Sites of Power

Abstract

ABSTRACTDuring the Dutch Golden Age of mapmaking, the views of foreign harbours produced for the East India Company (VOC) took on special significance and were even adapted into full- scale paintings in the office of the directors in Amsterdam. Produced by Johannes Vingboons, son of the Flemish emigre painter David Vinckeboons, these atlas views survive in a number of studies and finished folios, including a volume in the National Archives in The Hague. Three of these images, however, attest to the limits of the power and expansion of the VOC in East Asia. One, a view of the capital of Siam, Ayutthaya, shows a city worthy of comparison to Amsterdam in its canals, its scale of expanse, and its faithfully rendered towers of gilded Buddhist temples. This was clearly a kingdom with which the Dutch had to treat as equals, and the VOC established a regional factory' on the outskirts. In similar fashion, the rendering of Osaka Castle shows the formidable military defense apparatus of Momoyama Japan with carefully noted details that have no parallel among Dutch atlas views. Both of these kingdoms remained untouched by the might of the Dutch seaborne empire and offered trade only on specified and limited conditions, such as the entrepot in Nagasaki. A final, exceptional image in the Vingboons Atlas in The Hague is a coloured etching produced by Romeyn de Hooghe. It commemorates the Dutch military victory that finally secured hegemony over the trade in the entire spice islands archipelago, the Battle of Makassar. In addition to the VOC commander, Speelman, this print also memorializes Buginese leader Arung Palakka. The insertion of this unique battle scene amidst the otherwise placid views of shorelines and harbours in the Vingboons Atlas clearly points to the struggles for economic and military dominance in the Asian seas which drove the Dutch colonial mapmaking enterprise.