heading 'bijzondere onderwerpen' (particular subjects) in the new inventory. Moreover, many archival documents created by the Hoge Regering are kept under the collections of 'gewestelijke stukken' (regional documents) and 'buitenland' (foreign) at the Arsip Nasional Republik Indonesia.35 To organize their documents the Hoge Regering (as well as the Heeren XVII) used the resolution system, as most of the early modern (state) institutions did.36 In such a system decisions are at the core of the archive. All other documents are connected to the (date of the) decisions, like the incoming and outgoing correspondence. Therefore, the decisions can be seen as the 'backbone' of the archive. Indeed, next to large series of notulen (minutes of the meetings) and resoluties (the decisions, in all their administrative forms), series of bijlagen (annexes) to the resolutions can be found. These annexes consist of the incoming letters that have led to the resolutions (the dates of the resolutions are written on the documents). Taken together, the notulen, resoluties and bijlagen form a large part of the total archive of the Hoge Regering. However, it seems that the Generale Secretarye did not implement the resolution system on all documents. For example, separate series of incoming and outgoing correspondence with the Dutch Republic, the outposts, and 'native princes' can be found. These books mostly include a table of contents, in which the letters are listed chronologically. Although decisions were taken on the basis of these letters, it appears that they were not treated as annexes to the resolutions. Moreover, the above-mentioned dagregister cannot only be seen as a daily report of everything going on in the port and town of Batavia, it also serves as another registration system of the Generale Secretarye. One can, for example, read, "at nine o'clock in the morning a native vessel arrived, carrying a letter from the director of Bantam". In many cases parts of the letters are even copied to the dagregister as extracts. In the daily reports all the incoming and outgoing correspondence are registered in chronological order. It looks as if the resolution system and the dagregisters were used simultaneously. Compared to the seventeenth century, however, it is remarkable that the size of the dagregisters considerably decreases, whereas with the resolution books it is quite the opposite. In the eighteenth century many days go by when "nothing happened" in the daily reports.37 A possible explanation might be a more strict compliance to the resolution system in the eighteenth century. However, further research on the relationship between the two registration systems is necessary. In the eighteenth century, to maintain grip on the growing amount of paper, it became necessary to create indexes through which the archive would be accessible. Or, to cite Ann Stoler, "paper trails called for an elaborate coding system by which they could be tracked colonial office buildings were constructed to make sure they were properly catalogued and stored".38 Using COLONIAL LEGACY IN SOUTH EAST ASIA - THE DUTCH ARCHIVES 35 Chijs, Inventaris van's lands archief te Batavia; Balk and Van Dijk, Inventaris van het archief van de Hoge Regering, 160-168. 36 The archive is comparable with the archive of the Staten-Generaal of the Dutch Republic, on which Theo Thomassen wrote his dissertation. Thomassen, Instrumenten van de macht. About the resolution system and indices, see there pages 283-284, and 380-383. 37 The dagregisters are found under inventory numbers 2457-2622 of the archive of the Hoge Regering. ANRI, Hoge Regering. 38 Stoler, 'Colonial archives and the arts of governance', 90. 39 The realia on the resolutions of the Heeren XVII - further discussed in my master thesis - are probably also created in the first half of the eighteenth century. However, in his dissertation on the archive of the Staten-Generaal, Thomassen argues that the first clerk of the Staten-Generaal already decided to 78

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Jaarboeken Stichting Archiefpublicaties | 2012 | | pagina 80