scholarly journals Het gebruik van “Oud en Nieuw Oost-Indiën” van François Valentyn door bewindhebbers van de VOC in de achttiende eeuw

2021 ◽  
Vol 32 ◽  
pp. 137-156
Author(s):  
Siegfried Huigen
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
The Netherlands ◽  
Central Government ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Dutch East India Company ◽  
East Indies ◽  
Personal Archives ◽  
Source Of Information ◽  
The Way

This article discusses the circulation of information extracted from François Valentyn’s Oud en Nieuw Oost-Indiën (1724–1726) during the eighteenth century, both with regards to the central organs of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) in the Netherlands and the VOC establishments in the East Indies. First, three documents are analysed that were part of five VOC directors’ personal archives, with the aim to determine the way these directors made use of Valentyn’s book. It is concluded that for these directors Oud en Nieuw Oost-Indiën was probably the most important source of information about the VOC’s trading empire, while at the same time their epistemic interest was limited to matters of trade. Second, the usage of Valentyn’s book in various VOC establishments in the East Indies is assessed on the basis of correspondence between these establishments with the VOC central government in Batavia. Because of the fact that Oud en Nieuw Oost-Indiën was used simultaneously as a source of information by several actors, both in the Netherlands and in the East Indies, this might have resulted in standardising the operational knowledge of the East Indies within the VOC network.

Private Trade and Elite Privilege. The Trial of Nicolaas Schaghen, Director of Bengal

Itinerario ◽  
1996 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 69-86 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pamela McVay
Keyword(s):  
The Netherlands ◽  
Board Of Directors ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Dutch East India Company ◽  
High Court ◽  
East Indies ◽  
Hands On ◽  
Dutch East Indies ◽  
At Home

It is common wisdom among the historians of the Dutch East Indies that everyone in the Dutch East India Company engaged in private trade. That is, ‘everyone’ traded in goods supposedly monopolized by the Company and ‘everyone’ abused his or her position to squeeze graft from the Company's trade. It was, supposedly, to get their hands on the private trade and graft that people joined the Dutch East India Company (VOC: Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie) in the first place. But back in the Netherlands the VOC's Board of Directors (the Heeren XVII) objected vociferously to private trade, which drained Company profits and shareholder revenue. To appease the Heeren XVII back at home, the various Governors-General and Councillors of the Indies (Raad van Indië), who represented the Heeren XVII in Asia, issued annual placards forbidding private trade while the High Court (Raad van Justitie) carried out infrequent desultory trials for private trade. But these prosecutions were inevitably doomed to failure, so the story goes, because everyone engaged in private trade would ‘cover’ for everyone else.

“Gij kent genoegt mijn gevoelig hart”. Emotional Life at the Occupied Cape of Good Hope, 1798-1803

Itinerario ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 63-80 ◽  
Author(s):  
Danelle van Zyl-Hermann
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
The Netherlands ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Dutch East India Company ◽  
British Government ◽  
Emotional Life ◽  
Cape Of Good Hope ◽  
Old Order

With the eighteenth century drawing to a close, Anglo-French hostilities were rapidly escalating in Europe. Besides competing for power on the continent, both the British and the French were concerned with expanding their influence in the East, where the once mighty trading empire of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) had been in steady decline for some decades. By the end of 1794, conflicts on the continent were turning firmly in France's favour and in January 1795 French troops invaded the Netherlands, forcing the ruling Prince of Orange to seek refuge in England. Members of the Dutch Patriot movement—the democratically-minded opponents of the Dutch monarchy and the old order in general—were sympathetic towards French revolutionary ideals and welcomed the French presence in their country. Meanwhile, the occupation of the Netherlands was of great concern to the British government, who suspected that the French would waste no time in also taking control of strategically-located Dutch colonies.

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.

The Dutch and English conquest of South East Asia.

2021 ◽  
pp. 247-263
Author(s):  
James F. Hancock
Keyword(s):  
East Asia ◽  
East India Company ◽  
South East Asia ◽  
Dutch East India Company ◽  
Philip Ii ◽  
East Indies ◽  
World Power ◽  
European Trade ◽  
Philip Ii Of Spain

Abstract The chapter summarizes the rise of Dutch and English empires. The Dutch path to world power was aided greatly in 1588, when a huge armada sent by Philip II of Spain to invade Protestant Elizabeth I's England was roundly defeated. This decisive defeat of the Spanish Armada greatly bolstered the confidence of the English and Dutch and encouraged them to forge their own routes to the riches of India and South East Asia. The chapter also discusses the first Dutch expeditions to the East Indies in search of spices and how Jacob Van Heemskerck's invasion started the end of the Portuguese monopoly on trade in the East Indies. The establishment of English and Dutch East India Company is also discussed. Finally, the chapter summarizes how the East India Companies affect the European Trade.

