The Low Countries. Jaargang 14

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Portrait of the Traveller with Burin and Printing Press
The Representation of Dutch Maritime Expansion
in the De Bry Collection of Voyages
[Michiel van Groesen]

When the Dutch Republic first embarked on overseas expansion, its impact was immediate. After the meagre profits of the first Dutch expedition to Asia in the late 1590s, the second voyage provided a clear indication of the lucrative possibilities of the trade in pepper and spices. Before the Dutch East India Company was founded in 1602 and given a monopoly of trade outside Europe many smaller companies had tried their luck, and by 1599 eight different companies from various towns and provinces of the Dutch Republic were participating in the East India traffic. While most of these early expeditions opted to follow the ‘Portuguese’ route around the Cape of Good Hope, several adventurers tried to find alternative avenues to the riches of the Orient: among them were explorers like Willem Barentsz and Jacob van Heemskerck, attempting to find a north-eastern passage, and Jacques Mahu and Simon de Cordes, who sailed westward aiming to emulate Magellan's circumnavigation. Both expeditions ended in disaster.

In the realm of early modern paradoxes that was the Dutch Republic, however, disaster of this type also meant success. Success, in particular, for the Amsterdam booksellers Cornelis Claesz and Zacharias Heyns, whose investments in bringing news of the overwintering in Novaya Zemlya and the tempestuous conditions in the Strait of Magellan provided quick and ample returns. Both narratives, written by Gerrit de Veer and Barent Jansz Potgieter respectively, were avidly read by the Dutch public, and were later included in all the important Dutch compilations of overseas journeys. The appeal of the accounts was also confirmed by the almost instant translations into German and Latin, which appeared within a year of the original publications. These translations were made for the monumental De Bry collection of voyages, published in Frankfurt between 1590 and 1634. This series comprised twenty-five folio volumes containing the cream of early modern European travel accounts. All the journals included were translated into German and Latin, and thus made available to a wider international readership.

Theodore de Bry (who died in 1598; ill. 1) and his sons Johan Theodore and Johan Israel, a Reformed dynasty of publishers and copper engravers, had lived in Strasbourg, Antwerp, and London before moving to the centre of the European book trade, Frankfurt, to set up their own publishing firm in 1590. They introduced the technique of including copper engravings in printed works to Germany,

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and their beautiful illustrations quickly became the trademark of the firm's publications. The collection of voyages was indisputably the officina's magnum opus, consisting of reports of European expeditions to Africa, Asia, and the New World. Inspired in the late 1580s by the Oxford geographer Richard Hakluyt, a strong proponent of English colonisation of the Americas, the De Brys generated publicity throughout Europe for overseas expansion. To enhance the reputation of this collection they often added new illustrations to the translated accounts, even when the original editions had already included iconographic material. Further modifications were made to the contents of some of the narratives, perhaps less conspicuous but not necessarily less influential. The resulting, newly constructed representation of the overseas world, in both texts and images, persisted well into the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

De Bry and De Veer: the crew who came in from the cold

Gerrit de Veer's Waerachtighe beschryvinghe van drie seylagien... (1598) was a classic example of an early modern best-seller. With most of the crew miraculously returning from Novaya Zemlya after having been given up for dead by almost everyone in Amsterdam, many eagerly awaited the details of so much misfortune. Cornelis Claesz, the leading publisher in the field of travel accounts, maximised the report's commercial potential, incorporating more than thirty copper engravings depicting encounters with polar bears and the construction of the Behouden Huys. This ‘House of Refuge’, a log cabin made from the wood of one of the two Dutch ships, enabled most of the crew to survive in the Arctic region for nine bitterly cold months.

The De Brys gratefully included copies of the original plates in their versions, published as part of Volume III of the India Orientalis series in 1599 (German) and 1601 (Latin). Several pictures were omitted from their set of illustrations, or had their most exciting features combined into a single composition. With so much iconographic material available, the urge to add new engravings was predictably limited, yet the one plate that the publishers did decide to add is all the more intriguing. Generations of Dutch schoolchildren have been told the story of the heroic overwintering at Novaya Zemlya, and the interior of the Behouden Huys from the De Bry collection has become one of the staple illustrations of that tale (ill. 2). The plate depicts the small crew sitting around a cauldron of soup and a roasted arctic fox with the bedridden, gravely ill ship's captain Willem Barentsz the only blemish on the otherwise pleasant, homely atmosphere.

The engraving is remarkably accurate, as archaeological studies at Novaya Zemlya in the 1990s have demonstrated. The ground plan of the cabin, with the bench-type beds along the perimeter walls, closely matches recent finds in the Arctic region. The clock, when compared to the original piece now in the collection of the Rijksmuseum (ill. 3), is depicted with stunning precision. This illustration, then, was not invented in the De Bry workshop in Frankfurt, like so many other pictures newly inserted into the collection. It must instead have been designed by one of the travellers, or by someone who had direct access to one of the survivors in Amsterdam. Why, then, did Cornelis Claesz, who had a nationwide circle of friends including geographers, travellers and engravers, and who must surely have been able to lay his hands on this picture, decide against including this revealing view of life in the log cabin?

