Diplomatic Letters VOC

This project is about publishing and providing access to a collection of hitherto unknown diplomatic letters. These were exchanged between the VOC’s High Government in Batavia and sultans and rulers in the Indonesian Archipelago and other rulers in Southeast Asia (in particular Siam) in the 17th and 18th century. These unique letters are included in the VOC archives kept at the Arsip Nasional Republik Indonesia (ANRI) in Jakarta.

Realization of the first important phase has taken place in 2014 on the Indonesian website Sejarah Nusantara with a searchable database of all identified letters, a geographical visualization of the document flow between 200 different locations, and an overview of kings and rulers. Significant letters are published in the Harta Karun (Hidden Treasures) section of the website.

The first phase of 4300 letters identified for the period 1683-1744 has been finished and a second phase is on its way in 2015 to extend the index of these letters with the periods before 1683 and after 1744, leading up to an index of more than 10,000 letters. Additional letters of interest from/to the capital of Thailand (Siam at the time) will be highlighted also in the second phase of the project.

OBJECTIVES
To provide access online for researchers in particular to an index of diplomatic letters that are hidden in the series Daily Journals of Batavia Castle, part of the VOC archives at ANRI, Jakarta. Also provide insight into the nature and size of the correspondence by use of a geographical visualisation. Some diplomatic letters will be explained and published in detail on the website for the general public. The subject of diplomatic letters will be promoted at several Universities in Indonesia, Thailand and the Netherlands in order to encourage scholars to use this valuable resource for their scientific work.

RESULTS
The website of Sejarah Nusantara has been extended with several webpages that explain about the diplomatic letters. It is possible now to browse and search through the letters, and also to immediately link to scans of original folio of the Daily Journals of Batavia to read the full text in Dutch. Eight letters are already highlighted in the so called Harta Karun section of the website, providing scientific articles and PDF publication. Finally, the letters are presented in a geographical and social visualization using state of the art digital humanities techniques, providing a new way to look at big data.
The data of the diplomatic letters is available for downloading for researchers who want to do their own analysis of the dataset.

See also:
Universitas Indonesia (Organisation)
University Leiden (Organisation)
University Chulalongkorn (Organisation)
Universitas Gadjah Mada (Organisation)

Maarten Manse (Expert)
Simon Kemper (Expert)

The Dutch Embassy (Organisation)