tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/dutch-east-india-company-7894/articlesDutch East India Company – The Conversation2022-09-08T15:34:11Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1894142022-09-08T15:34:11Z2022-09-08T15:34:11ZClimate change: colonial diaries in South Africa are helping scientists reconstruct weather patterns of the past to protect against future events<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/482956/original/file-20220906-22-vnb2ru.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A copy of the VOC's registers for April 1789. These daily registers contained rich detail - including about the weather.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Tracing History Trust</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The current climate crisis raises many questions. Some are forward-looking: how can this be fixed? Some look to the recent past: how did we get here? And some reach further back into history: are today’s extreme heat waves, catastrophic droughts and floods all due to climate change? Was climate and weather this bad 100 or a few hundred years ago?</p>
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<p>For scientists to answer those last two questions, they need to consult reliable instrumental weather records. But these only go back a few decades for many regions of Africa. The continent’s longest continuous single station weather record is that of the South African Astronomical Observatory in Cape Town, starting in 1841. <a href="https://rmets.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/joc.6314">This record shows</a> that rainfall has gradually declined since about 1900. </p>
<p>Yet, it also demonstrates that while Cape Town’s 2015-2017 drought was severe, it was little different from a much earlier drought (1930-1939). Looking even further back could help to create a more complete, nuanced picture of weather and climatic shifts in Cape Town. But given the absence of instrumental weather records prior to the 19th century – or during times well before human-induced accelerated global warming – this hasn’t been possible.</p>
<p>Now some answers are being provided by what seems at first glance an unlikely source: a massive project to photograph and transcribe daily registers kept by the Vereenigde Oost Indische Compagnie (VOC), or <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Dutch-East-India-Company">Dutch East India Company</a>, between 1651 and 1795. </p>
<p>All of the trading company’s activity in the Cape Colony was carefully documented in the VOC’s <em>daghregisters</em>, its daily registers or journals. Since 2016, these detailed records, held by the <a href="http://www.nationalarchives.gov.za">Cape Town Archives</a> and <a href="https://www.nationaalarchief.nl/">Nationaal Archief</a> in The Hague, have been photographed and digitised by the non-profit <a href="http://www.tracinghistorytrust.co.za/">Tracing History Trust</a>. By 2021, 2.5 million words had been transcribed for the VC Daghregister Project. </p>
<p>As we outline in <a href="https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/bams/103/8/BAMS-D-21-0127.1.xml">a recent research paper</a>, the digitised records are a treasure trove for climate scientists. They represent the longest and oldest known corporate chronicle of near-continuous daily weather recording for the southern hemisphere. </p>
<p>Here’s what we’ve learned from them so far – and what they may have to teach us about current and future climate.</p>
<h2>Detailed entries</h2>
<p>The VOC had a monopoly on shipping trade between what is today the Netherlands and southeast Asia through Indian Ocean trade routes at the end of the 16th century. By the mid-17th century, the company realised it needed a permanent reprovisioning and resting station. Table Bay at the Cape was deemed the most suitable. <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/johan-anthoniszoon-jan-van-riebeeck">Jan van Riebeeck</a> was then commissioned to establish the settlement as the first governor at the Cape from 1652. </p>
<p>Daily journal entries were written by trained scribes in a relatively informal style. The language used was an older version of modern Dutch of the Netherlands and Flanders, and also of Afrikaans, which evolved as a South African language from such early Dutch.</p>
<p>The register entries detail a wide range of human activity: trade, politics, diet, health, diplomacy, religion, governance and so on. They also contain environmental observations, such as daily weather phenomena. Daily weather observations were written into the registers in a consistent and systematic manner. Particular attention was given to sub-daily wind direction and force, which was important to shipping. </p>
<p>Other regular observations included precipitation (rainfall, hail, snow) and conditions of the sky (cloudiness, visibility). Extreme events such as violent storms, gale force winds, exceptionally hot or cold conditions, flooding and drought were noted and at times elaborated on with detail on human, agricultural, infrastructural, and environmental consequences and responses.</p>
<h2>Historical climate extremes</h2>
<p>Our <a href="https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/bams/103/8/BAMS-D-21-0127.1.xml">initial investigation</a> focused on the period 1773 to 1791. We outlined extreme inter-annual climate variability ranging from the highest number of annual rain days on record and flooding in 1787, to severe drought in 1788. Temperatures must have also been highly variable. Even though we do not have thermometer values, anecdotal accounts regularly speak of “excessive heat” during summer and icy winter conditions. </p>
<p>It is clear that society had to cope with “wild weather” and climate extremes during historical times. But coping mechanisms were not advanced and so societal suffering was often considerable – the weather records also provide valuable context to notable historic events such as shipwrecks and chronic food shortages. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/482957/original/file-20220906-14-51rjed.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/482957/original/file-20220906-14-51rjed.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=722&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/482957/original/file-20220906-14-51rjed.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=722&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/482957/original/file-20220906-14-51rjed.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=722&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/482957/original/file-20220906-14-51rjed.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=907&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/482957/original/file-20220906-14-51rjed.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=907&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/482957/original/file-20220906-14-51rjed.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=907&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Vergaan van schepen aan de Kaap de Goede Hoop, 1693, by Jan Luyken: Illustration of the stormy Cape weather.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Rijksmuseum</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This is not the end of our research; the records hold far more information from which we can learn about the Cape’s historical climate and weather. Our ongoing work aims to extend the climate chronology back to 1652 and establish the causes of climate variability and extreme weather during the 17th and 18th centuries. If we are better able to identify the drivers of past climate variability and extreme events, it will benefit our modelling of projected future climate scenarios and assist in forecasting expected short-term (the next few months) weather conditions.</p>
<p><em>All the transcriptions of the VC Daghregister Project will be made available in the public domain on a website to be hosted by the <a href="https://www.nationaalarchief.nl/en">Nationaal Archief Nederland</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/189414/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stefan Grab does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A project to transcribe Dutch colonial records of the weather in Cape Town can benefit modelling of future climate scenarios and assist in forecasting weather now.Stefan Grab, Professor of Historical climate and weather, University of the WitwatersrandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1157992019-04-22T01:40:55Z2019-04-22T01:40:55ZWho are Sri Lanka’s Christians?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/270227/original/file-20190421-28087-1rkuczv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Sri Lankan army soldiers secure the area around St. Anthony's Shrine after a blast in Colombo.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Sri-Lanka-Church-Blasts/5d962ce8ec5549c3943c31a63763dea7/50/0">AP Photo/ Rohan Karunarathne</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://www.vox.com/2019/4/21/18509739/sri-lanka-easter-sunday-attacks-terrorist">Nearly 300 people</a> were killed in several coordinated bomb attacks on churches and hotels in Sri Lanka on Easter. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/coordinated-explosions-rock-three-churches-and-two-hotels-in-sri-lanka-on-easter-sunday/2019/04/21/a09002a0-63f6-11e9-9ff2-abc984dc9eec_story.html?utm_term=.b5661d90c749">Several Christian communities</a> spread across the island nation were targeted in the attack: Suicide bombers detonated one set of bombs at churches in the cities of <a href="http://citypopulation.info/php/srilanka-prov-admin.php?adm2id=11">Colombo</a> and <a href="https://lanka.com/about/destinations/negombo/">Negombo</a> on the western coast, home to many <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Sinhalese">Sinhalese</a>-speaking Catholics. Another was detonated in a Protestant church 200 miles away – in Batticaloa, a city in the <a href="https://minorityrights.org/minorities/tamils/">Tamil</a> majority eastern side of the island. </p>
<p>As a Catholic religious studies researcher and professor, I lived in Sri Lanka in the fall of 2013 and did <a href="https://www.catholicsandcultures.org/sri-lanka">research</a> on Catholicism in both the southwest and northern parts of the country. Approximately, <a href="http://www.statistics.gov.lk/Abstract2016/CHAP2/2.13.pdf">7%</a> of Sri Lanka’s 21 million are Christian. The majority of them are Roman Catholic. </p>
