The Treaty of Giyanti divides Mataram under VOC pressure

About 180 Huguenots arrived aboard the Voorschoten. Their settlement added to the European population and agricultural footprint of the VOC colony. The Cape was not vacant: Khoikhoi and San...

French minister Pierre Simond accompanied Huguenot settlers to the Cape under VOC direction. The company promoted a Protestant settler population to develop farming and strengthen its provisioning...

A ship’s infected laundry brought smallpox to the Cape station. The epidemic devastated Khoikhoi communities, while also killing enslaved people and settlers. As communities fled and died, settler...

On 9 October, Dutch authorities and armed colonists began mass violence against Chinese residents of Batavia. The killings followed an escalating crisis shaped by VOC labor controls, deportation...

In a letter to the Society of Suriname, Governor Jan Jacob Mauricius Crommelin argued that colonial troops could not defeat Maroon communities and that peace might save the colony. Maroon...

One month after the Giyanti settlement, Sultan Hamengkubuwono I announced the name Ngayogyakarta Hadiningrat for his half of the former Mataram realm. The new court asserted Javanese political...

Enslaved people at the La Paix timber plantation rose against enslavement. The revolt spread through the Tempati region, with hundreds fleeing plantations and joining Maroon communities. This was an...

The agreement formalized a further division of the Mataram political order. VOC officials mediated and secured influence over Javanese succession, while local princes and courts shaped the...

A report to the Society of Suriname described the revolt and cautioned against alarming investors. The archive exposes how colonial authorities managed information about resistance to protect...

A group of former colonial officials warned the Society of Suriname about the revolt’s scale and the danger to settler property. Their private alarm contrasted with public attempts to reassure...