Holmes, D. L. (2008). Old company records: The effect of custodial history on the arrangement and description of selected archival collections of business records. Thesis, Master of Science, School of Computer and Information Science, Edith Cowan University, 2008. Available at https://ro.ecu.edu.au/theses/23
If you would like further information about Frederick Charles Danvers and the records he investigated in the 1890s at the State Archives in The Hague, please email me on geniedonna @ yahoo.com.au
Dutch Activities in the East Seventeenth Century Being a "Report on the Records relating to the East in the State Archives in The Hague" with two appendices by Frederick Charles Danvers, Edited with an Introduction by Nihar-Ranjan Ray, University of Calcutta. 1945.
Transcript of the Introduction written by Ray, 1945.
On January 26, 1910, Messers Mackenzie Lyall & Co. of Calcutta held a public auction in which a large number of books, manuscripts and typescripts were put under the hammer. A portion of the collection was purchased by Mr. Haridas Ganguli, a very keen student of history and a friend and collaborator of the late Mr. Rakhaldas Banerjee, archæologist and historian. It transpired that the collection contained at least two books bearing the signature of F.C. Danvers, and more important, three typescripts of uniform foolscap size, paper, script and ink, the last two bearing on a slip of paper pasted on their covers their respective title, name of author and date. They may be described as follows:
1. [63 pp.] No pagination number. On the first page at the top runs the title: Report on the records relating to the East / in the State Archives in the Hague. Text proper, 45 pp. Appendix I / List of important events in connection with the Dutch in India / during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries [45-55 pp.] Appendix II / Governore General of Netherlands India [57-63 pp.]. Typing on one page (recto) only. Writing faint on first and several other pages including the last. Paper board cover, blank. Thick cartridge paper bearing water-mark of A. Pirie & Sons / Ld. / Register. Ink : violet. No mention of authorship anywhere.
2. A slip of paper containing the title pasted on paper-board cover. Report / on / India Office Records / by / F.C. Danvers/ - / Appendix / - / 1898 [42 pp.] Content: List of Manuscripts in the British Museum relating to India and the East. On pages 4, 6 and 7 there are entries, one on each page, in inked handwriting, presumably of Danvers himself, that had evidently been indistinct. Thick cartridge paper bearing watermark of A. Piri & Sons / Ld. / Register. Ink: violet.
3. A slip of paper containing the title pasted on paper-board cover. Report / on / India Office Records / by / F.C. Danvers / - / Appendix / - / 1898 [6 pp.] Contents: Papers in the Public Record Office (Colonial Section) relating to India and the East, [p.1]; India, East, [p.2]; Admiralty Records, East India House, [p. 3]; Pepper Purchase and sale of, [p. 3]; Persia, [p. 4]; Correspondence, S. Helena, [p. 4]; Colonial Office Records [p. 6]. Clear writing. Thick cartridge paper bearing water-mark of A. Pirie & Sons / Ltd / Register. Ink: violet.
Mr. Ganguli was not slow to realise the importance of the typescripts, and he was persuaded by one of his friends to make a present of them along with some other books he had purchased from the auction to the public library of the Young Men’s Association of Vaidyabati, an old and flourishing village not very far from Calcutta. There they stood on the shelves until 1920 when Mr. Prabhatchandra Ganguli, a scholar and publicist, then interested in the history of Dutch activities in Bengal, tried to utilise them ; but he eventually gave up the idea, and they again went to rest on the shelves. In 1940, I happened to visit the Vaidyabati Library and examine its collections when the three typescripts fell to my hands. The authorities of the Library were good enough to part with them on personal loan to me, and since then they have been lying with me. It has been proposed that they will eventually be made over as a gift to the Manuscripts Department of Calcutta University Libraries for preservation and use.
