Nomination form International Memory of the World Register

The Archive of the Notaries 1578-1915

ID[2016-01]

1.0 Summary (max 200 words)

The Archive of the Amsterdam Notaries 1578-1915 is of global importance. It is the key to the history of countries all around the world with which Amsterdam had historical ties for centuries. It spans 30.000 large volumes, covering 3,5 centuries in time and 3,5 kilometres in length. It contains written and printed documents, parchments in precious bindings and seals revealing last wills, personal agreements, trading contracts, estate inventories, eyewitness testimonies of both daily life and critical events, and so much more. All together, it paints a detailed image of all aspects of the lives of people of all social classes, inhabiting or passing through Amsterdam, from the 17th to the 20th century. It shows the worldwide connections between families, traders, settlers and scholars. On a greater scale, the archive reflects the evolution of Amsterdam from a modest town to a centre of trade and tolerance – a city that thrived as a result of its international orientation. As the still largely untrodden archive holds the only surviving testimonies to many events, it deserves to be protected and remembered as UNESCO Memory of the World. This way it can be connected to other digitised sources worldwide and help to fill the gaps in our shared world history.

2.0 Nominator 2.1 Name of nominator

E.E. van der Laan LL.M, Mayor of Amsterdam on behalf of

2.2 Relationship to the nominated documentary heritage

Since 1656, the Mayors of Amsterdam, representing the City Government, were the custodians of the Archive of the Amsterdam Notaries as the information was highly regarded for a just and legal rule of the city of Amsterdam. The documents were securely kept in a locked room of the city hall and guarded by an appointed key holder, who had to swear an oath of secrecy. In 1915, when the first official repository for safe keeping of the cities archival documents was inaugurated in Amsterdam, the archive of the Amsterdam Notaries was among the first archives to be placed in this repository. See 3.4. History/Provenance By nominating on behalf of the Amsterdam City Archives the Mayor of Amsterdam underlines the importance of the Amsterdam notarial archive – not only for the , but for the history of the commerce and culture on a global scale.

2.3 Contact person(s)

Drs. Bert de Vries MBA, City Archivist and Director of the Amsterdam City Archives

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2.4 Contact details

Drs Bert de Vries MBA City Archivist and Director of the Amsterdam City Archives

Vijzelstraat 32 Postbus 51140 1007 EC Amsterdam [email protected] Tel: +31 20 2511600

3.0 Identity and description of the documentary heritage 3.1 Name and identification details of the items being nominated If inscribed, the exact title and institution(s) to appear on the certificate should be given

Amsterdam City Archives The Archive of the Amsterdam Notaries, 1578 – 1915 Collection number: 5075

The Archive of the Amsterdam Notaries contains written and printed documents, parchments in precious bindings and seals. It includes the professional documents of no less than 731 public notaries that were in function between 1578 and 1915. All together the Archive consists of almost 30.000 physical items (called ‘protocols’ in Dutch) containing approximately 4,5 million original notarial deeds (called ‘akten’ or ‘minuten’). They are mainly written in Dutch, but there are many documents in other languages, especially in the languages of nations with whom trade was extensive in the 17th and 18th centuries.

3.4 History/provenance

In 1656 the city government of Amsterdam ordered that 'closed' protocols – due to resign or death of of a notary – had to be brought to the city hall to be secured in a guarded and locked room (see 2.2). Before legislation the older notarial documents were sometimes kept at the secretary, but more so inherited by family, sold to successors or simply lost. The oldest officially administered and surviving protocol in the Archive dates from 1578, but it is not necessarily the first that was left in care of the city. Twice, in 1652 and 1762, fire struck inside the city hall and burning papers were reportedly thrown into the canals. As it is unknown how many protocols from pensioned notaries had been turned in previously, it is impossible to say how many of the oldest notarial documents have been destroyed due to one of those fires. A small portion, 850 of the 30.000 protocols in the Amsterdam City Archives show proof of heat damage and some of the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century notaries show larger chronological hiatuses that implicate a connection to the fire. Regulated by king Louis Napoleon in 1806, the Dutch national government had centralised the care for all archival documents in the . It is however uncertain whether the Archive of the Amsterdam notaries has ever been physically moved out of Amsterdam. In the 19th century the 2

administrative governance of the archives was handed back. In 1915 the Archive of the Amsterdam Notaries was placed in a newly designed repository. It has been in the custody of the Amsterdam City Archives for the last hundred years.

