FIRST SPACES OF COLONIALISM: THE ARCHITECTURE OF DUTCH EAST INDIA COMPANY SHIPS A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Cornell University In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Richard John Guy January 2012 © 2012 Richard John Guy FIRST SPACES OF COLONIALISM: THE ARCHITECTURE OF DUTCH EAST INDIA COMPANY SHIPS Richard John Guy Ph. D. (D.M.A.) (J.S.D) Cornell University 2012 This dissertation is an inquiry into spatial aspects of control, resistance and communication in the Dutch East India Company (VOC), as revealed by the architecture of its ships. The architectural type of the retourschip or “homeward bounder” is described and the history of its development, 1602- 1795 is traced, with special attention paid to the period 1740-1783, when the richest records concerning ship design were produced and the ships reached their most standardized forms. The retourschip was one of the highest technological achievements of its day and was used as an emblem for military and mercantile power by the VOC. The ship’s role and meaning as an armature for the VOC’s ideological constructs is examined. Ships also, in Paul Gilroy’s words, constituted "microcultural, micro-political systems," with their own social and spatial orders. These orders are explored, along with their ideological uses as structuring models for VOC society. Changes to the spatial design of the retourschip through the period of the VOC’s operation are linked to changes in the social structure aboard and to changes in the status of VOC mariners, officers and captains. Finally, the effects and effectiveness of the retourschip as a structuring model are interrogated using several mutinies, with special attention paid to the 1763 mutiny on the retourschip Nijenburg. The role of shipboard space in structuring mutinous actions is explored, as is the role of mutinies in forming the society of VOC mariners. Through the records of Admiralty and colonial court trials the socio-spatial order aboard the Nijenburg is closely examined both under the command of its VOC-appointed captain and under that of the mutineers, and the two conditions compared. Mutineers are shown to appropriate and subvert the VOC’s socio-spatial organization, while trial records are shown to reconstruct the social categories of the ship, incorporating mutiny into the Company’s dominant discourse. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH Richard Guy holds a Bachelor of Fine Art degree from the University of Oxford and a Master of Arts from Cornell University, his master’s thesis being awarded the Richmond Harold Shreve Outstanding Thesis Award. During the production of this dissertation he has been awarded a graduate fellowship at the Society for the Humanities and a Citation of Special Recognition from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts as part of the 2010 Carter Manny Award program. Parts of this work have been presented at conferences dedicated to history, art history, and maritime and area studies. In addition to his work as an architectural historian Richard has produced award-winning art and interactive design work for the American Museum of Natural History and independent software companies. iii To Aleksandra, Oliver and Katarina, without whose patience and support this would not exist. iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS If I were to list everyone who has helped me with this dissertation it would be considerably longer than it already is. My gratitude goes out to all those who have answered my questions and given freely and generously of their time. Of particular note, I would like first to thank the members of my committee, Christian Otto, Eric Tagliacozzo and David Powers, who have enabled me to pursue a topic that falls between their disciplines and who have guided me with patience and great consideration. I would also like especially to thank Ab Hoving, Jerzy Gawronski, Femme Gaastra, Martijna Briggs, Marcus Rediker, Jaap Jacobs, Robert Parthesius, Herman Ketting, Tim Murray, Christopher Monroe, Jenny Gaynor and Magnus Fiskesjo, without whose extraordinary help and kindness this dissertation would certainly be poorer, and might not exist at all. The mistakes are, of course, entirely my own contribution. This work was supported by a Citation of Special Recognition from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts as part of the 2010 Carter Manny Award program. Further support was received from a Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Completion Fellowship; a Mellon Graduate Fellowship at the Society for the Humanities, Cornell University; a Humanities, Arts, Science, and Technology Advanced Collaboratory (HASTAC) Scholars Fellowship, two Title VI Foreign Languages and Area Studies grants; a Michele Sicca Pre-Dissertation Research Grant; MacDougall research travel grants; and other sources through Cornell University. None of the supporting institutions or individuals named above bear any responsibility for the conclusions stated here. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Biographical Sketch iii Dedication iv Acknowledgements v List of figures vii List of Abbreviations viii Introduction 1 Chapter 1: The Typical Ship 48 Chapter 2: Space Aboard the Typical Ship 145 Chapter 3: Atypical Circumstances: the Mutiny on the Nijenburg 234 Conclusion 320 Appendix 1: Ranks and Positions Aboard VOC Ships 341 Bibliography 344 vi LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1.1: VOC printmark, Amsterdam Chamber, 1672. 56 Figure 1.2: VOC printmark, Middelburg Chamber, 1789. 56 Figure 1.3: Strij, J. van: Het jacht van de Kamer Rotterdam (detail). 79 Figure 1.4: Bentam, C: ship of 150 feet length, 1742. 129 Figure 1.5: Decquer, H: section of a katschip of 115 feet length, 1682. 133 Figure 2.1: longitudinal sections of the Batavia and Hollandia. 159 Figure 2.2: Batavia deck plans: poop deck, quarterdeck and foredeck. 160 Figure 2.3: Batavia deck plans: upper and lower decks. 161 Figure 2.4: Batavia deck plans: orlop and hold. 162 Figure 2.5: Hollandia deck plans: quarterdeck and upper deck. 163 Figure 2.6: Hollandia deck plans: lower deck and hold. 164 Figure 2.7: Extract from Noord Nieuw Landt deck plan, 1750. 165 Figure 2.8: Extract from inboard profile of the Falmouth, 1752. 172 Figure 2.9: Hillier & Hanson: simple floor plan and depth map, 1984. 182 Figure 2.10: Markus, T: workhouse floor plan and depth map. 184 Figure 2.11: Simple spatial map of Batavia subtype. 187 Figure 2.12: Simple spatial map of Hollandia subtype 188 Figure 2.13: Depth map for the Batavia subtype. 194 Figure 2.14: Depth map for the Hollandia subtype. 195 Figure 3.1: Design for a monumental gibbet, Kijkduin, 1764. 262 Figure 3.2: Proposed placement of the gibbets by the Texel roadstead. 262 Figure 3.3: Deck plans for the VOC ship Noord Nieuw Landt, 1750. 270 vii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS AN Netherlands National Archives. VOC Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie (Dutch East India Company). WIC West-Indische Compagnie (Dutch West India Company) MMPH Collection of the Maritiem Museum Prins Hendrick, Rotterdam, Netherlands. DAS Bruijn, J. R, Gaastra, F. S. & Schoeffer, I: Dutch-Asiatic Shipping in the seventeenth and eighteenth Centuries (The Hague, 1979), vols. I, II & III. viii INTRODUCTION In truth, a man-of-war is a city afloat, with long avenues set out with guns instead of trees, and numerous shady lanes, courts, and by-ways. The quarter-deck is a grand square, park, or parade ground, with a great Pittsfield elm, in the shape of the mainmast, at one end, and fronted at the other by the palace of the Commodore's cabin. Or, rather, a man-of-war is a lofty, walled, and garrisoned town, like Quebec, where the thoroughfares are mostly ramparts, and peaceable citizens meet armed sentries at every corner. Or it is like the lodging-houses in Paris, turned upside down; the first floor, or deck, being rented by a lord; the second, by a select club of gentlemen; the third, by crowds of artisans; and the fourth, by a whole rabble of common people. For even thus is it in a frigate, where the commander has a whole cabin to himself and the spar-deck, the lieutenants their wardroom underneath, and the mass of sailors swing their hammocks under all. And with its long rows of port-hole casements, each revealing the muzzle of a cannon, a man-of-war resembles a three-story house in a suspicious part of the town, with a basement of indefinite depth, and ugly-looking fellows gazing out at the windows. Herman Melville: White-jacket or, The World in a Man-of-war (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1970). 1 When I began my research into Dutch East India Company (hereafter VOC) ships, I was fortunate to be guided around the replica of the Batavia by Ad van der Zee, who at the time was wrapping up his part in the ongoing building of another replica, of the seventeenth century warship Zeven Provincieen.1 Ad had shown me around the many interior spaces of the Batavia, which were largely empty and undecorated, and had patiently answered my naïve questions about construction, timber, seaworthiness, the research underpinning the project and the prospects for building further replicas. Finally I approached the question on which I thought I might be able to bring some analysis to bear: I asked him about the use of space aboard, regarding which I had only been able to glean a few clues from the replica. He replied that, as I had observed, the Batavia was largely an empty shell and he hoped one day to be able to change that: to present the ship as HMS Victory is presented at Portsmouth, filled with the equipment its crewmen needed to carry out their tasks—charts in the captain’s cabin, saws and medicines in the doctor’s and, unlike the Victory, a rabbit warren of bunks throughout the lower deck, giving some impression of how the crew would have lived aboard on the way to the Indies.