<p>Sri Lanka’s Christians have a long history that reflects the dynamics of colonialism as well as present-day ethnic and religious tensions.</p>
<h2>Entry of Catholicism</h2>
<p>It was Portuguese colonialism that opened the door for Roman Catholicism into the island nation. </p>
<p>In 1505, the Portuguese came to Ceylon, as Sri Lanka was then called, in a trade agreement with King <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=Nn0oAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA304&lpg=PA304&dq=vira+parakrama+vii&source=bl&ots=7MmUgTn-SL&sig=ACfU3U2wz-GeNxmrALEjk-ZgJrpgIqpekA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiL9pfskuLhAhUQT6wKHVimC_IQ6AEwD3oECAgQAQ#v=onepage&q=vira%20parakrama%20vii&f=false">Vira Parakramabahu VII</a> and later intervened in succession struggles in local kingdoms. Among those converted included Don Juan Dharmapala, the king of Kotte, a small kingdom near present-day Colombo on Sri Lanka’s southwestern coast. </p>
<p>Later, when the Dutch and the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Dutch-East-India-Company">Dutch East India Company</a> displaced the Portuguese, Roman Catholicism was revived through the efforts of <a href="https://www.omiworld.org/our-charism/our-saints/non-oblate-causes/saint-joseph-vaz-1651-1711/biography/">St. Joseph Vaz</a>. </p>
<p>Vaz was a priest from <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=4bkhsEdK_YsC&pg=PA184&lpg=PA184&dq=goa+mathew+schmalz&source=bl&ots=X84zZIZVga&sig=ACfU3U1u_oAYDYZeoaQXW3EPl08zBLljtA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiM6vjFlOLhAhVCM6wKHd4sDH0Q6AEwAnoECAcQAQ#v=onepage&q=goa%20mathew%20schmalz&f=false">Goa</a>, Portugal’s colony in India, and arrived in Sri Lanka in 1687. Popular <a href="https://www.omiworld.org/our-charism/our-saints/non-oblate-causes/saint-joseph-vaz-1651-1711/biography/">folklore</a> credits Vaz with a number of miracles, such as bringing rain during a drought and taming a rogue elephant. <a href="http://www.ncregister.com/daily-news/pope-francis-canonized-first-sri-lankan-saint">Pope Francis made Joseph Vaz</a> a saint in 2015.</p>
<p>By 1948, when Sri Lanka gained <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UosArxZtK_c">independence from Great Britain</a>, Catholics had established a distinct identity. For example, Catholics would display the papal flag along with Sri Lanka’s national flag during independence day celebrations. </p>
<p>But tensions rose in 1960 when the Sri Lankan government compromised the Catholic Church’s independence by <a href="http://www.srilankaguardian.org/2011/01/schools-take-over-attempted-1962-coup.html">taking over church schools</a>. </p>
<p>In 1962, there was an attempted <a href="http://dbsjeyaraj.com/dbsj/archives/1250">coup</a> by Catholic and Protestant Sri Lankan army officers to overthrow the government of then prime minister <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Sirimavo-Bandaranaike">Sirimavo Bandaranaike</a>, allegedly in response to increased Buddhist presence in the military. </p>
<h2>Ethnic and religious divides</h2>
<p>The 25-year-long <a href="https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/sri-lankan-conflict">Sri Lankan Civil War</a>, starting in 1983, divided the Catholic community. </p>
<p>The war was fought against the government by the <a href="http://web.stanford.edu/group/mappingmilitants/cgi-bin/groups/view/225">Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, or LTTE</a>, who sought a separate state for Sri Lanka’s Tamil community in the northern and eastern parts of the island. </p>
<p>The rebels included Catholics in military positions. But, the Sri Lankan army also had Christian members holding leadership ranks.</p>
<p>Catholic bishops from Tamil and Sinhalese areas could not develop a coherent response to the conflict. They would not even agree on recommending a <a href="https://iias.asia/sites/default/files/IIAS_NL69_17.pdf">ceasefire during the Christmas season</a>. </p>
<p>Recent years have seen the <a href="https://www.palgrave.com/br/book/9783030035167">rise of militant forms</a> of Buddhism in Sri Lanka and Christians have been among <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/04/21/whats-behind-the-terrorist-attacks-in-sri-lanka/">its targets</a>. For example, the ultra-nationalist Buddhist organization, the <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2014/07/17/world/asia/sri-lanka-bodu-bala-sena-profile/index.html">Bodu Bala Sena</a> (also known as Buddhist Power Force) demanded that Pope Francis apologize for the “<a href="https://catholicherald.co.uk/issues/january-2nd-2015/sri-lankas-not-so-tranquil-buddhists/">atrocities</a>” committed by colonial powers. </p>
<p>While being Catholic and being Sri Lankan are not considered to be contradictions, Catholicism in Sri Lanka still struggles with its colonial past.</p>
<h2>Part of global Catholicism</h2>
<p>At the same time, Catholicism has a strong cultural presence in the country. </p>
<p>For example, in the North, there is a large pilgrimage site, <a href="https://www.americamagazine.org/voices/mathew-n-schmalz">Madhu</a>, dedicated to the Virgin Mary, which Pope Francis <a href="http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/travels/2015/outside/documents/papa-francesco-sri-lanka-filippine-2015.html">visited in 2015</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/270228/original/file-20190421-28116-k6f68i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/270228/original/file-20190421-28116-k6f68i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/270228/original/file-20190421-28116-k6f68i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/270228/original/file-20190421-28116-k6f68i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/270228/original/file-20190421-28116-k6f68i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=528&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/270228/original/file-20190421-28116-k6f68i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=528&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/270228/original/file-20190421-28116-k6f68i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=528&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Pope Francis in Colombo in 2015.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Sri-Lanka-Pope-Asia/69cb677d1a00447ea178b2e0bce7a542/112/0">AP Photo/Saurabh Das</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>There is also an internationally known healing and prayer center, <a href="https://www.catholicsandcultures.org/sri-lanka/kudagama-shrine-and-retreat-center">Kudagama</a>, northwest of the Buddhist holy city of <a href="https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/450">Kandy</a>.</p>
<p>Sri Lankan Catholics have also become prominent in global Catholicism. The cardinal archbishop of the capital Colombo, Malcolm Ranjith, was mentioned as <a href="https://www.ncronline.org/blogs/ncr-today/papabile-day-men-who-could-be-pope-9">papabile</a>, or candidate for pope, prior to the conclave that eventually elected Pope Francis.</p>
<h2>Protestants of Sri Lanka</h2>
<p>Sri Lanka’s Protestant community is quite small, constituting only 1% of Sri Lanka’s population. Like Catholicism, it was through colonialism that Protestant Christianity gained a foothold on the island. With <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00856409608723276?journalCode=csas20">Dutch traders and governmental officers came Calvinism</a> and Protestant missionaries who worked in Sri Lanka’s coastal areas. </p>
<p>While Calvinist Protestantism declined under British colonial rule, there was a revival in the Tamil-speaking northern areas of the island. The <a href="https://www.globalministries.org/church_of_the_american_ceylon">American Ceylon Mission</a> began in 1813 and established a number of medical dispensaries and schools. <a href="https://www.colombotelegraph.com/index.php/reflections-on-the-history-of-jaffna-college/">Jaffna College</a>, opened in 1872, remains an important Protestant educational institution that still has ties to America.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/270226/original/file-20190421-28113-xv85r4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/270226/original/file-20190421-28113-xv85r4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/270226/original/file-20190421-28113-xv85r4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/270226/original/file-20190421-28113-xv85r4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/270226/original/file-20190421-28113-xv85r4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/270226/original/file-20190421-28113-xv85r4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/270226/original/file-20190421-28113-xv85r4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">St. Sebastian’s Church, the site of a blast, in Negombo.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/APTOPIX-Sri-Lanka-Church-Blasts/f5fae49c624941018524369f76321228/2/0">AP Photo/Chamila Karunarathne</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The churches in Negombo, where I did research work and where one of the attacks took place, are <a href="https://www.catholicsandcultures.org/sri-lanka/introduction">beautiful Renaissance and Baroque-style structures</a> that are centers of activity throughout the day. Not only are there daily masses, but Catholics often come to light candles and pray to the saints. During worship ceremonies, women wear veils as was the Catholic tradition in the West until the mid-20th century. </p>
<p>Shrines to the Virgin Mary are a common sight on Negombo’s roads along with arches decorated with coconuts, which are the usual markers of a parish festival and procession. In honor of this Catholic culture, Negombo is popularly called “<a href="http://www.sundayobserver.lk/2018/11/11/yv/negombo-little-rome">Little Rome</a>.”</p>
