The journey to the East: 17th and 18th century German travel books as sources of study
E.U. Kratz published this survey in 1981, examining 37 German-language travel books written by employees of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) during the 17th and 18th centuries. The article argues that while these texts have been dismissed by Dutch historiography as inferior to the Linschoten and Hakluyt series, they offer an irreplaceable window into the lived experience of the common European in the archipelago and the cultural encounter between German-speaking travellers and the peoples of Southeast Asia.
Summary
Kratz’s central problem is one of source recovery and revaluation. The German travel books of the VOC era occupied a marginal position in the historiography of the archipelago, overshadowed by the better-known Dutch and British publication series, and no comprehensive register or analytical study of their contents had ever been attempted (p. 63). The author identifies 37 German authors who wrote memoirs, diaries, letters, and compendia about their service, noting that the most prolific writers were not the high-ranking officials but the lower ranks—common soldiers, sailors, coopers, tanners, and bakers—whose books were often less about the exotic East than about how a righteous Christian endures adversity (p. 64). The article traces the geographical and thematic range of these accounts, from the Sunda Straits and Batavia to the Moluccas, West Sumatra, the Leti islands off Timor, and Central Java, showing how the collective testimony of these writers documents the transformation of Batavia from a “beautiful town” into what Wollzogen called “the grave of the Germans” by 1791 (p. 64).
A significant portion of the analysis is devoted to individual texts that Kratz considers particularly valuable. Barchewitz’s 1730 account stands out as the most sustained ethnographic observation, with six years of residence on Leti yielding detailed descriptions of indigenous religion, social structure, and daily life, accompanied by a map and Malay word-list (pp. 70–71). Schwarz’s 1751 book provides one of only two German eyewitness accounts of the 1749 Chinese massacre in Batavia (p. 73). Kratz also examines the books’ treatment of Javanese culture, noting the striking absence of references to Javanese or Sundanese wayang and the minimal attention paid to Malay language, in contrast to the extensive descriptions of Chinese customs in Batavia (pp. 66–67).
Kratz ultimately resists the temptation to treat these books as sources for conventional colonial history. He acknowledges that their historical remarks are “coincidental and serve only to support what is known from other sources” (p. 74). Instead, he repositions them as sources for the history of European mentalities, attitudes, and the social conditions of the common man who made the journey. He identifies three broad typological categories: early casual diaries, sophisticated letters of the educated aristocracy (Wurmbb, Wollzogen), and a third type combining personal narrative with reflective observation, of which Barchewitz is the finest example (p. 76).
Key Findings
- 37 German authors are identified as having written about their VOC service; the earliest German reference to the archipelago is Balthasar Springer’s 1509 account of a Portuguese voyage, and the first German eyewitness travel book is Verken’s 1612 Eylffte Schiffart (pp. 63, 68).
- l’Honore Naber’s 13-volume re-editing series Reisebeschreibungen von deutschen Beamten und Kriegsleuten (1930–31) covers only up to 1712 and omits some of the most interesting texts; its editorial priority was VOC institutional history rather than ethnographic value (p. 63).
- Schwarz (1751) describes the annual burning of surplus spices outside Batavia: a pit was dug, filled with wood, set alight, and spices including nutmeg, cloves, cinnamon, and pepper were carried in sacks and burned, a process that “often lasts fourteen days,” with sentries posted and the death penalty for anyone taking even five or six pounds (p. 73).
- Schwarz and Schroder (1749) are the only German eyewitness accounts of the 1749 Chinese massacre; Schwarz records that after the killings, prices rose tenfold (from one shilling to ten shillings), and when Chinese returned they were hanged in groups of “ten, twenty or thirty” on a gallows erected near the town hall (p. 73–74).
- Barchewitz resided in the archipelago for twelve years (1709–1721), including six years as the VOC’s agent on Leti off Timor, and claims to have converted six Letinese to Christianity while simultaneously observing that the unconverted “acted with more honesty” than those who were converted (pp. 70–71).
- Wollzogen’s 1794 account of an audience at the susuhunan’s palace in Solo records his shock at Javanese servility toward their ruler, yet Kratz notes the irony that Wollzogen and his men had been sold to the VOC by their own sovereign, Duke Karl August of Württemberg (p. 74).
Conclusion
Kratz’s definitive takeaway is that the German travel books, while contributing little to the reconstruction of colonial or Indonesian political history, make a far larger contribution to the “history of the times”—illuminating the social conditions, education, attitudes, and misapprehensions of the people who actually made the journeys, the perils of the voyages, the severe regimen of the common VOC servant, and the moral debates within Europe about the value and necessity of such enterprises (pp. 74–76). He concludes that these books, despite their repetitions and occasional crudity, provide glimpses of Indonesian daily life and cultural patterns whose continuity over four centuries still strikes the modern reader (p. 76).
Context
- The article draws on the re-edited texts in l’Honore Naber’s series and on original editions held in European libraries; Kratz had previously compiled a comprehensive list of all 17th- and 18th-century German publications on Indonesia (Kratz 1978, cited in footnote 2, p. 63).
- Historiographically, the study intervenes in the Dutch-dominated field of VOC history by asserting the independent value of German-language sources, which Coolhaas (1960) had dismissed as inferior to the Linschoten series (p. 63).