Title page_Contents_Acknowledgements_Map

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The handle http://hdl.handle.net/1887/29589 holds various files of this Leiden University
dissertation
Author: Kuruppath, Manjusha
Title: Dutch drama and the company’s Orient : a study of representation and its
information circuits, c. 1650-1780
Issue Date: 2014-11-04
Dutch Drama and the
Company’s Orient
A Study of Representation and its Information Circuits, c. 1650-1780
PROEFSCHRIFT
ter verkrijging van
de graad van Doctor aan de Universiteit Leiden,
op gezag van Rector Magnificus prof. mr. C.J.J.M. Stolker,
volgens besluit van het College voor Promoties
te verdedigen op dinsdag 4 november 2014
klokke 10:00 uur
door
Manjusha Kuruppath
geboren te Mudis (Tamil Nadu, India)
in 1984
Promotiecommissie
Promotor:
Prof. dr. J.J.L. Gommans
Overige leden:
Prof. dr. G. Dharampal-Frick (Universiteit Heidelberg)
Prof. dr. J. Pollmann (Universiteit Leiden)
Prof. dr. O.J. Praamstra (Universiteit Leiden)
Dr. A.J.E. Harmsen (Universiteit Leiden)
Cover illustration: Het tooneel van d'Amsterdamsche Schouwburg gesticht in't jaar 1637 en vertimmert in 1665
in Jan de Marre, Het eeuwgetyde van den Amsteldamschen schouwburg (Amsteldam: Izaac Duim, 1738),
Shelfmark 1088 B 13: 1, © Special Collections, Leiden University Library. Note: The original illustration has
been modified to include the insignia of the Dutch East India Company.
Cover design & layout: Mahmood Kooria
© 2014 Manjusha Kuruppath
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this dissertation may
be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means
(electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the written permission of the copyright
owner.
Contents
Acknowledgements
5
Map: Dutch Settlements and Scenes of Action
7
INTRODUCTION
8
Representation and Information Transfer
12
Organization
22
Chapter One: THE REPUBLIC, ITS STAGE, AND ITS EAST INDIA COMPANY
24
Introduction
24
The Dutch East India Company
29
The Dutch East India Company: The Merchant and Manufacturer of Information
32
The Amsterdamsche Schouwburg
48
Dutch Drama and the Orient
52
Chapter Two: WHEN VONDEL LOOKED EASTWARDS: JOOST
VAN DEN VONDEL’S ZUNGCHIN (1667)
58
Introduction
58
“One’s Company, Two’s a Crowd”: Representation in Zungchin
60
Historicity in Vondel’s Zungchin
63
Two Playwrights, One Tale
66
The Benefits of Extensive Reading: Vondel and the Sources for Zungchin
68
Batavian Holidays and Information Packages: Martino Martini and the VOC
70
News Channel Formosa
74
Discourses, Dispositions, Despotisms: Imagining the Middle Kingdom
80
Discerning Oriental Dispositions: Tartar Bloodbaths and Chinese Bookishness
84
Begetting Sinister Children: Benevolent and Oriental Despotisms
90
Arms or Amiability: To Talk or Terrorize the Chinese into Trade
95
The Playwright Sorts and Sieves: Motives behind the Scripting of Zungchin
100
Conclusion
107
Chapter Three: CASTING DESPOTS IN DUTCH DRAMA:
THE CASE OF NADIR SHAH IN VAN STEENWYK’S THAMAS KOELIKAN (1745)
110
Introduction
110
The Plot (The Historical and the Literary)
111
Van Steenwyk, Dryden, and their Sophies
119
Passage to (Mughal) India: Information Transfer and its Resultant Discourses
121
The Mughal Discourse
127
The Company Discourse of the Dutch Factory in Hoogly (Bengal)
129
The European Correspondence
136
The Politics of Representation in Van Steenwyk’s Thamas Koelikan
138
Conclusion
145
Chapter Four: SWIMMING AGAINST THE TIDE:
ONNO ZWIER VAN HAREN’S AGON, SULTHAN VAN BANTAM (1769)
148
Introduction
148
Bad Blood over Banten: The English and Dutch Hostilities in Print
152
Antecedents to Agon’s Anti-Colonial Indictment
157
Accounts of Travel and Travelling Company Correspondence
161
Making the Other’s Business One’s Own: Information Gathering and Intelligence Acquisition
165
Salacious and Sordid Spectacles: Representation of Banten’s Women and Sultan Abdul
169
Anxieties over Apostasy: The Company and Its Renegades
174
The Other Side of the Story: Banten’s View of Batavia
180
Intentions, Influences, and the Inevitable Scholarly Tussles
188
Van Haren, Fence-sitting, and the Other Side
192
Closing in on Van Haren’s Intentions
194
Conclusion
203
CONCLUSION
206
Samenvatting
215
Summary
218
Bibliography
221
Curriculum Vitae
242
Acknowledgements
My tryst with drama began at the early age of four when I landed a role in a nativity play. I
now forget what I was cast as, but I distinctly remember being allotted the role (which came
with no dialogues) only because the organizers were convinced that I could not sing, dance or
act. Subsequent years saw me acting (this time surprisingly with dialogues) in plays ranging
from the Panchantantra to a college production of Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat. It
took a while before realization hit me that I was probably better off writing about the stage
than performing on it. My doctoral thesis will of course be the test of whether my judgement
was a sound one.