<p>But now this “Little Rome” – with its beautiful churches, beaches, and lagoon – will also be known as the site of a horrific act of anti-Christian violence.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/115799/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mathew Schmalz does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Suicide bombers struck Sri Lanka’s churches and hotels on Easter Sunday, killing and injuring hundreds of people. Seven percent of Sri Lanka’s population is Christian – most of them Roman Catholics.Mathew Schmalz, Associate Professor of Religion, College of the Holy CrossLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/996162018-07-10T15:14:00Z2018-07-10T15:14:00ZWho is more powerful – states or corporations?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/226745/original/file-20180709-122265-iolpwb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">World party. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-illustration/world-conference-business-meeting-eight-seat-53537059?src=WRHu4vXWG3vatTyd9rHDIA-1-0">ktsdesign</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Who holds the power in international politics? Most people would probably say it’s the largest states in the global system. The current landscape of international relations seems to affirm this intuition: new <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/23340460.2015.960184">Russian geopolitics</a>, “<a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/president-donald-j-trumps-foreign-policy-puts-america-first/">America First</a>” and <a href="https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/11/china-lead-globalization-after-united-states/">Chinese</a> state-led global expansion, among others, seem to put state power back in charge after decades of globalisation. </p>
<p>Yet multinationals like Apple and Starbucks still wield phenomenal power. They oversee huge supply chains, sell products all over the world, and <a href="http://fortune.com/2018/04/25/apple-tim-cook-trump-trade-war/">help mould</a> international <a href="https://www.wiley.com/en-us/The+Political+Power+of+Global+Corporations-p-9780745698458">politics</a> to their interests. In some respects, multinationals have governments at their beck and call – witness their <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-buck-stops-elsewhere-how-corporate-power-trumps-politics-41992">consistent success</a> at dodging tax payments. So when it comes to international politics, are states really calling the shots?</p>
<p>We compare states and corporations based on how deep their pockets are. The following table ranks the 100 largest corporations and countries on the basis of their revenues in 2016. Revenues in the case of states is mainly collected taxes. </p>
<p>States occupy the top rankings, with the US first followed by China and Japan (the eurozone ranks first with more than US$5,600 billion if we treat it as a single political entity). But plenty of corporations are on par with some of the largest economies in the world: Walmart exceeds Spain and Australia, for example. Of the top 100 revenue generators, our ranking shows 71 are corporations.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/226707/original/file-20180709-122268-pnm2se.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/226707/original/file-20180709-122268-pnm2se.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/226707/original/file-20180709-122268-pnm2se.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=842&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/226707/original/file-20180709-122268-pnm2se.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=842&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/226707/original/file-20180709-122268-pnm2se.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=842&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/226707/original/file-20180709-122268-pnm2se.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1058&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/226707/original/file-20180709-122268-pnm2se.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1058&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/226707/original/file-20180709-122268-pnm2se.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1058&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Authors’ calculation based on Forbes Fortune Global 500 list 2017 and.
CIA World Factbook 2017.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Fichtner/Babic/Heeskerk</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Notice also that the top ranked corporations follow the same nationality-order as states: America’s Walmart is followed by three Chinese firms. There are already 14 Chinese firms in the top 100, though the US has 27. </p>
<p>Our comparison is necessarily crude, but suggests that besides the very largest states, the economic power of corporations and states is essentially on par. This prompted us to try and rethink corporate power in international politics in a <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03932729.2017.1389151">recent paper</a>. We argued that globalisation has brought about a global structure in which state power is not the exclusive governing principle anymore. </p>
<p>Just think about the private and public power of global giants like Google or Apple. When Donald Trump <a href="http://fortune.com/2018/04/25/apple-tim-cook-trump-trade-war/">recently met</a> Apple chief executive Tim Cook to discuss how a trade war with China would affect Apple’s interests, it demonstrated that the leading multinationals are political actors, not bystanders. </p>
<p>There always existed big and powerful global corporations – the <a href="https://theculturetrip.com/europe/the-netherlands/articles/a-brief-history-of-the-dutch-east-india-company/">Dutch East India Company</a> dominated European trade in the 1600s and 1700s, for instance. But global corporations’ current power position vis-à-vis other actors is unprecedented in terms of sheer size and volume.</p>
<h2>How global power works</h2>
<p>State power did not disappear with globalisation, but it transformed. It now competes with corporations for influence and political power. States use corporations and vice versa, as the following two examples illustrate: offshore finance and transnational state-owned enterprises. </p>
<p>To start with offshore finance, global corporations use different jurisdictions to avoid being taxed or regulated in their home country. Lost taxes due to profit shifting <a href="https://www.taxjustice.net/2017/03/22/new-estimates-tax-avoidance-multinationals/">could be</a> as high as US$500 billion globally. When states position themselves as tax havens, they undermine the ability of “onshore” states to tax corporations and wealthy individuals – a cornerstone of state power. </p>
<p>Besides tax havens, numerous EU governments have become notorious for offering “<a href="https://www.somo.nl/eus-secret-sweetheart-tax-deals-with-multinational-corporations-soar-to-record-numbers/">sweetheart deals</a>” that reduce the tax burden for specific multinationals to an astonishing extent. Also, our <a href="http://corpnet.uva.nl">CORPNET</a> research group at the University of Amsterdam recently <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-06322-9">identified</a> five countries <a href="https://theconversation.com/these-five-countries-are-conduits-for-the-worlds-biggest-tax-havens-79555">who play</a> an important additional role in facilitating tax avoidance: the UK, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Ireland and Singapore. Each enables multinationals to shift investments at minimum cost between tax havens and onshore states. </p>
<p>Turning to our second example, states have grown as global corporate owners in recent years. They <a href="http://www.toknowpress.net/ISBN/978-961-6914-13-0/papers/ML15-353.pdf">now control</a> almost one quarter of the Fortune Global 500. By investing in state-owned enterprises beyond their borders, states gain strategic leverage vis-à-vis other states or actors – Russia’s <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/21/nord-stream-2-ukraine-concerned-russia-could-attack-its-gas-pipeline-analyst-says.html">gas pipeline holdings</a> via Gazprom in eastern Europe are a good example. This has led some observers to <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/state-capitalism-9780199385706?cc=nl&lang=en&">diagnose</a> a potential transformation of the liberal world order through “state capitalism”. </p>
<p>The below diagram shows the aggregated numbers of transnational state-owned enterprises or TSOEs owned by each country. The nodes represent states as owners: the bigger and darker a node, the more companies it owns outside its borders (click on the picture if you want to make it bigger). </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/226724/original/file-20180709-122280-nurlha.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/226724/original/file-20180709-122280-nurlha.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/226724/original/file-20180709-122280-nurlha.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=312&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/226724/original/file-20180709-122280-nurlha.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=312&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/226724/original/file-20180709-122280-nurlha.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=312&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/226724/original/file-20180709-122280-nurlha.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/226724/original/file-20180709-122280-nurlha.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/226724/original/file-20180709-122280-nurlha.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Authors’ illustration based on data from Bureau van Dijk’s ORBIS database.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">https://www.bvdinfo.com/nl-nl/our-products/company-information/international-products/orbis</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Notice the paramount position of China (CN), which controls over 1,000 TSOEs, including the likes of Sinopec and ICBC China. Countries like France (FR) and Germany (DE) are also prominent owners, but their connections to China highlight that they are targets of TSOE investment, too. </p>
<p>It starts to become apparent that international relations are anything but a one-sided story of either state or corporate power. Globalisation has changed the rules of the game, empowering corporations but bringing back state power through new transnational state-corporate relations. International relations has become a giant three-dimensional chess game with states and corporations as intertwined actors. </p>
