become the most successful and profitable of the new breed of international trading companies, the VOC had an estimated 4,500 Europeans in its employ in Asia by 1625, a figure which had risen to 11,550 by 1687. Most of these were soldiers and sailors (of many nationalities, not only Dutch) and nearly a tenth were in government and trade. Probably the single most important Company policy affecting their sexual behaviour was the decision to allow Dutch women to go only to garrisoned outposts, notably Batavia which had become the VOC capital in 1619. Initially they were encouraged to do so on five- or ten-year contracts in order to find husbands and enlarge the settlement. But the earliest arrivals tended to be of low character, unsuited to the tropical climate, extravagant in their financial demands on the Company and apt to repatriate once they had married. By the 1630s the VOC had ended the scheme and Dutch women usually only went East after that if they were the wives or daughters of senior officials. The VOC now encouraged its employees to marry local women, who in many cases had first to be freed from slave status. The rationale was that Asian women had fewer material needs, produced healthier children and wanted to remain in the East. From 1639 on their husbands were obliged by law to stay, too. Thus was the way prepared for the growth of Batavia’s distinctive Eurasian or ‘Mestizo’ population and culture.
In undefended, purely commercial, outposts Dutch women were not allowed at all, which was a cause of much resentment. Sometimes the best-qualified person for a post had to step aside for an inferior candidate simply because he was already married. VOC employees who did not want to marry local women were left with little option but to resort to concubines and prostitutes. Abstinence was too difficult for most and the high mortality rate among employees fostered an ‘enjoy life while you can’ attitude. Even high officials partook of this behaviour, sometimes lavishly, while soldiers and sailors, at the other end of the scale, could perhaps only afford the services of prostitutes occasionally. Many of these relationships were abusive and unruly and resulted in abandoned children. Early on, the board of directors in Amsterdam (known as the Heeren XVII or Seventeen Gentlemen) tried to ban such permissive behaviour, not surprisingly without much success. Over time they realised the advantages of having many single employees: they could live in simple accommodation, their expenses were generally fewer and they could be sent on missions and relocated to new outposts without much fuss. Their associations with ‘loose women’ were the inevitable price that had to be paid. The VOC directors never ceased, though, to be concerned about the dangers of debauchery and drunkenness among the Company’s employees.
It seems likely that many homosexuals were drawn to service in the VOC. At home they faced severe persecution, sodomy (by which was meant anal penetration, active or passive) being a capital offence. Before the 17th century execution was usually carried out by fire or sometimes beheading and, from then on, usually by strangulation or hanging. Those found guilty of other sexual practices, such as mutual masturbation, received lesser penalties. Sodomy was punished with such harshness because it was deemed a crime against nature. It was contrary to God’s plan, abhorrent to Him, and eternal damnation awaited sodomites once their earthly sufferings were over. Leniency invited God’s wrath, even to the extent of the destruction of entire cities and peoples as in biblical times. There was nothing specifically Calvinist about this view of sodomy; it was widespread in Protestant and Counter-Reformation Catholic Europe. By contrast, reports were being brought back by sailors and assorted travellers (and, from the early 17th century, VOC employees) of remarkable tolerance of homosexuality in Asian societies. This could hardly fail to be an allure. Another attraction was that VOC service entailed much confinement in single-sex groups, whether on long journeys by ship or in work-places such as barracks and factories, where sexual opportunities were likely to be readily available (so-called situational homosexuality), if only because of a lack of alternatives.
Once they had arrived in the East Indies, homosexuals might have felt encouraged to give expression to their sexual inclinations, if they weren’t already, by the sight of the moral laxness of many VOC employees. Their partners were other VOC employees or, in relationships potentially more hierarchical in nature, members of the indigenous populations. VOC policy on sodomy was as strict as it was back in Holland, so discretion was absolutely essential. What could be expected in the event of discovery was made spectacularly clear in the case of Joost Schouten.
Born in Rotterdam in the early 1600s, Schouten arrived in the East Indies in 1622 on the ship Wapen van Rotterdam as an ambitious young VOC employee. In 1624 he joined the Dutch factory in the Siamese capital Ayutthaya as an assistant and had become a sub-merchant by 1628, when he was entrusted with the important duty of presenting a gift from Frederik Hendrik, Prince of Orange, to the Siamese King Prasat Thong in a lavish ceremony at the royal court. The following year he left Siam to become secretary to the envoy Willem Janssen on a mission to Japan and his subsequent report on the complicated situation there, delivered in Batavia, enhanced his growing reputation.