A close preliminary study and examination of the typescripts convinced me that they were unpublished works of Danvers, and perhaps even unknown to and unutilised by scholars in the field ; indeed I did not find any reference anywhere to these documents, though it was well known that Danvers had been deputed to the Hague by the India Office for securing for their library transcripts of Dutch Records relating to India and the East, and presumably also to report on them. True, the first typescript had nowhere any mention of its authorship, but it was clear from the text that there was nothing inherently improbable about Danvers being the author ; on the contrary, the first few paragraphs and the last of the Report left hardly any doubt in this respect. But before deciding to publish the documents or part thereof I put myself in touch with Dr. S. N. Sen, Director of Archives of the Government on India and wanted to have some more definite information in respect of Danvers and the typescripts in my possession. Here is the relevant portion of Dr. Sen’s letter, dated 8th July, 1941:
“F.C. Danvers was deputed by the India Office for securing for their library transcripts of Portuguese and Dutch Records on India. These transcripts are now available in the India Office Library. Danvers published a brief report on the Portuguese records and two volumes on the Portuguese in India (1894). The typescript in your possession is unknown to me and so far as I am aware has not been published as yet. You will however do well to write to Sir William Foster who is likely to be better informed. Danvers was an official of the India Office and more is likely to be learnt about him at that end than at Delhi. The transcripts of Dutch records brought by him are also in the India Office. Eleven volumes of these transcripts were translated into English. Sir William Foster however told me that these translations might not always be accurate because Danvers did not know Dutch, and the Dutch scholar who collaborated with him was not familiar with Indian history …”
Subsequently in a private letter Dr. Sen advised me to publish the documents for scrutiny by scholars. But I deferred publication and wanted to contact the India Office and Sir William Foster before going to press. This I did sometime towards the middle of 1942. The Superintendent of Records on the India Office informed me with regret that after an exhaustive search no tract had been found of the Report by Mr. F.C. Danvers’ (letter dated 25th August, 1942). Almost simultaneously came also Sir William’s reply which is all but fully quoted below:
“I know nothing of any report by Mr. Danvers (beyond interim ones) on his researches in the Dutch archives. His assistant in that task (until 1895) never heard of anything of the kind ; the India Office can not trace one ; and I myself could hardly have been ignorant of such a document. In any case I can not conceive that such a report be worth publishing. It must be nearly half-a-century old and would be now quite out of date. Moreover, Mr. Danvers knew no Dutch and was not well-informed on the subject of Dutch colonial history.
“There remains the mystery how anything written by him could have found its way to a small library in India. Is it certain that the document really relates to Dutch archives? Or, can it be the work of some Indian student in London, based upon Mr. Danvers’ general report on the India Office Records, issued in 1888 (can 1898 be a mistake for that date?). This reports contains sections dealing with Dutch activities in Java, Sumatra and elsewhere. In that case “State Archives” would refer, not to the Dutch but to the English official records.”
Even a casual reading of the Report published would show that it deals not with English but with Dutch official records in the State Archives in the Hague. And since it is so, the Report is more concerned with Dutch colonial activities in the Archipelago than with India proper, and India in the Report more often than not stands for the Dutch colonies in the East in general but their colonial settlements in the Southern Seas in particular. Certain Dutch publications relevant to the subject have also been utilised and largely drawn upon. The documents examined and utilised are the most important ones in the Hague Rijksarchief and are mentioned in the very first few paragraphs of the Report. Nor can it be the work of an Indian student in London based on any of Mr. Danvers’ general reports. A reference to the first few paragraphs and the last one of the Report would show that it is the work of one who examined the Dutch Records locally in the State Archives in the Hague in 1893, 1894 and also in the year (1895?) when the Report was actually drawn up. Mr. Danvers’ general “Report .. on the Records of the India Office” was issued in 1888 – a reference presumably to this report is made in f.n 2 of page 51 ; but the present Report has hardly any thing to do with either that Report or with the India Office Records. It is interesting, however, to note that Typescripts 2 and 3 though described as Report on India Office Records : Appendix, contain, in fact, only lists of English official documents relating to Dutch activities in the East, in the British Museum, Public Record Office (Colonial Section), Colonial Office and elsewhere, in London. I presume, they were intended to be treated as appendices to the main general report on the India Office Records issued in 1888. This may or may not be true, but since the English official records are more or less well-known and have been utilised by various scholars I am not publishing these bar lists which are hardly of any use to-day.