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The answer can probably be found by looking at the publisher's editorial strategy. After the belated, unexpected return of the surviving crew members to Amsterdam, the excited Dutch readership was eager to learn of the inconceivable hardships their countrymen had endured. A shrewd publisher like Cornelis Claesz was unlikely to pass up such an opportunity, and as the engraving of the seemingly comfortable Behouden Huys may not have fitted the bill, it was sacrificed as a result. The De Brys, in Frankfurt, had other concerns. Their broad, international readership did not share the immense anticipation of the Dutch customers. In order to reach all of their potential readers, moreover, another poignant problem had to be adressed: the confessional conflict ravaging the Old World automatically extended to distant shores when European overseas expansion gained momentum. Although a large segment of the readership of the De Bry collection may well have been Protestants, a significant group of customers were either Catholics, or irenics hopeful of a possible reconciliation of the Christian confessions. The De Brys, in order not to alienate a large share of their potential readership, opted in their collection to emphasise the guile of the European explorers, and even their superiority abroad, often at the expense of the indigenous peoples they encountered. Hence the plate of the expertly-built, comfortable log cabin, constructed to successfully conquer the almost unbearable conditions, was readily included in the De Bry volumes.

De Bry and Barent Jansz: naked natives and fearful giants

The first Dutch attempt at circumnavigation was as much a failure as the voyage to Novaya Zemlya. Only one of the five ships that left Rotterdam in 1598, and a fraction of their crews, returned safely to the Dutch Republic. The account of this unfortunate voyage, Wijdtloopigh verhael, appeared in Amsterdam in 1600; it was composed by the publisher Zacharias Heyns and based on the journal of the ship's physician Barent Jansz. Heyns' intentions were probably twofold: firstly, he sought to deflect the blame for the mission's failure from the only surviving

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captain of the fleet, Sebald de Weert, whom he had known for a long time. Secondly, he strove to ensure that the account would achieve the same best-seller status as Gerrit de Veer's narrative. Both objectives were served by emphasising the suffering of the crew. Illness, thunderstorms, and a hostile reception by the indigenous people of the southernmost part of the American continent therefore epitomised the Dutch interpretation of the expedition. The original work included eight illustrations, all woodcuts, three of which depicted the mythical ‘Patagonian Giants’ as fearsome individuals with a menacing attitude.

The De Bry family, in their collection, included eleven plates. All of these were, as usual, accompanied by captions which were written for this specific purpose - usually paraphrased excerpts of the main text - and assembled at the end of the volume concerned, India Occidentalis IX (German 1601, Latin 1602). Besides including information on the Dutch experiences in Patagonia, the De Brys also concentrated on the brief sojourn in West Africa, on the way to the Strait of Magellan. Whereas Barent Jansz and Zacharias Heyns had devoted only one of their eight illustrations to this meeting, the De Brys added a second engraving. The encounter between the Dutch captain De Weert and an indigenous

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woman near Cabo Lopez on the West African coast, in the modern-day country of Gabon, had clearly caught their eye. Barent Jansz, in his journal, had introduced this unexpected meeting as follows: ‘When in the morning, the captain stood in his doorway, he was approached by an old woman.’ The De Brys translated this sentence, but they also modified it slightly. They reported in both Latin and German that: ‘... when in the morning, the captain stood in his doorway, he was approached by an old woman, who was entirely naked.’

Not only is this reference to the woman's nudity not found in the original account, but the Dutch text contains no reference whatsoever to any presumed nudity of the West Africans. The single Amsterdam woodcut devoted to West Africa in fact showed all the locals wearing at least some sort of garment to cover their genitals (ill. 4). The textual addition of the De Brys, however, was not an isolated revision. In their adapted version of the original Dutch illustration,

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the West Africans had been carefully undressed, leaving the international readership with a more disturbing image of the West Africans than the Dutch audience had received (ill. 5). In the caption to this illustration, the De Brys once more confirmed the nudity of the West Africans. Whereas the original Dutch account had stated of the local chief that: ‘he had been surrounded by his nobility’, the De Brys made sure that their texts and images correlated, declaring instead that: ‘he had been surrounded by his nobility, who were entirely naked.’

The efforts by the De Brys to have texts and images support each other, indicate the systematic nature of these alterations. The second De Bry engraving of the Dutch visit to West Africa, one without a counterpart in the original, further affirmed the nakedness of the indigenous people. On the right of the new illustration, the meeting was depicted between captain De Weert and the

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woman who, according to the textual additions of the De Brys mentioned before, approached him on his doorstep, ‘while entirely naked.’ Again, the illustration corresponded with the statement in the modified text. Yet what is even more apparent is the selectiveness of the Frankfurt publishers. The woman, hidden away in the original edition, had clearly been chosen by the De Brys to represent disquieting qualities of the West African people which, in their opinion, had not received enough attention in the Dutch version.

