The Batavia of Johan Nieuhof
Fri 4/24 • 1PM - 2PM PDT
The Dutch East India Company (Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie, or VOC) made significant strides towards establishing colonial control over the Indonesian islands in the seventeenth century. When the Company founded Batavia in 1619, the city became the administrative hub of an extensive mercantile network and served as its Asian headquarters. In this talk, Emma Gagnon, Ph.D. candidate in the History of Art and Architecture Department at the University of California, Santa Barbara and a recipient of the 2025-26 Kenneth Karmiole Graduate Research Fellowship at the UCLA William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, examines the images of Batavia in Johan Nieuhof’s (1618-1672) illustrated travelogues. Nieuhof spent years in and out of the colonial capital, and his accounts provide some of the earliest images of Batavia. This talk demonstrates how the city’s Dutch identity was defined not only by its built environment but also through the dissemination of these forms in the Dutch Republic’s print culture.