The introduction of cannon capable of battering down the walls of medieval fortifications caused an important transformation of European siege warfare and fortification design from the fifteenth century onwards. This chapter will lay down a baseline of the broad thrust of the development of European fortrification design to which the designs of the VOC's engineers can be compared. The chapter will argue that far from being static after the development of the basion, fortification design was a highly dynamic field. New developments in siege tactics required defenders and engineers to react. By the late seventeenth century there were a number of well-established rival styles of fortification design, all of which set out to achieve the same objective, but through opting for rather different design choices. If VOC engineers followed trends in Europe, which trends did they follow and what does this tell us of the background of the Company's engineers and the dissemination of engineering knowledge overseas? Merely looking at bastions does not suffice for us to judge whether fortifications were considered “up to date” by their contemporaries. Finally, the chapter will briefly pay attention to three different sources of inspiration for VOC engineers: Portuguese fortifications, South Asian traditions in fortress design, and the designs of its French and British rivals in the eighteenth century.

This chapter will of necessity focus on the work of a relatively small number of engineers to describe the development of fortification design in Europe over a long period of time and the debates between various schools of thought. This does not mean that I subscribe to what Janis Langins has called “the old heroic tradition of historiography of technology.” But there were some engineers whose influence surpassed that of others because either they could shape the institutional setting in which others would operate (Vauban), or they were in a position to publish their ideas, which could then be taken up by others (Specklin, Coehoorn and Landsberg for example). Since most of the engineers working for the VOC in Asia lacked first-hand experience of “regular” sieges (whether defending or attacking), knowledge of the written tracts was all the more important as reference to published siege journals or fortification treatises would serve both to stifle opposition to their proposals and to cement reputations as well-versed experts.

When penning these words in the mid-1680s Amsterdam director Coenraed van Beuningen was engaged in a mission to reduce the costs and overheads of the VOC in Asia. Van Beuningen was a powerful man in Amsterdam. He had been a member of the urban council since 1660 and would be one of the city's four mayors seven times between 1669 and 1684. He was deputy to the States-General in 1673-1682 and would lead multiple diplomatic missions to France and Sweden. In the year of disasters of 1672, Van Beuningen chose to side with the Orangist faction in Amsterdam led by Gillis Valckenier. In 1681, Van Beuningen became a director of the Amsterdam chamber of the VOC. In this capacity, he displayed a remarkable knack for devising elaborate plans and calculations which would prove that the VOC in Asia could greatly reduce its costs, and in so doing become more profitable. Frequent targets of his cost-cutting enthusiasm were the size of the fleet in Asia and the garrisons and fortifications maintained by the Company. Van Beuningen was frequently too optimistic, and his paper exercises contained errors. But although he was perhaps the most strident of the directors in his wish to cut costs, he was by no means the only one. Though his plans were often far-fetched, he could also be acute and insightful. In the same document, Van Beuningen argued “that the Company's Fortifications and Garrisons can contribute nothing in this world to the security of the Company's affairs on Ceylon…” In doing so, Van Beuningen pointed to an important weakness in Van Goens's strategic vision.

By the time that Coenraad van Beuningen, director of the VOC Amsterdam chamber, worded his concerns on the management of the Company in 1685, the VOC had acquired itself an empire. Apart from being the largest European shipping firm operating on the Cape route, the Company operated a large intra-Asian trade and had acquired for itself a position as a territorial power in parts of littoral Asia and southern Africa, with all the trappings of sovereignty that that entailed. In the eastern Indonesian archipelago, on parts of Java, especially around Batavia itself; in the coastal lowlands of Ceylon; in parts of Malabar; as well as around the recently founded city of Cape Town the VOC was an administrator and ruler, as well as a merchant. This dual role brought with it inherent tensions which could not easily be resolved. These tensions between merchant and ruler explain the debates that were waged within the Company in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries on issues such as colonization and the rights of colonists, the maintenance of monopolies, conquest, and territory. The inherent problem, that it was difficult being a jealous monopolist and a fair administrator at the same time, would never be solved by the Company. These debates on the very nature of the Company had obvious repercussions for the decision whether to build fortifications, at which locations, and at which moments in time, as well as the possibility of using citizen militias to garrison them. To understand the debates on fortifications it is therefore necessary to give a brief introduction to the organization of the VOC, in both Europe and Asia. This chapter will therefore first present an introduction to the VOC, as well as a more detailed overview of the south Asian possessions of the Company in India and on Ceylon.

