Records in a Rival's Repository: Archives of the Dutch East India Company and Related Materials in the India Office Records (British Library), London (and the National Archives of Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur)

Itinerario ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 16-38
Author(s):  
Lennart Bes
Keyword(s):  
East India Company ◽  
British Library ◽  
Dutch East India Company ◽  
Kuala Lumpur ◽  
British East India Company ◽  
National Archives

AbstractTwo of the former so-called rival empires of trade in the Orient, the Dutch and the British with their respective East India Companies, are today friendly neighbours, closely co-operating both politically and economically. Their erstwhile mercantile rivalry in the East, however, is still reflected in the fact that part of the records of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) is nowadays kept in—of all places—the department of India Office Records at the British Library in London, the very repository of the archives of the British East India Company (EIC).This article presents an overview of the relatively unknown and unexplored materials derived, copied, or translated from the VOC and stored in that lion's den. Apart from a few miscellaneous papers, three groups of records will be described: the remaining archives of the VOC establishment at Melaka (in Malaysia), VOC documents in the Mackenzie collections, and relevant materials in the archives of the EIC. The bulk of the first group of records and parts of the second and third group are unique. In addition, the few Dutch records from Melaka that still remain in Malaysia will be dealt with in an Appendix.

scholarly journals A Brief Survey of the Anjuman-i Islam in Colonial Malaya (Suatu Tinjaun Ringkas Mengenai Anjuman-i Islam di Malaya)

2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 319-343
Author(s):  
Hafiz Zakariya
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Content Analysis ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
British Library ◽  
Kuala Lumpur ◽  
National Archives ◽  
Leadership Structure ◽  
History Of ◽  
Sensitive Issues ◽  
Official Records

The Anjuman-i-Islam was established in 1921, following the visit of Khwaja Kamaluddin to Singapore and other states in the Peninsula. This study discusses the establishment of the Anjuman-i-Islam during the early twentieth century, as a response to the British growing influence in Malaya. The British administrators were cautious in their treatment of the Muslim matters, which were and still are regarded as very sensitive issues. At the same time, they were suspicious of any activity, which could potentially undermine their position in Malaya. After covering the history of the foundation of the Anjuman-i-Islam, the paper describes the major activities of this association especially in printing. Moreover, it analyses the major achievements as well as challenges facing this Islamic association. It also examines the membership and leadership structure of the Anjuman-i-Islam. Finally, it analyses the attitude of the Anjuman-I-Islam towards the issue of the Caliphate. This study adopts the method of content analysis by investigating the archival materials (such as diplomatic and official memoirs and diaries, British official records, contemporary newspapers, magazines and periodicals). These primary sources are obtained from the National Archives in Kuala Lumpur and its branches, the Library of University Malaya, the Za’ba Memorial Library, the National Archives of United Kingdom, and the British Library. Keywords: Anjuman-I Islam, Malay-Muslims, Indian-Muslims, British and Caliphate.   Abstrak Anjuman-i-Islam telah ditubuhkan pada tahun 1921, ekoran lawatan Khwaja Kamaluddin ke Singapura dan negeri-negeri di Semenanjung Tanah Melayu. Makalah ini membincangkan penubuhan Anjuman-i-Islam pada awal kurun ke-20 sebagai satu tindak balas dalam menghadapi kekuasaan Inggeris yang semakin kuat di Malaya. Para pentadbir Inggeris amat berhati-hati berurusan dalam hal ehwal berkenaan Muslim kerana urusan ini dianggap sangat sensitif. Dalam masa yang sama, pentadbir Inggeris curiga terhadap sebarang aktiviti yang boleh menjejaskan kedudukan mereka di Malaya. Selepas membincangkan sejarah penubuhan Anjuman, artikel ini menghuraikan aktiviti-aktiviti utama persatuan ini terutamanya di bidang penerbitan.  Ia juga menganalisis pencapaian dan cabaran yang dihadapi persatuan ini. Ia turut menyentuh tentang keahlian dan struktur kepimpinan Anjuman-i-Islam. Akhirnya ia membincangkan sikap Anjuman terhadap isu Khilafah. Kajian ini menggunakan kaedah analisis kandungan dengan meneliti data arkib (seperti perjanjian, memoir dan diari, dokumen rasmi Britain, suratkhabar dan jurnal). Data ini diperolehi daripada Arkib Negara di Kuala Lumpur dan cawangan-cawangannya; Perpustakaan Univerisiti Malaya, Perpustakaan Memorial Za’ba, Arkib Negara Britain dan Perpustakaan Britain.  Kata Kunci: Anjuman-i Islam, Melayu-Muslim, India-Muslim, British dan Khilafah.

