Friends on the Other Side: François Caron, Patronage, and Local Agency in Diplomatic Relations Between the Dutch East India Company and Tokugawa Japan, 1627-1641

Bottom-up study into the personal contributions of Dutch colonial agent François Caron (1600-1673) and local patrons to the formation of favourable diplomatic relations between the Dutch East India Company and the Tokugawa shogunate of Japan in the period precluding Dutch confinement on the island of Deshima, Nagasaki. This contribution demonstrates that when the Tokugawa Shogunate began to redefine the conditions of foreign trade and diplomatic relations with Japan during the early seventeenth century, it was only one of several actors involved in this process. The local Dutch factory, led by the charismatic cultural broker Caron, also had a voice in this process through its powerful allies at court which Caron accumulated over the course of a single decade, allowing them to secure a position for the Dutch East India Company in Japan after 1641. It challenges the predominant theory that the Dutch owed their success in Japan to a pragmatic approach to trade which eschewed...Show moreBottom-up study into the personal contributions of Dutch colonial agent François Caron (1600-1673) and local patrons to the formation of favourable diplomatic relations between the Dutch East India Company and the Tokugawa shogunate of Japan in the period precluding Dutch confinement on the island of Deshima, Nagasaki. This contribution demonstrates that when the Tokugawa Shogunate began to redefine the conditions of foreign trade and diplomatic relations with Japan during the early seventeenth century, it was only one of several actors involved in this process. The local Dutch factory, led by the charismatic cultural broker Caron, also had a voice in this process through its powerful allies at court which Caron accumulated over the course of a single decade, allowing them to secure a position for the Dutch East India Company in Japan after 1641. It challenges the predominant theory that the Dutch owed their success in Japan to a pragmatic approach to trade which eschewed proselytization of the Christian faith by raising attention to the importance of systems of patronage and the efficiency of local agency in Japan and the broader early-modern colonial context.Show less

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Friends on the Other Side: François Caron, Patronage, and Local Agency in Diplomatic Relations Between the Dutch East India Company and Tokugawa Japan, 1627-1641