The Ambivalence of Freedom: Slaves in Jaffna, Sri Lanka, in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries

2019 ◽  
Vol 78 (03) ◽  
pp. 497-519
Author(s):  
Nira Wickramasinghe ◽  
Alicia Schrikker
Keyword(s):  
Sri Lanka ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Dutch East India Company ◽  
Court Records ◽  
Local Practice ◽  
British Rule ◽  
Eighteenth And Nineteenth Centuries ◽  
Dutch Colonial

This article discusses slavery and the lives of enslaved people in Jaffna, northern Sri Lanka, under Dutch and British rule. It argues that by sanctioning and tapping into a perceived local practice of slavery and legally constituting slaves, Dutch colonial rulers further strengthened the power of the dominant caste Vellalar over their subordinates. This was done through processes of registration, legal codification, and litigation. For some enslaved people, however, bureaucratization provided grounds for negotiation and resistance, as well as the potential to take control over their individual lives. British rule that took over areas controlled by the Dutch East India Company or Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie—first in the guise of the East India Company (1796–1802), then under the Crown (1802–1948)—introduced a number of measures, acts, and incentives to dismantle slavery as it was practiced on the island. This article draws from Dutch and early British period petitions, court records, commission reports, and slave registers to interrogate the discourse of freedom that permeated the British abolition of slavery from 1806 to 1844 and suggests that in Jaffna after abolition there remained bondage in freedom.

Pride and Prejudice: The Role of Policy and Perception Creation in the Chinese Revolt of 1652 on Dutch Formosa

Itinerario ◽  
2003 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 17-36
Author(s):  
Marné Strydom
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Pride And Prejudice ◽  
Dutch East India Company ◽  
Economic Success ◽  
Colonial Society ◽  
History Of ◽  
Dutch Colonial

The events of September 1652 on the island of Formosa were one of the bloodiest chapters in the history of Dutch management of the island, and could arguably be viewed as one of the most severe suppressions of a rebellious group in the seventeenth century. The unexpected, ill-prepared uprising of thousands of frustrated, angry and impoverished Chinese farmers and field hands against Dutch colonial management were successfully, yet in the most severe and savage way, suppressed through a military collaboration between the Dutch East India Company (VOC) and the local Aborigines of the island. In total some 3,000 Chinese residents of the island were killed, the ‘hacked-off’ head of the leader ‘displayed on a stake […] to frighten the Chinese as a sign of victory over those dastardly traitors’, while three of his lieutenants were tortured to death by Company officials in an effort to extract confessions and information from them. Indeed severe action towards a section of the Formosan colonial society that was primarily responsible for the economic success of the Dutch settlement enterprise.

New Publications in 1998

Itinerario ◽  
1998 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 97-121
Author(s):  
Jaap de Moor
Keyword(s):  
New Guinea ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Foreign Affairs ◽  
Colonial History ◽  
Dutch East India Company ◽  
Economic Expansion ◽  
Indonesian Archipelago ◽  
History Of ◽  
Magnum Opus ◽  
Dutch Colonial

The year 1998 saw the publication of a new and impressive handbook on the history of Dutch economic expansion and political domination in Asia and the Indonesian Archipelago in particular: J.J.P. de Jong's De waaier van het fortuin (The fan of fortune). Its almost seven hundred pages are packed with information about the Dutch in the Indonesian archipelago in the period between 1595, when the first Dutch ships departed for Asia, and 1950, when the Dutch colonial presence in Indonesia (with the exception of Dutch New Guinea) came to an end. De Jong, an official at the Dutch ministry of Foreign Affairs, who obtained his doctorate with a thesis on the Indonesian decolonisation in 1988, has undoubtedly delivered his magnum opus with this new study. The book does not only tell the story of the Dutch expansion in Indonesia, it also gives a number of new or partly new interpretations of Dutch colonial history in the archipelago. It is divided into five parts: I: The Era of the Dutch East India Company; II: ‘Plantation Java’; III: The Era of Changes, 1870–1918; IV: The Modern Colony, 1918–1942; and V: ‘Denouement’, 1942–1950.

scholarly journals In search of sepoys: Indian soldiers and the Dutch East India Company in India and Sri Lanka, 1760–1795

2021 ◽  
pp. 096834452110303
Author(s):  
Erik Odegard
Keyword(s):  
Sri Lanka ◽  
Historical Record ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Full Time ◽  
Dutch East India Company ◽  
French And English

Unlike the French and English India, the Dutch East India Company did not shift to recruiting predominantly Indian soldier personnel for service in India, sepoys, from the 1740s onwards. Although Dutch Company (VOC) remained much more reliant on European recruitment, it did in fact also recruit sepoys in India. These soldiers remain little noted in the sources and the historical record. This article will explain why the VOC did not follow the French and English lead. The VOC’s late acceptance of sepoys as full-time soldiers meant it could not effectively compete with either French or English companies in India.

