Are Unpublished Sources Best? Reflections on a Seventeenth-Century Dutch Source

Extract

In his excellent edition of the abortive Dutch expedition to capture Elmina Castle on the Gold Coast in 1625, Henk den Heijer has transcribed from records in the Algemeen Rijksarchief the journal by Admiral Jan Dirksz Lam and the resolutions passed by the ships' council. I was puzzled, however, by his decision not to include the anonymous 13-page pamphlet Waerachtich verhael van den gantsche reyse ghedaen by den eersamen Jan Dircksz Lam…, published in Amsterdam immediately after the fleet's return to the Netherlands in 1626. He includes a facsimile of the title page and mentions my own translation of the section dealing with Sierra Leone, but offers no explanation for not including it. Could it be that he considered the printed document somehow less “primary”—and hence less valuable—than the manuscript(s)?

Without wishing to compare both texts in detail, we may look at two examples. In the section on Sierra Leone, where the fleet spent three months, the two sources record a number of things in more or less the same way, albeit in quite different wording: both mention meeting a French yacht from Dieppe, negotiating successfully with the “king” for permission to take water, firewood, limes etc.; both report on a “strange beast” (probably a chimpanzee) which was caught, teased, and eventually thrown overboard. But the pamphlet (pp. 4-8) gives us a wealth of information on the king's appearance (orange stockings, grey hat with orange plumes, etc.), his wives, the military parade he offered in honor of the Dutch, an African interpreter named Herry who had spent a long time in England, and many other topics.