The Report on the Dutch official Records stands, it seems, on a different footing. True, it is already about half-a-century old, and we are now fairly well-posted with facts and circumstances relating to Dutch activities in the East. Even so, there are in this Report points of information, and in certain instances details of facts that are not yet available to English readers. Such, for instance, is the details account of the relations between the English and the Dutch between the years 1617 and 1620 and of the selection of Jakatra as the seat of the Dutch Government in the East and its eventual transformation into what came to be known as “Batavia”, the head-quarters of the Dutch in the East. New side-lights on Dutch policy are also available on many points of detail, especially in respect of Dutch relations with the Archipelago nationals, the Chinese, the French and the Spaniards besides the English and the Portuguese. Of other interesting items mention may be made of the introduction of coffee plantation in Java. But the value of the Report lies in its analysis of the “Articles of Instructions” issued from time to time, beginning from November, 1609, by the Netherlands Administration for the regulation of their eastern trade. Mr. Danvers correctly points out that “these instructions are the embodiment of the principles on which the Dutch East Indian possessions were obtained, held and governed. Without these it would be impossible fully to appreciate the continuity of policy pursued by the Dutch in the East, or properly to apportion the responsibility for their actions between the State, the Company and their Governors. This is, I believe, the first instance of these important documents being made available excepting in the Dutch language.” Reference to these “Instructions” are to be met with in recent publications in English, but Mr. Danvers’ claim that he makes available for the first time to English readers their detailed statement and draws attention of English readers to their importance is, I think, substantially correct even to-day.
The ‘mystery’ of how anything written by Mr. Danvers could find its way to a small library in India can easily be explained. Instances are frequent of personal collections including manuscripts of scholars and bibliophiles in Europe being broken up after the death of their owners, their being auctioned locally and then shipped out – if they were of Indian interest – for sale in India. More than one auction house in Calcutta within my knowledge used to and do even now hold periodical auctions of such books etc., and some of our important libraries have enriched their collections by purchase in lots from such sales. Important old book-sellers also make a profitable trade in business of this kind. It seems that Mr. Danvers’ collection after his death was similarly broken up and somehow or other part of it at least found its way to Calcutta where Messers Mackenzie Lyall & Co. put it under the hammer. This assumption finds support in the fact that in the lot purchased by Mr. Ganguli there were at least two books which from the signatures on their title pages seem to have belonged to the collection of Mr. Danvers. I am told by Sir Jadunath Sarkar that H. H. Shrimant Bala Sahib Pant Pratinidhi Raja Sahib of Aundh also has in his possession a small collection of typed papers of Mr. Danvers which, I understand, were purchased by H. H. the Raja Sahib from a London old book stall, and which relate themselves to Dutch activities in India and the Archipelago.
It is difficult to assess from this report the extent of Mr. Danvers’ knowledge of the Dutch language or that of help he received from his Dutch assistant. The fact that he was deputed to the Hague to report on the Dutch Records in the State Archives perhaps shows that he was not altogether ignorant of Dutch and it is quite possible that he was materially helped by Dutch assistants. In any case I have not been able to find in his Report anything that seriously contradicts facts known from English and Dutch publications on the subject or materially alters the course of events reconstructed from unpublished records in the State Archives in the Hague. It is true, the Report is scrappy and inadequate even in respect of the seventeenth century which admittedly was the scope Mr. Danvers had set for himself ; but we must remember that it was not meant to be anything more than a preliminary sketch like his brief Report on the Portuguese Records … (1892) that seems to have later developed into two big volumes of History of the Portuguese in India (1894). Had he lived for several years more the would perhaps have given us an equally valuable book on the Dutch in India. His investigations in Dutch activities in the East seem to have begun sometime before 1888 when he issued his Report on the India Office Records, and continued till his death. It is likely therefore that he had taken noted and drafted tentative reports that we have yet no knowledge of. Sir William in his letter refers to such interim drafts ; in the present Report Danvers also speaks of one that was drawn up a year before (1894?).
