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Documentatieblad werkgroep Achttiende eeuw. Jaargang 1979 (1979)

Documentatieblad werkgroep Achttiende eeuw. Jaargang 1979

(1979)– [tijdschrift] Documentatieblad werkgroep Achttiende eeuw–rechtenstatus Auteursrechtelijk beschermd

Vorige Volgende

On the eighteenth century as a category of Indonesian history: a reconsideration of J.C. van Leur

This paper takes its origin from the review by J.C. Van Leur, ‘Eenige aanteekeningen betreffende de mogelijkheid der 18e eeuw als categorie in de Indische geschiedschrijving’ (Tijdschrift voor Indische Taal, Landen Volkenkunde, LXXX, 1940, pp. 544-567), of Vol. IV of F.W. Stapel (ed.), Geschiedenis van Nederlandsch Indië (Amsterdam, 1940), written by the late Dr. E.C. Godée Molsbergen. I have taken my references to this review from the English translation, ‘On the Eighteenth Century as a Category in the writing of Indonesian History’ (Indonesian Trade and Society. Essays in Asian Social and Economie History by J.C. Van Leur, The Hague, 1955, pp. 268-89).

 

I should make it clear at the outset that I am not disputing Van Leur's contention that the European concept ‘Eighteenth Century’ can be adequately applied as a subdivision for the course of Indonesian cultural history. The periodization for this needs to be a different one. ‘Is it possible’, asked Van Leur (p. 270), ‘to write the history of Indonesia in the eighteenth century as the history of the Company?’ He answered his own question with a resounding negative. Again, one can only agree; although I would add the caveat that it would be equally erroneous to write the history of Indonesia in the eighteenth century without giving due weight to the Company. Scholars like H.J. de Graaf and M.C. Ricklefs have been able to combine both Dutch and indigenous sources most effectively in their historical writing; but this can only be done by those with similar linguistic qualifications.1 The sacro-magical nature of the bulk of Javanese literature in the eighteenth century reflects the beliefs of people who lived in a world thickly inhabited by spirits and supernatural powers. It is difficult to imagine a more different intellectual background from the spirit-world of the Javanese than that of the eighteenth-century Netherlanders, whether these latter were rigid Calvinists, or had been affected by the ideas of the Enlightenment. This symposium is avowedly concerned with ‘De Nederlanders Buitengaats’ and so enables me to utilise an unashamedly Eurocentric viewpoint of the type so trenchantly criticised by Van Leur when reviewing the work of Godée Molsbergen and F.W. Stapel.

‘The history of the Company in the Eighteenth century’, wrote Godée Molsbergen, ‘is the reflected image of that of its mother country, in fact of the Europe of that day,... sometimes more fiercely lighted by the tropical sun, and influenced by the almost legendary distance that lay between the Netherlands and the Archipelago.’ Van Leur strongly challenged this comparison, and he argued that there was no noticeable deterioration in the quality of the Company's officials during the eighteenth century. With all due deference to the innovative work of this remarkable man, I would argue that there was a decline in efficiency, and in standards; and that the conventional picture of the colonial pruikentijd is largely justified. I think it was James Mill who remarked sarcastically that the British Empire in India was a form of outdoor-relief (armenzorg) for the upper classes.2 This, of course, is equally true of all colonial empires in the East, from the Portuguese in 16th-century India to the Americans in the 20th-century Philippines. To what extent the VOC in Asia offered increasing career-opportunities to men from upper-class Dutch families is still uncertain. Dr. G.J. Schutte's analytical discussion of this problem seems quite convincing to me. I think we can accept his tentative conclusion that a patrician family background was certainly an advantage, but that the top ranks of the Company's servants in Asia were not a closed and self-perpetuating oligarchy.3

 

