Adam Clulow's first monograph adds to the distinguished cross-disciplinary research which he has presented in history and area studies journals over the past decade. The Company and the Shogun: The Dutch Encounter with Tokugawa Japan summarizes his transnational scholarship on piracy, maritime trade patterns and diplomacy in the China Sea region in the first half of the seventeenth century. The book moreover offers innumerable new insights into related topics such as the political administration of the Dutch East India Company (VOC), the Tokugawa Bakufu's foreign policies and Southeast Asian debuts in international relations. Illustrating the company's clashes with and its ultimate surrender to Tokugawa Japan over diplomacy, violence and sovereignty, he shows how the Dutch succumbed to the demands of the Bakufu for the sake of durable access to Japan. This stands in clear contrast to the company's image as an unrelenting organization, which frequently used its military apparatus elsewhere in Asia.

Clulow's approach of combining micro-historical details with big questions partly strikes a chord with the scholarship of Tonio Andrade and Robert I. Hellyer.Footnote ¹ This impressive survey undoubtedly benefitted from both the author's analytical strength and from a thorough engagement with Dutch and Japanese sources (i.e. various Dagregister editions, the Ikoku Nikki and records of the Dainihon Shiryō). A clear focus on diverse actors and a remarkably eloquent writing style including lively anecdotes and expressive figurative language characterize his revisionist story telling, an accomplishment which deserves special mention considering that Clulow was faced with the translation of antiquated classical Japanese records and unpolished Dutch scripts into modern English.

What makes the survey of further value is the new insights into the company's political administration, its operating institutions and how its members mastered challenging environments. Given the scarcity of publications beyond the company's commercial and maritime strategies, Clulow's findings prove historians of the European expansion in Asia (including the review author), who used to think that they knew how the VOC functioned, wrong.

The interdisciplinary nature of the book stimulates various research traditions. First, as a study in international and diplomatic history, long-held views of European diplomatic engagement as a straightforward process or as the result of smooth negotiations are challenged. An elaborate survey of three early modern conflicts between emerging states presents answers to the question on how formal and informal negotiating patterns shaped diplomatic relations from Makassar via Siam and Southern China to Japan. In a similar light, the conclusion ultimately contrasts Dutch diplomatic approaches in Asia with its peculiar performance in Japan.

Second, being also a study in Japanese history the book introduces state-of-the-art Japanese-language scholarship to international readers and discusses important paradigms of research on the Tokugawa regime, including political consolidation under the Tokugawa or the controversial matter of restricted foreign relations. As such, the study benefits from the author's profound training in Japanese historical research traditions to which it offers an alternative perspective. With regard to Japanese history, however, it arguably does have some untapped potential: research in gaikōshi (foreign relations history), such as the seminal work of Tanaka Takeo on late medieval and early modern Japanese foreign relations, or Shimizu Yūko's recent study on early Tokugawa foreign relations during the shuinsen trade, could have provided additional context.Footnote ²

Third, it is an excellent study in global history. The author globally acquired what it takes to achieve a balanced, comparative view of both past events and current scholarly debates. Adam Clulow studied at the University of Kwazulu-Natal in South Africa, received a Master's degree from the University of Niigata in Japan and a Ph.D. in East Asian History from Columbia University. Since 2008 he has taught at the School of Philosophical, Historical and International Studies of Monash University in Australia. A number of fellowships and advanced proficiency in foreign languages further enabled him to pursue broad research in Japan and the Netherlands in order to dig up evidence for his thesis. Future studies in global history will recognize the importance of his work, centered on the permanent Dutch refashioning illustrated in a flexible and partly far-sighted adaptation of the changing Japanese diplomatic circuit of the seventeenth century.

Reviewing a brilliant study like this is a complicated venture because there is only so much one can seriously criticize, similarly there is a risk of commending elements of this study too highly. A few minor suggestions for change could therefore be made; these are mostly of a formal nature and should rather be addressed to the publisher than to the author. For instance, a list of figures is missing despite the nine illustrations (including European paintings and photographs by the author). The use of Chinese characters for the sake of clarity, an approach that has recently become common in Western language scholarship on East Asia, would have been helpful for future reference and to avoid confusion. As already indicated, research by Japanese scholars and in particular a comparison with other European diplomatic actors in Japan could have put certain accounts into greater perspective. The topical, non-chronological narrative makes it sometimes complicated to place historical events in their temporal sequence, in particular if the reader is not familiar with the broader story. That said, I will confine myself to summarizing noteworthy features of the contents in the remaining part of the review.

Contrasting Charles Boxer's overemphasis on the Christian impact on Japan's transformative foreign relations (p. 11) with Ronald Toby's and Arano Yasunori's underestimation of Europeans for specific Tokugawa diplomatic, commercial and maritime policies, the introductory chapter summarizes previous research on early modern Japanese foreign relations. Clulow's own assumptions were clearly inspired by Leonard Blussé's thesis that VOC actions in Asia rested on diplomacy and violence.

