Emily Innes

Life and Career

Jacques de Coutre (1577–c.1640) was a Flemish merchant-traveller who operated out of Portuguese Malacca and Goa during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Baptised Jakobus vande Koutere on 5 March 1577 in Bruges, he was the son of a broom maker and, together with his brother Joseph, sought his fortune in Portuguese Asia, arriving in Goa in 1592 [1, pp. 71–72]. The brothers settled in Goa, married sisters from a local family, and became benefactors of the Misericordia and a hospital for the poor. They also contributed in 1605 to the equipping of a fleet dispatched to relieve Malacca from a Dutch sea-borne siege [1, p. 72].

De Coutre’s career was shaped by the escalating confrontation between the Portuguese and the Dutch East India Company (VOC) in South-East Asian waters. By the first decade of the seventeenth century, Portuguese India was under severe pressure, and a series of royal ordinances marginalised and eventually ordered the expulsion of foreign merchants from the Estado da India [1, p. 72]. Despite these measures, the brothers remained in Goa and are reported to have spied on the Dutch for their Portuguese hosts. In 1623, however, they were deported to Lisbon on suspicion of collusion with the VOC and charged with treason [1, pp. 72–73]. Following intervention from the Flemish merchant community in Lisbon, they were transferred to Madrid, where a royal decree of 29 June 1632 formally exonerated them [1, p. 73]. De Coutre died in Zaragoza around July 1640, in his early to mid-sixties [1, p. 73].

The Madrid Manuscripts

The principal body of De Coutre’s writings is preserved as Madrid MS 2780 in the National Library of Spain, comprising two sections: an autobiographical narrative titled Vida de Jaques de Coutre (covering the first 242 folios) and seven political memorials (arbitrios) written in Portuguese and Spanish during the mid to late 1620s [1, pp. 75–76]. The memorials, independently transcribed and published by Benjamin Teensma in 1989, address topics ranging from anti-Dutch naval strategy to the construction of fortifications in the Singapore Strait [1, p. 76]. The Vida was edited by De Coutre’s son Esteban, who is believed to have helped compile and organise his father’s notes, though the precise extent of his editorial hand remains uncertain [1, p. 77].

The Vida has been published in a Flemish–Dutch translation (1988) and a Spanish edition (1991), but no complete English translation exists [1, p. 94]. Literary scholars have noted its resemblance to the picaresque novel, a genre prevalent in Golden Age Spanish fiction, with De Coutre casting himself as a resourceful anti-hero who repeatedly escapes peril through cunning and loyalty to his sovereign [1, pp. 78–79]. Historians such as George Winius initially hailed the text as a prime source comparable to the accounts of Pyrard and Linschoten, though subsequent critical analysis has tempered this enthusiasm, recognising a genuine experiential core interwoven with literary embellishment [1, pp. 79–80].

Singapore, the Straits, and the Johor River

De Coutre’s memorials and Vida constitute one of the most comprehensive surviving European accounts of pre-British Singapore and the adjacent straits [1, p. 71]. Having operated out of Malacca from the mid-1590s, he possessed first-hand knowledge of the region’s geography, maritime traffic, and political dynamics [1, p. 81]. He described Singapore Island—termed the Isla de la Sabandaria Vieja—as measuring approximately seven leguas across from east to west, situated at the Johor River estuary and girded by the New and Old Straits of Singapore as well as the Tebrau Strait [1, p. 82].

His most detailed observations concern present-day Sentosa, which he called the Isla de Arena, estimated at about three leguas in length and positioned in the middle of the two straits [1, pp. 82–83]. He identified the Surgidero—an anchorage point at the convergence of the Old and New Straits—with the site of present-day Fort Siloso, noting a stone peak that formed a natural fortress [1, p. 83]. The Old Strait, running between Singapore Island and Sentosa around present-day Harbourfront and Keppel Marina, was described as narrow enough to be closed by spanning a chain across, yet deep enough for carracks of three or four decks to pass [1, p. 83].

De Coutre proposed the construction of two fortresses on Singapore soil—one on Sentosa at the Surgidero, and another on the eastern coast of the island, probably around Bedok or Changi—along with a small fort on a sandbank in the Johor River estuary to patrol the entire river [1, pp. 82]. He also recorded observations on the orang laut (sea people) who inhabited the straits, describing their narrow boats of light planks in which they kept their families, dogs, cats, and poultry, and noting their role as fish and fruit pedlars and paid informants [1, pp. 85–86]. His ship anchored at a Malay settlement called Sabandaria on the southern shore of Singapore Island, a location Borschberg identifies with the old port now lying beneath reclaimed land south of present-day Beach Road; De Coutre declared this ‘one of the best [ports] in all of the East Indies’ [1, p. 86].

Research and Documentation

The rediscovery of Madrid MS 2780 in the mid-1960s and its subsequent publication in the late 1980s and early 1990s opened a new chapter in the historiography of early modern Singapore and the Straits [1, p. 94]. Borschberg’s 2008 article in the Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society represents the most sustained engagement with the manuscripts from a Singaporean and regional perspective. Its two principal historiographical contributions are the resolution of the long-standing debate over the location of the Old Strait of Singapore—anchoring De Coutre’s descriptions to identifiable modern geography and refuting the earlier view that it corresponded to the Tebrau Strait—and the provision of evidential grounds for challenging the ‘Raffles myth’ in Singapore’s national historiography, demonstrating that the island’s geo-strategic potential was openly recognised by European traders and officials well before 1819 [1, pp. 92–93]. The text remains available only in the Spanish original and a partial Flemish–Dutch translation, a limitation that Borschberg notes will almost certainly be addressed in future scholarship [1, p. 94].

MBRAS Sources

• P. Borschberg (2008). Jacques de Coutre as a source for the early seventeenth-century history of Singapore, the Johore river and the straits. JMBRAS 81(2): 71–98

References

1. P. Borschberg (2008). Jacques de Coutre as a source for the early seventeenth-century history of Singapore, the Johore river and the straits JMBRAS 81(2): 71–98. Read on JSTOR