Gold-Leaf Flattery, Calcuttan Dust, and a Brand New Flagpole: Five Little-Known VOC Collections in Asia on India and Ceylon

Itinerario ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 91-106
Author(s):  
Lennart Bes
Keyword(s):  
Sri Lanka ◽  
The Netherlands ◽  
Tamil Nadu ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Dutch Reformed ◽  
Dutch East India Company ◽  
Gold Leaf ◽  
Reformed Church ◽  
National Archives ◽  
The Hague

Beside the records of the Dutch East India Company (or VOC) stored at the Netherlands National Archives in The Hague, there are various VOC collections kept in Asia that pertain to India and Ceylon. Some of these are relatively well-known: the “Dutch Records” in the Tamil Nadu Archives (Chennai); the records of the VOC government of Ceylon in the Sri Lanka National Archives (Colombo); the records of the Dutch Reformed Church of Ceylon at the Wolvendaal Church (Colombo); and the records of the Asian VOC headquarters at Batavia in the National Archives of Indonesia (Jakarta).

scholarly journals Construction at Cochin: Building ships at the VOC-yard in Cochin

2019 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 481-494
Author(s):  
Erik Odegard
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Sri Lanka ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Dutch East India Company ◽  
Relative Cost ◽  
Royal Navy ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Malabar Coast ◽  
Relative Decline

The port of Cochin on the Malabar Coast of India had always been a centre of shipbuilding. After the Dutch conquest in the port in 1663, the Dutch East India Company (VOC), too, established a shipyard there. At this yard, the VOC experimented with building ocean-going ships until the management of the company decreed that these were to be built solely in the Dutch Republic itself. During the first half of the eighteenth century, the yard focused on the repair of passing Indiamen and the construction of smaller vessels for use in and between the VOC commands in Malabar, Coromandel, Bengal and Sri Lanka. For most of the vessels built during the 1720s and 1730s, detailed accounts exist, allowing for a reconstruction of the costs of the various shipbuilding materials in Malabar, as well as the relative cost of labour. From the 1750s onwards, operations at the yard again become more difficult to discern. Likely, the relative decline of the VOC’s presence in Malabar caused a reduction in operations at the yard, but the shipyard was still in existence when Cochin was captured by British forces in 1795. However, this did not mean the end of Cochin as a shipbuilding centre, as a number or Royal Navy frigates were built at Cochin during the early nineteenth century.

MIDWIVES AND MEDICAL MEN IN THE CAPE COLONY BEFORE 1860

1998 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 271-292 ◽  
Author(s):  
HARRIET DEACON
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
Social History ◽  
Historical Record ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Dutch East India Company ◽  
British Rule ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Archival Record ◽  
Social History Of Medicine

Relatively little research has been done on the history of midwifery at the Cape, although there has lately been increasing interest in the social history of medicine, as well as in the history of abortion, rape, infanticide and motherhood in South Africa. One of the reasons for the dearth of research is the relative absence of women, especially black women, from the historical record. The archival record of what was called the Cape Colony during the early nineteenth century is rich enough to reveal something about women's history, however. The Cape was first settled by Europeans in 1652 under the auspices of the Dutch East India Company (DEIC), and was captured by the British in 1795 and again in 1806. During the first half-century of British rule at the Cape, urban midwives came under greater professional and official scrutiny and left some traces in the historical archive. The remaining absences tell their own stories, too, and in this paper these silences will be made to speak, if only softly and tentatively, of the role of women in colonial African medical care.