The above excerpt from a letter from Pieter Sluysken, commander of Galle, probably written to Governor-General Willem Arnold Alting in the summer or fall of 1787, sums up the problems facing the VOC's high command in the second half of the 1780s: too many engineers. In itself this would not have been a problem if only the engineers had been able to work out consensus proposals which they could present to the VOC's high command (either the local governor or the High Government) for approval. However, the engineers working on Ceylon in the 1780s could not agree on anything other than that the fortifications needed to be modernized. The actual modifications themselves would become the object of intense debate, as all engineers attempted to have their own proposals accepted. Since the officials who would have to make the decision in this matter were not themselves technically trained, the technical debate over the various proposals also and perhaps in the first place, became a contest between rivalling networks of patronage within the VOC. The ensuing ruckus clearly illustrates the enduring tensions between Batavia and Ceylon even in the late eighteenth century.

War: The Fourth Anglo-Dutch War in Asia, 1780-1784

Ever since the American Revolutionary War had erupted into a wider European conflict by France's entry into it in 1778, the position of the Dutch Republic in Europe and of the VOC in Asia had become more precarious.

The fall of Cochin in 1795 and the last VOC possessions on Ceylon in 1796 marked the end of a military presence of VOC or Dutch forces in South Asia. The peace treaty of Amiens saw the return of the Cape to the Batavian Republic, but Ceylon and the former VOC possessions in India remained in British hands. The Batavian Republic, allied to France, was hard pressed to defend its commerce in Europe, but even so a plan was launched in 1805 to recapture Ceylon. By December of that year, two ships of the line, Pieter Paulus and the aptly named Chatham, lay ready at Hellevoetsluis, along with the frigate Euridice and the French brigs Phaeton and Voltigeur and transports for a contingent of French troops of 3,000 men. But the expedition was cancelled due to the outbreak of war with Austria. Instead of Ceylon, the assembled troops went to Zeist and ultimately on towards Germany and the battle of Jena-Auerstadt. The newly founded Kingdom of the Netherlands would have some former VOC possessions in India restored to it in 1818. Chinsurah, Pulicat, Sadras, Bimilipatnam, Jaggernaikpuram, and Tuticorin were restored to the Netherlands in much the same way that Pondicherry was returned to France. But these towns would not remain part of the kingdom for long. In 1825 they, along with Malacca, were traded in exchange for the British possessions on Sumatra, primarily Bengkulu. All that remained of the VOC's presence in India and Ceylon were the ruins of its forts and warehouses and the archival records.

In studying both the realized plans of VOC fortifications and the debates between engineers on their unrealized plans, this book has shed light on several interrelated topics. In the first place this is of course the spread of European engineering ideas to the European colonies. Fortification design in Europe was a highly dynamic discipline, and this dynamism is reflected in the debates between engineers of various backgrounds working for the VOC in Asia. These engineers themselves, their backgrounds, social status, and aspirations are another topic on which this study has dwelt at some length.

The final inspection of the VOC's military state in all of its Asian and African possessions was conducted by a Military Committee specially formed for the task in 1789-1792. Strikingly, this committee was not formed by the VOC in Asia, but rather was the result of an initiative taken by the Admiralty of Amsterdam. Writing on the state of the fort at Trincomalee in 1790, the committee clearly articulated the vulnerability of a small fort to bombardment by mortar and red-hot shot. This chapter will follow the evaluations and recommendations of this committee as it inspected the fortifications of Ceylon and Malabar in 1789-1790. The inspection of the defenses would be used to articulate proposals for their improvement and the engineer attached to the committee had the power to overrule the VOC's engineers and submit the final plans for improvemet. Given that, the selection of the chief engineer for this mission was of course a sensitive choice. But why was a committee that operated outside the regular VOC chain of command formed in the first place? The committee illustrates an important change in the relations between the Generality and the VOC. Since the first naval squadron under J.P. van Braam had been sent immediately after the Fourth Anglo- Dutch War, the admiralties of the Dutch Republic had continuously maintained small naval squadrons in Asia. Defense of the Asian possessions was no longer the exclusive responsibility of the VOC even before the committee was formed. Working outside the VOC hierarchy, the Military Committee would be able to present the States-General with an independent assessment of the state of defense of the empire in the East.

While the engineers had been debating their plans in Asia throughout the 1780s, events in the Netherlands had taken a dramatic turn, which would ultimately decide the engineers’ quarrels. The poor performance of the VOC in the war with Britain had convinced many in the Republic that intervention by the Generality was warranted.

The preferred term for all manner of artillery or bastion-trace fortifications in the historiography seems to be the “Trace Italienne.” But this is not a term that I have found in use anywhere in the sources. By the second half of the eighteenth century Dutch students of military engineering could not even say where exactly the bastion had originated. One anonymous student, despite naming many early Italian examples of bastions, said that some thought the bastion had originated in Bohemia, but that others argued for a Turkish origin. The phrase “Trace Italienne” is unfortunate for another reason. I have argued in chapter one that fortification design was highly dynamic and that the invention of the bastion was only the beginning of a development. It does not seem useful to refer to a fortification design by Coehoorn or Vauban by the name Trace Italienne, when there was a world of difference between the first Italian bastions and these later designs. Instead, I have used either “bastion trace” or the more generic “artillery fortification,” since not all types of designs actually used bastions to begin with.