The heightened contrast between the cultured Dutch and the primitive indigenous people they encountered was even more emphatic in the three De Bry engravings depicting the ‘Patagonian Giants’. The first of three Amsterdam woodcuts of the giants portrayed them in the impressive manner that the usually well-informed Dutch readership would have expected. The large man in the foreground had been depicted with his weapon raised, seemingly ready at all times to provide a hot reception for unwanted visitors (ill. 6). The corresponding De Bry illustration showed not a trace of such an exhibition of indigenous power. In marked contrast, the Patagonians, despite their presence in numbers, were represented as fearful instead of fearsome (ill. 7). The armed giant who most closely resembled the Dutch prototype was unmistakably on the run. The arrival of one small boat with European sailors, introduced by the De Brys, had led to

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disarray among the supposedly fearsome Patagonians, with smoke rising from the barrel of one of the rifles.

The second Dutch illustration of the Patagonians showed a woman and her two children. Three immaculately dressed and well-armed Dutchmen, added to the illustration in the De Bry collection, provided an obvious civilised contrast to the three Patagonians. The third and final woodcut of Patagonia in the Amsterdam edition represented a typical indigenous couple. Barent Jansz's rather sterile illustration, strongly reminiscent of those often used in contemporary European costume books, showed a woman who looked like the Patagonian woman in the previous plate, flanked by a man with feathers on his head and around his waist (ill. 8).

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In the third De Bry engraving, the evocation of costume books had disappeared, as the Patagonian man in the foreground was depicted lying on the ground, with his hands bound together (ill. 9). Although the man had already been dead when the Dutchmen found him, the overriding impression of this engraving, and indeed of the complete set of three De Bry engravings, was nevertheless one of defeat for the indigenes. Whereas the original sequence of Dutch illustrations had presented readers with an image of the ‘Patagonian Giants’ as a ferocious community, essentially a confirmation of the existing views of the Patagonians in sixteenth-century Europe, the De Brys, in their own sequence, had replaced solid strength with blind panic, so that readers would be left not with an idea of savage power, but with the comfortable impression of European supremacy overseas. The concluding engraving of the set of three in the De Bry collection irrefutably confirmed the predictable outcome of a clash between well-armed Europeans and an unsophisticated indigenous populace, regardless of their impressive size.

The two accounts, and the modifications to these accounts, show two different sides of the editorial strategy of the De Bry family. When given the opportunity

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to include accurate pictorial material of European adventures abroad, they did. The engraving of the interior of the Behouden Huys was in all likelihood designed in Amsterdam, but it was nevertheless eagerly included by the De Brys in their version of De Veer's tragic narrative. When, on the other hand, the existing iconography was considered insufficient, the family reverted to their own skills of design and engraving, which frequently resulted in a significant alteration of the representation of the overseas world. The undressing of Barent Jansz's West Africans at Cape Lopez and the transformation of the Patagonian Giants into a group which easily succumbed to European firearms are cases in point. These examples reveal a deeper purpose behind the modifications made in Frankfurt. In order to meet the demands of their heterogeneous, international group of readers, the De Brys stressed the otherness of the natives encountered on distant shores, juxtaposed by European technical expertise and civility. The early Dutch maritime expeditions, by Gerrit de Veer and Barent Jansz, but also by other early icons of adventure like Jan Huygen van Linschoten, Willem Lodewijcksz, and Pieter de Marees, were made to fit this pattern.

Further reading

Ch.T. Beke (ed.), The Three Voyages of Willem Barents to the Arctic Regions (1594, 1595 and 1596) [Works issued by the Hakluyt Society, vol. 54] (photomech. Reprint). New York, 1964.

J. Braat, J. Gawronsky, J.B. Kist, et al. (eds.), Behouden uit het Behouden Huys: catalogus van de voorwerpen van de Barentsexpeditie (1596), gevonden op Nova Zembla. Amsterdam, 1998.

S. Burghartz (ed.), Inszenierte Welten. Die west- und ostindischen Reisen der Verleger De Bry, 1590-1630. Staging New Worlds. De Bry's illustrated travel reports, 1590-1630. Basle, 2004.

M. van Groesen, ‘Barent Jansz. en de familie De Bry. Twee visies op de eerste Hollandse expeditie “om de West” rond 1600’. In: De zeventiende eeuw 21-1 (2005), pp. 29-48.

F.C. Wieder (ed.), De reis van Mahu en De Cordes door de Straat van Magalhães naar Zuid-Amerika en Japan 1598-1600 [Werken van de Linschoten-Vereeniging, vols. 21, 22, 24]. The Hague, 1923-25.