Another aspect which requires further research is the shifting balance between the blijvers and the trekkers. I suppose it is safe to say that the great majority of men who signed on with the Company for a period of service in the East intended to return to Europe at the end of it, or at any rate once they had made their fortune. But it is equally certain that most of them did not return, especially sailors, artisans (ambachtslieden), and junior personnel. The increasing unhealthiness of Batavia in the second half of the 18th-century was another factor which turned would-be trekkers oversea into blijvers underground. The life-style of Northern Europeans in the tropics, with their apparently inexhaustible thirst for alcohol, also contributed to a very heavy mortality-rate, just as it did with the servants of the rival EIC. On the other hand, many of the blijvers did succeed in producing children and raising families. Some of these children, particularly sons of wealthy fathers, were sent to the Netherlands for their education. Others remained all their lives in the East, including the Governor-General (1761-1775) Petrus Albertus van der Parra, who seems to me (though not to Van Leur) to be the personification of the pruikentijd in Asia.

 

The American historian, Holden Furber, has recently drawn attention to the stereotyping of careers in the VOC during the eighteenth century, and the tendency for persons with the ‘right connections’ in the Netherlands to get the best jobs.4 This was a natural development, given the oligarchic nature of society in the Ancien Régime.

It could probably be paralleled by a similar, if rather later, development in the EIC. Charles Wilson wrote many years ago: ‘British society provided careers for cadets of good family: remunerative offices in government; church livings; commissions in the armed forces; a growing number of potentially lucrative situations in the colonies (not really important until the second half of the 18th century).’5 The loss of the American colonies naturally increased the attractions of a career in the EIC for ‘cadets of good family’, especially in the Presidency of Bengal, where ‘shaking the pagoda tree’ had become a lucrative way of life for officials who could exercise authority and were not overscrupulous.6 Bengal was also one of the ‘plums’ of the VOC's service, if not to the same extent after the Dutch débacle on the Hughli in 1759.

 

Relying largely on the genealogical work of Wijnaendts van Resandt (De Gezaghebbers der Oost Indische Compagnie op hare Buiten-Comptoiren in Azië, 1944), Holden Furber observed that the number of VOC servants born or engaged ‘in Indië’ (i.e. Asia) was already considerable by the early eighteenth century. Ongoing research by Netherlands scholars in the ‘Koloniaal Archief’ section of the Rijksarchief is greatly adding to our knowledge of the career-structure of the VOC, and the socio-economic conditions of all those who were involved in it from a Governor-General to a common sailor. I should particulary like to mention the work of Drs. F.L. Lequin and his (forthcoming) qualitative and quantitative study on the VOC personnel in Bengal during the 18th-century. I will not anticipate his results, which will be based on a detailed examination of the 127 volumes of the musterrolls, the 21 volumes of the Rollen der Gequalificeerden (1700-1787) and the 2,979 volumes of the Scheepsoldijboeken (1700-1794), and other voluminous manuscript sources. But he will be able to reconstruct the detailed careers of about 3,500 VOC employees who served at one time or another in Bengal. Meanwhile, it is clear that by 1760 a noticeable trend had developed in the growing number of ‘German’-born and of non-European-born servants, with a corresponding decline in the number of Netherlands-born servants. The mortality figures for the VOC employees in Bengal show, unsurprisingly, a close correlation with those of the EIC for the same period. Drs. Lequin tentatively concludes that about 25% of the VOC employees in Bengal returned to Europe after an average time of service of fourteen years. The analysis of the EIC's Bengal Army Lists, 1760-1834, by Dodwell and Miles gave almost exactly the same result, from a larger sampling it is true.7

 

