An Empire in Disguise: The Appropriation of Pre-Existing Modes of Governance in Dutch South Asia, 1650–1800
Keywords:
Dutch empire, South Asia, early modern period, bureaucracy, paperwork, zamindar-fiscaal, Chinsurah, Bengal, disāva, Jaffna, Sri Lanka, pattas, olas,Abstract
This article presents an analysis of the paper- and office work at two South Asian corners in the early modern Dutch empire. The article engages with current approaches to the histories of bureaucracy and empire that emphasize the lived experience of “paperwork” in order to gain a localized understanding of what constituted empire. The article focuses on the production and use of pattas, olas, and thombos in the offices of the Dutch zamindar-fiscaal in Chinsurah (Bengal) and the Dutch disāva in Jaffna (Sri Lanka). Dutch bureaucracy in these spaces was entrenched in local practices, and created through processes of layering and blending, as evidenced by material and linguistic characteristics. The deeds and registers recorded essential aspects of life such as labor, marriage, and transactions of property, and the article shows how such paperwork mattered to villagers in Chinsurah and Jaffna. The production of the deeds and registers itself could include a public spectacle, and we argue that this performative aspect of the local bureaucracy added to the perceived relevance of the paperwork. Furthermore, through an analysis of legal cases we reconstruct the use and abuse of these bureaucracies by Dutch officials and local inhabitants, which signifies a parasitical relationship that is characteristic of so many imperial and colonial spaces. Through a focus on the local bureaucratic practices, the authors shed new light on questions about the character of the Dutch empire, where things never turned out to be exactly as they appeared at first sight.
References
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Ibid.
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NA, VOC inv. nr. 2849, Memorie left by Taillefert for director Bisdom: f: 176r., 177r.
8
For the Dutch translation of the firman, see NA, VOC 2849, Memorie of Taillefert: f. 177r.
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NA, VOC 2849: f. 155v.
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NA, VOC 2849: f. 155r.
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Ibid.
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NA, VOC 1422, Translated from Persian and extracted from the missive of the Nawab of June 6, 1686 to Hendrik Adriaan van Reede from Dhaka to Kasimbazaar, December 28, 1686: f. 1256r.v.
16
NA, VOC 2849, Memorie of Taillefert: f. 155r.
17
For the etymological explanation of the word patta and its colonial presence see Chatterjee, Negotiating Mughal Law, 134; for local level pattas, see Rajasthan state archives, https://rsad.artandculture.rajasthan.gov.in/content/raj/art-and-culture/rajasthan-state-archives-bikaner/en/services/digitization-and-microfilming.html?q=patta#, last accessed on February 1, 2023
18
For more information on this, see Bes, Lennart, “Gold-Leaf Flattery, Calcuttan Dust, and a Brand-New Flagpole: Five Little-Known VOC Collections in Asia on India and Ceylon,” Itinerario 36 (2012): 94–95CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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20
West Bengal State Archives (hereafter WBSA), Kolkata, India, Records Part I, 1758–1858, F. Dutch pattas relating to Chinsurah, bundle 1A, patta nr. 20, patta nr. 75; bundle 2B, patta nr. 761.
21
For more information, see the website of Rijckheyt on the regional histories of the Netherlands, updated on January 21, 2023 and last accessed on February 1, 2023, https://www.rijckheyt.nl/cultureel-erfgoed/bestuur-17e-en-18e-eeuw
22
For the definition of the fiscaal in the VOC, see Om Prakash, The Dutch East India Company and the Economy of Bengal, 1630–1720 (Delhi: Manohar Publications, 2012), 41. In the context of the Dutch Republic, it appears that the mandate of offices like that of the fiscaal or the dorpsmeester varied from place to place. The Dutch dictionary indicates that the fiscaal is an office related to the enforcement of laws, but the examples given refer to specific fields and institutions. For instance, the office of the waterfiscaal is related to the laws of trade on sea and such other administration in the Dutch Republic. It is possible that the office of the fiscaal acquired a new meaning in the context of the VOC. For the dictionary meaning of fiscaal, see https://gtb.ivdnt.org/iWDB/search?actie=article&wdb=WNT&id=M016549&lemma=fiskaal&domein=0&conc=true, last accessed on February 1, 2023
23
Chatterjee, Negotiating Mughal Law, 74.
