Abstract
Djoeke van Netten examines the interplay between privacy and secrecy in the ships of the Dutch East India Companies (1595-1799). Space aboard a ship was scarce and privacy a rare privilege. Netten starts with a discussion of the sources available as well as those lost to history. She then continues by examining what can be known about the protection of and access to (secret) information and (private) belongings aboard ships. Cases where privacy was violated and secrets revealed emerge as some of the most informative historical events to be examined in this context. As she confronts her historical examples with relevant theoretical and historiographical concepts, she concludes by raising important questions for further research on privacy and secrecy aboard ships.
Highlights
To the National Maritime Museum (Het Scheepvaartmuseum) in Amsterdam floats a replica of an eighteenth-century Dutch East India man
How can privacy on ships be researched when the word itself was not used? Should historians conclude that, because of the absence of the word in the sources about VOC ships, this subject was not of much concern for contemporaries? We do not find extant evidence of explicit reflections or emotions suggesting that privacy or the lack of it were perceived as problematic or adding to the suffering on board
We can neither conclude that sailors or others on board a VOC ship did not suffer, nor should we downplay the possibility that they might have suffered from lack of privacy or the pressure that accompanies the keeping of secrets
Summary
To the National Maritime Museum (Het Scheepvaartmuseum) in Amsterdam floats a replica of an eighteenth-century Dutch East India man (illustration 1). This replica was built in the 1980s and modelled after a real ship called the Amsterdam, which had set sail in 1749
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