304 Netherlands East Indies fishing rights, and similar mechanisms mostly adopted from U.S treaties Further reading: Calloway, Colin The American Revolution in Indian Country: Crisis and Community in Native American Communities New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995; Dickason, Olive Patricia Canada’s First Nations: A History of Founding Peoples from Earliest Times Don Mills, Ontario: Oxford University Press, 2002; Hoxie, Frederick E ed Encyclopedia of North American Indians: Native American History, Culture, and Life from Paleo-Indians to the Present New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1996; Kupperman, Karen Ordahl Indians and the English: Facing Off in Early America Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2000; Nash, Gary B Red, White, and Black: The Peoples of Early North America 4th ed Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2000; Perdue, Theda, and Michael D Green, eds The Cherokee Removal: A Brief History with Documents Boston: St Martin’s Press, 1995; Wallace, Anthony F C Jefferson and the Indians: The Tragic Fate of the First Americans Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999; White, Richard The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650–1815 Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991 Michael J Schroeder Netherlands East Indies The Netherlands East Indies was a political unit controlled by the Dutch, covering what is now Indonesia Consisting of a vast archipelago of over 2,000 islands, it had been taken over piecemeal by the Dutch over several centuries The center of their rule was on the island of Java and their capital was Batavia (now Jakarta), located on the north coast of Java Their main reason for initially taking the islands had been to control the trade with the Spice Islands, and the Dutch therefore exerted great control over the eastern islands in the archipelago, the Moluccas, especially the island of Ambon Gradually the Dutch established military bases throughout the islands and in the early 17th century began to cultivate plantations On the island of Java, they first took over Batavia and the area around it in 1619, adding the Preanger districts to the south of Batavia in 1677 Two years later they annexed Cheribon and then Semerang, taking Bantam, the westernmost part of Java in 1684 The Dutch then took control of the northern coast in 1741 and the island of Madura two years later Some areas in south-central Java remained in the control of the sul- tans of Yogjakarta and Surakarta (Solo) Outside Java the Dutch had reached agreements to trade and establish bases on many islands but did not have control of northern Sumatra, which was under the control of the sultans of Aceh (or Atjeh) and the island of Bali By the 1770s they had control over much of the coastal regions of Borneo and the Celebes (now Sulawesi) On an administrative level, the Dutch ruled through the Dutch East India Company, which, outside Java, made no attempt to control the people, working through native rulers—with the exception of the islands of Ambon, Ternate, and Banda in the Moluccas However, from 1770 the company was faced with bankruptcy Its employees had made huge fortunes but the main company itself was in a disastrous financial position When war broke out with England in 1781—the American Revolution—the Netherlands government had to intervene financially to prevent the company going bankrupt However, the debt burden increased and in 1783 the company ceased paying dividends to shareholders In 1790 the Dutch government appointed a committee to overhaul the company—the government itself was the chief creditor While a rescue package was being arranged, war with France broke out in 1792 and three years later the Netherlands was invaded The National Assembly, under French revolutionary control, then proclaimed the Batavian Republic and enacted a new constitution by which the state took over the Dutch East India Company, and the company was formally dissolved in 1798 The Batavian Republic was eager to get funds from its colonies and decided to institute a different administrative structure for the East Indies By the nature of the various treaties with the different sultans and rulers, it was necessary to totally overhaul the entire system, and in 1803 a report was submitted to the new republican government Most of its recommendations were actually academic because in 1795 when William V had fled the Netherlands ahead of the French, he had taken refuge in England and ordered all his colonial governors to welcome British troops and merchant ships Thus the British had taken control of Malacca— also ruled by the Dutch at the time; and the bases at Padang (which had been sacked by the French in 1793 and was unable to resist), Ambon, Banda and even Ternate in 1799 The latter was particularly important for the trade in sandalwood In 1802, by the Treaty of Amiens, all these places were to be restored to the Dutch; however, with war breaking out so soon afterwards, the British decided to keep them all and prepare to invade Java