4.0 Legal information 4.1 Owner of the documentary heritage (name and contact details)

City of Amsterdam, the Netherlands E.E. van der Laan LL.M, Mayor.

Mayor4.2 Custodian of Amsterdam of the documentary heritage (name and contact details if different from the owner)

Drs. Bert de Vries MBA Director Amsterdam City Archives [email protected] Tel: +31 20 2511600

4.3 Legal status

Ownership: Amsterdam City Archives The city of Amsterdam has the legal and administrative responsibility for the Archive of the Amsterdam Notaries.

4.4 Accessibility

The Archive of the Amsterdam Notaries is primarily accessible in original form or microfilm on site, during opening hours of the building. The catalogue of the complete archive is accessible by an online finding aid. The online accessibility was rewarded with the 2009 Best Archives on the Web Awards from ArchivesNext.com. The objects itself are only partially available in digital reproduction and therefore not easily accessible to foreign researchers. And even when digitised, browsing the large volumes is very time-consuming. Research is therefore still mostly based on the card index initiated in the 1960s. See 3.2 Catalogue or registration details.

The Amsterdam City Archives aim for 24/7 and worldwide accessibility by taking the following steps: 1. Digitising. For reasons of immeasurable value for both scientific and family research, the Amsterdam City Archives needs to digitise the complete Archive of the Amsterdam Notaries and has therefore initiated a large-scale project to ensure online access to the many millions of individual documents. First step: all registers need to be scanned. This is quite a challenge as the archive is so immensely large and more than 50% of the documents is bound in old parchments covers; some of them very valuable and some up to 30 cm wide. A further complication is that a small, but important part of the archive is partially damaged due to a fire inside the City Hall in 1762. These documents are extremely fragile and can only be handled with utmost care. The City Archives have extensive experience in mass-digitising processes since the start of 3

the scanning on demand programme in 2007. 2. Indexing. The second step is indexing and transcribing the contents of the now digitised documents. The institution will join forces with the general public as well as specialists and combines crowdsourcing with traineeships for students and graduates. Projects are organised in partnership with the and the University of Utrecht. As the Amsterdam City Archives was the initiator of the award-winning and very successful Dutch crowdsourcing website VeleHanden.nl (‘many hands’) in 2010 we have gained expert knowledge on how to organise crowdsourcing and how to keep a crowd motivated.

There are no legal restrictions on the accessibility of the Archive of the Amsterdam Notaries. As the youngest documents are more than 100 years old, protection of the privacy of people mentioned in the documents is not an issue. There are access restrictions to the partially burned documents. These are too fragile for public access. Thanks to the project that has started February 2016, access to the information in the documents will once again become possible.

4.5 Copyright status

All documents in the Archive of the Amsterdam Notaries are free from copyright.

5.0 Assessment against the selection criteria

5.1 Authenticity

Authenticity of this archive is legally guaranteed. It was the importance of these documents for law and justice that induced the city government to secure them in a locked room inside the town hall as early as the 17th century. The practice of a notary was not a free trade, but regulated by the law. From 1525 on, notaries were admissioned by the regional Court (Hof van Holland). They were examined, swore loyalty and integrity by oath and they validated their deeds on ready stamped and sealed paper. Violators risked prosecution; a notary in 1700 found himself sentenced to death after signing false testaments. Protocols of notaries no longer in function were ordered back to the secretary at the town hall, to be shielded from physical dangers and alteration of its contents. Both authenticity and integrity are therefore guaranteed. A notary client receives a copy of a document that is drawn on his request, so he can prove to a third party what had been written down and signed for approval. However, when it comes to disputes in court, the minutes of the documents, kept in the protocol of a notary, have the absolute power of the law and are in fact the originals. These old documents still have legal force today. A lawsuit that attracted much attention in the Netherlands in the last century was a case of a plasterer versus the city of Amsterdam. He claimed to be the rightful heir to a 17th century field marshal and claimed the field marshal’s legacy, which was worth millions and had been kept in custody by the city for the last centuries. To build his case he relied on the notarial records. Although the court recognised the legal force of the documents in the Archive of the Notaries, he did not win his case as the court declared the case barred.