Another issue is geographic names, I have predominantly opted for the modern usage (so Chowghat and not Chettua), with a few exceptions where use of the modern name seemed illogical (Batavia, not Jakarta; Madras, not Chennai). Finally, a word on illustrations. A work on fortification design is not complete without illustrations. Since the process of design itself was always a matter of integrating text and image, the analysis and description of these designs, of the development of design, and of the debates on designs must also integrate text and image. In some instances, an image really can convey more than 1,000 words. The output of the Company's engineers is housed in a number of collections, the most important being the National Archives in The Hague and the Leiden University Bodel Nijenhuis collection, but also including the National Maritime Museum in Amsterdam, and abroad the Bibliothèque National de France and of course the remaining Company archives in Jakarta, Colombo, and Chennai. The collections of the National Archives of the UK in Kew and the British Library also containe maps immediately post-dating the Dutch period.

Rijckloff Volckertsz. van Goens, formerly the Dutch East India Company's (VOC) governor of Ceylon had, by the fall of 1672 been appointed Superintendent and commander-in-chief of the VOC's establishments and forces in South Asia. A French fleet had anchored in Trincomalee on Ceylon and in July of that same year had sailed to São Tomé de Meliapur on the Coromandel Coast and taken the town. News had just arrived from Europe that the Dutch Republic and France were at war, spurring Van Goens to take another critical look at the disposition of the VOC's forces in the region. Negapatnam on the Coromandel Coast, taken from Portugal in 1659, was seen as a weak point and in need of new fortifications. Dombaer and Butler, together representing the commercial and military sides of the Company, were dispatched to Negapatnam to inspect the existing works and suggest improvements. Van Goens remarked to the Company's leadership in Batavia that he himself had drawn a possible new trace for the fortifications in their plan “in dotted lines.” Negapatnam would ultimately be refortified, but only in the 1680s, at the instigation of another fortification enthusiast, Hendrik Adriaan van Reede tot Drakenstein, empowered as the direct representative of the Company's Dutch leadership to inspect the VOC establishments west of Malacca. This episode draws our attention to the processes by which the Company decided to build fortifications, the process of designing these fortifications and their actual construction. As this example suggests, many of the individuals engaged in the design of fortifications were not, in fact, specialized military engineers, but rather amateurs, “experienced theorists or practitioners.” This is an interesting point, since much importance is attached to the role European artillery fortifications played in Early Modern European expansion.

The VOC plays a special role in this debate, since it built more fortifications over a much wider geographic scope than any of its rivals. The East India Company (EIC), focused in its territorial possessions on India since the 1680s, built fewer forts and would later focus its military energies on constructing a potent field force.

The victory of the VOC in the war with Calicut which was brought to a close in 1717 also marked the end of an era. This was to be the last war until the 1760s in which the VOC was able and willing to defend its claims of exclusive trading privileges by force. In the case of the war with the Zamorin, as we have seen, this also resulted in an increase in the territory under the Company's control, though much of this was then ceded to the Company's allies. Marking the victory, the Company erected a new fort at Chowghat (Chettuva/Chettua in the sources) that would henceforth act as the northern gate to the lands of the Company and its allies. This was the last fort built to control new territories. From the 1740s onwards, a new series of fortifications was built, but both their aim as well as their dislocation would be novel. These new forts were built to protect previously unfortified factories against attack by Marathas in territories to the north where it had previously not been necessary to maintain fortifications. This was mainly due to the decline in the power of the Mughal Empire. At the same time, and partly as its consequence, the rise of new states created new threats to which the VOC had to find an appropriate response. In the south, Travancore would upend traditional Malabar politics and undermine the Company's role. On top of all this, the period also saw the increasing strength of French and British forces in India, partly due to the wars between these states in 1740-1748 and again from 1756 until 1763. But French and British power also increased because of the political turmoil on the subcontinent. Even in the years of nominal peace between 1748 and 1756, French and British forces would fight each other, “on loan” to various local states. In so doing, they gained additional territories and incomes as well as valuable experience.

The decline in Mughal power had a number of knock-on effects, all of which worked to the detriment of the VOC. As Mughal power slowly declined, other powers were willing and able to fill the void. Some of these were run by former Mughal provincial governors such as Mubariz Khan who, from 1715 onwards, set up a de facto independent state in Hyderabad.

