Vermeer's Hat

by Timothy Brook

  The junk that the Ouwerkerck had captured was blown in the opposite direction and washed up at the south end of Korea. Three of the Dutchmen, including Weltevree, went ashore at Cheju Island to find water. While they foraged, the Chinese on board regained control of their ship and sailed away, abandoning those who had gone ashore. The “pirate,” as the modern historian who has reconstructed Weltevree’s story calls him, “had been done in by his victims.”

  Weltevree must have handled his first encounter with Koreans with dexterity, for not only did the Koreans not decapitate him, as the Chinese had done to some of Las Cortes’s fellow shipwreck survivors, but they recruited him for his technical skills. The sole condition of his employment was that he not leave the country. Now that he was in Korea, he had to accept that he was there for good. His two fellow castaways died fighting against a Manchu invasion in 1635, but Weltevree survived, and indeed flourished, as a royal gunsmith. The arquebuses carried by the Koreans who apprehended the Sparrow Hawk crew may well have been manufactured under his supervision.

  Weltevree did more than just adapt to his new circumstances in Korea: he prospered. He worked hard, rose in rank, married a Korean woman, and had children who were assigned to carry on their father’s trade as gunsmiths. By the time the Sparrow Hawk wrecked on the coast of Cheju, Weltevree had been speaking and presumably reading Korean for twenty-six years. Having spoken no Dutch for that long, when confronted with the Dutch sailors, he found it awkward to speak to them. As one of the Sparrow Hawk survivors later recorded, they were surprised that “a Man of 58 Years of Age, as he then was, could so forget his Mother-tongue, that we had much to do at first to understand him; but it must be observ’d he recover’d it again in a month.” Weltevree had crossed so far over the language barrier with his host culture that he found it difficult to cross back when the need arose. He may have learned other Asian languages, for one of his duties was to take charge of foreign sailors and fishermen—mostly Japanese and Chinese—who were shipwrecked on the coast. He shared command of the newly shipwrecked Dutch sailors with a Chinese sergeant, in fact, and they may well have communicated with each other in a language other than Korean.

  Weltevree integrated himself into Korean society so well that Koreans came to accept him as one of them. The Korean official who introduced him to the Sparrow Hawk survivors laughed when they expressed delight in finding a Dutchman. “You are mistaken,” the Korean told them, “for he is a Coresian.” Weltevree may have looked Dutch to the Dutchmen, but to the Koreans he had become something else. The Dutchmen who found him a generation later could scarcely imagine such a transformation. His entry into Korea had been a matter of necessity at the time, but by the time the Sparrow Hawk struck the coast, Weltevree had no wish to leave. He had attained a position of much greater importance than he ever could have achieved back home, and in that condition survived into his seventies surrounded by his sons. His life as a Korean turned out far better than his life as a returned Dutchman would have been.

  When the survivors of the Sparrow Hawk learned in their first interview with the Korean king that they would not be permitted to return to the Dutch post in Japan, they were shocked. Repatriation was the shipwreck convention in Europe, and they had expected it to be respected in Asia.

  “We humbly beseech your Majesty,” the Dutch sailors addressed the king through Weltevree, “that since we have lost our Ship to the Storm, you would be pleas’d to send us over to Japan, that with the assistance of the Dutch there, we might one Day return to our Country, to enjoy the Company of our Wives, Children and Friends.”

  “It is not the custom of Corea to suffer strangers to depart the Kingdom,” the king replied. “You must resolve to end your Days in my Dominions. I will provide you with all Necessaries.” The king saw no reason to alter standard procedure, as foreigners who left Korea might take back strategic information that could be used against the king in the future.

