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A Madman in the City of Ghosts: Nicolaas Kloek in Pontianak

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 April 2010

J.J. van Goor
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Extract

In the many letters written by princes in the Indonesian archipelago to the Governor-General of the Dutch East India Company at Batavia, the relative status.is expressed in the address. Titles that are used range from “friend and ally” to “father” and “grandfather,” reflecting the formal relationship that had been laid down in the contracts. The address shows the position of the VOC occupied during the greater part of the seventeenth and eighteenth century. The Dutch East India Company, though a large bureaucratic apparatus, was approached in a personified way. The formal distance to the Governor-General was expressed in terms derived from daily social life. It also makes one realize that a trading company had become an Asian ruler. In the Indonesian archipelago the VOC constituted an important political power.

Type
Articles
Information
Itinerario , Volume 9 , Issue 2 , July 1985 , pp. 196 - 211
Copyright
Copyright © Research Institute for History, Leiden University 1985

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References

Notes

1. E.g. VOC 3558, fol. 351–382 Letters of Asian prince s received in 1780.

2. See 11. Terpstra in Stapel, F.W. ed. Geschiedenis van Nederlondsch Indië. (Amsterdam 1938–1940) Vol. II, 337, 360, 371, 372, 386Google Scholar.

3. Gpor, J. van, “Seapower, trade an state formation: Pon-tianak and the Dutch 1780-1840”, in Goor, J. van ed.Companies in Asia the European impact upon Asian Society, trade and politics (Forthcoming 1986).Google Scholar

4. For example: Ricklefs, M.C., A history of modern Indonesia (MacMillan Asian Histories Series 1981) 79, 86, 91CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5. The most important sources for the following are: VOC 3524, fol. 1–146; VOC 3534, fol. 1469–1509; VOC 3553, fol. 1–125.

6. Ahmad, Raja Ali Uaji ibn, The Precious Gift, ann. and transl. by Matheson, Virginia and Andaya, Barbara Watson. (Kuala Lumpur 1982).Google Scholar

7. VOC 3534, fol. 1478–1479.

8. VOC 3534, fol. 1479–1480.

9. VOC 3534, fol. 139 10, VOC 3534, fol. 47; 144.

11. VOC 3553, fol. 16, “Uwe Hoog Edelheedens zullen mis-schien in 't denkbeeld komen dat ik bezig ben om een Roman te schrijven en dat bij vergrooting.”

12. VOC 3524, fol. 189–190.

13. VOC 3524, fol. 144.

14. VOC 3524, fol. 77–83.

15. VOC 3524, fol. 1473.