Although these appalling mortality-rates were usually blamed on ‘the climate’, it is obvious, as indicated above, that overindulgence in unsuitable food and drink had more to do with it. There was little or nothing to choose between the employees of the VOC and of the EIC in this respect, as anyone familiar with the literature of the period

will allow. The senior and wealthier servants of the two companies lived on a scale of ‘conspicuous expenditure’ which they could not have afforded in their respective home countries, but which the slave labour - or the very cheap labour - available in the East, enabled them to indulge to the full. For example, if we look at the convivial parties depicted in the satirical paintings of Cornelis Troost, or those of his English contemporary, William Hogarth, these are relatively small and intimate affairs. But similar entertainments in Bengal and Batavia were apt to turn into gigantic orgies; although few of them can have attained the extravagence of the wedding festivities of G.-G. Jacob Mossel's youngest daughter, Geertruida Margaretha. On the occasion of her marriage (at the age of sixteen) to the patrician Mr. Pieter Cornelis Hasselaer (a widower with six children) on the 24 April 1757, the 600 guests were treated to a magnificent banquet presided over by eleven masters-of-ceremonies. There was a procession with guards of honour, numerous coaches, musical bands, and massive illuminations at night, with over 3,200 lamps in the bridegroom's house alone. There was a toast-list of twenty-one items, beginning with ‘De Goede Welkomst aan Tafel’ and ending with ‘Het welvaren van het Vaderland’. Two fountains, especially erected by the government for the happy occasion, spouted respectively red and white wine, ‘tot vreugde van het volk’. We can well believe the reporter of these proceedings in the Nederlandsche jaarboeken (1757), who concluded his account by stating: ‘Met één woord, al wat Luister, Rykdom en Blydschap kon vertoonen, werd hier op het uitmuntendste gezien.’ It is typical of the gap between theory and practice which was such a feature of the VOC at this period, that G.-G. Mossel was responsible for one of the numerous edicts limiting or forbidding displays of pracht en praal.8

 

Van Leur has argued that this colonial society was a Dutch society only to a limited extent, ‘because of its character, interlaced to a large extent with fragments of Oriental folkways and social forms. Thus had developed the opulent life of the higher classes in the Indies, with their country seats, their pomp and ceremony, their retinues of slaves and serfs / a life linked to that of the Javanese nobility more than to any other.’9 I am not sure that this is correct. Obviously, the architecture of the Buitenplaatsen was influenced by the prevailing climatic conditions and the need to keep them cool; but it was basically European. The pracht en praal was facilitated by slave and cheap labour; but it was very different from the complex culture of the Javanese kratons with their blending of indigenous, Hundu and Islamic elements. Certainly, most of the VOC's officials cared very little about the oriental cultures with which they came into contact; and they remained stubbornly Eurocentric, whether they were blijvers or trekkers. Men like Nicholas Hartingh in Java, Isaac Titsingh in Japan, and J.W. Van Braam Houckgeest in China, were very much the exception.

Far more typical was our Mr. Pieter Cornelis Hasselaer. Although an ‘Indische jongen’, born at Batavia in 1720, where his father was Directeur-Generaal, he was brought up at Amsterdam, only returning to Batavia in the year of his marriage to Gertruida Margaretha. He subsequently filled several lucrative positions as Water-fiscaal, Resident of Cheribon, and Raad-Ordinaris at Batavia, before repatriating with his young daughter in 1772 as Admiral of the retour-vloot. He became a burgomaster of Amsterdam for 22 years, until dispossessed by the Révolutionnair Comité in 1795, dying two years later. He had made a vast fortune in Java through his marriage and lucrative posts. He was thus able to restore and extend the family buitenplaats or landhuis of Groeneveld near Baarn. This is still one of the most attractive country seats; but I presume there must be many others in the Netherlands which owe their origin or their improvement to money made in the service of ‘Jan Compagnie’ in Asia.10

 

Van Leur also severely criticised the contention of Godée Molsbergen and many other historians that an ‘atmosphere of corruption’ was mainly responsible for the collapse of the VOC in Asia. He claimed that ‘such corruption did not necessarily impair the efficiency of the administration. Not a single element predetermining destruction was contained in it. Such a regime could possess the full power to exist and to act.’11 Once more I would venture to dissent. I agree that it was not the sole factor in the Company's decline; but Godée Molsbergen and others who denounced it, Snouck Hurgronje for example, never claimed that it was. But it must have been a powerful contributory factor. Feenstra Kuiper has shown this was true for the Japan trade, where the contraband cargoes of the opperhoofden and others on Deshima were sometimes more valuable than those on the Company's account.12 The same was true of Bengal; and we can expect more details about the extent of corruption there, and the blatant disregard of the Company's rules, from the forthcoming work of Drs. Lequin.

