3 - Middelburg: The city – The majority of commanders from the city of Middelburg – From Company to Navy – Making a fortune at the Cape – Two very different men – Changes in geographical origins

Summary

Moving southwards, to the province of Zealand, the seat of the Zealand Chamber was in the city of Middelburg. It was a large Chamber which generated a quarter of the turnover of the Company, in fact as much as that of Enkhuizen, Hoorn, Delft and Rotterdam combined. In contrast to both the previous cities, Middelburg was not situated on open water; nevertheless of all the Company harbours it had the shortest and the best connection with the North Sea. The distance from Middelburg to open water was 7 kilometres. Towed by horses, a ship would travel from Middelburg via a straight canal, dug in 1535, and then by the narrow, somewhat winding canal of Welsinghe, to the Vlacke, the entrance to the Sloe, the waterway between the islands of Walcheren and Zuid Beveland, at Fort Rammekens on the Wester Scheldt. The navigability of this route was constantly deteriorating and in need of maintenance, but it was only in 1792 after repeated complaints by the Zealand Chamber that the canal and the harbour were dredged. In the roads off Rammekens, the additional loading took place and cargo was discharged after a return voyage.

The city was equipped with the usual facilities of a VOC Chamber; these were situated on the harbour in the vicinity of the entrance to the canal. As it was equipped with locks, this was the oldest tidal harbour in the Dutch Republic. The facilities consisted of the Oost-Indisch Huis, the shipyard and the warehouses. The ropewalk was just outside the city walls. All these facilities were expanded at the beginning of the eighteenth century. In 1711 the Oost-Indisch Huis was considerably enlarged and afterwards extended to the warehouses situated at its rear, reached via three consecutive courtyards. The havoc wreaked by war in 1940 destroyed all the buildings with one exception: the house of the superintendent of the shipyard remained intact.

The City

Middelburg was the administrative centre of the province of Zealand. In both the seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries the city had more inhabitants than either Enkhuizen or Hoorn, but there are few reliable population figures. A 1660 estimate gives a number of between 28,000 and 30,000 townspeople, and an estimate in 1700 a slightly lower total. Around 1780 there would have been approximately 18,000 inhabitants.