Part 1 (Diplomacy) – arguably the strongest and densest part of the survey – consists of three chapters, which deal with various aspects of the peculiar position of the Dutch in Japan's domestic and foreign policies. Achieving a permanent position in Nagasaki and annual access to Edo – as the only European trading nation by the 1630s – did not come overnight but was the result of diplomatic finesse by VOC officials, clever cooperation with Japanese authorities and a willingness to compromise. Close connections between diplomacy and commerce of the VOC's Japan agenda date back to the arrival of company members equipped with a diplomatic document in Hirado in 1609. Nevertheless, Clulow debunks the narrative of diplomat-merchants well received by a friendly shogun (p. 25). Quite to the contrary, the company's peculiar profile and its lack of a presentable political representative (either because of the lack of a monarch in the Netherlands or the low rank of the Governor General in Batavia) hampered Dutch legitimization. According to Clulow, the Dutch could only survive in Japan once they were willing to subordinate themselves to Japanese sovereignty as “a faithful vassal” of the Bakufu (p. 18). Supporting his argument, a prominent part of chapter 2 describes the episode of the rejected delegation led by ambassador Pieter Nuyts. The diplomatic mission sent from the Governor General Pieter de Carpentier from the VOC headquarters in Batavia to the Shogun in 1627 marked a shift in VOC diplomatic practice. Despite a strong desire to live up to the symbolic necessities of East Asian diplomacy, the improvised mission did not succeed in its goal of directly negotiating trade policies with the Shogun: Ambassador Nuyts's haughty behavior (he resisted being humiliated as the mere bearer of an official letter) was less disturbing for Japanese authorities than the fact that the Dutch offhandedly replaced the Stadhouder of former diplomatic correspondence (“king of Holland”) with the Governor General.

In Chapter 3 Clulow revisits the image of VOC officials as loyal vassals of the Shogun, first illustrated by Engelbert Kaempfer. Tracing the rhetoric of subordination and the constant use of “vassal” or “loyal servant” in VOC correspondence, the author shows that this very image of the “shogun's vassal” was in fact the result of conscious scheming by VOC agents. After 1634, VOC officials were asked to publicly display their loyalty in a humble and silent audience with the shogun in Edo at the end of the so-called Hofreis from Nagasaki. Clulow argues that these humble acts became part and parcel of Tokugawa domestic policies, the sankin kōtai (alternate residence of local lords), and provides evidence that even company members of the time were aware of such similarities.

Part 2 (Violence) addresses the company's aggressive gunboat diplomacy through a revisionist lens. Chapter 4 highlights the limits of the company's notorious elastic legal framework for dominating maritime trade. Despite the technological and institutional shortcomings of Tokugawa maritime control, the VOC acknowledged the bakufu's maritime sovereignty by accepting the authority of the red seal passes (shuinjō) in 1610. Before long their use of maritime force was even further curtailed and, being associated with piracy (bahan), their image was tainted. When company merchants captured and plundered the Portuguese vessel San Antonio in 1615 off the coast of a peripheral Japanese island, the harsh Tokugawa reaction indicates how explanations based on Grotius's Mare Liberum failed due to different legal interpretations.

Chapter 5 discusses how the Dutch gradually gave up the right to wage war against enemies in Japanese waters during violent clashes with the Zheng maritime empire over Taiwan that led to conflicts with Chinese merchants in Nagasaki. Regardless of Dutch arguments, the Bakufu did not tolerate VOC maritime aggressions and insisted on non-intervention on the seas.

A comparatively short Part 3 (Sovereignty) discusses how the Bakufu eventually successfully interfered with Dutch sovereignty claims outside Japan. Chapter 6 illustrates VOC rivalry in Taoyuan with Japanese merchants. Once the Dutch built Fort Zeelandia and claimed dominion over the territory (including attempts to collect taxes from Japanese merchants), the Bakufu refused to accept Dutch attempts to control the island, which interfered directly with the interest of Japanese shuinsen merchants. In Clulow's words “Batavia presented its claims as the product of universal ideas” which “derived in fact from a European language of sovereignty and possession that had no equivalent in Japan” (p. 218). After offenses against Hamada Yahyoue, the Tokugawa ignored carefully constructed Dutch arguments before the situation seemed to escalate. After a four-year standoff the VOC ultimately also surrendered their sovereignty.

Chapter 7 describes how the company had lost all options for negotiation and only an act of humiliation could save them after the embarrassment of the Nuyts embassy and the events in Taiwan. Thus, Nuyts was to take the blame and was handed over as a prisoner in the summer of 1632 in a symbolic act of yielding to Japanese jurisdiction. While Nuyts was placed under house arrest in Hirado, the new opperhoofd Couckebacker initiated humble negotiations with Edo. Using an impressive diplomatic gift (a chandelier from Holland), an act of great importance in the East Asian diplomatic circuit, he once again signalled the company's willingness to surrender to Japanese terms and conditions.

To sum up, the book is a remarkably intelligent and entertaining attempt to show that VOC officials and merchants behaved “like lambs in Japan”.Footnote ³