M. M. Azizul Islam Rasel

University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh

“Dutch Perception of the Mughals, Bengal and Assam: A Study of a Seventeenth Century Dutch Travelogue”

Seventeenth Century is important for the Dutch in diversified ways. This is the century when the Dutch defeated its maritime rivalry, particularly the Portuguese, in the east and established its dominance in the Southeast Asia. This century is also regarded as the golden age of the Dutch for economic affluence and for intellectual activities. The Dutch East India Company emerged as one of the largest trading companies in the early modern period. It had established its trading settlement in different parts of Asia, particularly Indonesia, India and Ceylon. Through its imperial and trading networks many Dutch travelled to Asia and Africa. Some of these travelers wrote their experiences of the region they visited and back at home published their accounts for the European readers. Travel accounts were very popular in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries among the European readers. This genre of writings appeased the general thrust of reading and contributed to the construction of European knowledge on Asia and Africa in the early modern and modern times. These travelogues are one of the important sources for history of the Asiatic region. This paper studies a seventeenth century Dutch travelogue, titled Vervarelyke Schip-breuk van ‘T Oost-Indisch Jacht Ter Schelling, written by a Dutch East India Company worker Frans Jansz. van der Heiden , which produced knowledge on the Asiatic region. The paper investigates that how the Mughals, Bengal and Assam were represented and understood in the Dutch travel literature. The paper argues that this type of travel literature produced and influenced the colonial knowledge of the East.

Bio

Azizul Rasel is a historian and Lecturer at the University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh. He completed an M.A. in history from the University of Dhaka, Bangladesh and Leiden University, the Netherlands. His field of interests includes early modern and modern and contemporary South Asian history, society, and culture. He currently developed interest in critical theory.