Diplomacy

Ambassadors go from Banten in Java to the England of Charles II

A Mission of Two Ambassadors from Bantam to London in 1682

In 1682, Charles II ruled in England. In other places, other men ruled. This interesting little pamphlet, essentially no more than a typo-littered typescript produced by a regional archaeological society, came about through a series of strange events.

The Javanese in Banten, who went to Britain in a diplomatic mission in the late seventeenth century, of course, made records of all they had seen and done. There was a diary, an official diary, of the trip. It survived their journey home; it was perhaps made for their sovereign subsequently. And then, over the years, it vanished. Was it thrown away instantly, in the changing of one regime to the next — a coup of father by son, as did happen, or after colonisation by another power? Or did the diary simply vanish as all things finally vanish, into nothingness, into the great black mass of non-existence, dissintegrated by the forces of historical entropy? I don’t know.

What I do know is that, apparently, a copy of this diary was made in Dutch. It was, of course, the Dutch who took over in Java, who ruled what is now Indonesia. The Dutch had, decades before the diary was written, renamed the city we now call Jakarta ‘Batavia.’ They did all kinds of things. And they copied some historical documents, it seems — the record of Javanese ambassadors to the court of Charles II being one of them.

When this book was typed up at the beginning of the twentieth century, its introducer claims that a good translation was made of the Dutch copy. And this is what readers of this book get. But I must warn a reader or two that good though translations may be, they are never perfect. This document has travelled between two languages already, and over three hundred years, even as it arrives in shaky, error-filled early-twentieth-century English. We may not be getting quite the full story here.

But let’s take the diary at its word. (And why not? It adds much to the gaiety of events.) What we get if we accept all and forgive all is a document of some interest.

There were only two Javanese ambassadors to make the journey to Britain. They travelled with a retinue of who knows how many. Travelled on English ships. The precise number of ships they filled was not recorded, or not recorded accurately. The journey itself, the chronicler passes over. They arrived in Britain and that’s that.

Here diplomatic language takes up much of the slack — and more’s the pity. The two ambassadors are ever being escorted from unfamiliar place to unfamiliar place, in the company of the same rotating cast of East India Company men who either speak their language or know the terrain well enough to be worth including in the reception committee.

These men are mostly knights, and they seem mostly to have impressed their guests. The guests are taken, for instance, to East India House on Leadenhall Street, and appear to have left surprised by the scale of the place and also by the corporate secrets they are supposedly inducted into knowing, as if these were Elysian mysteries. (The ambassadors even say they cannot describe what they were told in their official diary, theoretically intended for the king. They must have taken being sworn to silence on commercial matters quite seriously.)

More widely, the ambassadors are taken about to observe London society. They visited parks and castles and churches like any tourist. The two of them were, they say, delighted by what they called ‘city music’ played during mealtimes at the town houses and the guildhalls. Very often, the ambassadors described having been given ‘delicious’ drinks and subsequently feeling quite energetic and willing to explore their surrounds. (One of their party, the diary says, died in England from extreme, excessive alcohol consumption, which he began, in the English fashion, the very moment he arrived. He did not appear to have been much mourned, although when he was buried in a London cemetery, it was according to the rites and religion of his fathers — and his body was accompanied by one or two friends.)

The ambassadors said they enjoyed visiting St. George’s Chapel, in Windsor Castle, most of all.

Other entertainments included visiting the houses of the rich and wandering their grounds, and attending the Duke’s Theatre, where the name of the play or plays attended by the ambassadorial team is always redacted.

The ambassadors appeared to have enjoyed their time in England. They wrote often of the quality of the food and music, of the elegance and generosity of their hosts, of the wealth they saw around them, reflected in all they are given and offered.

The ambassadors write quite often of this or that duke or earl who has received them, including the royal Duke of York and the Earl of Berkeley. They overstate — as of course they would — how much attention the great and the good afforded them. They met the king only twice, but each time appeared much affected. In the final meeting, he stood up to greet them and handed the senior of the two emissaries a message for their sovereign.

This has been held in my hands and is now in yours, the king said. I trust that it shall touch no other man’s hands until you place it into the palms of your own sovereign.

The ambassadors said that their journey to and from England was successful. In many ways, it must have been. The entire mission returned safely home, save for the unmourned man who drank himself to death — and one slave, of no account and no importance, who was lost at sea.