The killing of Posthouder Scheerder and Jifar Folfolun (The War of the Breasts): Malukan and Dutch narratives of an incident in the VOC's waning days

2019 ◽  
Vol 50 (3) ◽  
pp. 324-346
Author(s):  
A. Ross Gordon ◽  
Sonny A. Djonler ◽  
Hans Hägerdal
Keyword(s):  
Sea Cucumber ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Oral Traditions ◽  
Small Islands ◽  
Economic Exchange ◽  
Dutch East India Company ◽  
Colonial State ◽  
Eastern Side ◽  
Local Tradition ◽  
History Of

The Aru Islands in southeastern Maluku have a long history of economic exchange and colonial relations with the Dutch East India Company (VOC), and later the Dutch colonial state. Aru was fragmented in smaller autonomous settlements, of which those in the east produced valuable items for export, such as pearls and tripang (edible sea cucumber). The article focuses on a spate of anti-colonial revolts in the waning days of the VOC in the 1790s. It centred on the Batuley villages situated on a few small islands on the eastern side. The central incident leading to the resistance was the killing of a Dutch low-ranking officer, Scheerder, an event which has been preserved in local tradition till the present day. A search in the VOC archives confirms several details, but suggests a rationale for the resistance which is partly different from the traditional version, and linked in with larger movements of resistance in Aru and Maluku. The article discusses the significance of the oral traditions, and how a comparison with archival materials can enrich our understanding of Arunese–Dutch relations.

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.

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.

History of Western sources on Japanese art

1986 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 8-13 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nancy S. Allen
Keyword(s):  
English Language ◽  
Fine Arts ◽  
Primary Source ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Japanese Culture ◽  
Dutch East India Company ◽  
The West ◽  
Meiji Restoration ◽  
Japanese Art ◽  
History Of

Learning about Japanese art has been difficult for Westerners. Limited access, language barriers, and cultural misunderstanding have been almost insurmountable obstacles. Knowledge of Japanese art in the West began over 150 years before the arrival of Commodore Perry in 1853. Englebert Kaempfer (1657-1716), sent to Japan as a physician for the Dutch East India Company, befriended a young assistant who provided information for a book on Japanese life and history published in 1727. By 1850, more ethnographic information had been published in Europe. Catalogs of sales of Japanese art in Europe exist prior to 1850 and collection catalogs from major museums follow in the second half of that century. After the Meiji Restoration (1867) cultural exchange was possible and organizations for that purpose were formed. Diaries of 19th century travellers and important international fairs further expanded cross-cultural information. Okakura Kakuzo, a native of Japan, published in English about Japanese art and ultimately became Curator of the important collections of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. The advent of photography made visual images easily accessible to Westerners. Great collectors built up the holdings of major American museums. In the 20th century, materials written and published in Japan in English language have furthered understanding of Japanese culture. During the past twenty years, travelling exhibitions and scholarly catalogs have circulated in the West. Presently monographs, dissertations and translated scholarly texts are available. Unfortunately, there is little understanding in the West of the organization of Japanese art libraries and archives which contain primary source material of interest to art historians.

A Pretender on Gowa' Throne. The War of Batara Gowa I. Singkilang in South West Celebes, 1776–c. 1790

Itinerario ◽  
1985 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 151-177
Author(s):  
M.P.H. Roessingh
Keyword(s):  
18Th Century ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
Dutch East India Company ◽  
High Government ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Hague ◽  
State Archives ◽  
State Of Affairs

The subject of this article is the fight for the throne in the kingdom of Gowa at the end of the 18th century, during the decline of the Dutch East India Company, a period which also saw the downfall of Gowa and the supremacy of Bone. The sources for the history of this period are twofold: on one hand the indigenous sources, “lontara-bilang” (diaries) and other records in Buginese and Makassarese; secondly, the European writings, principally the archival materials from the Dutch government at Makassar, supplemented by travel accounts and reports of the English. My primary sources are almost exclusively Dutch, namely the papers of the VOC, as they are preserved in the General State Archives in The Hague. To be more precise, these sources may be in Dutch, but in addition to the letters etc. written by Company officials, they also contain translations from documents drawn up by the rulers of Bone and Gowa or other of Asians. Moreover, the governors of Makassar often made use of indigenous sources, both oral and written, in preparing their lengthy memoirs about the state of affairs in their district. In 1736, the High Government in Batavia decided that two accurate genealogical tables must be prepared of the royal houses of Bone and Gowa.

Waiting for the ‘Just King’: The Agrarian World of South-Central Java from Giyanti (1755) to the Java War (1825–30)

1986 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-137 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Carey
Keyword(s):  
Colonial Period ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Cultural Tradition ◽  
Dutch East India Company ◽  
Self Confidence ◽  
Central Java ◽  
South Central ◽  
History Of ◽  
Religious Ideals ◽  
First Time

Students of Javanese society have long recognized that the Java War (1825–30), the bitter five-year struggle against European colonial rule in Java, constituted a watershed in the history of modern Indonesia. In his recent textbook, Professor Ricklefs has characterized the year 1830 as ‘the beginning of the truly colonial period in Java’, arguing that the Java War marked the transition point between the ‘trading’ era of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) and the years of ‘colonial’ exploitation ushered in by Johannes van den Bosch's well known ‘cultivation systems’. In military and political terms, the costly Dutch victory over the javanese made them, for the first time in their three and a half centuries of involvement in the archipelago, the undisputed masters of Java. At the same time, scholars of Javanese Islam have suggested that the defeat of the Javanese leader, Dipanagara (1785–1855), and the religious ideals for which he fought (most notably his goal of strengthening the institutional position of Islam in Javanese society), temporarily undermined the morale and self-confidence of the Islamic communities in Java. Specialists in the history of the central Javanese principalities (vorstenlanden), especially those interested in cultural developments, have also seen the Javanese failure in 1825–30 as a setback to the vitality and independence of the Javanese cultural tradition, a time when Javanese society began to turn in on itself and lose something of its strength and flexibility.

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.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document