Contraband trade on homeward-bound Indiamen via the Cape of Good Hope was also a notorious abuse. None of these factors were new, and there were plenty of complaints about them in the second half of the seventeenth century. But all the available evidence indicates that these abuses increased in the eighteenth century. This was certainly no secret to contemporaries, many of whom deplored and denounced it, including Dirk Van Hogendorp.

 

Van Leur considered that Van Hogendorp was a poor witness. ‘His Berigt van den tegenwoordigen toestand der Bataafsche bezittingen in Oost-Indie (1801) and his other writings give abundant evidence of his doctrinaire attitude and his lack of appreciation for the real nature of Oriental life as well as for the acquired rights of the Company. Along with that, there was a strongly coloured personal animostity against the regime at Batavia as a source of his abundance

of invectives: “the present nonsensical system of administration” (het tegenwoordig onzinnig systema van Regeeringsvorm), and “the miserable and oppresive government” (de ellendige en drukkende Regeering) count among the milder of them. Factional passion and personal hatred were allowed to discolour the picture of the government in Batavia at the end of the century.’13 Van Leur's criticism is too harsh. Of course, Van Hogendorp was self-opinionated and prejudiced in some respects; but in other respects he was an intelligent eyewitness and a perceptive critic. He was one of the first Europeans to denounce the myth of the ‘lazy native’, so widespread then and for long afterwards. Much of his criticism is firmly based; and many - though not all - of his suggestions for reform were viable. Perhaps Van Leur would have softened his strictures of Dirk Van Hogendorp had he lived to read the latter's correspondence with his more famous - but much less interesting - brother Gijsbert Karel, published by E. du Perron-De Roos in 1943.14 But there is no need to depend on Van Hogendorp's evidence alone. It is confirmed by a host of other witnesses, including the report of an official committee published in 1791, which complained over ‘de onbeteugelde schraapzugt en trouwloosheid van veele van's Compagnies Dienaaren.’15

 

It has often been pointed out that the EIC suffered from a great deal of corruption and administrative abuses at this period, but that it did not collapse in consequence of this. True enough; but the extent to which the EIC itself, and the economy of Bengal as a whole, were damaged by official and unofficial corruption is still a matter of argument among historians, and may never definitely be quantified. What does seem certain in a comparison between the servants of the EIC and those of the VOC at this period, is that the former, however corrupt they were - and a good many of them were exceedingly corrupt - were usually more energetic and resourceful than their Dutch opposite numbers. Holden Furber has argued, convincingly to my mind, that one reason for the success of the EIC in overtaking its originally more powerful Dutch rival, was the greater scope which the former gave its servants to indulge in the ‘country’ (inter-Asian) trade. The opportunities thus afforded them fostered their energy and their initiative, though not necessarily their honesty. The EIC, by leaving most of the ‘country trade’ to its servants after c. 1670, reduced the amount of corruption which otherwise its servants would have indulged in. The VOC, by strictly limiting (on paper) the participation of its servants in the ‘country-trade’ merely fostered the development of their illicit activities in this branch. Morever, these illicit activities were often carried out in conjunction with English traders. But it was the growth of energy and initiative among the English, and the relative stagnation or decline of these two factors with the Dutch, that made the big difference and reversed the respective positions of the two companies during the 18th century.16

