Shaping a Dutch East Indies

In 1724-1726, the Dutch clergyman François Valentyn published a 5,000-page account of the Dutch East India Company’s empire. It was the first and, for a long time, the only survey of the Dutch establishments in Asia and South Africa. Shaping a Dutch East Indies analyses how Valentyn composed this work and how it largely determined the Dutch perspective on the colonies in Asia until the 1850s. It seeks to highlight both the great diversity of knowledge gathered in Valentyn’s book and its geographical spread, from the Cape of Good Hope to Japan, with a focus on the Indonesian archipelago. Huigen’s book is the first in-depth study of Valentyn’s work, which is a foundational text in the history of Dutch colonialism.

Siegfried Huigen is professor of Dutch Literature at Wrocław University (Poland) and visiting professor of Dutch Literature and Cultural History at Stellenbosch University (South Africa). He has published extensively on the history of colonial knowledge in Asia, Southern Africa and East Central Europe. He recently published East Central Europe between the Colonial and the Postcolonial in the Twentieth Century (2023) with Palgrave as co-editor.

"Shaping a Dutch East Indies serves as a masterful and incisive literary analysis of a seminal work in the history and construction of Dutch colonial knowledge and administrative discourse. Huigen is to be congratulated with revisiting the “thorny issue” of Valentyn’s “Great Work,” complicating and challenging the modern scholarly communis opinio."
- Markus Vink, The State University of New York at Fredonia in International Journal of Asian Studies (2024).

"Huigens boek is verrassend van inhoud en methodiek" (Huigen’s book is refreshing in both content and methodology).
- Coen van ’t Veer, Leiden University, in BMGN Low Countries Historical Review (2024).

"Huigen’s book can be recommended to anyone interested in the history of colonial knowledge production and the transnational world of the VOC."
- Hans Hägerdal, Linnaeus University, in South East Asia Research (2024).