<p>This transformation of the global environment is probably here to stay and even accelerate. Washington <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-zte/u-s-ban-on-sales-to-chinas-zte-opens-fresh-front-as-tensions-escalate-idUSKBN1HN1P1">recently blocked</a> the large Chinese telecommunications manufacturer ZTE from access to critical American suppliers, for example. It did this to gain advantage in trade negotiations with Beijing. The Chinese Sovereign Wealth Fund then <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-14/china-wealth-fund-sells-out-of-blackstone-stake-held-since-ipo">withdrew</a> its longstanding investment in the American Blackstone Group following Trump’s push for economic sanctions on China. </p>
<p>We live in an era where the interplay between state and corporate power shapes the reality of international relations more than ever. In combination with the current nationalist and protectionist backlash in large parts of the world, this may yet lead to a revival of global rivalries: states using corporations to achieve geopolitical goals in an increasingly hostile environment, and powerful corporations perhaps using more aggressive strategies to extract profits in response. If this is where we’re heading, it could have a lasting impact on the world order.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/99616/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Milan Babic receives funding from the European Research Council under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Eelke Heemskerk receives funding from the European Research Council under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme).</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jan Fichtner receives funding from the European Research Council under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme.</span></em></p>Walmart is bigger than Spain, Berkshire Hathaway is bigger than Russia. It could be time to rethink international relations.Milan Babic, Doctoral Researcher, University of AmsterdamEelke Heemskerk, Associate Professor Political Science, University of AmsterdamJan Fichtner, Postdoctoral Researcher in Political Science, University of AmsterdamLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/874292017-11-14T19:11:35Z2017-11-14T19:11:35ZRembrandt, capitalism and great art: the Dutch golden age comes to Sydney<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/194462/original/file-20171114-27607-yjl60s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn 'Self-portrait as the apostle Paul' 1661 (detail)</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Rijksmuseum, de Bruijn-van der Leeuw Bequest, Muri, Switzerland</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In 1962, when I was a child caught in the crowd looking at the Treasures of Woburn Abbey exhibition at Sydney’s David Jones department store, a painting of a child spoke to me – Rembrandt’s portrait of his sister Elizabeth leaning against a gate. I marvelled at the way the paint defined the expression on her face and brush strokes shaped the gold of her hair. The beauty of the painting and the way the paint evoked both mood and form changed the way I saw the world.</p>
<p>Sydneysiders again have a rare opportunity to see a number of paintings and etchings by Rembrandt in <a href="https://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/exhibitions/rembrandt/?gclid=CjwKCAiAoqXQBRA8EiwAIIOWsjGcIOJoi7EtLGl5XfUr6H0P8aSU56IkxynAeI2iv2ObZC09vBfHqxoCy7YQAvD_BwE">Rembrandt & the Dutch Golden Age</a> at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. </p>
<p>In 1962 it was enterprising fundraiser, the Duke of Bedford, who brought his work to Sydney. Crowds flocked to the exhibition as it gave the local population what they yearned for – the real presence of old master paintings, the kind of art that is seen in Europe, the US, and Melbourne – but never Sydney. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/194519/original/file-20171114-27612-7hujk8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/194519/original/file-20171114-27612-7hujk8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/194519/original/file-20171114-27612-7hujk8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=708&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194519/original/file-20171114-27612-7hujk8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=708&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194519/original/file-20171114-27612-7hujk8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=708&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194519/original/file-20171114-27612-7hujk8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=889&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194519/original/file-20171114-27612-7hujk8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=889&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194519/original/file-20171114-27612-7hujk8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=889&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Pieter de Ring, ‘Still life with golden goblet’ 1650–60 oil on canvas, 100 x 85 cm.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Rijksmuseum</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The National Gallery of Victoria has benefited from generous bequests and the work of Rembrandt scholar <a href="https://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/essay/obituary-ursula-hoff-ao-obe-1909-2005/">Dr Ursula Hoff</a>, leading to several Rembrandt-inspired exhibitions visiting Australia, although none came to Sydney. With a restricted budget and more academic older collection, the the kind of curatorial partnerships that Melbourne does with ease were simply not available to the Art Gallery of New South Wales.</p>
<p>So it is very much to Michael Brand’s credit that as director of the NSW gallery he has forged close relationships with other art museums to consciously balance out the gaps in the collection. Two years ago he negotiated <a href="https://theconversation.com/masterpieces-from-scotland-is-easily-the-greatest-exhibition-of-old-master-works-to-visit-sydney-51038">The Greats</a> which exhibited some of the most significant works from the National Gallery of Scotland. Now it is the turn of the Dutch. </p>
<h2>The art of merchants</h2>
<p>It is impossible to walk through the exhibition without being aware of possible subtexts. The Dutch culture of the 17th century was predicated on trade, on the possession and accumulation of material wealth for conspicuous consumption.</p>
<p>Rembrandt & the Dutch Golden Age is an exhibition in part to promote and encourage visits to the Netherlands and the <a href="https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en?lang=en&gclid=CjwKCAiAoqXQBRA8EiwAIIOWslfB_klb0wbS334NfNHRL4lgi7z1OeBkzpCJ5yG2ishjGPfzOmdQRRoCRWIQAvD_BwE">Rijksmuseum</a> in Amsterdam, and also to remind the world of the material and cultural debt modern capitalism owes to those early world traders and explorers. </p>
<p>It is easy to draw parallels between the comfortable materialism and speculative behaviour of 17th century Holland and 21st century Australia. However, to see this solely as the celebration of the art of an acquisitive society flush with funds is to sell it short. </p>
<p>It does however begin with a room honouring the people – the black clad Protestant merchant class, who made sure their sober clothing was made of the finest fabric and decorated with exquisite lace. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/194459/original/file-20171114-27595-ta6cl4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/194459/original/file-20171114-27595-ta6cl4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/194459/original/file-20171114-27595-ta6cl4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=801&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194459/original/file-20171114-27595-ta6cl4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=801&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194459/original/file-20171114-27595-ta6cl4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=801&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194459/original/file-20171114-27595-ta6cl4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1007&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194459/original/file-20171114-27595-ta6cl4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1007&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194459/original/file-20171114-27595-ta6cl4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1007&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Frans Hals, ‘Portrait of Feyntje van Steenkiste’ (c1603/04-1640) 1635 oil on canvas, 121.9 x 91.5 cm.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Rijksmuseum, on loan from the City of Amsterdam</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It is unfortunate that Frans Hals’ superb partner portraits of the merchant Lucas de Clercq and his wife are displayed separated by Jan de Bray’s large group portrait of the artist governors of the Guild of St Luke, Haarlem. The guilds worked as artists’ professional organisations, controlling training and ensuring that lucrative commissions only went to their members.</p>
<p>The exhibition progresses to the source of the merchants’ wealth – the Dutch mastery of the seas and the subsequent spice trade to the East Indies. Ludolf Bakhuizen’s Warships in a heavy storm evokes the power of the sea, the threatening clouds and the fragility of sail. </p>
