Cover Page. The handle holds various files of this Leiden University dissertation

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1 Cover Page The handle holds various files of this Leiden University dissertation Author: Kuruppath, Manjusha Title: Dutch drama and the company s Orient : a study of representation and its information circuits, c Issue Date:

2 Dutch Drama and the Company s Orient A Study of Representation and its Information Circuits, c PROEFSCHRIFT ter verkrijging van de graad van Doctor aan de Universiteit Leiden, op gezag van Rector Magnificus prof. mr. C.J.J.M. Stolker, volgens besluit van het College voor Promoties te verdedigen op dinsdag 4 november 2014 klokke 10:00 uur door Manjusha Kuruppath geboren te Mudis (Tamil Nadu, India) in 1984

3 Promotiecommissie Promotor: Prof. dr. J.J.L. Gommans Overige leden: Prof. dr. G. Dharampal-Frick (Universiteit Heidelberg) Prof. dr. J. Pollmann (Universiteit Leiden) Prof. dr. O.J. Praamstra (Universiteit Leiden) Dr. A.J.E. Harmsen (Universiteit Leiden) Cover illustration: Het tooneel van d'amsterdamsche Schouwburg gesticht in't jaar 1637 en vertimmert in 1665 in Jan de Marre, Het eeuwgetyde van den Amsteldamschen schouwburg (Amsteldam: Izaac Duim, 1738), Shelfmark 1088 B 13: 1, Special Collections, Leiden University Library. Note: The original illustration has been modified to include the insignia of the Dutch East India Company. Cover design & layout: Mahmood Kooria 2014 Manjusha Kuruppath All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this dissertation may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the written permission of the copyright owner.

4 Contents Acknowledgements 5 Map: Dutch Settlements and Scenes of Action 7 INTRODUCTION 8 Representation and Information Transfer 12 Organization 22 Chapter One: THE REPUBLIC, ITS STAGE, AND ITS EAST INDIA COMPANY 24 Introduction 24 The Dutch East India Company 29 The Dutch East India Company: The Merchant and Manufacturer of Information 32 The Amsterdamsche Schouwburg 48 Dutch Drama and the Orient 52 Chapter Two: WHEN VONDEL LOOKED EASTWARDS: JOOST VAN DEN VONDEL S ZUNGCHIN (1667) 58 Introduction 58 One s Company, Two s a Crowd : Representation in Zungchin 60 Historicity in Vondel s Zungchin 63 Two Playwrights, One Tale 66 The Benefits of Extensive Reading: Vondel and the Sources for Zungchin 68 Batavian Holidays and Information Packages: Martino Martini and the VOC 70 News Channel Formosa 74 Discourses, Dispositions, Despotisms: Imagining the Middle Kingdom 80 Discerning Oriental Dispositions: Tartar Bloodbaths and Chinese Bookishness 84 Begetting Sinister Children: Benevolent and Oriental Despotisms 90 Arms or Amiability: To Talk or Terrorize the Chinese into Trade 95 The Playwright Sorts and Sieves: Motives behind the Scripting of Zungchin 100 Conclusion 107 Chapter Three: CASTING DESPOTS IN DUTCH DRAMA: THE CASE OF NADIR SHAH IN VAN STEENWYK S THAMAS KOELIKAN (1745) 110 Introduction 110

5 The Plot (The Historical and the Literary) 111 Van Steenwyk, Dryden, and their Sophies 119 Passage to (Mughal) India: Information Transfer and its Resultant Discourses 121 The Mughal Discourse 127 The Company Discourse of the Dutch Factory in Hoogly (Bengal) 129 The European Correspondence 136 The Politics of Representation in Van Steenwyk s Thamas Koelikan 138 Conclusion 145 Chapter Four: SWIMMING AGAINST THE TIDE: ONNO ZWIER VAN HAREN S AGON, SULTHAN VAN BANTAM (1769) 148 Introduction 148 Bad Blood over Banten: The English and Dutch Hostilities in Print 152 Antecedents to Agon s Anti-Colonial Indictment 157 Accounts of Travel and Travelling Company Correspondence 161 Making the Other s Business One s Own: Information Gathering and Intelligence Acquisition 165 Salacious and Sordid Spectacles: Representation of Banten s Women and Sultan Abdul 169 Anxieties over Apostasy: The Company and Its Renegades 174 The Other Side of the Story: Banten s View of Batavia 180 Intentions, Influences, and the Inevitable Scholarly Tussles 188 Van Haren, Fence-sitting, and the Other Side 192 Closing in on Van Haren s Intentions 194 Conclusion 203 CONCLUSION 206 Samenvatting 215 Summary 218 Bibliography 221 Curriculum Vitae 242