  The king then became the ethnologist and ordered them to sing Dutch songs and dance Dutch dances so that he could witness European culture firsthand. After the performance, he gave them each a set of clothes “after their Fashion,” as one of the survivors put it, and assigned them to serve in the royal bodyguard. Henceforth they would live as Koreans. Some learned to function well in the Korean language, but most were not content with their new position. Two years later, the ship’s master and a gunner approached a Manchu ambassador visiting Korea to ask that he take them back to China, whence they understood they could be repatriated. The Koreans, learning of this appeal, were adamant that this should not happen. They bribed the Manchu ambassador to get the two Dutchmen back and threw them in prison, where they eventually died. Eleven years after this incident, another eight, unwilling to accept their life sentence, escaped by boat to Japan. They were the ones who carried the story of Weltevree, otherwise thought lost at sea, to the outside world.

  That left eight of the original crew to live out their lives as “Core-sians.” Among them was a sailor named Alexander Bosquet. This man had had several identities before being stranded in Korea. He started life as a Scot, possibly one of the Scottish exile community in France; then went looking for work in the Netherlands, where he changed his name to Sandert Basket; then sailed to Asia as a ship’s gunner for the VOC. He ended up finally in Korea—where he must have been obliged to adopt yet another name, this time a Korean one. Bosquet/Basket managed to be Scottish, French, Dutch, and Korean by turns. How many of the other “Dutchmen” on the Sparrow Hawk started out as something else or ended up as something else again?

  WELTEVREE NEVER MEANT TO LAND on Korean soil. Nor had he any intention of staying there when he did, though in time he accepted the sovereignty into which he had fallen. China handled such affairs differently, as we have seen. Adriano de las Cortes and the survivors of the Guía were permitted to repatriate after clearing themselves of the suspicion of being pirates. But there were other Europeans who did enter China with the intention of staying: missionaries.

  There were two ways to take up permanent residence in China. One was to petition the regional authorities for permission, which the Jesuits successfully did starting in the 1580s. It was understood on both sides that, by entering China of their own will, they were agreeing to remain in China for the remainder of their lives. From the Chinese point of view, the only reason a foreigner would come and then leave, other than to bring tribute, was to spy. The other way to enter China was to sneak in unnoticed, which is what missionaries of the Dominican order started to do in the 1630s. These two ways into China—by the “front door” through Macao (the Jesuits’ route), and by the “back door” along the Fujian coast (the Dominicans’)—happen to be the same two paths by which tobacco first entered China.

  The Jesuit strategy of working with the political authorities in China was based on the hope that their support would translate into open toleration and popular acceptance. The most successful of the early Jesuits was the Italian missionary Matteo Ricci, who entered China from Macao in 1583. After spending a decade improvising his dress and conduct, Ricci worked out an accommodative relationship with Chinese customs and beliefs that enabled him to find his way into elite society—and after 1604 to collaborate with Paolo Xu on translation projects. Their success encouraged the Jesuits to follow this path of accommodation. By the time of Xu’s death in 1633, there were roughly a dozen Jesuit missionaries working throughout the realm.

  The Dominicans’ strategy was the diametric opposite of the Jesuits’ accommodative posture. They were suspicious that accommodating, both politically and theologically, compromised the integrity of Christian doctrine. The Dominicans preferred to sidestep officialdom and embed themselves in local social networks below the radar of the state. This is why, when an Italian Dominican named Angelo Cocchi landed on an island off the Fujian coast on the second day of 1632, he was not another hapless shipwreck victim seeking repatriation, but someone who intended his journey to end exactly here in China.

&nb
sp; Angelo Cocchi was fortunate to have reached China. By all rights he should have died before reaching land. He and his party of twelve had bought passage on a ship that was leaving Taiwan two days earlier. Cocchi had been on the island for the previous three years heading a Dominican mission that had been founded five years earlier. (The Spanish would shortly abandon their little foothold and leave Taiwan to the Dutch.) Juan de Alcarazo, the Spanish governor of the Philippines, asked him to open trade negotiations with the Chinese governor of Fujian, Xiong Wencan. Cocchi had agreed readily, for the request handed him a long-sought opportunity to go to China. His dream to convert the Chinese may have dawned on him as early as 1610, when the thirteen-year-old Florentine boy entered the Dominican order as a novice. Perhaps the idea took form over the next decade of study in Fiesole and Salamanca, or when he left Cádiz for Panama in 1620, or when he took ship in Acapulco for Manila in 1621. The idea was certainly upon him by 1627, when he was ordered to learn the Fujian dialect in Cavite, the port of Manila where all Chinese, and possibly his former teacher, would be systematically massacred in 1639.