<p>The painting that best summarises the Dutch attitude to its remote possessions is Aelbert Cuyp’s portrait, A senior merchant of the Dutch East India Company and his wife, in the background the fleet in the roads of Batavia. They dominate the foreground, protected from the heat by a Javanese servant who holds a parasol. He gestures with his stick to the distant (and therefore smaller) ships and harbor, his possessions.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/194460/original/file-20171114-27585-8yqzuh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/194460/original/file-20171114-27585-8yqzuh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/194460/original/file-20171114-27585-8yqzuh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194460/original/file-20171114-27585-8yqzuh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194460/original/file-20171114-27585-8yqzuh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194460/original/file-20171114-27585-8yqzuh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194460/original/file-20171114-27585-8yqzuh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194460/original/file-20171114-27585-8yqzuh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ludolf Bakhuizen, Warships in a heavy storm c1695, oil on canvas, 150 x 227 cm.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Rijksmuseum, purchased with the support of the Vereniging Rembrandt</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Most Dutch did not travel so far, but their new affluence meant they could buy art. They lived in cities and valued small-scale paintings of landscapes with figures such as Jacob van Ruisdael’s Landscape with a waterfall, a work that implies the fierceness of nature, something to be admired from a distance.</p>
<p>This was a culture of city dwellers. Some were poor, as seen in Gabriel Metsu’s The herring-seller, contrasting youth and old age, with light and dark. Jan Steen’s The merry homecoming, which shows the return of a drunken boating party, manages to combine moral censure with comedy.</p>
<h2>Vermeer and Rembrandt</h2>
<p>One of the great glories of Dutch art is Vermeer’s Woman reading a letter, and this painting alone is a reason to visit. It hangs in solitude, a small quiet piece of perfection. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/194457/original/file-20171114-27573-1oj6md7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/194457/original/file-20171114-27573-1oj6md7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/194457/original/file-20171114-27573-1oj6md7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=717&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194457/original/file-20171114-27573-1oj6md7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=717&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194457/original/file-20171114-27573-1oj6md7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=717&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194457/original/file-20171114-27573-1oj6md7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=902&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194457/original/file-20171114-27573-1oj6md7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=902&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194457/original/file-20171114-27573-1oj6md7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=902&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Johannes Vermeer, ‘Woman reading a Letter’ 1663, oil on canvas, 46.5 x 39 cm.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Rijksmuseum, on loan from the City of Amsterdam (A. van der Hoop Bequest)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The painting is well known in reproduction, but the real thing tells the viewer more. As with all Vermeer’s work, Woman reading a letter appears at first to be deceptively simple – a young woman, possibly pregnant, painted in profile, mouth open, reading. Every element combines to create a sense of harmony. </p>
<p>The map hanging on the wall behind her is placed so as to create a Golden Section, that harmonious proportion first admired by the Greeks – but it also tells of a world beyond the domestic sphere where she may not go. The luminous blue of her jacket is echoed in the flesh tones of her arms as her hands grip the paper. That luminosity is heightened by the darker dulled blues of the chairs and map frame. The generous clean curves of her clothing and the light on her body is emphasised by the dark crumpled cloth in the foreground. It is a truly magnificent work of art.</p>
<p>The room dedicated to Rembrandt seems almost a lesser experience after looking at Vermeer. This is perhaps unfair as it is well installed and does give a sense of Rembrandt’s range from the early Two old men disputing, on loan from the National Gallery of Victoria, to the late interrogation of his Self-portrait as the Apostle Paul. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/194456/original/file-20171114-27625-17o3jev.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/194456/original/file-20171114-27625-17o3jev.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/194456/original/file-20171114-27625-17o3jev.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=708&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194456/original/file-20171114-27625-17o3jev.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=708&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194456/original/file-20171114-27625-17o3jev.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=708&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194456/original/file-20171114-27625-17o3jev.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=890&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194456/original/file-20171114-27625-17o3jev.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=890&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194456/original/file-20171114-27625-17o3jev.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=890&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn ‘Self-portrait as the apostle Paul’ 1661 oil on canvas, 91 x 77 cm.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Rijksmuseum, de Bruijn-van der Leeuw Bequest, Muri, Switzerland</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As he aged Rembrandt’s self-portraits became increasingly reflective. Paint shapes the form as his self-questioning face emerges from the dark. This is the only time Rembrandt painted himself as a Biblical figure, the sword and the manuscript identifying the subject as Paul. He shows the Apostle in prison, bars at the back, considering his life and work, awaiting his fate.</p>
<p>The exhibition includes a small selection of some of Rembrandt’s best known etchings, including two states of The three crosses, so that visitors can see how he gouged into the plate as he progressively darkened the Biblical narrative.</p>
<h2>The power of great art</h2>
<p>For all their culture of conspicuous consumption, the Dutch were aware of the fragility of life. The final room shows exquisite flower paintings and an opulent Still life with golden goblet by Pieter de Ring. The final word, however, goes to Aelbert Jansz van der Schoor’s Vanitas still life, a collection of skulls and bones, which is to be the fate of all.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/194455/original/file-20171114-27612-q2e8ic.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/194455/original/file-20171114-27612-q2e8ic.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/194455/original/file-20171114-27612-q2e8ic.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=524&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194455/original/file-20171114-27612-q2e8ic.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=524&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194455/original/file-20171114-27612-q2e8ic.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=524&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194455/original/file-20171114-27612-q2e8ic.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=658&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194455/original/file-20171114-27612-q2e8ic.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=658&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/194455/original/file-20171114-27612-q2e8ic.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=658&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Aelbert Jansz van der Schoor ‘Vanitas still life’ c1660–65, oil on canvas, 63.5 x 73 cm.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Rijksmuseum</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In purely transactional terms, exhibitions such as Rembrandt & the Dutch Golden Age are events of mutual benefit. The lender charges a significant fee as well as promoting their institution as a tourist destination, while holding a major event or exhibition makes the host a local tourist destination. </p>
<p>This is why Destinations NSW is the major sponsor for the Art Gallery of New South Wales’ summer exhibitions and why, at the exhibition opening, the Minister for the Arts, Don Harwin, described the benefit of this and other exhibitions as a tourist industry driven accumulator of wealth. </p>
<p>To see Rembrandt & the Dutch Golden Age as a lucrative adjunct to the tourism industry sells it short. The real value of great art is that individual works can reach out and make a lasting connection with the viewer so that suddenly the world is seen in a different way.</p>
<p>I hope that some of those who visit Rembrandt & the Dutch Golden Age this summer remember to take a child with them. Exposure to great art, painted on a human scale, may change the direction of her life, as it did mine in 1962.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/87429/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Joanna Mendelssohn has in the past received funding from the Australian Research Council.</span></em></p>Rembrandt & the Dutch Golden Age, a major new exhibition, is the first of its kind to visit Sydney. The title is something of a misnomer – the centrepiece is a stunning work by Vermeer.Joanna Mendelssohn, Honorary Associate Professor, Art & Design: UNSW Australia. Editor in Chief, Design and Art of Australia Online, UNSW SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/842692017-10-11T19:17:38Z2017-10-11T19:17:38ZPicturing the unimaginable: a new look at the wreck of the Batavia<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/189694/original/file-20171011-13137-15fo98l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Paul Uhlmann, Batavia 4th June 1629 (night of my sickness), 2017, oil on canvas (detail, one of three panels).</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Courtesy of the artist</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Before dawn on the morning of June 4 1629, the Batavia, a ship of the Dutch East India Company, struck a reef at the Abrolhos Islands, some 70 kilometres off the Western Australian coast. More than seven months earlier the ship had left the Netherlands to make its way to the city of Batavia (present-day Jakarta), carrying silver, gold and jewels and 341 passengers and crew. During the shipwreck, 40 of them drowned. The others found safety on a nearby island. </p>
