"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
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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.