Frederick Charles Danvers was for nearly fifteen years, from January, 1884 to 1898, Registrar and Superintendent of Records of the India Office. In the India Office List for 1898, his career has been detailed as follows:
Educated at Merchant Taylors’ School and King’s College, London, and after a special training preparatory for Addiscombe, studied for two years for a civil and mechanical engineer ; East India House writer, old establishment, 26th January, 1853 ; junior clerk, Public and Ecclesiastical Department, India Office, September, 1858 ; Public Works Department, 1861 ; senior clerk, June 1867 ; assistant secretary in the Public Works Department, February, 1875 ; assistant secretary in the Revenue Department, 1877 ; Registrar and Superintendent of Records, January, 1884 ; in 1855 designed a salt-weighting machine, of which a number were manufactured in this country for the use of the Madras Government; in 1859 was deputed to Liverpool and Manchester to report on Traction engines, with a view to their being used in India ; deputed to Lisbon to examine the Portuguese records relating to India, 1891-92 [and at Evora relating to India ; India Office List, 1895] ; on similar duty to the Hague, 1893-95. [On similar duty to the Hague, Sept., 1893 and again, Oct., 1894 ; India Office List, 1895] ; author of articles published in “Engineering” relative to public works in India, 1866-1875 ; of a design for carrying the East Indian Railway under the Hugli from Howray to Calcutta, transmitted to India by the Secretary of State in 1868 ; of “Statistical Papers relating India” (Parliamentary Paper 1869) ; of memoranda on Indian coal, coal-washing and artificial fuel 1867-69 ; of “Coal Economy”, 1872 ; of “A Century of Famines”, 1770-1870, 1877, of papers read before the Society of Arts, on “Agriculture in India”, 1878 (Society’s silver medal), “Famines in India”, 1886, and “The India Office Records”, 1889 (Society’s silver medal); of a “Report on the Records of the India Office”, 1887 ; “Chiefs, Agents, and Governors of Bengal”, 1888 ; of a “Report on the Portuguese Records relating to India”, 1892 ; and of a “History of the Portuguese in India”, 1894 ; elected a Corresponding Member of the Royal Geographical Society of Lisbon, 1894, and of the International Colonial Institute, Brussels, 1895.
It will be seen from above that Mr. Danvers was deputed by the India Office to the Hague thrice, once every year, in 1893, 1894 and again in 1895, evidently to report on the Dutch Records on India in the State Archives in the Hague. This is exactly what Mr. Danvers states in the last paragraph of his Report. It is further clear that except an interim one in 1894 (p. 5), he did not issue any further report on those records before his death, though it appears that the present Report was actually drawn up in 1895. The two appendices (not published) to the Report on the India Office Records were however prepared in 1898. It is difficult to say why Danvers chose not to submit to the authorities his final Report on the Dutch Records which must have been the purpose for which he was deputed to the Hague. In any case it is clear that he did prepare a Report which for some reason or other was not submitted to the proper authorities nor issued independently which explains why the India Office List has no entry, or why Danvers’ assistant (ill 1895) had no knowledge of any such report. Absence of any knowledge on the part of the India Office and of Sir William Foster may also be explained in the same manner.
In the printing of the Report, Mr. Danvers’ typescript has been followed rather very scrupulously. Nothing has been changed, not even the spelling of proper names. I have however inserted certain punctuations to facilitate easier reading and understanding, but that too where it was found absolutely necessary. Vingurla has been spelt in a least three different ways (Wingorla, Vengurla, Vingorla) ; Mataran occurs also as Mataram; Pondicherry as Pondichery, Negapatam as Nagapatam; Achin as Atchin; Coromandel as Coromandal; Macao as Mecao; and so on. I have chosen not to interfere with such alternative forms of proper names. There are however certain evident mistakes, perhaps typist’s errors, which have been rectified in “Notes and Corrections”, e.g. Pieter van den Broeck should certainly be Pieter van den Broecke.