My incredible journey of writing this thesis begins and ends in Leiden where, having
spent six years of my life, can easily qualify as my second home. I confess to being far more
familiar with streets and places in Leiden than in any other town. I shall sorely miss walking
down the Rapenburg and catching the sun outside the University Library. The Encompass
Programme was my passport to this town. It gave me the wonderful opportunity of pursuing
my post-graduate and doctoral degrees at the University of Leiden. Professor Jos Gommans
who supervised my Master’s thesis (and consequently was my doctoral supervisor in which
capacity he cannot be thanked as per university regulations) put me on the track of exciting
research, Professor Leonard Blussé and Alicia Schrikker helped me find my feet academically
and my fellow Encompassers provided me with the necessary social distraction. Marijke van
Wissen was friend, financial adviser and mum all rolled in one. Because of her absolute
incapability of turning down a request for help and because of my constant need for advice, I
was almost a permanent fixture in her office. I cannot thank her enough.
Numerous people have helped my thesis assume its present form by reading and
critiquing chapters, providing valuable input, advising me on the format I had to follow or by
patiently listening to me while I discussed my research plans - Lodewijk Wagenaar, Cynthia
Vialle, Murari Kumar Jha, Nadeera Seneviratne, Kate Ekama, Archishman Chaudhuri,
Mahmood Kooria, Lennart Bes, Uji Nugroho, Maretta Kartikasari, Maria Ingrid, Johny
Khushyairy, Cheng Wiechung, Zhongxiao Wang and Pham Van Thuy. I am sorely indebted
to Ton Harmsen for his immeasurable assistance in translating and comprehending many of
the sources used in this thesis. Lodewijk Wagenaar, Cynthia Vialle and Hugo s’Jacobs also
allowed me to exploit their knowledge of the Dutch archives on several occasions over the
past years. I give thanks to Rene Wezel and Yolande Spaans who made learning Dutch an
exciting experience and to C.G. Brouwer for providing valuable guidance when working on
the play Thamas Koelikan. I am grateful to Lincoln Paine for editing this work and making it
far more readable than it previously was. Earlier versions of two chapters in this thesis
appeared as “Casting Despots in Dutch Drama: The Case of Nadir Shah in Van Steenwyk’s
Thamas Koelikan,” Indian Economic and Social History Review, Vol.4, No.2 (April, 2011),
241-286 and “When Vondel Looked Eastwards: A Study of Representation and Information
Transfer in Joost van den Vondel's Zungchin (1667),” in Shifting the Compass:
Pluricontinental Connections in Dutch Colonial and Postcolonial Literature, Jeroen Dewulf,
Olf Praamstra and Michiel van Kempen ed.(Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars
Publishing, 2013), 91-111. I am grateful to the editors of these works for permitting me to
include these articles in my thesis.
I reserve this final space to thank the people I am most indebted to – my friends
Mohana Prabha, Hameeda C.K, Uma S.P. and Manjima Bhadran for being indispensible
sources of entertainment, moral support, and gossip, over Skype; Dr M.N. Rajesh from the
University of Hyderabad for his academic advice which has benefitted me immensely; my
language mate Ana den Boer with whom I spent many evenings bettering my spoken Dutch;
Simon Schmidt, Zhongxiao Wang and Johny Khushyairy for being great friends; Kate Ekama
for being a wonderful flatmate; Archishman Chaudhuri for his good sense of humour and
immense help finding the books and sources I desperately needed in the final stages of my
PhD; Nadeera Seneviratne for her friendship and the million conversations we had on
virtually every topic under the sun, and most of all, Smitha Thamarath Surendran with whom
I spent my happiest times in Leiden jabbering in Malayalam, cooking upma and dosas in the
weekends and watching films at the Pathé. I am grateful to my brother Ramgovind Kuruppath
who I like to genially refer to as my counselor. Having always been a source of inspiration, he
has supported me through thick and thin and has always lent a willing ear to my woes.
Halfway through my PhD, I tied the knot. I had to juggle a long distance marriage with
writing my dissertation. Although this meant constantly filling out visa applications and
waiting long hours in airports, this was virtually a cakewalk. For this, I am ever so grateful to
my husband Anoop Velath Kizaekka for his boundless patience, unstinting support and
infectious optimism. Our son Keshav was born shortly after I submitted my thesis and I look
forward to our lives together. My biggest thanks go to my parents, Divakaran Moorkath and
Soumini Kuruppath for wholeheartedly supporting my academic pursuits and for showing far
greater pride in my accomplishments than I. I can only aspire to return their love in equal
measure.
Map: Dutch Settlements and Scenes of Action

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