Charles Wilson observed in his previously quoted Cambridge Economic History of Europe (Vol. VI, 1955, p. 72): ‘It seems clear that British commerce of the 18th century was by comparison with that of the Continent, impressively energetic, pushful, and open to innovation.’ Exactly the same can be said of Englishmen in Asia during the 18th century, whether servants of the East-India Company or private-traders, ‘interlopers’ and the like, from Canton to Basra. Conversely, the decline of Dutch energy and initiative in Europe, with a corresponding decline or stagnation in several fields of industry and technology was obvious to many observers at the time, and is generally acknowledged by historians today. The classic work in this respect is Johan de Vries, De Economische Achteruitgang der Republiek in de Achttiende Eeuw (Amsterdam, 1959). This decline did not, of course, affect all branches of industry, trade, and commerce equally, or at the same time; but by the last quarter of the eighteenth century the cumulative effects had become painfully obvious. In short, English energy contrasted strongly with Dutch lethargy, even though the former often assumed unpleasantly arrogant and aggressive forms which aroused world-wide hostility.

 

Van Leur opined that the reason for the Company's downfall in Asia was to be found mainly, ‘if not exclusively, in the Company's maritime impotence... Maritime impotence, which the government attempted insufficiently and without perseverence to redress, seems solely responsible for the Company's downfall.’17 Here again, I must insert a qualification. ‘Solely’ is too strong; but growing maritime weakness was certainly a prime contributory cause of the Company's collapse. As with the VOC's financial situation, the real state of affairs was long hidden to outsiders. They saw only that with richly-laden fleets totalling between thirty and forty sail a year, and with annual dividends to shareholders in excess of 20%, the VOC still seemed to be a major power, and Batavia in truth the ‘Queen of the East’.

 

Dupleix wrote to Labourdonnais on the 1 December 1744: ‘As to the Dutch, if war is declared with them and they do not care to keep the peace in India, they will be quite capable of keeping us busy without having the English on our hands, too.’18 Little did he suspect that G.-G. Baron Van Imhoff, with whom, incidentally, Dupleix was closely concerned in private-trading ventures, was writing in the same year: ‘Hoe het met ons gesteld is, durf ik bijna niet te zeggen, want het schaamt sig... alles manqueert, goede schepen, volk, officiers, en so werd een der capitaalste taken van Neerlands mogendheyt in de waagschale geset.’19 The failure of the expedition sent by Mossel to Chinsura in 1759 was a clear indication that things had got worse despite Van Imhoff's efforts at reform, which included the establishment of a Naval Academy (Académie de Marine) at Batavia.

One reason for the fiasco in the Hughli in 1759 was the typical indiscipline of Justus Baak, skipper of the Visvliet. Despite stringent orders

to keep in convoy, he sailed ahead on the first day and reached Bengal early in order to get a better price for his contraband goods, thus alerting the English. Equally typically, he was not punished. However, the main reason for the failure of this expedition was the fumbling and irresolute way in which it was managed from start to finish. A force of 4,000 men had originally been envisaged, but in the upshot not more than 350 European and 560 Indonesian troops could be scraped together. The Directeur at Chinsura got cold feet and disclaimed all connection with the expedition to Clive and Forde.20

 

The weakness of the VOC's maritime strength in Eastern seas circa 1740, was to some extent a reflection of the weakness of the States-General's navy in Europe, which reached its nadir about that time.21 During the second half of the 18th century various naval reforms greatly improved the quality of the Dutch naval officer corps, as was clearly evidenced in the war of 1780-83, when they performed so well against greatly superior English forces in the North Atlantic. But this naval recovery was not reflected in the VOC's sea service. Ceylon and the Cape of Good Hope were only saved for the VOC by the French fleet under De Suffren during the fourth English War. No sooner was the war ended, than Malacca, the Riouw Archipelago, and West Borneo were so seriously threatened by Indonesian attacks, that two detachments of the States' Navy, under J.P. Van Braam and Willem Sylvester, respectively, had to be sent from the Netherlands to save them. The naval officers in these expeditions werevery scornful of the VOC's naval force. ‘Dat was de staet van blokkade, God beeter! eene magt, die geene vlieg konde hinderen, 't in of uytkomen der Riviere te beletten maer zoo is 't hier in Indiën, alles bestaet hier in schijn!’ Nobody cared to take responsibility, decisions were indefinitely delayed, or not implemented, and the servants of the VOC seemed to do nothing more than ‘slaepen, vreeten, en zuypen.’22 There was probably some exaggeration in this gloomy assessment, but not much; and Dirk van Hogendorp's criticisms were on similar lines.