5.2 World significance

The Archive of the Amsterdam Notaries is unique and irreplaceable as it is not in any way constrained 4

to the city borders, but stretches out to all corners of the world. It is the key to the history of countries all around the world with which Amsterdam had historical ties for centuries. It provides a detailed description of many aspects of the lives of people of all social classes, inhabiting or passing through, from the 17th to the 20th century. But more importantly, it shows the evolvement from a modest town to a city that influenced large parts of the 17th century world; and after nearly a century, its decline. Amsterdam was the last stop on this side of the ocean for countless European emigrants and adventurers setting sail to the east or west. Once large datasets have been assembled from the archive, emigration patterns can be deducted from their last wills and authorisations, trusted to paper by one of the Amsterdam notaries. Furthermore we find first proofs of innovative ways to finance worldwide logistics, start-ups leading to the exploding Baltic trade in the early-modern period, but also estate inventories including paintings from Rembrandt to Ruysdael owned by the cosmopolitan and connected families that surpassed all national boundaries, next to testimonies of disasters on board of ships manned by international mixed crews, transporting slaves from Africa to the Americas. All this is written down in the people’s own words to testify for one another and in court.

5.3 Comparative criteria:

1 Time

All economic, social and cultural changes in society over time are reflected in the Archive of the Amsterdam Notaries. In the Archive of the Amsterdam Notaries one can track over time the numerous great changes in the world of international trade. Several documents testify of the birth of the Dutch East India Company, the first multional corporation and the first company to issue stock, at the start of the 17th century. In the 18th century it is documented how new ways to finance world trade are invented with the immense capital the Amsterdam merchants had accumulated in the previous century. During the 19th century, when most fortunes are lost again, the documents point out more conservative ways to invest the remaining money. In the same way the start, growth and decline of creative industries in Amsterdam can be witnessed from up close and at a personal level. The famous paintings of the Dutch Old Masters are identifiable in estate inventories together with maps, globes and books from highly renowned cartographers and publishers. Those very same painters and cartographers show themselves in a more active role, when the inventories of their own houses or shops are drawn or in case they act as a witness to someone else's notarial needs. In the 18th century we see French art appearing in the inventories, to slowly overrule the art of Dutch origin.

2 Place

The Archive of the Amsterdam Notaries is the primary source of information for the history of Amsterdam, a small town that nonetheless operated at the centre of the world. In the declarations we read the story of numerous ships that set sail to the new world and the subsequent founding of New Amsterdam. For some trading settlements, there is no other mention found but in the Archive of the Amsterdam Notaries. Not to mention the Dutch exporting their administration and notarial practices to the new worlds.

And there's more. The Archive of the Amsterdam Notaries is filled with worldwide interconnections. The Archive records locations of people embarking, loading, sailing, trading and dying in towns, harbours and faraway shores all over the world. Connected locations include settlements as New 5

Netherlands, the gold coast of Guinee, old plantations in South and Central America, but also small trading villages in Northern and Eastern Europe. Researching a fraction of the historical toponyms (geographical names no longer in use or recorded fonetically) has already led to current towns and cities in countries on all continents, amongst which all neighbouring and European countries but also Russia, the Canary Islands, the Dutch Antilles, Venezuela, Mexico, Barbados, Egypt, Morocco, Iceland, Lebanon, Israel, Iran, Syria, , , Nigeria, Liberia, Taiwan, Indonesia and India.

3 People

The Archive of the Amsterdam Notaries captures both the written paintings of daily life of ordinary Amsterdam citizens as the written portraits of influential individuals. Documents as last wills and prenuptial agreements give us an exceptionally close up view. Belongings found from room to room are noted down in these documents, from expensive cupboards in the parlor and pots and pans in the kitchen to hidden jewelry and the amount of woollen undergarments in bedroom drawers. What we know of long-lost interiors comes mainly from paintings of Vermeer; but the notarial deeds caught on paper what was never painted. Besides the material culture we also get acquainted with private lives of people. The rich and famous sign in bold curves, while we also experience the shaky written signatures of inexperienced hands and of course, from those who never learned how to write, the simple cross marks. A specific type of notarial declaration was recorded at request of the Amsterdam jurisdiction, for use in criminal accusations. These records consist of verbal witness reports, written down in the exact words the witnesses used there and then – including bad language. Most of the time, those witnesses came from the lower ranks of society; people that in general left few paper trails. The Notarial documents may be the only officially recorded testimony of their speech and manners. Not to mention the contents: The witness reports point out who the real father is and spill details on secret agreements, political dissidents, pub brawls, cheating merchants, witnessed accidents and streetcrimes, and so on. There is no aspect of daily life that is left uncovered in the Archive of the Amsterdam Notaries. Daily life in Amsterdam came in many shapes and forms. As the city was known for its religious tolerance, it hosted many newcomers that had fled from prosecution. Huguenots and Portuguese Jews formed close communities that left traces of their imported customs and left-behind loved ones in all kinds of notarial agreements and property leases. Last but not least, one gets to know the names of nearly all people living in or passing through the international transport hub of Amsterdam as the Amsterdam harbour was the last foot on the ground for a great number of people on the move. Most people moving to other parts of the world had their last will made up by an Amsterdam notary just before they set sail on their dangerous journey. One of the best known among them is Peter Stuyvesant, the later Director-General of the colony of New Netherland, and a major figure in the early history of New York. Numbers of emigrants started as Stuyvesant. This makes the Archive of the Amsterdam Notaries a source of primary importance for people from all over the world tracing their roots back to the ‘Old Country’. For the more unfortunate travellers and seamen, the Notarial documents can also unveil the means of death and places of burial that were left unknown to this day.

