A Brill Calendar: July 18

Few organizations may be compared to the Dutch East India Company VOC.

It was founded on March 20 1602 in order to curb cut-throat competition between Dutch cities in South-Eastern Asia; and disbanded by a decree of the Batavian Republic, successor to the Republic of the Seven United Provinces on March 18 1798, with all properties, assets and debts going over to the new regime. Only some half dozen European countries embarked as seriously to develop and maintain mercantile and commercial posts and plantations across the world’s oceans.

With an organizational longevity like the one of VOC, it is seldom that its founding spirit remains unchanged or ‘true to itself’. It may be expected that there just isn’t a ‘self’ to be true to. The VOC has been portrayed as a wild bunch of ruthless robbers; and as paragon of far-seeing entrepreneurial initiative. Both sides of the contrast still find advocates in the third millennium; including a Prime Minister of the Kingdom of The Netherlands...

However, in this sea of time it is seldom that one meets a ‘rara avis’ like Joannes Camphuys (Haarlem, Holland July 18 1634 – Batavia, Java July 18 1695). He seems a serene Joseph amidst his no-nonsense VOC brethren. Camphuys departed to Java in 1653: an adolescent who quickly rose through the ranks of the hierarchy to become, for seven years, Governor-General. Without his support a scholar like the German surgeon Engelbrecht Kaemfer (1651 – 1716), couldn’t have earned his Leyden Doctorate in 1693, following his seminal study of Indonesian flora.

Camphuys’s administration marks a brief epoch of VOC history in which harsh suppression during three preceding generations abated and seemed to resemble peace and prosperity for both white and coloured folk.