Page 22 - Kraak Porcelain, Jorge Welsh

Unlike the Portuguese who traded in Macao and Goa, the Dutch relied more heavily on the
Chinese junk trade in Bantam. This made, however, for a great deal of uncertainty as the
traders were never sure when the Chinese junks would arrive or what they would supply.

Dated evidence of the types of Chinese ceramics available and the quantities brought
back to the Netherlands in these early days of the export trade come from several sources.
Dated evidence comes from archaeological finds from kiln sites in China and from exca-
vations in the countries that imported the porcelain. Another source is the archeological
salvages from numerous shipwrecks. Finally, an extremely important source of dated evi-
dence comes from the cargo lists and other documents in the archives. Nowhere in the
world do such old documents exist in such great quantities. In many ways, they are like a
time capsule o ering insight into the thriving early days of global trade.

The organisation of the consisted of executive managing o cers who formed the
Board of Directors (Heren Zeventien). They represented six main Dutch cities or chambers
(Kamers): Amsterdam, Middelburg, Rotterdam, Del , Enkhuizen and Hoorn. Each cham-
ber was responsible for fitting out their own ships, hiring their own sailors and organizing
their own trading.

With so many ships voyaging back and forth to the East, the chambers of the were
very active and produced a large quantity of paperwork. There was never a central archives
depository. Each of the six chambers, representing the di erent cities, carried out their du-
ties independently with no uniform archives administration. Each chamber saw a er its
own documents and the sheer volume of these documents multiplied at a very fast pace.
For instance, there was a growing stream of paperwork from the octrooigebied (the area
covered by the charter of the Company). In addition, each year returning ships brought
‘incoming’ and ‘outgoing’ documents, including journals, letters, proceedings (resoluties),
diaries (dagregisters) and other documents from the Governor-General and Council in Bat-
avia, as well as from other establishments in Asia and the Cape of Good Hope. Adding to
these great quantities of paperwork, the Heren XVII (the Board of Directors) expected the
Governor-General and the Council to have all important documents sent home to them
copied sixfold, one copy for each chamber. Over the course of history, many of these papers
have been lost or destroyed, but the vast quantity that remain are compiled into the
archives which are open to the public and housed in the National Archives in The Hague.

Documented evidence in the archives
Cargo lists, statements and expenses are among the ‘incoming’ documents. These are docu-
ments that were sent from the headquarters in Asia to the head o ces of the in the
Netherlands. These documents are an important source for understanding the amounts of
porcelain imported to the Netherlands. From them certain deductions can be made about
the early porcelain trade from the East.

For instance, in the first quarter of the th century porcelain was carried to the Nether-
lands only sporadically aboard ships as shown by the invoices of ‘return ships’ which
list irregular amounts.