Hollandia compendium

The wreck of the Dutch East India Hollandia , which sank off the coast of Southwest England in 1743, is one of the most coherent and exhaustive sources of information about the history of the Dutch East India Company (VOC), 1602-1795. A collection of artifacts from the Hollandia , on display at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, has drawn increasing interest to the activities of the Company's exceptional international enterprise - particularly with regard to production, trade, and transport. The VOC succeeded in maintaining an almost worldwide trade and transport network for nearly two centuries. Artifacts from ships such as the Hollandia provide clues to the interworkings of the Company as a whole. The Hollandia Compendium is an interplay between historical and archaeological data, thus providing an elaborate and detailed visualisation of the VOC and its functions as a trading company. The present study is a catalogue of objects originating from the wreck. It is a lexicon of administrative usage of the VOC. Additionally included are discussions of the significance of VOC Ships to the development of a historical-archaeological discipline for further investigation of these wrecks, and a survey of historical sources, both material and written for information on ships of the VOC in the mid-18th century.