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 Koleksi Raffles Dari Jawa: Bukti Dari Eropa Tentang Sebuah Peradaban

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 165-182
Author(s):  
Alexandra Green
Keyword(s):  
Musical Instruments ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Local Culture ◽  
British Library ◽  
Asiatic Society ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
British East India Company ◽  
British Colony ◽  
Key Questions ◽  
Royal Asiatic Society

Stamford Raffles was promoted to Lieutenant Governor of Java when the island was taken from the Dutch by the British East India Company in 1811 as part of the Napoleonic warsin Europe. During Raffles’ years on Java, he collected substantial cultural materials,among  others  are;  theatrical  objects,  musical  instruments,  coins  and  amulets,  metal sculpture, and drawings of Hindu- Buddhist buildings and sculpture. European interest inantiquities explains the ancient Hindu- Buddhist material in Raffles’s collection, but thetheatrical objects were less understood easily. This essay explored Raffles’ s collecting practices, addressing the key questions of what he collected and why, as well as what were the shape of the collection can tell us about him, his ideas and beliefs, his contemporaries, and Java, including interactions between colonizers and locals. I compared the types of objects in the collections with Raffles’ writings, as well as the writings of his contemporaries on Java and Sumatra in the British Library and the Royal Asiatic Society. Raffles was one of the first people to apply the enlightenment notion of systematic collecting to cultural material, but his collections were not systematized by Javanese standards, indicating his incomplete understanding of the local culture. Instead, the objects demonstrated that Raffles chose items considered indicative of civilization according to European ideas, assembling objects to support his argument in favor of Java as a remaining of a British colony, as well as to promote his own image as a scholar- official. 

John Company: The Act of Incorporation

CounterText ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 165-183
Author(s):  
David Ashford
Keyword(s):  
Artificial Intelligence ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Literature ◽  
East India Company ◽  
First Episode ◽  
British Library ◽  
Intelligent Networks ◽  
British East India Company ◽  
History Of

‘John Company: The Act of Incorporation’ is the first episode in a series of twelve open-form pieces on the history of the British East India Company, and relates legal innovations behind the inception of the Company to the development of forms of Artificial Intelligence in Elizabethan England. The poem references primary material contained in the seventeenth-century anthology Purchas his Pilgrimes and in the East India Company's archives now housed in the British Library, and draws on research conducted by Kevin LaGrandeur in his book Androids and Intelligent Networks in Early Modern Literature and Culture (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2013), and by Vladimir I. Braginsky in his essay ‘Towards the Biography of Hamzah Fansuri: When Did Hamzah Live? Data From His Poems and Early European Accounts’, Archival 57 (Paris, 1999), 135–75.

A famine in Surat in 1631 and Dodos on Mauritius: a long lost manuscript rediscovered

2017 ◽  
Vol 44 (1) ◽  
pp. 134-150 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. Winters ◽  
J. P. Hume ◽  
M. Leenstra
Keyword(s):  
English Translation ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Secondary Source ◽  
Dutch East India Company ◽  
The Status ◽  
Insight Into

In 1887 Dutch archivist A. J. Servaas van Rooijen published a transcript of a hand-written copy of an anonymous missive or letter, dated 1631, about a horrific famine and epidemic in Surat, India, and also an important description of the fauna of Mauritius. The missive may have been written by a lawyer acting on behalf of the Dutch East India Company (VOC). It not only gives details about the famine, but also provides a unique insight into the status of endemic and introduced Mauritius species, at a time when the island was mostly uninhabited and used only as a replenishment station by visiting ships. Reports from this period are very rare. Unfortunately, Servaas van Rooijen failed to mention the location of the missive, so its whereabouts remained unknown; as a result, it has only been available as a secondary source. Our recent rediscovery of the original hand-written copy provides details about the events that took place in Surat and Mauritius in 1631–1632. A full English translation of the missive is appended.

