Conclusion About fifty men worked at the writers' office of the Kamer Amsterdam, at least double that for the 'Generale Secretarye' in Batavia. They are the most important 'nodes' in the information network of the Company, where information was collected, processed, overwritten, forwarded and exchanged. It became clear that the document flow between these nodes is to be regarded as the artery of the information network of the Company. The archives created by these offices are still highly linked to each other. To keep track of the huge amounts of circulating documents, both offices used registration systems and kept realia. Further analysis of the registration system of the Hoge Regering shows that a 'pulse' can be discovered in the realia. The varying amount of references, calculated per quarter, reveals a "quiescence and quickened pace" in the number of decisions taken on specific subjects. Even 'archival events' can possibly be traced. In the realia on the years 1737-1750, archival events come to light that partly seem to correspond 'historical events'. Other archival events, however, can - on first glance - not be explained by the events described in our historical textbooks. Whether or not all archival events correspond to an underlying "thickening" of documents is open to further investigation. The Persian example shows that it can, but this is only one case. So, can we claim that the described method to trace archival events works? Maybe we can. However, some reservations have to be considered. First, the archive of the Hoge Regering reveals that the coverage of the resolutions via the realia is poor. In the investigated years, this varies between 6,54% and 29,21%, which means that not all decisions (and underlying documents) come to light via the realia. This is also true for the Persian example. In the third quarter of 1737 eleven references are found in the realia under the keyword Persia, while 119 references can be calculated in the chronologically listed marginalia of that quarter.64 Of those 119 references, the realist did take over the sending of letters under cachet volant, but ignored the marginalia on the "lengthy and confusing" letters of the Persian outpost. Once again, this shows that the realia are based on a selection of resolutions. Although it can be assumed that the realist chose the most important resolutions, he apparently did not regard this reference as important enough. A second remark is on the quantifiability of the used 'qualitative' terms. It might be possible to trace archival events on the level of realia, but the underlying "thickening of documents" is still hard to quantify. Research on this underlying thickening is difficult because comparison of the amounts of documents on this level (per subject and in time) is hardly possible. It is not only time consuming, but also problematic because documents can seldom be placed under only one subject heading (thus, to compare the amounts of documents per subject, theoretically an infinite number of copies needs to be made)The question whether or not an archival event is indeed found on this level is now only answered on the basis of instinct. But how many letters have to be exchanged on a certain subject, and in what pace, before it can be marked as an archival event? How many pages have to be written? COLONIAL LEGACY IN SOUTH EAST ASIA - THE DUTCH ARCHIVES 64 Thus, coverage is 9,24%. This is more than the average coverage on the year 1737 (6,88%). ANRI, HR, Realia, inv. number 2188. ANRI, HR, Resolutions, inv. number 979-980. 65 Apart from the Persian example, in my master thesis Het informatiesysteem en -netwerk van de Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie an archival event around the Chinese Massacre of 1740 is discussed. 90

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Jaarboeken Stichting Archiefpublicaties | 2012 | | pagina 92