<p>Since there was no fresh water on the island they would name Batavia’s Graveyard (now Beacon Island), Commander Pelsaert and about 45 others took a longboat in search of water on the mainland. Unsuccessful in his search, Pelsaert decided to sail on to the city of Batavia to get help. By the time he returned in mid-September, the followers of Jeronimus Cornelisz, the man he had left in charge, had murdered 115 men, women and children. </p>
<p>It was not just the extent of the killings that shocked Pelsaert, but also their sheer cruelty: victims had been repeatedly stabbed, had their throats slit with blunt knifes, or their heads split with an axe. In his account of the events, Pelsaert tried to comprehend what had happened. No Christian man could ever have done this. It had to be the work of the devil.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188904/original/file-20171005-21992-1ypylt4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188904/original/file-20171005-21992-1ypylt4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188904/original/file-20171005-21992-1ypylt4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188904/original/file-20171005-21992-1ypylt4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188904/original/file-20171005-21992-1ypylt4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=464&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188904/original/file-20171005-21992-1ypylt4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=584&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188904/original/file-20171005-21992-1ypylt4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=584&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188904/original/file-20171005-21992-1ypylt4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=584&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ongeluckige Voyagie, Van t Schip Batavia, nae Oost-Indien. State Library of Western Australia.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">State Library of Western Australia</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Mutiny, shipwreck, treasures, brutal murders and a “happy” ending for the 116 people who survived: it all sounds like the script for a Hollywood movie. No wonder then that <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-03-29/russell-crowe-buys-rights-to-batavia-book-island-of-angry-ghosts/7282468">Russell Crowe has bought the rights to Hugh Edwards’s novel Island of Angry Ghosts</a>, which recounts the shipwreck and its rediscovery in 1963. The Batavia’s tragic tale has inspired novels, a stage play, songs, an opera, a musical and radio dramas, and is now the subject of an <a href="http://www.lwgallery.uwa.edu.au/exhibitions/batavia">exhibition combining art and science</a> at the Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery at the University of Western Australia. </p>
<h2>Retelling the Batavia horrors</h2>
<p>Within a few months of the shipwreck, the first short accounts appeared in print in the Netherlands. In 1647 these were followed by the publication of Pelsaert’s notes under the title <em><a href="http://purl.slwa.wa.gov.au/slwa_b1660729_7">Ongeluckige Voyagie, Van ‘t Schip Batavia</a></em>.
Unsurprisingly, Pelsaert’s sensational eyewitness account proved a considerable success. It was republished several times over the following decades. </p>
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<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Beacon Island in the Abrolhos Islands, site of the Batavia wreck.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Guy de la Bedoyere/Wikimedia</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The gruesome Abrolhos murders somewhat faded from view during the 18th and early 19th centuries. But by the 1890s they had re-entered the public imagination, not least because Perth’s Western Mail chose, somewhat curiously, its Christmas issue (1897) to publish <a href="https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Western_Mail/24_December_1897/The_Abrolhos_tragedy">a full English translation of Pelsaert’s account</a>.</p>
<p>Since then there have been numerous novels and retellings of the tale. Bruce Beresford directed a <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1791649/?ref_=nm_flmg_dr_41">1973 TV movie</a>. Many stories have been accompanied by illustrations. But the wreck has provoked surprisingly little response from visual artists. </p>
<h2>Meditating on mortality</h2>
<p>In the new exhibition, two Perth-based artists, Robert Cleworth and Paul Uhlmann, collaborated with a team of archaeologists from the University of Western Australia, who recently excavated several new burials of the murder victims on Beacon Island. The exhibition features a presentation of these recent digs and projections of the grave sites alongside works by Cleworth and Uhlmann. By referencing skeletons and skulls, the two artists create new forms of contemporary <em>memento mori</em>, or artworks that remind us we all must die.</p>
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<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Paul Uhlmann, Batavia 4th June 1629 (night of my sickness), 2017, oil on canvas (detail, one of three panels).</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Courtesy of the artist</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Much of the work on display is inspired by the art and life of Johannes Torrentius, a Dutch painter convicted in 1628 for his alleged blasphemy, heresy and Satanism. Although not aboard the Batavia, Torrentius was widely believed to have inspired Cornelisz in his gruesome deeds. </p>
<p>Besides his heretical statements on religion, Torrentius had offended Dutch Calvinists with a number of bawdy pictures. All of these transgressive works were destroyed, yet titles such as A Woman Pissing in a Man’s Ear give some indication of their subject matter. </p>
<p>Ironically, the only Torrentius painting to have survived is an allegorical still life that warns against immoderate behaviour. During his lifetime, the painter would have created numerous <em>vanitas</em> paintings, works that address life’s vanities, assisted by a camera obscura, a darkened box in which a lens projects an external image – a forerunner to our modern cameras. </p>
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<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Paul Uhlmann, Batavia skull (camera obscura I), 2015, photo print on aluminium.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Courtesy of the artist.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Uhlmann has used the same device to create a triptych of photo prints that show the skull of one of the Batavia murder victims from three different angles. The skull, recovered in 1964, was missing a small bone fragment, the result of a blow to the head. This fragment was unearthed during the latest excavations. Uhlmann has used both the skill and the fragment in his study to demonstrate the impermanence of life and the transience of the skull.</p>
<p>Skulls also feature prominently in the paintings on display by Cleworth, and not just skulls of humans but also that of a wallaby. The skull testifies to the hunger and hardship of the victims: wallabies were not indigenous to Beacon Island and must have been brought there by the shipwreck survivors. This is another example of how art and science are brought together in this show.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188939/original/file-20171005-9750-1a4l7vw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188939/original/file-20171005-9750-1a4l7vw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188939/original/file-20171005-9750-1a4l7vw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=792&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188939/original/file-20171005-9750-1a4l7vw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=792&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188939/original/file-20171005-9750-1a4l7vw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=792&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188939/original/file-20171005-9750-1a4l7vw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=995&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188939/original/file-20171005-9750-1a4l7vw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=995&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/188939/original/file-20171005-9750-1a4l7vw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=995&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Robert Cleworth, memento mori - two hands, 2017, oil on panel.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Courtesy of the artist</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>A second painting by Cleworth shows two hands hovering in front of a deep-blue background. The broad brushstrokes evoke the sea surrounding the islands. The hands are those of the lead mutineer, Cornelisz. </p>
<p>Somewhat ironically, no one died by these hands during the reign of terror. Cornelisz had ordered his cronies to kill, rather than committing the murders himself. Nevertheless, when Pelsaert returned to Batavia’s Graveyard and immediately dispensed justice, he ordered Cornelisz’s hands be chopped off before he was hanged on the gallows.</p>
<p>These artworks don’t simply retell the story of the Batavia and its cruel aftermath. They explore the nexus of art and science, using processes similar to those of the 17th century. They not only offer reflections on the unimaginable cruelty that took place four centuries ago, but provoke a new reading of past events.</p>
<hr>