  On 30 December 1631, Angelo Cocchi took passage on a Chinese junk sailing from Taiwan to Fujian. His multicultural retinue included a fellow Dominican from Spain, Tomas de la Sierra, two Spanish guards, seven Filipinos, a Mexican, and a Chinese interpreter. Whatever they were bringing with them in the way of presents, supplies, and rumored silver was too great a temptation for the sailors of the vessel. The crew wasted no time. On the first night at sea, they attacked the foreigners, intending to kill them all and take their possessions. Five Filipinos, the Mexican, and one Spaniard were killed. The rest retreated to a cabin and barricaded themselves inside. Each side spent the following day waiting out the other. The next night, New Year’s Eve, the boat was boarded by yet another gang of pirates, who stripped it of everything it carried, massacred the entire crew, and left the boat to drift. Did they not know that an Italian, a Chinese, two Spaniards, and two Filipinos were hiding below deck? It seems not, for they would have been sure to equate foreigners with silver and fight them for it.

  On the morning of New Year’s Day, 1632, Angelo Cocchi emerged cautiously from the cabin in which he and five traveling companions, two of them wounded, had barricaded themselves for two nights and a day. They found their junk drifting off the coast of Fujian and completely deserted, except for the bodies of the slain that still lay on the deck. They managed to land the junk on an island, from which local fisherman conveyed them to the mainland, perhaps out of honest pity, though more likely because they got the junk in exchange for their aid. They were then transferred to the prefectural seat of Quanzhou, one of the ports that handled the trade with Manila, from where they were sent on to Governor Xiong in Fuzhou, the provincial capital. Xiong received Cocchi politely but was not about to grant him residence or even open discussion about trade. Instead, he reported Cocchi’s arrival to Beijing and asked for instructions. He also ordered that the pirates who had boarded Cocchi’s ship be apprehended and executed—which they were, despite Cocchi’s plea to spare their lives.

  The court responded four months later with an order that the survivors of the Guía would have been delighted to receive so quickly: these people were to be sent back. European missionaries were allowed to enter China so long as they observed the four conditions the Jesuits respected, thanks to Matteo Ricci’s improvisation: arrive through legal channels, dress Chinese, speak Mandarin, and conduct yourself according to Chinese norms. Cocchi failed on all counts (was his Chinese substandard, or was the dialect he learned in Cavite unintelligible?) and was ordered out of the country. Rendition to the Philippines was precisely what Cocchi did not want. He wanted to stay in China; he desired to devote the rest of his life to spreading Christianity among the Chinese; he wanted never to return to Manila, much less to Florence.

  When the day arrived for Cocchi to board the boat that was arranged to take him back to Manila, a Japanese Christian who wanted to go to the Philippines took his place. The substitution was arranged through Luke Liu. Liu was a Chinese Christian from Fuan, a neighboring county seat where the Jesuits had already established a mission and won ten converts. What a Japanese Christian was doing in Fuzhou, and how he fooled the authorities, are puzzles without answers, but the ruse worked. After making the switch, Liu whisked Cocchi out of the capital and off to Fuan, where together they set about transforming Cocchi’s appearance and speech into those of a Chinese.

  Cocchi managed to stay out of sight of the provincial authorities. They would have apprehended and exiled him had they known he was there. Even so, he worked publicly enough to convert several people and build two churches. He was so certain of his ambition to build a Dominican presence in Fujian that, within a year, he and his followers devised a plan to smuggle more missionaries from Manila, again via Taiwan. This time the boat was sent from China for the purpose and was manned by four Chinese converts to make sure nothing went amiss. The plan went off without a hitch. In July 1633, Cocchi welcomed two Spanish priests (one of whom, Juan de Morales, had previously led a failed mission to Cambodia) to Fuan. None of this would have been possible without Cocchi’s Chinese associates, and yet they would not have become involved had Cocchi failed to gain their trust and devotion. Four and a half months later, at the age of thirty-six, Angelo Cocchi suddenly fell ill. He died in the very place where he had long intended his life to end, if not quite this soon.

