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‘Old and New East-Indies’ François Valentyn Date: 1724-6 Original Language: Dutch DescriptionValentijn’s  Oud en Nieuw Oost-Indien, vervattende een naauwkeurige en uitvoerige verhandelinge van Nederlands mogentheyd in die gewesten (‘Old and New East-Indies, presenting an accurate and extensive treatment of the Dutch government in those regions’) is the largest work written by an individual European on Asia between 1500 and 1900. It occupies five volumes, though most copies have the last three volumes bound in two books. R…

‘Brief account of the experiences of Frederick de Houtman in Aceh during the 26 months of his captivity’ Frederick de Houtman Date: 1601 Original Language: Dutch DescriptionTwo pages into Cort verhael, his 49-page account of his second voyage to the Indonesian archipelago, Frederick de Houtman engages in a three-page description of the Maldives, expressing much admiration for the many beautiful mosques on these tiny islands. He then recounts his arrival in Aceh on 24 June 1599, paying much attention to the ceremonies of the …

Biography This Johannes Maurus should be distinguished from his better-known namesake, the Spanish convert from Islam to Christianity known as Juan Andrés or Johannes Andrea Maurus, author of the treatise  Confusión o confutación de la secta Mahomética y del Alcorán (1515). This ‘Dutch’ Johannes is mentioned in archival sources as the ‘Arab’, the ‘Turc’ and sometimes as ‘Jan Cornelisz’. He asked for baptism in Delft in 1643, where the sources give his age both as 23 and 19. He appears to have been a popular young man who received sub…

Date of Birth: Place of Birth: Date of Death: Place of Death: Biography Primary Sources of Information Secondary Sources of Information    Works on Christian-Muslim RelationsDutch and Malay authors on the Paderi Wars in west SumatraKarel Steenbrink

- Javanese court chronicles on the rising power of the Dutch, 17th and 18th centuries Date: 17th and 18th centuries Original Language: Javanese DescriptionThis entry concentrates on Javanese works produced for the major courts of the Sultanate of Mataram, located in the Yogyakarta-Surakarta area. These court chronicles were not written for entertainment, devotion or moral edification, unlike the many works on Muslim romantic figures such as Amir Hamzah, Iskandar Zulkarnain, Sultan Ibrahim, Muhammad Hanafiyya and many …

BiographyJan Pieterszoon Coen was born in Hoorn, one of the seven towns with a representative in the VOC (Dutch East India Company). His father was a trader, and in 1601 he sent Jan to Rome to be educated in international commerce. The young Coen learned double-entry bookkeeping, a skill that would serve him well in future endeavours.In December 1607, Coen departed for the East Indies on a fleet of 13 ships as a junior official of the VOC. In April 1609, the fleet visited the harbour of the small archipelago of Banda, the sole provider of nutmeg at …

Date of Birth: Place of Birth: Date of Death: Place of Death: Biography Primary Sources of Information Secondary Sources of Information Works on Christian-Muslim RelationsDutch and Malay accounts of the conflicts known as the Banjar War, 1859-1905Karel Steenbrink

'The Acehnese' Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje Date: 1893-4 Original Language: Dutch DescriptionThe sultanate of Aceh (also written as Atjeh or Acheh) in northern Sumatra had remained independent from the Portuguese, Dutch and other powers since the mid-16th century. In the Anglo-Dutch Treaty of London of 1824, when Sri Lanka was ceded to the British and Bencoolen to the Dutch, its independence was still guaranteed. However, around 1870 the Dutch wanted to prevent the ‘smuggling’ of pepper and other commodities from Sumatra to the fr…

Date of Birth: Place of Birth: Date of Death: Place of Death: Biography Primary Sources of Information Secondary Sources of Information Works on Christian-Muslim RelationsCorpus Diplomaticum Neerlando-IndicumKarel Steenbrink

Date of Birth: 10 October 1845 Place of Birth: Haarlem Date of Death: 3 March 1927 Place of Death: Delft BiographyLodewijk Willem Christiaan van den Berg was born into a family of artists; his father was a painter and his mother worked as a musician. As a child, he lost the sight in one eye, hit by an arrow while playing. This may have contributed to his calm and very serious character, contrasting with the somewhat Bohemian lifestyle of his parents. He was a brilliant student in languages and law, and in 1868 gained his doctorate with a dissertation on Islamic law ( De contractu 'do ut des' jure…

‘Memorandum to the noble governors about the condition of the Dutch Indies’ Jan Pieterszoon Coen Date: 1 January 1614 Original Language: Dutch DescriptionJan Pieterszoon Coen wrote many letters and reports for the VOC central office in Amsterdam, and the substantial memorandum of 1 January 1614 was known as his vision statement for the VOC. It occupies 24 pages in his biography (Colenbrander,  Jan Pietersz. Coen . Levensbeschrijving, pp. 451-74; all the references that follow are to this edition), and is divided into 14 sections. The first five discuss the VOC…