Inventing the English Massacre

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alison Games
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
British Empire ◽  
English Language ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Dutch East India Company ◽  
Violent Event ◽  
The Indian Ocean ◽  
English East India Company ◽  
British Culture

This book explains how a conspiracy trial featuring English, Japanese, and Indo-Portuguese co-conspirators who allegedly plotted against the Dutch East India Company in the Indian Ocean in 1623 produced a diplomatic crisis in Europe and became known for four centuries in British culture as the Amboyna Massacre. The story of the transformation of this conspiracy into a massacre is a story of Anglo-Dutch relations in the seventeenth century and of a new word in the English language, massacre. The English East India Company drew on this new word to craft an enduring story of cruelty, violence, and ingratitude. Printed works—both pamphlets and images—were central to the East India Company’s creation of the massacre and to the story’s tenacity over four centuries as the texts and images were reproduced during conflicts with the Dutch and internal political disputes in England. By the eighteenth century, the story emerged as a familiar and shared cultural touchstone. By the nineteenth century, the Amboyna Massacre became the linchpin of the British Empire, an event that historians argued well into the twentieth century had changed the course of history and explained why the British had a stronghold in India. The broad familiarity with the incident and the Amboyna Massacre’s position as an early and formative violent event turned the episode into the first English massacre. It shaped the meaning of subsequent acts of violence, and placed intimacy, treachery, and cruelty at the center of massacres in ways that endure to the present day.

scholarly journals The manuscript journals of the trial of Charles I: new evidence on their provenance and purpose*

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edward Vallance
Keyword(s):  
British Library ◽  
Public Account ◽  
Charles I ◽  
National Archives ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Evidence

Abstract Historians of the trial of Charles I will be familiar with the two copies of the manuscript journals kept in The National Archives of the U.K. and the U.K. Parliamentary Archives. Besides these manuscripts, two further copies of the trial proceedings are held in the Beinecke Library, Yale, and in the British Library. This article compares these versions to propose a tentative document history of the journals, suggesting that these manuscripts were produced for different purposes: what began as the basis for an authoritative public account of the trial later became a text intended for a more select legal audience.

scholarly journals Book Reviews

1981 ◽  
Vol 137 (2) ◽  
pp. 363-380
Author(s):  
C Dijk ◽  
A. Reid ◽  
J. Goor ◽  
Francois Valentijn ◽  
F.G.P. Jaquet ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Economic History ◽  
British Library ◽  
Kuala Lumpur ◽  
Land Grants ◽  
Oxford University ◽  
The People ◽  
National University ◽  
Ann Arbor ◽  
History Of ◽  
Oxford University Press

- C van Dijk, A. Reid, The blood of the people: Revolution and the end of traditional rule in Northern Sumatra. Kuala Lumpur etc., 1979. Oxford University Press. 288 pp. - J. van Goor, Francois Valentijn, Francois Valentijn’s description of Ceylon, translated and edited by Sinnappah Arasaratnam. Hakluyt Society, Second Series, volume 149 (London 1978) XV + 395 blz. - F.G.P. Jaquet, P.B.R. Carey, The archive of Yogyakarta; an edition of Javanese reports, letters and land grants from the Yogyakarta court dated between A.J. 1698 and A.J. 1740 (1772-1813) taken from materials in the British Library and the India Office Library (London); Vol. I; Documents relating to politics and internal court affairs. Oxford, Oxford University Pres, 1980. XXVI, 227 pp. Ills. Oriental documents, III. - P.E. de Josselin de Jong, Barbara Watson Andaya, Perak: The abode of grace. A study of an eighteenth century Malay state. East Asian Historical Monographs Series. Oxford University Press, Kuala Lumpur, 1979. 444 pp., 7 maps, genealogical table. - G.A. Nagelkerke, Marlene van Doorn, Bouwstoffen voor de sociaal-economische geschiedenis van Indonesië van ca. 1800 tot 1940; een beschrijvende bibliografie - deel 2 (Materials for the socio-economic history of Indonesia from c. 1800-1940; a descriptive bibliography - vol. 2). De Indische Gids, 1879-1941. Amsterdam, Koninklijk Instituut voor de Tropen, 1979, 116 pp. - Anke Niehof, Kevin Sherlock, A bibliography of Timor, Australian National University, Canberra, 1980, 309 pp. - S.O. Robson, L. Mardiwarsito, Kamus Jawa Kuna (Kawi) - Indonesia, Penerbit Nusa Indah, Ende, Flores, 1978. XIV & 426 pp. - S.O. Robson, Soewojo Wojowasito, A Kawi Lexicon, edited by Roger F. Mills, Michigan Papers on South and Southeast Asia number 17, Center for South and Southeast Asian Studies, The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 1980. XV & 629 pp. - R. Roolvink, s. Udin, Spectrum, Essays presented to Sutan Takdir Alisjahbana on his seventieth birthday. LII + 656 pp. Dian Rakyat. Jakarta. - R. Roolvink, Leonard Y. Andaya, The Kingdom of Johor 1641-1728. xviii, 394 pp. Oxford University Press, Kuala Lumpur, 1975.

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