  COCCHI, LIKE WELTEVREE, MADE THE choice never to go home. Both men survived the choice they made, at least initially, and both began to fashion new lives for themselves in their new circumstances, one as a priest, the other as an employee of the king’s arsenal. Theirs were not the only circumstances through which Europeans who ended up in foreign lands far beyond Europe made the decision not to go back. There were others.

  The ship on which Weltevree had first sailed to Asia, the Hollandia, returned to Europe in 1625 with a load of pepper. Two of its crew on that voyage chose not to complete the journey. We know about them because, by coincidence, none other than Willem Bontekoe captained Weltevree’s Hollandia on its return. Bontekoe once again was a magnet for misfortune, for storms ravaged the Hollandia during its Indian Ocean crossing. By the time the ship reached the island of Madagascar, it had to limp into the Bay of Sancta Lucia for repair, including the raising of a new mast.

  Sancta Lucia was a mooring that Dutch mariners in this situation regularly used, so the Malagasy people living around the bay were well familiar with Europeans. Bontekoe sent some of his men ashore to “have speech with the inhabitants”—indicating that at least one side spoke the language of the other. The Malagasies agreed to let them land and repair their ship, and even volunteered to help drag the timber needed for making a new mast from the interior of the island out to the coast. Working side by side bred familiarity, so much so that over the three weeks the crew spent at Sancta Lucia, “the men often wandered away to seek pleasure.” As Bontekoe bluntly puts it, “the women were keen to have intercourse with our men.” His sole concern was that the men not absent themselves too much from their jobs, though he also realized that sexual intercourse boosted their morale. “When they had been with the women,” he noted, “they returned meek as lambs to their work.” The visitors found clear evidence that this was not the first time Dutch sailors had slept with the local women. Though Bontekoe notes that the Malagasies are “mostly black” with hair “curled like sheep’s wool,” he also observes that “we saw here many children who were almost white, and whose fair coloured hair hung from their heads.” He doesn’t need to explain further. The crew of the Hollandia were about a decade behind the first Dutch fathers of Malagasy Creole children.

  As the ship was preparing for departure on the morning of 24 April, after close to a month’s sojourn at Sancta Lucia, Bontekoe discovered that two of the men on night watch were missing. Hilke Jopkins and Gerrit Harmensz had not only disappeared, but had taken one of the ship’s boats with them. As Bontekoe put it, Jopkins and H
armensz “ran away to the blacks.” Perhaps the evidence of earlier coupling had encouraged Hilke Jopkins to take his chances locally and not return home to Friesland, and Gerrit Harmensz not to go back to his family in Norden. Is it even reasonable to assume that either man had a home or family in Europe? Having sailed east years earlier, a choice that was for many a last resort, they may well have had nothing to return to. Why not make a new life where there seemed some chance of happiness, or even just survival?

  Bontekoe sent a company of soldiers out to apprehend the deserters and return them to the ship. Their labor was needed. Jopkins and Harmensz were spotted at one point, but with the connivance of the Malagasies, they could not be caught. The search achieved nothing except to delay the Hollandia’s departure by one more day. Bontekoe gave up and left them to the life they had chosen.

  Jumping culture was not as easy as jumping ship. It involved giving up the language, food, beliefs, and etiquette of one’s birthplace in favor of those of an adopted land. Such matters were different for the rich, who had a stake in the way things were at home. Jopkins and Harmensz were poor men, and the conditions of life for the poor were much the same everywhere. Holland’s poor might eat different grains from Africa’s poor, but starch still made up the bulk of their diet. They might dress themselves in this homespun rather than that homespun, but rough cloth was rough cloth. They might pray here to this deity rather than there to that god, but they knew that the afterlife was pretty much beyond their management in any case. All they could do was pray and hope for the best.