From Japan to Manila and Back to Europe: The Abortive English Trade with Tonkin in the 1670s

It is a well-known fact that the reconstitution of the English East India Company in the 1660s caused a significant revolution in its Asia trade. Coincidently with this improvement, the Company also attempted to expand its trade to East Asian countries, using its Bantam Agent, its only base in Southeast Asia, as a springboard for launching this strategy. Around 1668 the Court of Committees in London was looking for an appropriate opportunity to re-open relations with Japan through the channel of Cambodia. The plan of re-entering the Japan trade – in this the directors in London might have been influenced by their officials in Bantam or they themselves had overestimated its prospects – was then put into practice at the end of 1671. Forthe Company itself, trading with Japan would obviously be profitable, as it had observed at first hand the considerable success of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) over the last decades. The English in the East also grew convinced that the regional trade between Japan and other areas would reap extra profits for the Company. Among the selected targets was Tonkin, present-day northern Vietnam. At that time, its silks and other textiles were highly valued and could fetch good prices in Japan. Traders who took Tonkinese silks to Nagasaki were then able to purchase Japanese silver and copper. These precious metals would be brought back to invest in local merchandize at other factories to keep up the flow of the Japan trade and to supply marketable goods for Europe. The ultimate aim of the English in tradingwith Tonkin was, therefore, to create the so-called Tonkinese silk-for-Japanese silver trade, like that successfully undertaken by the Dutch since 1637. Besides, the search for new markets for English manufactured goods was another reason that spurred the Company on to carry out this plan.