<p><em><a href="http://www.lwgallery.uwa.edu.au/exhibitions/batavia">Batavia: Giving Voice to the Voiceless</a> is at the Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery until December 9 2017.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/84269/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Arvi Wattel does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The shipwreck of the Batavia and subsequent murders of 115 men, women and children have inspired many retellings. A new exhibition combines art and science to find new angles on an old tale.Arvi Wattel, Lecturer, UWA School of Design, The University of Western AustraliaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/431942015-06-17T04:35:56Z2015-06-17T04:35:56ZThe story of East Africa’s role in the transatlantic slave trade<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/85028/original/image-20150615-5838-a7kcp0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A sailor walking among African captives in the hold of a slave ship. From the book Revelations of a Slave Smuggler published in 1860.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Foundation essay: This article is part of a series marking the launch of The Conversation in Africa. Our foundation essays are longer than usual and take a wider look at key issues.</em></p>
<p>The recent discovery of the remains of the Portuguese slave ship <a href="http://www.iziko.org.za/news/entry/shipwreck-discovery-provides-insight-on-transatlantic-slave-trade">São José</a> off Cape Town has brought East Africa’s role in the transatlantic <a href="http://www.unesco.org/new/en/culture/themes/dialogue/the-slave-route/transatlantic-slave-trade/">slave trade</a> to public attention. But the São José was merely one of a large number of slave vessels that either rounded the Cape or put into Table Bay for refreshment.</p>
<p>The sinking of the São José two days after Christmas in <a href="http://www.iziko.org.za/news/entry/shipwreck-discovery-provides-insight-on-transatlantic-slave-trade">1794</a> marked the end of a bad year for the slave trade at the Cape of Good Hope. In April that year, a second vessel, the French ship Jardinière, had gone down off Cape Agulhas. Around 185 slaves had reached shore but many had then escaped or had died of their exertions. Only 125 were finally auctioned at Stellenbosch.</p>
<p>In France, the republicans had outlawed slavery and the slave trade. In Britain, a chorus was rising in many parts of the country in opposition to a trade that wrenched 80,000 people every year from their homes in Africa and brought them to the Americas.</p>
<h2>Slave rebellions</h2>
<p>After a decade of peace, Britain and France were once again at <a href="http://www.dwr.org.uk/dwr.php?id=64&pa=52">war</a> and ships laden with slaves were a prime target for both warships and privateers. All this made a bad situation only worse as the major market for East African slaves was in a state of high rebellion. Slaves had <a href="http://www.blackpast.org/gah/haitian-revolution-1791-1804">taken over</a> large parts of St Domingue, an island in the West Indies that, a decade later, would become the independent republic of Haiti. </p>
<p>The plundering and burning of the sugar plantations in France’s wealthiest colony had destroyed the established market for East African slaves in the Americas. The Sao José was thus a pioneer, hoping to find a new market for East African slaves in Brazil. This was no easy matter, as traders in Angola and the Congo monopolised the sale of slaves to Portuguese America.</p>
<p>East Africa was a late participant in the <a href="http://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/ism/slavery/">transatlantic slave trade</a>. It was only in the 1770s that a regular trade in slaves to the French islands of <a href="http://www.infoplease.com/country/mauritius.html">Mauritius</a> and <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-14114856">Réunion</a> began from points on the East African coast. Small numbers of slaves had been carried around the Cape for more than a century. But as planters on St Domingue cried out for labour, this trade became more profitable and systematic, particularly as the French king agreed to subsidise the shipment of slaves to the island.</p>
<p>West-Central Africa <a href="http://www.slavevoyages.org/tast/assessment/essays-intro-06.faces">bore the brunt</a> of this demand. But as the price of slaves rose, traders looked further afield for their human merchandise. So, although it took around 120 days to get from Mozambique to St Domingue, and almost 30% of slaves died on this long Middle Passage, it quickly became a profitable route.</p>
<p>A triangular trade developed as ships sailed from French ports such as Bordeaux and Nantes to buy slaves in East Africa. The slaves were then taken to St Domingue and exchanged for tropical produce like sugar, coffee and indigo. The size of these vessels grew in the 1780s and some had the capacity to carry up to 1000 slaves.</p>
<p><a href="http://abolition.e2bn.org/resistance_63.html">Rebellions</a> were frequent and slave ships carried large crews and the firepower needed to suppress any resistance. The East Africa slave trade reached its <a href="http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/slavetrade.htm">peak</a> in 1789-90 when about 46 ships, carrying more than 16,000 slaves, circumnavigated the Cape. Almost all were bound for the sugar and coffee plantations of northern St Domingue.</p>
<p>Many French slavers stopped at the <a href="http://www.capetown.at/heritage/history/explorers_port.htm">Cape</a> during this time as the colony run by the <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/topic/dutch-east-india-company-deicvoc">Dutch East India Company</a> provided them with a break in the long Middle Passage. Ships’ captains often sold part of their human cargo at the Cape to rid them of slaves least able to survive the Atlantic crossing. It also made space for new stocks of fresh food and water.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/85061/original/image-20150615-5829-1skwcrg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/85061/original/image-20150615-5829-1skwcrg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/85061/original/image-20150615-5829-1skwcrg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/85061/original/image-20150615-5829-1skwcrg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/85061/original/image-20150615-5829-1skwcrg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/85061/original/image-20150615-5829-1skwcrg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/85061/original/image-20150615-5829-1skwcrg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Slaves would be locked in the hold of the ship, held by iron shackles.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Cape colony and slavery</h2>
<p>New crewmen could be enlisted at the <a href="http://www.britishempire.co.uk/maproom/capecolony.htm">Cape</a> to replace those who were injured or sick, or who had died or deserted in the tropics. <a href="http://www.capetown.travel/content/page/where-is-cape-town">Cape Town</a> also served as a site at which information could be obtained about the state of the market for slaves on the coast, and from which news about misdemeanours at sea could be forwarded to France for prosecution.</p>
<p>Some French ships sold their entire cargo of slaves at the Cape while others provided the settlement with sugar, coffee and rice, and an assortment of commodities, most notably ivory and gold, to be shipped northwards to Europe.</p>
<p>Perhaps most importantly, slaves could go ashore and exercise at the Cape before embarking on the gruelling transatlantic leg of the crossing. Dutch East India Company officials disliked this as they saw slaves as carriers of small pox and other diseases and feared that, once ashore, slaves could escape official controls and be sold illegally. </p>
<p>Officials were also disturbed by the entry into Cape Town of hundreds of near naked slaves, many of them diseased or infirm. The first leg of the long Middle Passage, from <a href="http://www.nationsencyclopedia.com/economies/Africa/Mozambique.html">Mozambique</a> to Cape Town, lasted around 35 days and resulted in a high mortality rate. Emaciated and exhausted captives failed to adapt to their conditions of incarceration.</p>
<p>Many slaves had been seized or sold deep in the interior. They arrived on the coast in a condition that became increasingly desperate when they were locked in the hold of the ship as it patrolled the coast for weeks or months looking to buy slaves. Jammed into <a href="http://africanhistory.about.com/od/slaveryimages/ig/Slavery-Images-Gallery/SlaveShipBrookes.htm">slave decks</a> often scarcely a metre high, held by iron shackles, and kept in a naked condition to prevent the proliferation of lice, slave ships had the look of floating dungeons.</p>
<p>Forced to consume unfamiliar food and weakened by their exertions, many slaves contracted intestinal infections or the dysentery that drained them of their last reserves of energy. Unable to wash or oil the skin, they were prey to the flies that carry craw craw, a malady that induces severe inflammation of the skin and sometimes river blindness.</p>
<h2>Dutch ease slave monopoly</h2>
<p>The slave uprising that started in northern St Domingue in <a href="http://www.marxist.com/slave-revolution-saint-domingue151204.htm">August 1791</a> tolled the end of this French trade in people. A year later, in an act of desperation, the Dutch East India Company abandoned its monopolistic hold on trade and allowed individuals to bring slaves to the Cape for sale.</p>
<p>The São José was perhaps an early product of this new liberal attitude to trade. But it was only two years later, once the British had taken hold of the Cape, that a cosmopolitan group of merchants at Mozambique Island opened a new trade in slaves with the Americas, this time with both Rio de Janeiro and the Spanish vice-royalty at Rio de la Plata. </p>
<p>The British eventually <a href="http://abolition.nypl.org/home/">outlawed</a> the importation of slaves to the Cape in 1808 and initiated a policy of freeing slaves in the colony. As such, close to 10,000 slaves were liberated at the Cape. They worked alongside the descendants of another 30,000 shipped to the colony from Madagascar and mainland Africa and an equal number of earlier arrivals from south Asia and the Indonesian archipelago. </p>
