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senior staff put together a collection of navigational instruments that a pilot such
as Gomes would be sure to appreciate. These did buy Gomes's favour, but Saris
began to suspect that some treachery was being planned. He weighed anchor and
crossed over to Ternate to call on the governor in person, but Don Jerónimo made
it clear that he would not trade. All he wanted from the English, he claimed, were
several pairs of seamen's boots. Saris sent over three pairs gratis and switched to
his back-up plan: he set his course for Japan.
Saris'streatmentbytheDutchwasamongtheissuesraisedatthesecondAnglo-
Dutch conference in 1615. The first conference had been under way while Saris
was at sea. In fact, the day de Groot lectured James I on the freedom of the sea,
13 April 1613, happened to be the day Saris sent the boots to Don Jerónimo as a
gesture of farewell to the Spice Islands. Back in Europe, neither the Dutch nor the
EnglishknewwhatwastranspiringoffTernate,buttheycertainlydidwhenthetwo
sides met for a second conference two years later at The Hague. De Groot took the
stage again, arguing that the Dutch position since the publication of
The Free Sea
had been consistent. The English delegation cited Saris's journey as evidence of
the double standard of the Dutch legal position, insisting that trade should be 'free
as well for us as for yourselves'. The answer from the Dutch side came from de
Groot. The contracts were valid, he declared, and the men who signed them and
thentriedtotradewithSariswere'perfidious'andnottobetrusted.ItwastheEng-
lish who were intimidating the local rulers, not the Dutch.
De Groot knew this was all a fiction. He was personally and legally offended
at Blocq calling the Moluccans 'our slaves', but he was the VOC's lawyer and ob-
liged to argue on his client's behalf. So he retreated to the high ground of contract
law and insisted that 'he to whome another hath promised to deliver certayne com-
modities hath right to hinder the promiser from delivering them to any other'. In
the narrowest of legal terms, the Dutch were simply enforcing contract. The issue
had nothing to do with the freedom of the seas.
The second conference is regarded by fans of de Groot as a low point in their
hero's career. He may have phrased the Dutch legal right to exclude the English by
invoking the law of contract, but in reality the exclusion rested on the condition of
virtual slavery of the people, and it was imposed and maintained solely by force.
Van Ittersum concludes that de Groot could have had few doubts about the true
nature of the VOC contracts. 'From the perspective of the indigenous peoples, the
contracts were no longer voluntary agreements but cruel dictates that undermined
their sovereignty and self-determination', she writes; 'the countervailing evidence
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