Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-xfwgj Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-20T08:14:13.187Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

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)
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

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

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

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.

3 Roessingh, Marius P.H., Sources of the History of Asia and Oceania in the Netherlands (Munich etc. 1982) 74.Google Scholar

4 Generate missiven I, x.

5 Gaastra, F.S., De Geschiedenis van de VOC (Haarlem and Antwerp 1982) 82.Google Scholar

6 Nelson, W.A., The Dutch Forts of Sri Lanka (Edinburgh 1984)Google Scholar; Greig, D., The Reluctant Colonists. Netherlanders abroad in the 17th and 18th centuries (Assen 1987).Google Scholar

7 Arasaratnam, Sinnapah, Merchants, Companies and Commerce on the Coromandel Coast 1650–1740 (Delhi etc. 1986) 68Google Scholar; van Dam, Pieter, Besckryvinghe van de Oostindische Compagnie. Stapel, F.W. and van Boetzelaer, C.W.Th. eds. Rijks geschiedkundige publicatiēn, grote serie 63, 68, 74, 76, 83, 87, 96 (7 vols.; 's —Gravenhage 1927–1954) II, 110, 128.Google Scholar

8 Gaastra, Geschiedenis van de VOC, 82.

9 Haafner, Jacob, Raize te voet door het eiland Ceilon (Amsterdam 1826) 64Google Scholar; Gupta, A. Das, ‘De VOC en Suratte in de 17e en 18e eeuw’ in: MAP. Meilink-Roelofsz, De VOC in Azie (Bussum 1976) 74, 75.Google Scholar

10 van Opstall, M.S., ‘Dutchmen and Japanese in the eighteenth century’ in: van Goor, J. ed., Trading companies in Asia 1600–1830 (Utrecht 1986) 107–127.Google Scholar

11 Steur, J.J., Herstel of ondergang. De voorstellen tot redres van de VOC 1740–1795 (Utrecht 1984) 79–82.Google Scholar

12 Arasaratnam, Sinnapah ed. Memoir of Julius Stein van Gollenesse Governor of Ceylon 1743–1751 for his successor Gerrit Joan Vreeland 28th February, 1751 (Colombo 1974).Google Scholar

13 Gaastra, Geschiedenis van de VOC, 118–122; Steur, Herstel of ondergang, 27, 28.

14 Van Dam, Beschryvinghe I, 40–54.

15 Ibidem, 48, 52.

16 Ibidem, 255–258.

17 Generale missiven IX, 709.

18 Knaap, G.J., Kruidnagelen en Ckrislenen. De Verenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie en de bevolking van Ambon 1656–1696 (Dordrecht 1987) 100–104.Google Scholar

19 Van Dam, Beschryvinghe II, 45.

20 Knaap, Kruidnagelen en Christenen, 58–60.

21 Generale missiven IX, 17, 112, 134, 208, 223.

22 van Goor, J., ‘Karaeng Balambaru, alias Tjenrane, een deserteur uit velen?’ in: Poeze, Harry and Schoorl, Pirn eds., Excursies in Celebes (Leiden 1991) 63–81.Google Scholar

23 Nagtegaal, L., Rijden op een Hollandse Tijger. De Noordkust van Java en de VOC 1680–1743 (Utrecht 1988) 172.Google Scholar

24 Ibidem, 184 ff.

25 Van Dam, Beschryvinghe II, 486–490.

26 Ibidem, 200–211.

27 Ibidem, 304–305.

28 Ibidem, 310–311.

29 Vos, R.C., Koopman en Koning. De VOC en de MaUise linhandel 1740–1800 (Utrecht 1990) 202.Google Scholar

30 Generale missiven IX, 209, 234, 265.

31 Ibidem, 30, 151, 227, 263, 490.

32 Ibidem, 30, 113, 263, 348, 371, 490.

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

34 Ibidem, 363.

35 Ibidem, 272.

36 Van Dam, Beschryvinghe II, 262–272.

37 Generate missiven IX, 78, 79, 236, 603.

38 Andaya, B. Watson, Perak, the Abode of Grace (Oxford 1979).Google Scholar

39 Smith, G. Vinal, The Dutck in Seventeenth Century Thailand (DeKalb 1977)Google Scholar; van Goor, J., Kooplieden, Predikanten en Bestuurders overzee - beeldvorming en plaatsbepaling in een andere wereld (Utrecht 1982) chapter I.Google Scholar

40 Prakash, Om, The Dutch East India Company and the Economy of Bengal 1630–1720 (Delhi etc. 1988) 66–70.Google Scholar

41 Generate missiven IX, 161.

42 Das Gupta, ‘De VOC en Suratte’, 82–84.

43 Generate missiven IX, 159.

44 Ibidem, 165.

45 Ibidem, 171.

46 Ibidem, 71,207, 294.

47 Ibidem, 39, 160, 411, 575, 615.

48 van Santen, H.W., De Verenigde Oosl-Indische Compagnie in Gujarat en Hindustan, 1620–1660 (Leiden 1982) 20–25Google Scholar; Prakash, Economy of Bengal, 222–234.

49 Generate missiven IX, 329, 383.

50 Knaap, Kruidnagelen en Christenen, 259.

51 Ibidem, 133.

52 Generate missiven IX, 267, 304, 351, 437.

53 Ibidem, 98, 154, 299.

54 Hoadley, Mason C., ‘Slavery, Bondage and Dependency in Pre-Colonial Java: the Cirebon-Briangan Area, 1700’ in: Reid, A. ed., Slavery, Bondage and Dependency in South-East Asia (St. Lucia etc. 1983) 97.Google Scholar

55 Nagtegaal, Rijden op een Hollandse Tijger, 194–196.

56 GJ. Knaap, ‘Coffee for cash. The Dutch East India Company and the Expansion of Coffee Cultivation in Java, Ambon and Ceylon 1700–1720’ in: Van Goor ed., Trading Companies in Asia, 33–51.

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

58 Generate missiven IX, 404.

59 Prakash, Economy of Bengal, 239.