Far Outliers

The Korea Times reports that:

6.08 million Koreans were living overseas as of July 2003, recording a 7.56 percent increase from 2001, according to statistics released by the Foreign Affairs-Trade Ministry recently.

The largest population of overseas Koreans, about 3 million, is in the Asia-Pacific region, with over 2 million in China alone, and nearly 200,000 in Australia and New Zealand. The largest growth in the Americas was in North America, where nearly 2.5 millions Koreans now live. Europe and the CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States) account for another 600,000 or so. Korean populations actually declined in Japan, South America, the Middle East, and Africa.

South Korea’s population is now approaching 50 million, while North Korea’s is about 22 million–and probably falling.

I remember attending a talk once by a pair of Korean government-sponsored speakers whose purpose seemed to be to flatter Koreans abroad and enlist their support in Korea’s drive to achieve its rightful place in the universe. A Korean raised in the Soviet Union talked about the disproportionate success of the Korean minority there–second only to the Jews in educational attainment. He even suggested that Koreans were a “chosen people” although he became somewhat defensive about the comment later. The other speaker framed his message in terms of competition with Japan. Korea might lack Japan’s population, its wealth, its resources, and its head start, but it had a secret weapon: its huge population of well-placed Koreans abroad. During the question period, my favorite fearlessly contrarian antinationalist among the Korean graduate students asked the speaker what made him think that Koreans abroad might be willing to be shills for either the Korean government or Korean businesses.

Andrei Lankov’s latest column in the poorly edited Korea Times discusses a fundamental paradox of human-rights monitoring: The most repressive societies yield the least reliable evidence, while the most open societies yield the best evidence. This favors apologists for the most repressive regimes, and undermines apologists for more open regimes.

Attempts to study repressive systems in non-democratic societies unavoidably hit a paradox: the more effective and stringent the controls over the population, the less the outside world knows about ongoing horrors. In the late 1960s, when the terror of Mao’s regime reached its apex, information about the horrors perpetrated was seldom reported by the Western press. Under Mao’s successors, when the regime softened, the Western press took up reporting the “abuse of human rights in China.” A few decades earlier, something similar had been happening in the USSR after Khruchshev’s [sic] reforms.

In both cases, the current ideological fashions among Western intellectuals played a major role: the self-appointed “progressive thinkers” of the 1960s loved Mao almost as much as their predecessors loved Stalin in the 1930s. Solzhenitsyn was not the first to tell the world about Stalin’s terror — there had been earlier reports. However, leftist thinkers who reigned supreme in academic and intellectual circles ignored those reports. Solzhenitsyn’s exposures in the 1960s were taken seriously only because by his time the Soviets had gone out of fashion. However, former fans of Stalin switched their adoration to Mao.

The same has often been the case in Korea where the left is increasingly powerful in academia and the media. The leftist intellectuals tend to dismiss reports of North Korean terror. However, in recent decades it has become quite difficult to ignore the growing number of testimonies coming from the North.

via The Marmot

The July 2004 IIAS Newsletter includes an article by Wil O. Dijk on the Dutch VOC in Burma during the 17th century, the same period in which they were conquering one sultanate after another in the Spice Islands and the rest of the Indonesian archipelago.

This article highlights a little known aspect of the Dutch East India Company (VOC)’s inter-Asian trade: the trade with Burma. The vast archives of the VOC at the National Archives in The Hague have yielded a treasure trove of detailed information on seventeenth century Dutch-Burmese relations. The archives throws light on the composition of the VOC’s Burma trade, and how it fit into the grand design of the Company’s inter-Asian commerce, where it was not as marginal as some historians would have it. Vital statistics on shipping, imports and exports, wages and prices, and inventories of Indian textiles the Dutch shipped across the Bay of Bengal, together with purchasing and selling prices, allow us a unique glimpse into life in seventeenth century Burma….

The VOC’s years in Burma can be divided into three distinct periods: the early years of indecision (1634-1648), the golden middle years (1649-1669) and the final years of decline and departure (1670-1680). During the first period suggestions were made, in turn by Pulicat and Batavia (the company’s head office in Asia), to close down the Burmese factories. Pulicat and Batavia, however, seemed unable to agree, with the result that trade continued halfheartedly. The second period witnessed a great improvement in conditions for trade. In the final years, a new king with little interest in trade or foreigners ascended the Burmese throne. By this time the objectives of the Dutch East India Company had altered, while forces beyond its control were working to undermine the company. In the end the Burma trade became a casualty of the company’s new priorities….

Empire of trade

Burma offered a large assortment of export goods. Statistics indicate that the Dutch generally took what they could get. Tin was a constant as were lac, elephant tusks, chillies (long peppers) and beeswax. In the 1650s, Chinese copper coins and Burmese ganza (a metal akin to bell metal) became major exports. The Company turned large quantities of Chinese copper coins, flowing into Burma from Yunnan, into money to be used as legal tender in Batavia and Ceylon. In the final years, the Dutch also exported a great deal of gold, much of it originating in China. The VOC, through its elaborate inter-Asian network, was in a position to trade Burmese goods in the most profitable markets throughout Asia.

[Ming China was at this time selling off copper and gold to convert to silver coinage, thereby fueling global trade, especially with Tokugawa Japan and the Spanish Empire in the New World.]

Their Bengal factory, always in need of additional funds, was sent valuable Burmese cargoes (including Chinese coins, ganza, and zinc). The copper extracted from Chinese coins and ganza was in great demand in Coromandel, as were gold, tin, timber and chillies. In Japan a profitable market existed for Burmese catechu, namrack, deerskins, buffalo hides and horns. Lac generated excellent profits in Mocha, as well as in Persia, where there was a good market for Burmese tin, elephant tusks, cardamom, and the costliest of Burma’s fabled rubies. Considerable quantities of Burmese elephant tusks were shipped to Surat, while in Holland there was demand for the excellent Burmese lac. As for Burma’s famous Martaban jars, there was constant demand throughout Asia for these huge, glazed pots used to store and transport a myriad of things, from potable water and rice to gunpowder and, on occasion, stowaways….

Military commitments

The main points of contention – the ban on direct trade with China at Bhamo, royal monopolies, high tolls, and the disarming of ships – were exasperating but not new. Rather, the circumstances and priorities of the Company had changed. Trade was no longer its main concern; the VOC had changed into a territorial enterprise with military and political commitments and began to operate increasingly from its two power bases, Batavia and Ceylon.

More importantly, a radical shift occurred in its commercial priorities. Whereas in the early days the company’s inter-Asian sea-borne traffic was a key element in its drive to create a vast empire of trade – with the outcome of this traffic largely determining the flow of trade between Asia and Europe – by 1680 the situation was different. The VOC’s inter-Asian trade had peaked by the 1670s, and was replaced by direct trade between Asia and Europe. This is perhaps the main reason behind the Dutch decision to abandon Burma. Whereas Burma had been an integral part of the VOC’s inter-Asian trade for nearly half a century, the company’s new priorities now made it irrelevant.