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