3. Management by the National Archives of
the Netherlands since 1856
he
removal of the state archives from the Binnenhof
to the Plein (in The Hague)
in 1854 was used by the Ministry of Colonies to urge for the
handing over of the colonial archives dating from before 1813.
This transfer was accomplished in the summer of 1856. According
to the official report, on this occasion four chests and one
package with maps and drawings were transported from Amsterdam(84).
Besides the collections from
the storehouses of the ministry of Colonies, in 1860 the Netherlands
National Archives of the Netherlands possessed (a small number)
of maps and drawings of the East which had belonged to the
archives of the States General and the States of Holland and
to several collections of private papers. All these holdings
were brought together in the collection 'foreign maps'. In
1863 Bakhuizen van den Brink appointed the retired naval officer,
P.A. Leupe, to make an inventory of them(85).
Leupe added miscellaneous acquisitions and gifts of charts
and maps of the colonies to the collected holdings, so that
the most recent maps in his catalogue date from the middle
of the nineteenth century. Between 1863 and 1866 the maps
and drawings which had been bound in with the Overgekomen
brieven en papieren in the VOC
and the WIC archives were detached from their volumes and
added to the collection of foreign maps. This detaching was
unfortunately carried out with only somewhat summary references
to the place of origin.
In 1866, the minister of foreign
affairs gave permission for the publication of Leupe's catalogue(86).
This was the first printed finding aid to a holding in the
possession of the National Archives of the Netherlands. A
supplement to Leupe's catalogue appeared nearly fifty years
later(87). Because
of the merging of the map collections of the ministries of
the navy and of the colonies during the Batavian Republic
and the French occupation, in the 19th century part of the
VOC maps ended up in the
Ministry of the Navy. The collections deposited and formed
there were also described by Leupe(88).
This collection can also be consulted in the Netherlands National
Archives of the Netherlands.
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