‘Official advice of C. Snouck Hurgronje’ Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje Date: 1889-1906 Original Language: Dutch DescriptionFrom 1889 to 1906, Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje was Advisor on Native Affairs in the Dutch East Indies. Even after his return to the Netherlands, he continued as advisor to the Dutch minister of colonial affairs until his death in 1936. Some 1,400 pieces of advice are listed in the Ministry’s archives. Of these, 675 are of minor importance or just repeat earlier texts, 75 are lost, and only …

VOC treaties with Muslim rulers of Indonesia Frederick de Houtman Date: 1605-20 Original Language: Dutch DescriptionFrederick de Houtman attracted most attention for his second trip to Indonesia, while his two periods as colonial administrator, in Ambon and the Moluccas, are only documented in his own official reports. These are stored in the National Archives of the Netherlands in The Hague and published partly in the collected works of Jan Pietersz. Coen ( Bescheiden omtrent zijn bedrijf in Indië, ed. H.T. Colenbrander, The Hague, 1919-34, 6 vols).One report of 1607 gives a s…

- L.W.C. van den Berg Date: 1873-95 Original Language: Various languages Description De beginselen van het Mohammedaansche recht, volgens de imāms Aboe Hanīfat en asj-Sjāfe‘ī ‘Handbook of Muslim law according to the Ḥanafī and Shāfiʿī schools’ Published in 1874, this book was written in 1871-2 when the author was teaching Islamic law at the Gymnasium Willem III in Batavia (xv + 269 pages long). The only comparable work in European languages at the time was N. von Tornauw’s  Das moslemische Recht (Leipzig, 1855), though his book concentrates on Shīʿa law. Van den Berg’s boo…

‘History of Tunis, Algiers and other towns of Barbary’ Cornelis Pijnacker Date: 1626 or 1627 Original Language: Dutch Description After his second mission to Algiers in 1626, Pijnacker composed his monograph  Historisch verhael van den steden Thunes in the same year or the year after.  It is not the story of his travels (which was published in print in 1650 as the anonymous booklet  Reyse naer Africa) but rather of his diplomatic mission and the general culture of the two cities of Tunis and Algiers. It consists of 54 unnumbered chapters, of which chapters 46-…

Date of Birth: Place of Birth: Date of Death: Place of Death: Biography Primary Sources of Information Secondary Sources of Information Works on Christian-Muslim RelationsJavanese court chronicles on the rising power of the DutchKarel Steenbrink

Jacob Corneliszoon van Neck Date of Birth: About 1564 Place of Birth: Amsterdam Date of Death: 15 March 1638 Place of Death: Amsterdam BiographyJacob Cornelisz. van Neck was born into a prominent family in Amsterdam. Very little is known about his youth except that his father died when he was two years old and his mother when he was about 11. He received a good general education and then special training in nautical sciences, and he became involved in various forms of trade.The oldest company for trade with Southeast Asia selected him as the admiral for its second fleet of ei…

‘Lecture on the religion of the Turks’ Johannes Coccejus Date: About 1625 Original Language: Greek Description As a 22 year-old student in Bremen, Coccejus delivered a lecture in Greek on the religion of the Turks, partly as a linguistic exercise. This formed the basis for Oratio de religione Turcarum (constituting 11 pages in print), written as an admonition for the reformation of church and state in his time. The origin of Islam and its immense progress at the time presented a great challenge for Christians. Using secondary sources, Coccejus summarises the life of Muḥammad an…

‘Daily account of what has taken place here in Batavia since 1 January 1624, as well as some reports about other settlements’ Dagh-register Date: 1624-1799 Original Language: Dutch DescriptionOn 6 December 1621, Governor General Jan Pieterszoon Coen ordered all settlements of the VOC to keep a diary ( Dagh-register) of important events. This was to include reports about local politics and trade rivals, especially the British but also the French, Danish, Portuguese, Gujarati and others. An account was entered for every month, detailing the shi…

‘Travels’ Nicolaas de Graaff Date: Unknown; before 1688 Original Language: Dutch DescriptionThe first 100 pages of this book (its full title is  Reisen van Nicolaus de Graaff, na de vier gedeelten des Werelds, als Asia, Africa, America en Europa, mitsgaders sijn Oostindische spiegel) contain brief and concise reports of de Graaff’s first 13 voyages. The following 130 pages cover his last three voyages.  Oost-Indise spiegel (98 pages) is re-printed with new pagination in the same volume. On his first voyage, de Graaff arrived in Aceh, Sumatra, where he saw th…