"An unbelievable amount of paper": the information system and network of the Dutch East India Company1 The year is 1736. The Dutch East India Company (VOC) is the most important European trading company in Asia, with trading posts of the Company spread out to almost every corner. Batavia is the rendez vous of the trading system of the VOC in Asia. In the network of the Company, the city on the island of Java is the most important 'node', in which people, goods and information changed 'circuits', as Kerry Ward has pointed out.2 In Persia, the VOC's activities are under the auspices of director Carel Koenad. He is stationed in the city of Gamron, present-day Bandar-e Abbas in Iran. Like all trading posts of the Company in Asia, Gamron is obliged to keep the Hoge Regering (High Government) in Batavia informed on all relevant subjects. At least twice a year, Koenad receives answer to his letters. This year, however, he must have opened the seventy-five pages counting letter from Batavia with some apprehension. Perhaps to his surprise, however, the Hoge Regering first compliments him. Although some of his clerks were sick, earlier that year Koenad had sent some documents with priority to Batavia. Therefore, the Hoge Regering was well informed on some important matters, before the monsoon winds could prevent that. The congratulatory tone of the letter soon changes, however. In his latest letter, Koenad had asked the Hoge Regering if they were satisfied with his correspondence. The Hoge Regering writes him in reply that they were astonished by this suggestion. The gentlemen in Batavia complain about the letters of Koenad being not only "lengthy, confusing, and unintelligible", but by far the worst of all correspondences sent from the Indian trading posts. Seven or eight hundred pages had been received in Batavia, pages written in a tiny and unreadable handwriting, full of abbreviations and loan words. It was impossible to read them without a dictionary, the Hoge Regering further complains, and, most of all, it took far too much time to go through them. In the following years, according to Batavia, the letters sent by Gamron do not 67 NICO VRIEND 1 This article is an adapted version of my master thesis, Het informatiesysteem en -netwerk van de Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie (December 2011), Leiden University. An online-version is available via the 'Leiden Repository' on: https://openaccess.leidenuniv.nl/handle/1887/18501 2 Ward, Networks of empire, 10-11, 41-42. The information network of the Company is part of, and exists next to, other (information) networks. For example, as Woodruff Smith shows, the Company is also part of the "Amsterdam Information Exchange," next to consular reports, private merchant correspondence, and "movement of businessmen." Smith, 'The function of commercial centres'. On the important role of private networks, see for the British East India Company: Laidlaw, Colonial connections 1815-1845. For the Dutch East India Company: Nierstrasz, In the Shadow of the Company, unpublished dissertation, Leiden University.

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Jaarboeken Stichting Archiefpublicaties | 2012 | | pagina 69