Abstract
The Dutch East India Company (VOC) shared a history of two hundred years of coexistence with the locals in Bengal. And yet their official reports had little to say about this relation, except frequent complaints against the locals and the accompanying, inherent distrust. There has been, however, a significant amount of historiography that has developed in the recent decades on Indo-Dutch contacts based on the information available in the sources. This article aims to add more nuances to these dynamics, by showing how the Company and its officials were seen by the locals in Bengal. It argues that the local–Dutch relation had not just been about static characterisations of ‘partnership’, ‘cooperation’ or ‘conflict’, but was rather dependant on personal networks and profit motives backed by diverse social positions. The Dutch in the perception of the locals had different meanings, images and implications. Through the study of three objects—local texts, a Dutch painting and a legal case—this article aims to capture precisely these very perceptions in contributing towards the complex of Indo-Dutch interactions in seventeenth century Bengal.
Highlights
I had a book in my hands to while away the time, and it occurred to me that in a way a landscape is not unlike a book—a compilation of pages that overlap without any two ever being the same
It argues that the local–Dutch relation had not just been about static characterisations of ‘partnership’, ‘cooperation’ or ‘conflict’, but was rather dependant on personal networks and profit motives backed by diverse social positions
How can the local perceptions and their relations with the Company servants be unravelled for seventeenth century Bengal? Is it possible to restore properly the local agency in these hundred years of the Company’s existence that the official reports have stripped them of? I believe that there is a way and it is through the exploration of local mentalities at various levels of the society that their perceptions about the Dutch can be developed
Summary
The local texts produced in seventeenth century Bengal and written in the Bengali language belongs largely to the genre of Mangalkavya literature.[11]. Raja Krishnachandra, the ruler of Nadia hailed from a Brahmin family that had sought royal favours with the Mughals and become zamindars, not being unfamiliar to the Persian courtly culture.[30] At the same time, they were in touch with the Dutch, the English and the other Europeans that traded in the neighbouring areas This was because Nadia, that lay along the banks of the river Hugli, happened to be located in the middle of the route connecting Calcutta with Kasimbazaar and Malda.[31] While Calcutta was the English base in the eighteenth century, the factories of the Dutch had been there throughout the seventeenth century in Malda and Kasimbazaar.[32] These places with the European companies received regular supplies of textiles, especially muslin from Shantipur, in Nadia.[33] Besides this, there were moments when members of the royal family established financial connections with the European companies as had been the case of Raja Ramkrishna who gave money to the English in 1697 in return for military help to crush the rebellion of Shobha Singh in Bengal.[34] After the Battle of Plassey when the English had amassed enough power to intervene in the political organisation of Bengal, the revenues of Nadia were assigned to them by Mir Jafar.
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