Daily Life of the Dutch in Canton and Nagasaki: A Comparison Based on the VOC Dagregisters and Other Sources

Abstract

These few words were entered from time to time in the dagregisters, the official diaries kept by the heads of the Dutch East India Company trade in Canton and Nagasaki during their stay there. Fortunately, they do not occur too often, otherwise we would know far less about the lives and circumstances of the Dutch in China and Japan than we do. As it is, the dagregisters provide us with a wealth of information on a wide range of topics ranging from commercial matters, social and trade relations between Europeans and East Asians, political matters, the importation and use of Western technology and medicine in Japan, natural disasters, crimes, and, very important, the weather. The entries in the dagregisters recorded what happened on the day and they give us descriptions, sometimes in great detail, of the activities of the Dutch and their fellow Europeans in Canton and Nagasaki and of their interactions with their Chinese and Japanese hosts. They are the best sources for an understanding of the patterns of everyday life of the Dutchmen in the foreign settlements in the port cities of Canton and Nagasaki.The instruction to keep dagregisters (diaries) dates back as far as 1621, when the Heren Zeventien (the Gentlemen Seventeen, the board of governors of the Dutch East India Company in the Netherlands) wrote to the governor-general and councillors of the Indies in Batavia (present-day Jakarta), the VOC headquarters in Asia: “We think it necessary that not only in the General Comptoir [Office] in Batavia, but also in those in the Moluccas, Amboina, Banda, Patani, Japan, Jambi, Paliacatta, and Surat, in sum, in all those places where we have offices, our people keep a daily journal of everything that happens there and concerns our people, both in regard to the English, as to any other people, whoever it may be, in any way.