A Brill Calendar: December 24

"Peace on Earth?"

Few calendar days represent in Western traditions an abstract notion as readily as December 24: Christmas Eve, Peace on Earth.

An ideal rather than a reality more often than not; as proved on an island off the Chinese coast of the ‘Pacific’ (sic) Ocean, in 1652. Then still called ‘Formosa’, as its Iberian discoverers named it – ‘the beautiful one’ – the ad-hoc rulers over the domain were the Dutch, operating there for solid profit under the flag of the first ‘multinational’, the VOC, the United East-India Company of Holland. Having ousted their European predecessors in the exploitation in 1624, the VOC controlled Formosa with a sturdy fort, ‘Zeelandia’, and an encampment outside, called ‘Provintiën’ (‘Provinces’).

Earlier that December, Chinese warriors had attacked it, killing as much as eight VOC employees; an act of resistance calling for retaliation and revenge by the white exploiters in order to discourage repetition. The VOC administrator wrote in his complacent statement of account, December 24 1652: “And so, within the time of twelve days, the life of some three to four thousand rebellious Chinese was taken in revenge for spilling the Christian blood of men of the Low Countries.”

It is seldom that absence of any compassion is so sanctimoniously & placidly expressed; at the end of the year that Rembrandt painted a superb portrait of his second wife, Hendrickje Stoffels, the VOC started to build a brand-new fort on the cape of the African continent - after more than half a century of experimenting there with a “half way stop” providing fresh water, live-stock and food for crews on their endless watery road to the spice islands – at the end of the year that the young Republic still ruled the waves, but not very long before that profitable commission in the world at large was reluctantly transferred to Britannia.

‘Peace on Earth’ indeed.