State Formation and the Role of Portfolio Investors in Cochin, 1663–1700

Itinerario ◽  
1994 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 65-85 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hugo K. S'Jacob
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
The Netherlands ◽  
Traditional Approach ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Arts And Sciences ◽  
East Indies ◽  
Netherlands East Indies ◽  
Fourth Volume ◽  
Asian History

J.C. van Leur was not very kind to his fellow historians in 1940 when he addressed the Historical Section of the Batavian Society of Arts and Sciences, reviewing the fourth volume of the Geschiedenis van Nederlandsch Indië by E.C. Godée Molsbergen. The gist of his talk, entitled ‘On the Eighteenth Century as a Category in Indonesian History’, was that colonial historical studies in the Netherlands and in the Netherlands East Indies were of a fairly parochial nature. For Van Leur, who was well acquainted with social and economic historical theory, it was not difficult to criticize the traditional approach of Godée's study of the eighteenth century. He pointed out that it made no sense to use the eighteenth century as a category in Asian history. The reverse in fact was true, he argued, as from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century, Asian civilizations were characterized by a steady continuity. Nowadays many historians would agree with Van Leur's point of view, except for his refutation of the eighteenth century as a category in Asian history. The eighteenth century is now generally regarded as a period of change in many parts of Asia.

Culture and Society at the Cape of Good Hope, 1652–1795

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerald Groenewald
Keyword(s):  
18Th Century ◽  
Cape Town ◽  
Natural Increase ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Dutch East India Company ◽  
Male Population ◽  
East Indies ◽  
Cape Of Good Hope ◽  
Entrepreneurial Activities ◽  
Settler Population

In 1652 the Dutch East India Company founded a “refreshment station” in Table Bay on the southwestern coast of Africa for its fleets to and from the East Indies. Within a few years, this outpost developed into a fully-fledged settler colony with a “free-burgher” population who made an existence as grain, wine, and livestock farmers in the interior, or engaged in entrepreneurial activities in Cape Town, the largest settlement in the colony. The corollary of this development was the subjugation of the indigenous Khoikhoi and San inhabitants of the region, and the importation and use of a relatively large slave labor force in the agrarian and urban economies. The colony continued to expand throughout the 18th century due to continued immigration from Europe and the rapid growth of the settler population through natural increase. During that century, about one-third of the colony’s population lived in Cape Town, a cosmopolitan harbor city with a large transient, and overwhelmingly male, population which remained connected with both the Atlantic and Indian Ocean worlds. The unique society and culture that developed at the Cape was influenced by both these worlds. Although in many ways, the managerial superstructure of the Cape was similar to that of a Dutch city, the cosmopolitan and diverse nature of its population meant that a variety of identities and cultures co-existed alongside each other and found expression in a variety of public forms.

Fast and slow ships from China: The speed of Dutch East Indiamen reconsidered

2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 305-322
Author(s):  
Johan de Jong
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Ship Design ◽  
Critical Assessment ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Dutch East India Company ◽  
Inland Waterways ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Slow Adaptation ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
New Research

This article questions the commonly held assumption that the ships of the Dutch East India Company VOC were slower than those of other East India companies. Recently, Solar and De Zwart showed that Dutch ships were slower on outward voyages to a number of Asian destinations during the periods 1770–1775 and 1783–1792. They cited as plausible explanations differences in ship design resulting from constraints imposed by the Dutch shallow inland waterways and the slow adaptation of copper sheathing in the late eighteenth century. Research by the author of this article leads to a critical assessment of these explanations. Moreover, additional new research into homebound voyages from China undertaken by ships of four East India companies, for the periods 1730–1740, 1750–1755, 1770–1775 and 1783–1792, leads to the outcome that – concerning speed – Dutch ships could compete very well with those of the English, Swedish and Danish companies.

“NOTHING IS THE WAY IT SHOULD BE”: GLOBAL TRANSFORMATIONS OF THE TIME REGIME IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

2017 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 821-848 ◽  
Author(s):  
SEBASTIAN CONRAD
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
New Technology ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Dutch East India Company ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Time Regime ◽  
Modern Europe ◽  
The Way

When European clocks first arrived in seventeenth-century Japan they generated a commotion. The highly complex but also very precise instruments had been brought to Nagasaki by the Dutch East India Company that monopolized the sparse and highly regulated trade between Japan and Europe for more than two centuries. As an expression of the technological sophistication achieved in early modern Europe, mechanical clocks were hi-tech products of their time. They operated with a spring to store the energy, and their making required highly developed skills in casting and metalwork. The new technology made it possible to emancipate the measurement of time from sunshine and to achieve an evenness of temporal rhythms, not only during the day, but also at night.

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