6 Acknowledgements My tryst with drama began at the early age of four when I landed a role in a nativity play. I now forget what I was cast as, but I distinctly remember being allotted the role (which came with no dialogues) only because the organizers were convinced that I could not sing, dance or act. Subsequent years saw me acting (this time surprisingly with dialogues) in plays ranging from the Panchantantra to a college production of Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat. It took a while before realization hit me that I was probably better off writing about the stage than performing on it. My doctoral thesis will of course be the test of whether my judgement was a sound one. My incredible journey of writing this thesis begins and ends in Leiden where, having spent six years of my life, can easily qualify as my second home. I confess to being far more familiar with streets and places in Leiden than in any other town. I shall sorely miss walking down the Rapenburg and catching the sun outside the University Library. The Encompass Programme was my passport to this town. It gave me the wonderful opportunity of pursuing my post-graduate and doctoral degrees at the University of Leiden. Professor Jos Gommans who supervised my Master s thesis (and consequently was my doctoral supervisor in which capacity he cannot be thanked as per university regulations) put me on the track of exciting research, Professor Leonard Blussé and Alicia Schrikker helped me find my feet academically and my fellow Encompassers provided me with the necessary social distraction. Marijke van Wissen was friend, financial adviser and mum all rolled in one. Because of her absolute incapability of turning down a request for help and because of my constant need for advice, I was almost a permanent fixture in her office. I cannot thank her enough. Numerous people have helped my thesis assume its present form by reading and critiquing chapters, providing valuable input, advising me on the format I had to follow or by patiently listening to me while I discussed my research plans - Lodewijk Wagenaar, Cynthia Vialle, Murari Kumar Jha, Nadeera Seneviratne, Kate Ekama, Archishman Chaudhuri, Mahmood Kooria, Lennart Bes, Uji Nugroho, Maretta Kartikasari, Maria Ingrid, Johny Khushyairy, Cheng Wiechung, Zhongxiao Wang and Pham Van Thuy. I am sorely indebted to Ton Harmsen for his immeasurable assistance in translating and comprehending many of the sources used in this thesis. Lodewijk Wagenaar, Cynthia Vialle and Hugo s Jacobs also allowed me to exploit their knowledge of the Dutch archives on several occasions over the past years. I give thanks to Rene Wezel and Yolande Spaans who made learning Dutch an

7 exciting experience and to C.G. Brouwer for providing valuable guidance when working on the play Thamas Koelikan. I am grateful to Lincoln Paine for editing this work and making it far more readable than it previously was. Earlier versions of two chapters in this thesis appeared as Casting Despots in Dutch Drama: The Case of Nadir Shah in Van Steenwyk s Thamas Koelikan, Indian Economic and Social History Review, Vol.4, No.2 (April, 2011), and When Vondel Looked Eastwards: A Study of Representation and Information Transfer in Joost van den Vondel's Zungchin (1667), in Shifting the Compass: Pluricontinental Connections in Dutch Colonial and Postcolonial Literature, Jeroen Dewulf, Olf Praamstra and Michiel van Kempen ed.(newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2013), I am grateful to the editors of these works for permitting me to include these articles in my thesis. I reserve this final space to thank the people I am most indebted to my friends Mohana Prabha, Hameeda C.K, Uma S.P. and Manjima Bhadran for being indispensible sources of entertainment, moral support, and gossip, over Skype; Dr M.N. Rajesh from the University of Hyderabad for his academic advice which has benefitted me immensely; my language mate Ana den Boer with whom I spent many evenings bettering my spoken Dutch; Simon Schmidt, Zhongxiao Wang and Johny Khushyairy for being great friends; Kate Ekama for being a wonderful flatmate; Archishman Chaudhuri for his good sense of humour and immense help finding the books and sources I desperately needed in the final stages of my PhD; Nadeera Seneviratne for her friendship and the million conversations we had on virtually every topic under the sun, and most of all, Smitha Thamarath Surendran with whom I spent my happiest times in Leiden jabbering in Malayalam, cooking upma and dosas in the weekends and watching films at the Pathé. I am grateful to my brother Ramgovind Kuruppath who I like to genially refer to as my counselor. Having always been a source of inspiration, he has supported me through thick and thin and has always lent a willing ear to my woes. Halfway through my PhD, I tied the knot. I had to juggle a long distance marriage with writing my dissertation. Although this meant constantly filling out visa applications and waiting long hours in airports, this was virtually a cakewalk. For this, I am ever so grateful to my husband Anoop Velath Kizaekka for his boundless patience, unstinting support and infectious optimism. Our son Keshav was born shortly after I submitted my thesis and I look forward to our lives together. My biggest thanks go to my parents, Divakaran Moorkath and Soumini Kuruppath for wholeheartedly supporting my academic pursuits and for showing far greater pride in my accomplishments than I. I can only aspire to return their love in equal measure.

8 Map: Dutch Settlements and Scenes of Action