In 1633 Schouten returned to Siam, now as director of the factory in Ayutthaya, and in return for promises to assist the king in his dispute with the rebel state of Pattani he won permission to relocate the factory from a cramped wooden building within the city walls to a new and bigger brick building in its own grounds on the east bank of the Chao Phraya river to the south of the city walls. This was completed in 1634. (A replica of it on the same site, including a museum, is due to open to the public this year.) The Dutch ships sent to Pattani arrived too late, much to the fury of the king, but such was Schouten’s skill in handling him that he had soon won more trading concessions. Under Schouten the prosperity of the Dutch factory increased enormously.
In 1636, at the request of the governor-general, Schouten wrote his Description of Siam, the first widely-read account of the country by a European, in which he discussed its geography, politics, religion and customs in a generally knowledgeable way, though he had the usual inability of Europeans of that period to make much sense of Buddhism, which he dismissed as heathen idolatry. His comments on the people reinforced the well-established stereotype of Asians as being cowardly, superstitious, deceitful and lazy. He ended his account with a brief optimistic assessment of Dutch commercial interests in Siam, which stressed the vital necessity of maintaining good relations with the king.
Schouten left Siam for the last time in 1636 and subsequently returned to Holland with much honour and prestige. By early 1640 he was back in Batavia, now as a member of the Council of the Indies, a body to which only the ablest VOC servants belonged. He will have noticed new municipal buildings or a new church of the reformed faith as the capital gradually emerged from the years of its wild struggle for survival and started to take on a more permanent, secure and civilised appearance. In 1641 he made an inspection visit to the recently conquered stronghold of Malacca and from there proceeded to the court of the Queen of Aceh, where he concluded a beneficial commercial agreement. In Batavia again he helped to organise Abel Tasman’s expedition to the South Seas and was rewarded by having Schouten Island off the east coast of newly-discovered Van Diemen’s Land named after him in December 1642. He served in the law courts as a judge for several years and officiated at church councils, where he gained a reputation of being interested only in major decisions, leaving the details and petty disputes to others.
By mid-1644 he was a very wealthy man, famous, powerful and a leading member of Batavian society. He would have known that he had a strong chance of becoming the next governor-general. Instead his world was about to come crashing down around him.
On Saturday July 9th the residents of Batavia were shocked to learn that Schouten had been convicted of sodomy and sentenced to death by a special court of five judges sitting at Castle Batavia, the imposing fortress that dominated the town from the mouth of the Ciliwung river. According to the published sentence, he had confessed voluntarily, no torture or even the threat of it having been required. He admitted that he had allowed himself to be ‘used as a woman’ two or three times by a high-ranking boatswain’s mate called Jan Joosten from Amsterdam, since deceased, while travelling on board the ship Franeker between Aceh and Malacca in 1641. Subsequently, he had committed similar ‘vile and gruesome acts’ with several other men, the latest of whom, a halberdier, had reported him and so brought his crimes to light. The sentence claimed that as a judge of several years’ standing Schouten must have known ‘how abominable this filthy and vile sodomitic sin is in the eyes of God and man, so that for this reason the Lord God has destroyed Lands and Cities with fire from Heaven, as an example and warning to the whole world’. Therefore such sins could not be left unpunished for any reason and the accused should ‘be brought to the usual place where criminal justice is done, and there delivered over to the executioner, to be strangled at the stake, and his dead body thrown into the fire and burnt to ashes, with all his property confiscated’.
The governor-general, Antonio van Diemen, confirmed the court’s verdict on the same day and, because the following day was a Sunday, set the date of execution for the Monday. When Schouten was notified of his decision he asked to appear before the judges again in order to confess to further crimes and so ‘ease his conscience’, according to the published sentence. He said that over many years he had been with more men in Batavia, Siam and other places, naming 19 altogether, most of them now deceased or departed from the East Indies. Two exceptions were Jan van Cleef, a guardhouse soldier, and Pieter Egbertsz van der Kruyfe, a burgher of Batavia, both of whom were arrested. He had offended four times with each, always passively and never actively, though he had attempted the latter role unsuccessfully. Because of this extra confession, a more serious penalty (presumably being burnt to death without prior strangulation) was in order, but the governor-general, having heard many pleadings for mercy from relatives and high-ranking friends of Schouten, decided ‘out of his noble nature’ to grant a pardon for the additional crimes and to persist in the original sentence. This was duly carried out on Monday July 11th.
