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In the research room various kinds of finding aids are available, such as inventories, summary lists, index cards and other guides, which refer to records as well as newspapers. Advice on research methods, availability of records and the use of finding aids can be obtained from the staff.
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Readingroom (click to enlarge) |
There is a Branch Office in Kandy (Hemamali Mawatha, Kandy; telephone: 0823729). It keeps records pertaining to the Kandyan province and some record groups of public offices. A reader's ticket to consult these records has to be obtained from the Head Office in Colombo.
he National Archives provide the following services:
he following publications are for sale (titles in Sinhala not included):
The following professional publications are available on request (titles in Sinhala not included):
Other titles concerning the National Archives and its holdings include:
he Dutch first appeared on Ceylon (as Sri Lanka was referred to at that time) in 1602. The Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie (VOC, Dutch East India Company) only settled down in 1638 at Batticaloa, and made Galle its regional headquarters in 1640. When the VOC ousted the Portuguese from the Island in the late 1650's, the seat of the Dutch Governor was shifted to Colombo in 1656. Other important settlements included Trincomalee, Jaffna, Negombo, Matara, Mannar and Kalutara. Tuticorin and the other factories on India's Fishery Coast were also administered from Colombo, as were the Company's contacts with the Maldives. In the course of time, the VOC extended its control to all Ceylon's coastal districts. Here, some of the most productive cinnamon areas were located, which spice was the Island's prime commodity. In 1796 Ceylon was surrendered to the British.
The archives of the Dutch administration of Ceylon (record group 1) have been preserved in a fairly intact state. They stretch approximately 310 running metres and cover the period 1640-1796. The bulk of these archives is made up of the documents of the administrative bodies of the capital Colombo (c. 70%) and Galle (c. 30%). Only some smaller or larger fragments of the archives of the subordinate settlements have survived. The archives of the chief settlement in Colombo are described by M.W. Juriaanse in the Catalogue of the Archives of the Dutch Central Government of Coastal Ceylon 1640-1796 (Colombo 1943). Although not immediately apparent from the inventory, these archives present the picture of typical establishment archives based on the correspondence with superiors in the Dutch Republic or in Batavia, alongside with the resoluties (proceedings) with annexes and dagregisters (diaries) of the local administration, and archives from the various subordinate establishments.
There is a large series of resoluties with annexes of the Governor and Council, with the companion series of secret resoluties, and the resoluties from special departments. Besides these, there are various series of incoming and outgoing letters (ordinary, secret and from the internal and military departments), which are divided into the categories Patria (fatherland) and Cape of Good Hope, Batavia, various subordinate settlements, and other establishments in the octrooigebied (the area where the VOC was licensed to conduct trade). It is remarkable that dagregisters from Colombo are absent. These must have existed, considering the fact that parts of them are enclosed in the overgekomen brieven en papieren in the VOC archives in the Netherlands.
One chapter in the inventory, 'internal affairs', includes all sorts of series of documents concerning particular subjects, as well as protocollen van civiele akten (protocols of civil deeds) and legislation. Another chapter, 'external affairs', not only contains correspondence with other VOC establishments (it is not clear why these were not put together with the other correspondence), but also includes treaties and correspondence with local authorities and representatives of other European powers. Besides the archives of the Governor and Council, there are holdings from the hoofdadministrateur (head of trade) and from the dessave (district chief) of Colombo. The archives of the dessave contain a rich collection of tombos (a kind of cadastral registers). There are also extensive archives of the Raad van Justitie (Council of Justice) relating to both civil and criminal actions, and of lower-ranking legal bodies such as the landraad (court of first instance) and the civiele raad. Among the records of temporary governmental committees and persons are the archives of the Geheime Commissie (Secret Committee responsible for the conduct of the war with Kandy 1762-1766), consisting of resoluties and correspondence, and those of a few special committees which were sent from the Netherlands.
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"Example of treasures..." (click to enlarge) |
In addition, there are considerable holdings from the subordinate offices at Galle, Matara, Jaffna and Wanni. These are particularly important because such subordinate offices had fewer direct relations with the central authorities in Batavia and the Dutch Republic, so that there is less about them to be found in the VOC archives in the Netherlands. An inventory of these holdings has been compiled by M.E. van Opstall ed.: Inventory of the Archives of the Dutch Government in the Divisions of Galle (Matara) and Jaffnapatnam 1640-1796 by S.A.W. Mottau. With a List of Reconstructed 17th century Tombos by J.S. Wigboldus and Addenda to the Catalogue of the Archives of the Dutch Central Government of Coastal Ceylon (The Hague 1975).
The Galle archives contain the usual series of resoluties, correspondence with the superiors in Colombo, Batavia and the Dutch Republic, registers of wills, protocollen van civiele akten of the secretaries, appointments registers, reports of diplomatic missions, registers containing instructions to local functionaries, dagregisters, auction books and land registers. In addition, there are the archives of separate offices and committees such as the negotieboekhouder (trade accountant, which actually contains little about book-keeping but a lot of administrative documents), the tombo committee (the main part of which is comprised of population lists), and the school board. There are also large archives from the Raad van Justitie in Galle and of the landraad of the Galle district. The remaining archives of the district of Matara, then subordinate to Galle, mainly date from the last period of the Company administration. They contain both the holdings of the dessave as well as that of the landraad. As far as their composition goes, they are similar to the archives of Galle. With the exception of a series of tombos, the Jaffna archives contain only a few fragments. The same is true for the archives of the district administration of Wanni, of which also just a few fragments remain.
Furthermore, the National Archives keep the archives of the Consistory of the Dutch Reformed Church or Wolvendaal Kerk (record group 24), which was founded in 1642. According to its administration, Ceylon was divided into three ecclesiastical districts called Consistories: Colombo, Jaffna and Galle. The council of each Consistory was formed by the predikanten with two or three elders and six Deacons. The members of the council were all chosen by vote, the election being subject to the approval of the Government. The Church sent annual reports to the Dutch Republic on its state and progress on the island. The archives cover the period 1735-1837, and are in Dutch, Sinhala and English. They consist of the minute books of the Church and a Dutch-Sinhala dictionary compiled by Anos Comenius in the eighteenth century. At present, the archives are only accessible with the help of a file list.
In the framework of the TANAP (Towards A New Age of Partnership) programme, the physical condition of the Dutch archives in Colombo has been assessed according to the UPAA (Universal Procedure for Archival Assessment). About three-fifths is severely damaged and hardly fit for consultation. Paper repair and microfilming have been started in 2002. Moreover, four meters miscellaneous documents, often fragments, have to be sorted out.
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