 

There were other reasons for the decline of the VOC's maritime power, for which the Company itself was not to blame, except, perhaps, for its refusal to pay higher wages. The shortage of experienced seamen had been the subject of complaint from the Company's early days, but in the second half of the 18th century it reached crisis proportions. Netherlanders had usually preferred to serve in merchant-ships or in the whaling fishery, where wages were higher and absences from home were not too long, than either in the VOC or in the Navy. To a great extent, this had been atoned for by the enlistment of Scandinavians and men from the Baltic regions, unkindly designated as ‘plompe Oosterlingen.’ But after c. 1740 these men were no longer available in such numbers; and recourse was increasingly had to ‘louts from the depths of Germany’, (onervaren vreemdelingen uit het hart van Duitsland)

whose habitats had been devestated by the wars of the Austrian Succession (1740-1748) and The Seven Years War (1756-1763). Worse still, the population of several regions of the Netherlands which had been nurseries of seamen in the 17th century, were now demographically stagnating, or (like the Noorder Quartier) in catastrophic decline. Such seamen as remained, seldom chose to enlist with the VOC, so that the Directors were increasingly forced to complete their crews from the dregs of the urban proletariat, living on the edge of subsistence, and often suffering from malnutrition and infectious diseases at the time of embarkation. The result was a vicious circle. Ships sailed with such sickly crews, that in 1782, for example, 43% of those who embarked died before reaching the Cape of Good Hope, where 915 survivors were admitted to hospital. This terrible death-rate at sea was aggravated by the heavy mortality incurred while the Indiamen were loading their cargoes in fever-stricken Batavia, where the hospital was often compared to a butcher's shambles. If outwardbound ships were overmanned in order to replace men who died, then the resultant overcrowding directly contributed to increasing the mortality on board. In 1743-1744, therefore, the Directors were reluctantly compelled to allow the employment of Asian sailors in the homeward-bound fleets. In 1781, preference was given to the enlistment of Chinese, as they were more resistant to cold than were Javanese or Malays; but three years later the authorities at Batavia complained that ‘the Chinese sailors were most unwilling to serve’ aboard the returning Indiamen. They had shown this in 1783 when the exceptionally capable J.C. Radermacher, a councillor of the Indies and founder of the Bataafsche Genootschap, was killed with his whole family by Chinese mutineers on the ship in which he was returning to Europe (24 December 1783). Nevertheless, Chinese continued to be recruited, willing or otherwise. In 1792, out of a total of 1,417 seamen at the Cape of Good Hope, 579 were Europeans, 233 ‘Moors’ (mostly Gujarati Muslims), 101 Javanese, and 504 Chinese.23

 

The decline in the quality of the VOC crews, was accompanied by a decline in navigational theory and practice, or rather a relative stagnation when compared with the advances made by both the French and the English in these fields. Perhaps as an antidote to the frequent complaints over the indiscipline and willfulness of many of the skippers, the Directors laid down very strict sailing-directions for outward and homeward- bound Indiamen in 1746 (revised in 1783), from which their commanders were forbidden to deviate save in the most exceptional circumstances. Stavorinus, Van Hogendorp, and many other contemporaries averred, no doubt correctly, that the rigidity of these sailing directions had a cramping effect on many of the VOC's sea-officers, confirming them in their shell-back conservatism. The result was that Dutch East-Indiamen now made longer passages than either the French or the English, which had not been the case in the seventeenth century.