<p>Despite the ban on importing slaves, vessels carrying this human cargo continued to dock off Cape Town until 1824, when this practice was finally prohibited. This left the Cape with a number of families that had benefited from slavery and the slave trade. But it also left the colony with a far larger population of slaves who, after their <a href="http://www.saylor.org/site/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/Slavery-Abolition-Act-1833.pdf">emancipation</a> in 1833, would have to take charge of their lives and build a future for their descendants.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/43194/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Patrick Harries receives funding from Institut des etudes avancees, Nantes, France</span></em></p>The Portuguese slave ship São José, which sank off Cape Town, was one of many vessels that either rounded the Cape or pulled into Table Bay for refreshment during the Transatlantic slave trade.Patrick Harries, Emeritus Professor, University of BaselLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/200802013-11-21T19:14:40Z2013-11-21T19:14:40ZAustralians might speak Dutch if not for strong emotions<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/35010/original/8ygmgf9z-1384234055.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Unrealistic expectations raised early explorers' hopes beyond all possibility.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Larry W. Lo </span></span></figcaption></figure><p>How did Australia, the mysterious southern continent that had captured European imaginations since ancient times, slip from the grasp of the Dutch?</p>
<p>Four hundred years ago, the <a href="http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/174523/Dutch-East-India-Company">Dutch East India Company</a> – the most powerful business in the world – was trading all across the Indian Ocean and had its Asian headquarters in Java. And yet the most hard-headed businessmen of the age saw little value in pursuing trade and settlement in Australia.</p>
<p>The Dutch East India Company (often called the VOC, the initials of its name in Dutch) was set up in 1602 to help Dutch traders and explorers work together to find and supply spices across the world. Historians see the VOC as the world’s first multinational. </p>
<p>The company had trading posts in Africa and Asia and employed more than 30,000 people – at a time when there were only about 2 million Dutch altogether.</p>
<p>So why didn’t they set up in Australia too?</p>
<h2>Seeking riches in the great ‘Southland’</h2>
<p>The Dutch were looking for anything that could make them a profit, not just back home but also between ports in Asia. They also needed bases where they could refresh their supplies and workforce from Europe, across the Indian Ocean, to Batavia (modern-day Jakarta).</p>
<p>The Dutch knew for sure about a southern land from the time of <a href="http://www.duyfken.com/original-duyfken">the Duyfken</a>, a ship that encountered Australia in 1606, and they set to work investigating what the new land had to offer. </p>
<p>The 17th-century mariner <a href="http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/hartog-dirk-12968">Dirk Hartog</a> made a claim in 1616 but the VOC never made a settlement here. Why?</p>
<p>In short, unrealistic expectations raised hopes beyond all possibility. The great “Southland” had long been fabled to be overflowing with gold and peopled with giants – and, for all their practicality, the directors of the VOC hoped such tales might be true.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/35002/original/2bp39rvv-1384230610.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/35002/original/2bp39rvv-1384230610.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/35002/original/2bp39rvv-1384230610.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/35002/original/2bp39rvv-1384230610.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/35002/original/2bp39rvv-1384230610.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/35002/original/2bp39rvv-1384230610.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/35002/original/2bp39rvv-1384230610.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A Dutch East India Company merchant ship.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia commons.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>When Dutch explorer <a href="http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/vlamingh-willem-de-2760">Willem de Vlamingh</a> landed close to what would later become Perth on his 1696-7 mission in the Geelvinck, his crew brought news of a little hut and 18-inch footsteps they had found. </p>
<p>But when in the morning the group retraced their steps to the hut, they found “the 18 inch footsteps changed into ordinary ones”.</p>
<p>As to gold, <a href="http://www.tanap.net/content/about/heritage.cfm">VOC instructions</a> required crews to look out for riches: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Certain parts of this South-land are likely to yield gold, a point into which you will enquire as carefully as possible.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>They were also to get to know the local inhabitants. What might they have, what might they want, and what would they be willing to trade for it? </p>
<p><a href="http://museum.wa.gov.au/maritime-archaeology-db/sites/default/files/no._077_dutch_references_-_wrecks.pdf">Instructions from the Governor-General and Council</a> to the ships sent to search for the shipwrecked <a href="http://museum.wa.gov.au/maritime-archaeology-db/strangers-on-the-shore/vergulde-draeck">Vergulde Draeck</a>, lost in 1656 near the mouth of the Moore River, were told to observe Indigenous people’s “ornaments”, taking particular note:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>of what such objects are composed, whether they use any gold, silver or other metal, to see what they may be able and willing to exchange for these which could yield profit for the Company.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>But most returned to Batavia profoundly disappointed by the unfamiliar and seemingly barren landscape of the Western Australian coastline.</p>
<h2>The shock of a new coastline</h2>
<p>Vlamingh, in his detailed 1696-7 voyage along the coast, was scarcely more hopeful. His men had brought back <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/gardening/stories/s1866549.htm">Zamia Palm nuts</a> which had made them all violently ill. </p>
<p>The council in Batavia sent samples of flora along with their conclusions to the managers in the Amsterdam Chamber at the end of Vlamingh’s travels: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>[all of it] of little value and decidedly inferior to what elsewhere in India may be found of the same description … they have found little beyond an arid, barren and wild land, both near the shore and so far as they have been inland, without meeting with any human beings, though now and then they have seen fires from afar, some of the men fancying that two or three times they have seen a number of naked blacks, whom however they have never been able to come near to, or to come to parley with; nor have they found there any peculiar animals or bird.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/35003/original/gxm9w2wq-1384230811.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/35003/original/gxm9w2wq-1384230811.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=535&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/35003/original/gxm9w2wq-1384230811.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=535&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/35003/original/gxm9w2wq-1384230811.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=535&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/35003/original/gxm9w2wq-1384230811.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=672&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/35003/original/gxm9w2wq-1384230811.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=672&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/35003/original/gxm9w2wq-1384230811.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=672&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The dock of the Dutch East India Company at Amsterdam.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Even when contemporaries argued that the south-west of Australia offered huge potential as a stepping stone to Asia, and would also be perfect for wine-making, VOC officials refused to contemplate it. </p>
<p>In 1718, <a href="http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/27568252?uid=3737536&uid=2&uid=4&sid=21102905635467">Swiss civil servant and entrepreneur Jean-Pierre Purry</a> went as far as to warn the VOC governors not to let their emotions hinder what was a logical place to settle: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>It is only one third as far as from here to our Cape. It would be much better to make our cellar and our attic here than elsewhere. If there are any insurmountable objections, I confess I have not seen them. </p>
<p>All I have been able to learn is that there is little hope that treasures may be found in this vast land and that some have experienced the ferocity of its people. This is why these coasts have not been settled … these reasons are not good ones. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Purry insisted: “The country is neither worse nor more evil for that and this should not dissuade us”. In essence: don’t let this opportunity slip through your fingers just because it didn’t live up to your unrealistic expectations.</p>
<h2>Defeated by the landscape and people</h2>
<p>So perhaps the Dutch weren’t always the determined traders and rational businessmen they are made out to be in the textbooks. Was it really good business sense or actually greed and excitement turned to disappointment, dashed hopes, and resentment towards the continent’s land and peoples that governed their decision? </p>
<p>Analysing those emotions is key to our nation’s story.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/20080/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Susan Broomhall receives funding from the Australian Research Council.</span></em></p>How did Australia, the mysterious southern continent that had captured European imaginations since ancient times, slip from the grasp of the Dutch? Four hundred years ago, the Dutch East India Company…Susan Broomhall, Winthrop Professor of Early Modern History, The University of Western AustraliaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.