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India

My more than average interest in India and Bangladesh started in early 1978 when I joined UNICEF in Bangladesh as Communication Officer. From Dhaka the first recreation destination Calcutta was only 25 minutes away by flight. We went there for a long weekend every six to eight weeks.

My fascination for Dutch/Indian history started in 1987 with a newspaper cutting send to me by my friend Christiaan Minderhoud with a picture of the remaining walls of a Dutch reformed Church in Chinsura, 40 miles up the river Hooghly from Calcutta. The newspaper was appalled that the Mohsin University was tearing down this Indian – Dutch monument.

VOC archives

From that moment on I started checking the archives about the VOC (United East Indian Company) and reading old travel journals. Now I have 85 titles on the VOC in India. Based on information from those journals and pictures from the 1920s I planned a trip to the various coasts of India to document in slides what is left of these Indian-Dutch monuments. I did this trip on my own in February- March 1989.

"Monuments to Decay and Neglect" is an interesting article on VOC sites in India.

The Atlas Mutual Heritage (AMH) is an amazing data-bank containing a complete survey of VOC settlements and illustrative material of these settlements (maps, paintings, drawings, prints etc.).

Dutch VOC historian Femme S. Gaastra wrote a short introduction on the VOC.

"Towards A New Age of Partnerships" (TANAP) is a new initiative to help digitalise kilometres of archives, remnants of what the Dutch call this global past that lie in wait on sites across Asia, Africa, and Europe. India is part of this research as well. The TANAP site has an interesting short write up on the VOC in India.

The well-known Indian economist-historian Om Prakash gave an interesting interview published in Itinerario 1998/1: The Best of Two Worlds.

Slides on all coasts

I made slides on all coasts and was surprisded about what was still there.
© Dick de Jong, 2007