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. 2017 Jun 30;44(1):62–91. doi: 10.1177/0376983617712811

The Dutch East India Company through the Local Lens

Exploring the Dynamics of Indo-Dutch Relations in Seventeenth Century Bengal

Byapti Sur 1,✉
PMCID: PMC6187071  PMID: 30369711

The Dutch East India Company (VOC) shared a history of two hundred years of coexistence with the locals in Bengal. And yet their official reports had little to say about this relation, except frequent complaints against the locals and the accompanying, inherent distrust. There has been, however, a significant amount of historiography that has developed in the recent decades on Indo-Dutch contacts based on the information available in the sources. This article aims to add more nuances to these dynamics, by showing how the Company and its officials were seen by the locals in Bengal. It argues that the local–Dutch relation had not just been about static characterisations of ‘partnership’, ‘cooperation’ or ‘conflict’, but was rather dependant on personal networks and profit motives backed by diverse social positions. The Dutch in the perception of the locals had different meanings, images and implications. Through the study of three objects—local texts, a Dutch painting and a legal case—this article aims to capture precisely these very perceptions in contributing towards the complex of Indo-Dutch interactions in seventeenth century Bengal.

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