Amboina, 1623 ― Fear and Conspiracy on the Edge of Empire

In 1623, a Japanese mercenary called Shichizo was arrested for asking suspicious questions about a Dutch East India Company castle on Amboina, a remote set of islands in what is now eastern Indonesia. He was tortured until he confessed that he had joined a plot orchestrated by a group of English merchants to seize control of the fortification and ultimately to rip the spice-rich islands from the Company’s grasp. Two weeks later, Dutch authorities executed twenty-one alleged conspirators, sparking immediate outrage and a controversy that would endure for centuries to come.

In this landmark study, Adam Clulow presents a new perspective on the Amboina case that aims to move beyond the debate over guilt or innocence. Amboina, 1623 argues that the case was driven forward by a potent combination of genuine crisis, imagined threat, and overpowering fear that propelled the rapid escalation from suspicion to torture, that gave shape and form to the sprawling plot, and that pushed it forward to a final bloody conclusion. Based on a detailed analysis of archival records, letters, and contemporary legal documents, this book is a masterful reinterpretation of a trial that has divided opinion for centuries. Amboina, 1623 offers new insights into one of the most famous cases in global history and the nature of European expansion across the early modern world.

Adam Clulow is an associate professor at Monash University. He is the author of the prize-winning The Company and the Shogun: The Dutch Encounter with Tokugawa Japan (Columbia, 2014) and the creator of the Amboyna Conspiracy Trial website.