4 Subject and theme

The Archive of the Amsterdam Notaries contains the development of any subject and theme imaginable in daily or professional life. Many studies are written on numerous subjects documented in this large archive. A small selection of the subjects:  Possessions, both private en corporate. 6

 Guilds, trading, cultural and scientifical networks.  Economic and financial history. Assurance, investing, influence on stock market movements.  Maritime history. Ship building, Contracts regarding routes and cargo, ownership of ships or parts of ships, the routes, detailed stories in case of damage to ship or cargo.  Petit Histoire and Social history. Eyewitness reports of neighbours disputes, pub brawls, and other kinds of socially unaccepted behaviour; detailed descriptions of public places.  Evolution of the Notarial practice.

5 Form and style

One of the most interesting aspects of the Archive of the Amsterdam Notaries is the fact that notaries in specific forms of deeds literally wrote down what their clients said to them. Due to this practice it provides an enormous corpus of ‘written oral’ language of Amsterdam of the 17th and 18th centuries. This is not limited to the language of the upper class. On the contrary, there are many witness reports of troubles and fights, including inter alia a great corpus of slang and invectives from all layers of society and from all cultures living in the metropolis Amsterdam. The written words are neither limited to the Dutch language. Merchants from all over the world were stationed in Amsterdam and they requested a notarial deed in their own language. So in the Archive of the Amsterdam Notaries we find documents in German, French, English, Italian, Latin, Norwegian, Spanish and Portuguese. Notarial deeds needed to be complete and dated, but there was no instruction regarding form and style of the contents. For practical reasons, specific kinds of notarial deeds were formulated and formatted in uniform ways; some of the Amsterdam Notaries even used pre-written and pre-stamped forms. The same formats were sometimes used for decades. Digitisation and improved accessibility of the Archive can provide the breeding ground for (international) comparative research into the spreading and unification of notarial jargon, forms and style.

6 Social/ spiritual/ community significance:

Containing life events and the origins of millions of world citizens, the Archive of the Amsterdam Notaries holds the key for many in search of their family ancestry. It therefore has living significance for genealogists worldwide in general, and, for instance, persons with Jewish roots in particular. Also research into the history of the trade in and the lives of enslaved Africans has a significant emotional hold on people who are alive today. And, not to our surprise, masses of information are being found in the Archive of the Amsterdam Notaries. Documents on thousands of slave ships from Africa to the Americas and more than 200 plantations in , Berbice and other West-Indian colonies have been identified so far. Among the more formal and almost statistical documents, there are some that are especially moving. For instance witnesses telling about physical and sexual abuse of the enslaved Africans aboard the slave ships. But also eyewitness reports of slave uprising can be found. Needless to say, the notarial deeds reporting slave trade have a direct social significance to descendants of slaves, but also play their part in current society where the black pages of the Dutch slave trade and colonisation are felt to this day.

6.0 Contextual information

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6.1 Rarity

Many City Archives host notarial archives. An archive of notaries as such is not rare. What is rare is the size and scale of the whole. It is the combination of its huge extent with the way in which notarial practice in Amsterdam was conducted with considerable importance attached to it by the Amsterdam city government, and with the historical worldwide importance of the city of Amsterdam in past centuries, that makes the Archive of the Amsterdam Notaries so extremely rare and valuable for worldwide historical research.

6.2 Integrity

The contents of the Archive of the Amsterdam Notaries have not been altered; both authenticity and integrity are guaranteed. See also 5.1 Authenticity and 3.4 Provenance.

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