With this explanation, Carel Francken started his explanation of the events that led to the fall of Ceylon to British forces in 1795-1796 for Governor-General Van Overstraten in February 1797. Ever since the Fourth Anglo-Dutch War of 1780-1784, plans had been made for the improvement of the fortifications in anticipation of the next European war. The position of Ceylon and the importance of Trincomalee meant that the VOC could not hope to remain neutral in the next war. When war came, however, it came in a completely unexpected form. The Republic itself would fall before the colonies did: invaded by French revolutionary forces in 1794-1795, a new or “Batavian” Republic was declared in July 1795. This new Republic allied itself to France and war with Britain was promptly declared, with the stadholder fleeing to Britain. But the Batavian Republic would not be a mere French puppet. Jonathan Israel has argued that many traits of the “old” Republic were continued in the new and political leadership would be held by Dutchmen, not Frenchmen, often former Patriots from the movement of the 1780s. Though the new state would be a centralized republic, there were still many proponents of federalism in the new national assembly.

This transition would have dramatic consequences for the position of the VOC in Asia. When the old Republic was forced into war with revolutionary France in 1793 in alliance with Britain, the VOC's Asian possessions were safe, as the British Royal Navy ruled the waves. The most important concerns were providing convoys for outgoing Indiamen and guarding against French privateers in Asian waters. This even provided a stimulus for technical innovation as the VOC finally introduced copper sheathing on its ships on a large scale.

Rijckloff Volckertsz. van Goens, Commander-in-Chief of the VOC's forces in Ceylon and India, felt understandably frustrated with the directors of the VOC when he wrote them in February 1661. He had completed the conquest of the remaining Portuguese fortifications on Ceylon in 1658 and taken Negapatnam on the southern Coromandel Coast the next year. By early 1661, when writing these lines, two concerns weighed paramount on his mind: the conquest of Malabar and the refortification of the places already taken. Van Goens was concerned that Portugal would yet be able to mount a counter-offensive and take back that which had been captured at tremendous cost after years of warfare. In addition, Van Goens became ever more suspicious of the VOC's former ally on the island, Raja Sinha, king of Kandy. Colombo had not been handed over to Kandy after its capitulation in 1656, and relations with Kandy had remained frosty ever since, spilling over into open conflict when Van Goens attempted to seize the territory of the Seven Korales in 1664-65. To protect the spoils of war therefore, Van Goens wanted to build new fortifications. He would not make the same mistake the Portuguese had originally made. They had built their forts with only the threat from Kandy in mind, not the possibility of a full-blown European siege. The VOC forts, therefore, should be designed explicitly with this idea in mind. To this end, new works had already been proposed for Galle and Colombo. Even Jaffna, which had been perhaps the strongest of the Portuguese fortifications, would be rebuilt with a large pentagonal citadel. But this system would not serve merely military functions. Van Goens had promised the directors of the Company that great profits could be gained from Ceylon, if only the Company could control the island's trade. This would require fortifying all the major ports and anchorages. To this end, the VOC would have to reconstruct the forts in the east, Trincomalee and Batticaloa, which had been handed over to the king of Kandy and destroyed twenty years before. But the directors did not wish to approve this move, leaving Van Goens frustrated by what he saw as their lack of vision.

Claudius Antoine (also Claude Anthonius or Claudius Antonie) van Luepken was a major of artillery in the VOC's army in Batavia when he penned these words in the early 1760s. Originally from Hamburg, Luepken entered VOC service in 1751, sailing out on board the Schakenbosch as a sergeant at twenty guilders a month. Once in Asia, his career advanced quickly: he was promoted to ensign at double his previous salary in his first year in Asia, and by 1757 he had made lieutenant-engineer and first surveyor at fifty guilders a month. By 1760 he had been made captain and his salary had risen to eighty guilders. Two years later, he was promoted to major of artillery with a further increase in salary to 150 guilders a month. In the capacity of major of artillery at Batavia, Luepken would in fact become the VOC's unofficial chief engineer, drafting ambitious plans for the refortification of Batavia after the end of the Seven Years’ War (1757-1763). The British capture of Havana and Manilla towards the end of the war showed the VOC leadership that even its central base might not be safe from amphibious attack. Though there was no formal continuation of the central position of “director of fortifications and approaches” that Pieter Gijsbert Noodt had occupied during the 1720s, Luepken would become the de facto chief engineer of the VOC, and was frequently asked to review plans from outlying establishments. In 1762, for example, he would advise the High Government to order the demolition of an outwork at Fort Mosselstein on the island of Kharg. In that same period Luepken was asked by the High Government to comment on proposals for new fortifications and improvements to existing works at Negapatnam and Cochin. Luepken, though he was more successful than the typical engineer, is typical for the period in a number of respects. Like many others who enlisted with the VOC in this period, he hailed from one of the German states. Also like many others, he sailed out at the low rank of soldier or subaltern officer before rising rapidly through the ranks once in Asia. This rapid advancement likely indicates that Luepken had either enjoyed some formal training or that he was experienced as a soldier.