24
WBSA, bundle 1A, patta nr. 8.
25
Willem Danckelmann mentioned being the dorpsmeester and fiscaal in his report to the governor-general and council, but this was not mentioned in the pattas.NL-HaNA_1.04.17_268 I, Report of Willem Danckelmann to the governor-general and Raad van Indië, Batavia, 1781: f. 6,7.
26
WBSA, bundle 1B, patta nr. 417; WBSA, bundle 1B, patta nr. 420; and WBSA, bundle 1B, patta nr. 360.
27
WBSA, bundle 8, patta nr. 3952; WBSA, bundle 9, patta nr. 4071.
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Farhat Hasan, “Property and Social Relations in Mughal India: Litigations and Disputes at the Qazi's Court in Urban Localities, 17th-18th Centuries,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 61 (2018): 871.
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It has been shown by Kumkum Chatterjee in her research how scribes in Mughal Bengal evolved as a professional class, and Nandini Chatterjee showed that some of them continued to serve the colonial government under the British in the later centuries. Kumkum Chatterjee, “Scribal Elites in Sultanate and Mughal Bengal,” The Indian Economic and Social History Review 47 (2010): 445–72; Chatterjee, “Mahzar-namas in the Mughal and British Empires”: 401.
30
NL-HaNA_1.04.17_268 II: folio not numbered.
31
Ibid.
32
NL-HaNA_1.04.17_ 268 I, Report of Willem Danckelmann to the governor-general and Raad van Indië, Batavia, 1781.
33
NL-HaNA_1.04.17_268 II, Report about the charges against Danckelmann with Parbotti Tsjern Raay, Hooghly, Bengal, 1780, 1781: folio not numbered.
34
Farhat Hasan points out how local power-holders ratified and intermediated the sale of property in sale deeds. Farhat Hasan, “Property and Social Relations in Mughal India,” JESHO 61 (2018): 855, 863.
35
NL-HaNA_1.04.17_268 II: folio not numbered.
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37
Sophia Pieters, ed., Instructions from the Governor-General and Council of India to the Governor of Ceylon, 1656 to 1665: to which is Appended the Memoir Left by Anthony Paviljoen, Commandeur of Jaffnapatam, to his Successor, in 1665. (Colombo: Cottle, Government printer 1908).
38
See the contributions by Dries Lyna and Luc Bulten and Nadeera Rupesinghe and Bente de Leede in this Law and History Review special issue.
39
Sophia Pieters, ed., Memoir of Hendrick Zwaardecroon, Commandeur of Jaffnapatam, (Afterwards Governor-General of Nederlands India), 1697; for the Guidance of the Council of Jaffnapatam, during his Absence at the Coast of Malabar. (Colombo: Cottle Government Publishers, 1911)
40
Raman, Document Raj.
41
Pieters, Memoir of Hendrick Zwaardecroon […] 1697.
42
Ibid.
43
Prakash, The Dutch East India Company and the Economy of Bengal, 24–53.
44
Pieters, Memoir of Hendrick Zwaardecroon […] 1697.
45
Sri Lanka National Archives (hereafter SLNA) Lot 1 / 6868.
46
The map was made by Pouwel van Schooten.
47
Lodewijk Hovy, Ceylonees Plakkaatboek, Deel II (Hilversum: Verloren, 1991), ordinance no. 573 “vernieuwde instructie voor de disāva van Jaffna,” para. 10–18, pp. 821–22.
48
These data are taken from the diary of disāva Thomas Nagel, which is kept in the SLNA, Lot 1 (VOC), inventory number 6868. All entries have been transcribed and entered into a database by Pouwel van Schooten, which enabled us to make a spatial and thematic breakdown.
