Bookkeeper-General Batavia (The Circulation of Commodities of the Dutch East India Company in the Eighteenth Century)
This project offers a database with information concerning the circulation of commodities as found in the administration of the Bookkeeper-General (Boekhouder-Generaal) of the Dutch East India Company (Verenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie, for short VOC) in Batavia.
During the two centuries of its existence, 1602-1799, the VOC carried a bewildering array of commodities on its large fleet of ships, varying from Asian luxuries, spices and textiles for Europe to bullion, money and necessities for its army and other services in Asia and South Africa. In Batavia, the capital in Asia, the Bookkeeper-General and his clerks produced financial overviews of the exchange of goods between the Dutch Republic and the VOC’s empire around the Indian Ocean and in East Asia, as well as of the exchange between the different regional possessions and trading factories of the empire. The Bookkeeper-General sent annual copies of his administration to the Chambers Amsterdam and Zeeland, back home in the Netherlands.