The revulsion that the judges felt for Schouten’s crimes (exacerbated, it would seem, by his perceived womanly sexual role) nullified all mitigating considerations, such as his long and valuable service to the Company. The so-called ‘pardon’ merely enforced a sentence that was normal in cases of freely confessed capital crimes. The judges’ fear of God’s vengeance if any weakness was shown was paramount and mirrored similar concerns in attitudes to sodomy prevalent in Europe at that time. The sentence gives some details of Schouten’s sexual behaviour and the events of his last few days, but generally raises as many questions as it answers regarding these matters.
An account which helps us to understand much better what happened was written by Jean-Baptiste Tavernier, a wealthy French gem merchant and prolific traveller, whose two-volume work Les Six Voyages de Jean-Baptiste Tavernier was first published in Paris in 1676. Although badly organised and sometimes inaccurate, it contained well-observed descriptions of many European and Asian countries and customs, interspersed with tales of influential people that Tavernier had met or heard about. Historians have often made use of this material, though somewhat surprisingly have referred hardly at all to the pages on Schouten. Tavernier arrived in Batavia in 1648 and, with side trips, stayed for several months. Given his status and association with the upper echelons of society he might well have heard about the Schouten scandal from people who had been closely involved. On at least two occasions he was invited to dine with van Diemen’s successor as governor-general, Cornelis van der Lijn, who had been one of the five judges at Schouten’s trial. Tavernier had no great love of the Dutch, with whom he became engaged in a protracted legal dispute, but the animosity towards Schouten that emerges from his narrative seems to have been more to do with the nature of his crimes.
The court sentence merely touches on the circumstances of Schouten’s arrest, stating that he was reported by a halberdier. It implies that the halberdier was Schouten’s latest bed-fellow but this is almost certainly the result of clumsy wording. If the halberdier had really had sex with him, he would have been extremely reluctant to report the matter for fear of facing execution himself.
Tavernier’s description of events throws much more light on the arrest. He prefaces his remarks with a warning that they concern ‘a matter that will be as painful for me to commit to paper as it will be, no doubt, for the reader to read’. He refers to Schouten as ‘Chot’ (he sometimes mangles names) and says that he was in the habit of using his money and authority to corrupt young men he found attractive and who were weak enough to give in to ‘his brutal lust’. After enjoying them for a while he would send them to various Company trading stations. He overreached himself in the case of a young Frenchman from the Champagne, who came to Batavia as a corporal and caught Schouten’s attention because he was handsome and well-built. Schouten arranged for him to replace a recently deceased halberdier of the governor-general’s personal guard, which surprised the young man because the position was nearly as well-paid as a company lieutenant. Having wooed the Frenchman with presents, Schouten ‘revealed his evil plan’, which the young man listened to in horror. He warned Schouten that he would report him to the governor-general if he mentioned the matter again, but Schouten made another strong attempt ‘to the point of putting a goodly number of gold ducats into his pockets’.
The young man went to see the governor-general in his office after the latter had dined and boldly revealed what had happened. Since the report was not sufficient in itself and, unsubstantiated, would lead to the young man being prosecuted for slander, the governor-general told him to arrange a meeting with Schouten. On that day he invited Schouten and several other councillors to dine with him. While they were eating, another councillor, Crocq (Paulus Crocq was also to be one of the judges at the trial) and a sergeant-major went to Schouten’s house, where a locksmith secretly opened the bedroom door. Here is Tavernier’s dramatic account of what happened next:
They hid behind the tapestry of the bed-head and the door was locked again. After dinner [Schouten] went to his bedroom, accompanied by the young halberdier, and tried again to persuade him in the usual way. When the young man resisted, in an attempt to overcome his reluctance, [Schouten] opened a chest and took out some Chinese brocades, which he gave him, at the same time pushing him towards the bed, where he wished to caress him. Immediately the two men behind the bed came out and the sergeant major caught him by the collar. All [Schouten] said was, ‘Gentlemen, have mercy on me. I am a dead man’, and he was straight away taken to prison.If we set aside the excessive language, we have a clear picture here of a man using his prominent position to win sexual favours and finally becoming overconfident and careless. There is corroboration for it in the assessment of Schouten delivered by a fellow-Dutchman, a surgeon called Gijsbert Heeck, in 1655. Schouten, he says:
... was strangled and burned to ashes in my presence in Batavia because of his gruesome sodomy. He was a man of unusual knowledge and extraordinary intellect, having been elevated through his ability and capacity to Member Ordinarius of the Council of India, but in his heart he was a hypocritical villain and seducer of many, secretly using his prominence and great authority to force them away from the path of decency into the way of devilish lechery, [the gratification of] which is in every respect impossible (it being Satan’s work).The entrapment of Schouten as described by Tavernier was a logical and believable consequence of the halberdier’s reporting of him mentioned by the judges in their sentence. The word of a mere soldier would never have been enough against a councillor. Tavernier’s account of the arrest also provides a possible answer to a question that has puzzled some: why did Schouten confess to his crimes so readily? If he was indeed captured in flagrante delicto, then he might well have considered denial to be futile, especially since he would have known that the red-hot irons of the torturer would be applied with determination in such circumstances. His first words to his captors, as reported by Tavernier, show how a mood of resignation had already overtaken him. As for the second confession, following the confirmation of the death sentence, there seems to be no reason to doubt that Schouten wished to unburden his conscience. Whatever private accommodations he may have made with his homosexuality over his years in Asia, it is not hard to imagine the mental turmoil that he would have suffered in prison and the urge to show contrition and thereby find some relief (even if it meant virtually condemning others to death in the process).
