Extremely rare account on Cornelis de Houtman’s 1595 to 1597 voyage to the East Indies, a pioneering enterprise which initiated Dutch presence in the East Indies and which set the standard for Dutch exploration, being organized by the Company of Distant Lands, the immediate forerunner of the more famous Dutch East India Company, the VOC, established in 1602.
This anonymous, firsthand journal, first published in Dutch as Verhael vande Reyse de Hollandtsche schepen ghedaen naer Oost Indien (Middleburg: Barent Langenes, 1597), was the first printed account describing the voyage. Two versions of the text appeared of which the Verhaelwas the briefer but also the earlier of the two (cf. Rouffaer, De eerste schipvaart der Nederlanders naar Oost-Indië onder Cornelis de Houtman). It was translated into German by Conrad Loew. Two editions of this German edition were printed in Cologne in 1598 for which priority has not been established but both are now extremely rare: four copies of that published by Peter Reschedt are listed in USTC; and no copies of this Bertram Buchholtz imprint are recorded on USTC or elsewhere.
De Houtman’s voyage was motivated by the precariousness of Dutch access, as a result of the Dutch Revolt, to the largely Iberian-controlled spices and bullion markets. The tenuousness of this access to these markets led the Dutch to examine the possibility of sailing directly to the East in their own ships. As a result, De Houtman was sent to Portugal in 1592 to investigate the conduct of the spice trade. He returned two years later urging the dispatch of direct voyages to the East and in 1595 led the first such venture.
De Houtman’s fleet sailed into the Atlantic to Brazil before rounding the Cape of Good Hope on 7 February 1595, it then sailed across the Indian Ocean from Madagascar to the Sunda Straits and en route touched on Sumatra, traded for a time in Bantam – a famously wealthy spice port –, and made several other stops on the north coast of Java and on Bali; on its homeward journey, the fleet sailed along the south of Java. De Houtman’s brother, Frederick, a talented astronomer who also sailed on the voyage, greatly contributed along with the Dutch navigator Pieter Dirkszoon Keyser to mapping the southern skies recording a great number of new constellations. ‘The voyage was not a financial success, and barely recovered its expenses. The nearly empty holds held only 245 bags of pepper, 45 tons of nutmeg, 30 bales of mace, and a selection of Chinese porcelain. The backers were aghast at the terrible loss of life [only 87 out of 249 men on the voyage returned and those that survived were too weakened on their return to even bring their ships into anchorage]. But the voyage was, in another sense, a resounding success in that it showed to the Dutch that they might successfully reach the Indies. In the following year no fewer than twenty-two ships distributed over six expeditions ventured out, and the rush to the East had begun’ (F. Swart, ‘Lambert Biesman (1573–1601) of the Company of Trader-Adventurers, the Dutch Route to the East Indies, and Olivier van Noort’s Circumnavigation of the Globe’, The Journal of the Hakluyt Society, December 2007). The Compagnie van Verre, which Houtman helped create, merged to form the Dutch East India Company. Houtman’s voyage is now known for being the starting point of the Dutch spice trade and colonization of Indonesia.
Lach notes that: ‘Firsthand reports of insular Southeast Asia arrived in the Netherlands with Cornelis de Houtman’s (d. 1599) fleet in August 1597. An anonymous Verhael vande reysewas published by Barent Langenes of Middleburg in 1597; it went through six editions in that year and the next, including translations into French, German, English and Latin’. The published journals of the voyage ‘provided European readers with the most detailed descriptions of Java to date and with the first continuous description of Bali in any language. By sailing around Java, De Houtman’s men were able to ascertain its true size and shape. They discovered that it was not nearly as wide from north to south as it appeared on Portuguese maps, and this was reported in the Verhael vande reyse. This work also contains a detailed description of Bantam, its harbor, fortifications, buildings, people, and trade, the prices of products, and the foreigners who traded there’ (D. F. Lach, Asia in the Making of Europe(Chicago, 1993) vol. II, part I, pp. 437–38).The author of this account is a yet unknown un-identified shipmate of Houtmans, he describes in his own words what was the first incursion into the Spice Trade by the Dutch.
"The failure of the Barents expedition to open up a route to the East by way of the North East Passage led the Dutch to attempt reaching the East by way of the Cape Route. The Expedition consisting of 4 ships under the command of Cornelis Houtman arrived at Bantam in Java in 1596, where they tried to get a cargo of spices. But hostilities with the Portuguese arose and the fleet was compelled to sail on. The circumnavigation of Java was the first recorded attempt of this kind by any European vessel. Much knowledge of the regions later to become the exclusive territory of the Dutch resulted from the voyage." (Cox I, p.262).
Rare institutionally, no copy of this edition is listed in any institution; of the Reschedt edition, there are 4 copies according toUSTC (Berlin Staatsbibliothek Preußischer Kulturbesitz; München Bayerische Staatsbibliothek; New York Public Library; and Vienna’s Österreichische Nationalbibliothek).
Provenance: Frederik Muller Rare Books, Holland; offered in partnership with Antiquariat INLIBRIS Gilhofer.
Tiele, pp. 122.G. P. Rouffaer, ed., De eerste schipvaart der Nederlanders naar Oost-Indië onder Cornelis de Houtman, 's-Gravenhage, 1915–29, vol. II, pp. [xix-xx], 106-109.
