The Private Papers of Artus Gijsels as Source for the History of East Asia

Abstract

The General State Archives in The Hague are gradually becoming famous, even outside Europe, for the wealth of documentary material on Asian history deposited there. Moreover, this institution endeavours to supplement the Company archives with microfilms of documents stored in less obvious places, whether public or private, at home or abroad. Now such documents, written in Dutch and pertaining to subjects which usually fall outside the scope of other groups of archives in such institutions, attract little attention locally and so are insufficiently utilised. It is therefore very gratifying that the General State Archives recently acquired the microfilms of a comprehensive collection of documents deposited in the Badische Landesbiliothek in Karlsruhe in the German Federal Republic. This collection derives from Artus or Arnoud Gijsels, official of the Dutch East Indies Company, and only at the end of the century became known in the Netherlands. Then the German Dr. E. F. Kossmann, Germanic scholar who later settled in the Netherlands, father and grandfather of renowned Dutch scholars, drew up a brief guide to its contents. He published this guide in “De Nederlandsche Spectator” (1888), a now almost forgotten cultural periodical published in the Netherlands. Colonial history was not Kossmann's special line, but the way he summarised this guide demands our respect. Thanks to his article, this collection received the attention both of the editors of the “Bouwstoffen voor de geschiedenis van de Maleise Archipel” (Material for the history of the Malayan Archipelago), P. A. Tiele and J. G. Heeres and of the editors of the journal of Batavia, H. T. Colenbrander, later professor of Colonial History at the University of Leyden. One gets the impression, however, that they did not personally investigate the entire collection in Karlsruhe. Tiele and Heeres mention it only in passing. Colenbrander's interest was directed mainly towards two reports drawn up by the Governor-General Van Diemen in 1636 and 1637. The report of 1636 was also deposited in the General State Archives, and this example differed only on minor details from that of Karlsruhe. But neither the General State Archives nor the Government Archives of Batavia had a copy of the 1637 report. This report, spanning merely the period from 1 January to 27 May 1637, was published by Colenbrander in his series of journals, supplemented by two other documents dating from after 27 May 1637. Van Diemen's journal of his voyage to Amboina was also lacking in The Hague and Batavia, and of it he had manuscript copies made — it was still the pre-technical age —. These copies are now preserved in the General State Archives' collection of accessions.