National Report for South Africa

2012 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
Legal System ◽  
Common Law ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Dutch East India Company ◽  
Insolvency Law ◽  
Cape Of Good Hope ◽  
British Rule ◽  
The Common

That South Africa has a mixed legal system is aptly illustrated by the origin and current structure of its insolvency law. Roman-Dutch law, including the procedure of cessio bonorum, was introduced when the Dutch East India Company established a presence at the Cape of Good Hope in 1652. The Ordinance of Amsterdam of 1777 is still regarded as the basis of South African insolvency law. The first local insolvency legislation was enacted under British rule. While the 1829 Cape Ordinance introduced some English bankruptcy principles, it retained certain features of the Ordinance of Amsterdam. The English influence was extended in the subsequent Cape Ordinance 6 of 1843 which in turn formed the basis of insolvency legislation in Natal as well as in the former pre-union republics, the Orange Free State and the Transvaal. After unification in 1910, the Insolvency Act 32 of 1916 was passed. It was replaced by the current Insolvency Act 24 of 1936. This legislation does not codify the law of insolvency but applies alongside the common law principles derived from Roman-Dutch law.

The making and unmaking of tropical science: Dutch research on Indonesia, 1600-2000

2008 ◽  
Vol 162 (2) ◽  
pp. 191-217 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Boomgaard
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Research ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Dutch East India Company ◽  
Colonial State ◽  
Indonesian Archipelago ◽  
History Of ◽  
Broad Outline ◽  
Dutch Colonial

The history of scientific research undertaken by Europeans in regions where they were the colonizing powers has been a popular and well researched topic for two decades now. A growing number of studies, with some preponderance of botany and medicine, have appeared on colonial and protocolonial science in the Americas and in Asia, and it seems likely that this is more than just a fad. However, scientific research by Europeans on and in the Indonesian archipelago does not figure prominently in this literature. Very few scholars working on Indonesia – with Lewis Pyenson (1989, 1998) as the main exception – have specialized in this potentially rewarding field. In order to give an impression of topics that could profitably be addressed, this article presents an overview, in very broad outline, of European – and particularly Dutch – scientific research on Indonesia during the last four centuries, with emphasis on the periods of the Verenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie (VOC, Dutch East India Company) and the Dutch colonial state.

Corvée Capitalism: The Dutch East India Company, Colonial Expansion, and Labor Regimes in Early Modern Asia

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
Matthias van Rossum ◽  
Merve Tosun
Keyword(s):  
Sri Lanka ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Labor Relations ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Direct Access ◽  
Dutch East India Company ◽  
Colonial Expansion ◽  
South And Southeast Asia ◽  
And Control ◽  
Labor Regimes

Abstract This article revisits our understanding of corvée labor regimes and their role and impact in the early expansion of colonialism and capitalism. Rather than remnants of feudal pasts, or in-kind taxation or revenue instruments of weak colonial powers, corvée regimes should be viewed as refined methods of colonial exploitation that provided colonial actors with more direct access to and control over the production of commercially interesting global commodities. This article explores and compares the corvée labor regimes employed and shaped by the Dutch East India Company (VOC) in the Moluccas, Sri Lanka, and Java. The article first addresses how to understand corvée and tributary relations as labor, production, and (political-)social regimes. Second, it explores and compares the organization and development of corvée labor relations in the context of the VOC in South and Southeast Asia. These corvée labor regimes reappear as crucial instruments in the expansion of (early) modern colonialism and capitalism, which could explain their widespread recurrence across the globe in the last few centuries.

scholarly journals Esaias Boursse’s ‘Tijkenboeck’

2019 ◽  
Vol 67 (4) ◽  
pp. 312-331
Author(s):  
Lodewijk Wagenaar ◽  
Mieke Beumer
Keyword(s):  
Sri Lanka ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Dutch East India Company ◽  
Standard Contract ◽  
Successful Career ◽  
Cape Of Good Hope ◽  
Important Evidence

We do not know who trained Esaias Boursse (1631-1672) to be a painter, but we do know that he became a member of the Amsterdam Guild of St Luke around 1651. He certainly did not have a successful career because he joined the Dutch East India Company (VOC) in 1661. He travelled to Colombo, the capital of the island of Ceylon (Sri Lanka since 1972), captured six years earlier by the Portuguese, by way of Batavia (now Jakarta). In 1663 he was back in Amsterdam – remarkable, as the standard contract with the VOC was for five years. In financial straits again, he re-joined the VOC in 1671 and left for Asia. Shortly after leaving he died at sea. In 1996 an album containing 116 drawings came to light, most of them made by Boursse during his time in Ceylon; he made only a small number during his outward or return journeys to the Cape of Good Hope. The drawings are completely different from his earlier known oeuvre of genre paintings and prints with religious themes. The pages in his ‘Tijkenboeck’ provide a unique picture of what Boursse saw in and around Colombo. They are important evidence of the early days of the VOC in its conquered colony of Ceylon.

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