We must not, however, exaggerate. There were still many excellent seamen in the VOC servce, and the great majority of the Indiamen made the round voyage between the Netherlands and Batavia in safety. William Hickey, who took passage in De Held Woltemade from Cape Town to the Texel in 1780, noted that the commander of this ship and commodore of the fleet, Captain Paardekooper ‘was in every respect a liberal-minded man. He laughed at the old system of navigation pursued by their ships... His mode of conducting the fleet was precisely the same as in our service, and no British commander could carry sail in a better style than he did.’24 The decline in the VOC's maritime strength was reflected not so much in the still richly-laden retourschepen from Asia to Europe, as in the number of ships employed in the inter-Asian (‘country’) trade. These had dropped from 66 in 1700 to 30 in 1775; and they must have declined still further by the end of the century:25 Nor should it be forgotten that the VOC was the greatest employer of labour in the Netherlands at a time when unemployment, especially in the towns, was threatening to turn the Dutch into a nation of renteniers and paupers.

Van Hogendorp and Stavorinus also complained that the Netherlanders had fallen behind their English and French rivals in shipbuilding techniques, as they were slow to abandon the deep-waisted vessels of the 17th century for the flush-decked ships which were preferred in the late 18th century. There was something in this criticism, as Dutch shipbuilding in the eighteenth century did decline, relatively speaking. The shipbuilding guilds became ossified and formed a restraint on the healthy development of the industry.26 However, it should be noted that from 1771 onwards, some ships of the Middelburg (Zeeland) Kamer, were strongly built with three flush-decks, especially for use in the dangerous voyages between Batavia and Nagasaki in the stormy South China Sea.27

 

One aspect of Dutch life and culture in Asia on which Van Leur did not comment in his article, was the Calvinist missionary element. This will presumably be dealt with by Drs. J. van Goor, so I will only make two points about it here. Firstly, the activity is a reflection of what Simon Schama has termed, rather unkindly perhaps, ‘the dense fog of piety’ which surrounded so much of the intellectual life of the Netherlands in the eighteenth-century.28 Admittedly, this pious fog was considerably dissipated by the fierce tropical sun in Asia; but its influence is clear if we compare the VOC with the EIC in their respective attitudes to Protestant Christian Evangelism. Whereas the attitude of the EIC was wholly negative, to the point that the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel had to use the Danish territory of Tranquebar as the base of its operations, the VOC had always given some positive support to Calvinist missionary activity, while always retaining a tight control over church personnel. It patronised the translation of the Bible and other religious works into various Oriental languages, including Malay, Ma-

layalam, Sinhalese and Tamil, as well as into Portuguese, which was still the lingua franca for many Europeans and Eurasian communities in the East.29 By contrast, the early translations of the Bible into Chinese by Portestant missionaries in the sphere of the EIC, had to be printed in Portuguese Macao and in Danish Serampore.30

 

But to sum up. Although I feel that the conventional viewpoint of the pruikentijd of the VOC in Asia is basically correct, in spite of the the criticisms of Van Leur, I do not deny that there were honourable exceptions to the general attitude of je m'en fichisme. I have already mentioned J.C. Radermacher, Isaac Titsingh, and Dirk van Hogendorp. I could add several predikanten, such as Domine François Valentyn for Java and Amboina, or the Rev. J.P. Wetzelius (1692-1751) and the Rev. H. Phillipsz (1722-1791) in Ceylon, this last a Sinhalese by birth. I will conclude by mentioning an extraordinary man, unique among Europeans in eighteenth-century Asia, the Zeelander, Samuel van de Putte, ‘the Mandarin from Middelburg’ (1690-1745), whose travels in Central Asia anticipated those of Sven Hedin and other 19th/20th century explorers.31 His appearance in North China in May 1734, considerably embarrassed the French Jesuits at Peking, to whom he wrote in Italian, stating that he was trying to emulate Gemelli Careri, the Neapolitan traveller who circled the globe in 1693-98, and wrote a classical account which has lost nothing of its fascination today.32 Unfortunately, Van de Putte, who died at Batavia in 1745, declared in his last will and testament that all his notes, correspondence and diaries should be destroyed. So they were; and we are therefore deprived of a literary legacy whose importance might rival that of Belle de Zuylen.

 

C.R. Boxer


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