Java on the way around the world: European travellers in the Dutch east indies and the transnational politics of imperial knowledge management, 1850-1870

Abstract

This article examines contemporary Dutch reactions to the travels in the Dutch East Indies of three non-Dutch Europeans and internationally popular mid-nineteenth-century travel writers: the Austrian Ida Pfeiffer, the German Friedrich Gerstäcker and the French Ludovic de Beauvoir. Their journeys were published in real time by the press both on Java and in the Netherlands, and the subsequent travel books were widely discussed in Dutch newspapers and specialised journals. This article examines this reporting and the ensuing public debates as attempts to control the flow of information from the colony, a process in which both the colonial authorities and opposition parties saw an opportunity to mobilise popular foreign authors in support of their respective political agendas. Building on recent work on imperial knowledge networks and using the example of popular travel writing, this article argues that those circuits often had a more transnational and trans-European character than commonly acknowledged.