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India and the Indonesian Archipelago from the Generale Missiven der VOC (Dutch East India Company)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 June 2011

J. Van Goor
J. Van Goor
Affiliation:
(University of Utrecht)
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Extract

Regularly, with the ships coming with the monsoon, the Governor-General and the councillors at Batavia received information from their subordinates from all over Asia. The Council of the Indies consisted of older members of the Company's bureaucracy, men who had served in several posts before being nominated to this ultimate position of honour. Together in council they constituted the best informed body on Asian affairs, in the East, as well as in the West. As a body they were responsible for the formulation of the generate missiven, the general letters in which the Heren Zeventien (Gentlemen Seventeen) were briefed on the state of affairs. The missiven had to be signed by all, dissent was not permissable. According to a a set pattern, all factories were dealt with in the same fashion. Any member of the council in principle would have been able to make an overview of the differing areas in which the Company was active. If any, they seem to have been the people able to make a comparison of the Indian subcontinent and the Indonesian archipelago. The following is an attempt to show what insights might have been expected from an interview with an elder servant of the ‘honourable Company’.

Type
Articles
Information
Itinerario , Volume 16 , Issue 2 , July 1992 , pp. 23 - 37
Copyright
Copyright © Research Institute for History, Leiden University 1992

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References

Notes

1 Algemeen Rijksarchief The Hague, Archives of the Dutch East India Company (VOC), inv.nr. 3761, fol. 14.

2 W.Ph. Coolhaas and J. van Goor eds., Generate missiven van gouverneurs-generaal en raden aan Heren XVII der Verenigde Oostindiscke Compagnie. Rijks geschiedkundige publicatien, grote serie 104, 112, 125, 134, 150, 159, 164, 193 and 205 (9 vols.; 's-Gravenhage 1960–1988) I, xiii.

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33 Ibidem, 220, 244, 282, 283, 357.

34 Ibidem, 363.

35 Ibidem, 272.

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45 Ibidem, 171.

46 Ibidem, 71,207, 294.

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51 Ibidem, 133.

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53 Ibidem, 98, 154, 299.

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57 Arasaratnam, Merchants, Companies and Commerce, 265–273.

58 Generate missiven IX, 404.

59 Prakash, Economy of Bengal, 239.