Dutch historian tracing forgotten Chinese migrants overseas

"Between 2001 and 2011, my colleagues at the Leiden University History department and I trained some 90 students from all over Asia towards an MA in History, and some 30 towards a PhD. Almost all of these young Asian historians have returned to teaching positions in Asia, and continue to collaborate with each other, creating new intra-Asian connections between Asian universities," said Blusse.

This teaching project came to his mind just before the VOC commemorated its 400th anniversary in 2002.

When asked to write booklets about Dutch relations with Asian countries, Blusse decided "those books should be written by people from those countries" and he made the necessary entrepreneurial arrangements with the Dutch authorities to get scholarships for young Asian scholars, and to enable them to use the VOC archives.

During its peak, the Dutch East India Company had more than 30 bases in Asia. Nowadays, about 1.5 km of VOC archives is preserved in National Archives in the Netherlands. A large part of the accountancy material was destroyed at the beginning of the 19th century, but the most important part, namely the reportage from Asia to Europe and the other way around, has been preserved.

There is even more material in Jakarta, but a large part consists of notarial archives and the archives have suffered a lot from the tropical climate. The complete archive of the VOC office at Deshima in Japan was transferred to The Hague at the end of the 19th century. Other smaller collections have been preserved in Sri Lanka and India.

"In his delightful book 'Europe and the people without history,' US author Eric Wolfe showed how it is possible and necessary to call attention to the history of peoples who may not have recorded their own histories and/or ended up as losers in the 'generally accepted popular version' of the official historical narrative. I myself have been surprised by how nowadays almost forgotten individuals/tribes/peoples often have acted as important actors in the past," said Blusse.

"The VOC archive can be studied from the point of view of the history of the company or of Dutch overseas expansion, as most Dutch historians have done. But, when reading against the grain, one may learn an awful lot of interesting information about Asian societies themselves," said Blusse.

"Given the fact that Asian archives yield very little economic data, combining those VOC materials with Asian data yields very surprising results. There is still so much to do."

"I still want to write two or three books if possible. But I think it is also our task to teach the young people. You could decide to make yourself known to the world as a famous writer then you must have all the qualities to do so and you have to be egoistic. But you could also decide that you are a professor and you have to help the others -- this is what those professors in Asia were doing for me, and it is exactly what I am doing for my students now," said the professor.