49
The etymology of the word paresse suggests a pre-Portuguese origin, as it was probably derived from the Tamil word parīsu (பரிசு), meaning “gift,” as Dennis McGilvray has kindly pointing out to us; The journal is unique among the Dutch records in Sri Lanka, and the only type of documents that we found that might bear resemblance to this are the diaries from the district officers in Pune from the Maharashtra archives from the same period, which are used as examples by Sumit Guha to show how over the course of the eighteenth century, centralized administration entered the household. Guha, Sumit, Beyond Caste Identity and Power in South Asia, Past and Present (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 133–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
50
Please note that this paragraph is largely based on an article that Alicia Schrikker has written in Dutch: Schrikker, Alicia, “’Op de dijk gezet’: schuld, onrust en bestuurlijke onzekerheid en onrust in Jaffna in de achttiende eeuw,” in Aan de overkant: ontmoetingen in dienst van de VOC en WIC (1600–1800), ed. Wagenaar, Lodewijk (Leiden: Sidestone Press, 2015), 145–63Google Scholar.
51
SLNA 1/6816. This paragraph is based on this analysis of these instructions. For a context of the creation of this document, see: Schrikker, “‘Op de dijk gezet’,” 145–63.
52
It goes beyond the purpose of this article to go into the question of identity formation in relation to these registration practices. For an analysis of local and colonial perceptions of slavery and its long-term impact see: Wickramasinghe, Nira and Schrikker, Alicia, “The Ambivalence of Freedom: Slaves in Jaffna, Sri Lanka, in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries,” The Journal of Asian Studies, 78 (2019), 497–519CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
53
See SLNA 1/6818–6820.
54
Schrikker, Alicia and Lyna, Dries, “Threads of the Legal Web: Dutch Law and Everyday Colonialism in Eighteenth-Century Asia,” in The Uses of Justice in Global Perspective, 1600–1900, ed. Vermeesch, Griet, Manon van der Heijden, and Jaco Zuijderduijn (London New York: Routledge, 2019), 42–56Google Scholar.
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SLNA 1/6819 April 1751, f 3–4.
56
SLNA 1/6820 February 16, 1752, ff 63–66.
57
For questions of translation, see, for example, the case between two velalar mudaliyars Don Paulo Eddiwiresinga Adiwira Pagoetuwe and Wellawapa Aroe Mogetaaij over a piece of land, April 24,1751. Here the litigants were requested to submit their olas to the secretarij for translation
58
The Governor-General, Willem Arnold Alting, decided to examine this and formed a committee composed of an official in the position of opperkoopman named Pieter Brueijs and another in the position of koopman named Anthony Bogaardt, who were both sent to Chinsurah to investigate the matter. The committee's reports were used for the trial of Danckelmann at the Raad van Justitie in 1780–81. It included the testimonies of local villagers who were allegedly mishandled by Danckelmann and Parbati as well as the testimonies of those officials who had been in the service of the katcheri and were thereby involved in these cases. See, NL-HaNA_1.04.17_268 I, Letter written by Willem Danckelmann to the governor-general and Raad van Indië, Batavia, 1781: f. 4–5 and NL-HaNA_1.04.17_268 II: folio not numbered.
59
NL-HaNA_1.04.17_268 II: folio not numbered.
60
For a similar example of legal pluralism see Benton, Lauren, Law and Colonial Cultures: Legal Regimes in World History, 1400–1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 140–49Google Scholar.
61
Raman, Document Raj; Saha, Jonathan, “Paperwork as Commodity, Corruption as Accumulation: Land Records and Licenses in Colonial Myanmar, c.1900,” in Corruption, Empire and Colonialism in the Modern Era A Global Perspective, ed. Kroeze, Ronald, Dalmau, Pol, and Monier, Frédéric (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021), 293–315CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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Schrikker and Lyna, “Threads of the Legal Web,” 42–56.