There are very few comprehensive works in English relating to Dutch Activities in India and the East. Prof. P. Geyl’s chapter on the “Dutch in India” in the Cambridge History of India, vol. V (1929), is certainly a competent and well-summarised narrative, but it is meagre. K.M. Panikkar’s Malabar and the Dutch (1931) traces the history of the relations of the Dutch with the west coast of India which may be said to begin with the capture of Cochin from the Portuguese in 1663 and continued till the surrender of that place to Major Petrie in 1795. In recent years Prof. D.G.E. Hall published two very interesting accounts relating to Dutch relations with Burma and Arakan (“Studies in Dutch relations with Arakan” and the “Daghregister of Batavia and Dutch Trade with Burma in the seventeenth century”, in the Journal of the Burma Research Society, 1936 and 1939). Interesting studies on different aspects and phases of Dutch relations with Bengal, Ceylon and the eastern coast of India have in recent years been made by various scholars ; some of them have been published in the Annual Proceedings of the Indian Historical Records Commission, others in different Indian historical journals.
But there is yet scope for a full and comprehensive account in English of Dutch activities in India and the East such as Mr. Danvers gave us in respect of Portuguese activities. Original materials for such a study, in manuscripts and in printed form, are now easily available, in Dutch and in English translations; and a fairly comprehensive bibliography of such materials has been furnished by Prof. Geyl and Mr. Panikkar. Besides, Prof. J. van Kan, a Dutch scholar who visited India in 1929-30, has given us a valuable catalogue entitled Compagniesbescheiden En Aanverwante Archivalia in Britisch-Indie En op Ceylon which gives us an inventory of the documents available in India and Ceylon. There is also a small collection of Dutch records in the Bengal Record Room, but they deal mainly with revenue matters in Chinsurah. Valuable secondary works in Dutch are also available and Prof. Geyl and Panikkar mention all important publications in this connection. Attention may also be drawn to the necessity of consulting materials available in books and manuscripts in Indian languages, mainly in Malayalam, Sinhalese, Tamil, and Bengali where incidental references to the Dutch and their activities are not altogether rare. It is true they are not mentioned as often as the Portuguese, but nevertheless such references furnish side-lights that are too interesting to be missed.
It remains for me to acknowledge my obligations. I am very thankful to Mr. Haridas Ganguli and the authorities of the Vaidyabati Young Men’s Association who very kindly allowed me to keep the typescripts with me for such a long time, and gave me permission to edit and publish the Report. I am also thankful to Dr. S.N. Sen, Director of Archives, Government on India, for having promptly replied to all the enquiries I addressed him from time to time. Sir William Foster was also very prompt in replying to the queries I placed before him for clarification. My young friend and pupil Mr. Sudhiranjan Das helped me in reading the proofs and preparing the Index. To all of them I extend my sincerest thanks and gratitude.
N.R.
The University
Calcutta.
1945
REFERENCES
Dutch Activities in the East Seventeenth Century Being a "Report on the Records relating to the East in the State Archives in The Hague" with two appendices by Frederick Charles Danvers, Edited with an Introduction by Nihar-Ranjan Ray, University of Calcutta. 1945.
Holmes, D. L. (2008). Old company records: The effect of custodial history on the arrangement and description of selected archival collections of business records. Thesis, Master of Science, School of Computer and Information Science, Edith Cowan University, 2008. Available at https://ro.ecu.edu.au/theses/23
If you would like further information about Frederick Charles Danvers and the records he investigated in the 1890s at the State Archives in The Hague, please email me on geniedonna @ yahoo.com.au
