6. Maps and Drawings in Asia and South Africa
aps
which were produced or administered in former VOC
establishments in Asia and South Africa have, in principle,
been preserved in those places themselves. However, a great
deal has been lost. Largest collections of maps were those
of the VOC administrations
in the Cape of Good Hope and Ceylon(98).
In Colombo, for instance, an important part of the administration
of land has been preserved in both written and cartographic
form(99).

Fort Jaffanapatman (modern-day
Jaffna at Sri Lanka)
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The most important collection
was naturally that formed in Batavia. In 1811 T.S. Raffles
appointed a commission whose task it was to make 'a general
record and collection of all archives, official documents,
maps and plans, which had pertained to the various departments
and offices under the former French government'. Amongst other
things this commission produced 'registers of maps and plans,
which had belonged to the Department of Engineering, under
the former French Government' (ca. 1812) (100).
Probably all the maps and drawings then available in Batavia
were described in the registers mentioned: Daendels had followed
the example of the Batavian Depot-Generaal and assembled all
the maps and drawings made by the military engineers. Nonetheless,
the same Daendels also gave orders to destroy old papers which
had no value. This undoubtedly had enormous consequences for
the maps and drawings.
Those which escaped destruction
were described by the government archivist, F. de Haan. In
his catalogue, in which more than 1100 maps and drawings from
the middle of the seventeenth century to the middle of the
nineteenth century are described (the number of sheets from
the VOC period is much less
than 1100), there are no sheets referring to the areas outside
Indonesia(101).
This collection is now in the Arsip
Nasional Republik Indonesia (ANRI)
in Jakarta. A small number of VOC
maps and drawings kept in the Arsip Nasional has been photographed
and can also be consulted in the National Archives of the
Netherlands in the Netherlands.
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