Of the trial Tavernier has little to say. He points out that Schouten confessed freely and claims that he named 40 contacts, which is an exaggeration even allowing for the second confession. He is wrong when he says that Schouten was sentenced to being burned alive. He continues with revelations about what happened on the Sunday that fell between the verdict and the execution, claiming that there was a plan to save Schouten, launched by his highly-placed relatives and friends. The governor-general and the whole council and their womenfolk were invited to a large party given by a friend in the town which would last from midday to evening. Two companies of infantry and one of cavalry accompanied the governor-general and many other inhabitants of the castle were also in the town at church services. All this made it possible for the plotters to release Schouten from prison without the guards noticing. The intention was to conceal him at night in some corner of a bastion by the sea, from which a boat would take him to Japara or Bantam, where the kings were close friends of his. But the guards noticed his absence, the governor-general was informed and sentinels were posted along the ramparts. The governor-general informed Schouten’s relatives that if he escaped they would be executed in his place. A thorough search was made and finally he was found hiding in a large cupboard in his sister’s home. So ended his last desperate, doomed hope of avoiding execution.
This story is uncorroborated but we know from the published sentence that there were pleadings for mercy by Schouten’s relatives and many friends, so the possibility of a rescue bid is certainly plausible and the high rank of some of them may have facilitated it. The Sunday reference is accurate.Tavernier cannot resist closing with the comment that the women of Batavia often told him how disdainful Schouten could be in their company and they in turn would refer to him as a ruffian; it was no surprise that he hadn’t married, they said, given that he had no love of their sex. Tavernier is very biased against Schouten and his narrative contains a few errors, but he had access to people who were fully aware of what had happened, his version is in line with many of the known facts and there is some supporting testimony for it.
What of Schouten himself? He was highly intelligent, of sweeping vision, ambitious, forceful, charming when he wanted to be. He had a wide network of influential and loyal friends. The fact that he was so wealthy meant that, like other VOC officials, he had almost certainly done a lot of illegal trading on his own account. He also abused his power for sexual purposes but, at a time when even high officials kept concubines and prostitutes and were often contemptuous of them, his behaviour was not unusually flawed and exploitative. The posthumous depiction of him as a monster of depravity owed much to the same vehemently anti-homosexual prejudice which had in effect sealed his fate from the moment of his arrest. Although he knew well the risks he was taking, it is hard not to feel a degree of sympathy for him as he was led out that Monday, a solemn crowd gathered, the executioner waiting to strangle him, a roaring fire ready to consume his corpse. Perhaps there were some Asian onlookers who felt quietly bemused by the whole event. What is undeniable is that, in the words delivered many years ago by the well-known VOC historian C.R. Boxer, ‘the Dutch East India Company lost one of its ablest servants on the public execution ground at Batavia in 1644’.
The two Dutchmen arrested after Schouten’s second confession were executed at about the same time by being placed in weighted sacks and drowned. Another associate was similarly dealt with a few months later. It was a just punishment, according to Gijsbert Heeck, ‘since they were unworthy to continue living among humans’. News of the Schouten case would certainly have caused a stir in other VOC bases and there may have been further investigations, but if so it is not known how many people were executed as a result. Tavernier repeats his figure of 40, which seems improbable. In their annual general letter to the directors in Amsterdam, dated December 23rd, 1644, the governor-general and council mentioned the Schouten case and, amid the usual God-fearing sentiments, expressed the hope that they would be spared sodomitic colleagues in future. In fact there were further sodomy trials in Batavia in the 17th century (often for what we would now call bestiality), drowning having become the standard punishment, but none of them could compare with Schouten’s, either in terms of the celebrity of the accused or of the reverberations which went round the territories of the Dutch East Indies.
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