Are There Connections Between the VOC’s Past and Present-Day Java?
Thanks to the collaboration between the Huygens Institute and various organisations, millions of VOC documents have been made available online in recent years. All those old letters, reports and ship’s logs are now accessible to everyone, a huge treasure trove of information about the colonial past.
Together with Erasmus University, the institute wants to spend the next four years investigating what these historical data still mean today. For example, how do the old structures and ideas of the VOC continue to influence modern Java? And what does that say about the way history still influences the present?
With this research, the teams hope not only to better understand how the past lives on, but also to spark new conversations about the shared history between the Netherlands and Indonesia.
Lodewijk Petram of the Huygens Institute explains the goal of the researchers involved in this project on the radio programme Met het Oog op Morgen.
Listen to the interview (Dutch only).
