P. Meyer (also rendered Mr. P. Myer in the older Dutch spelling) was a nineteenth-century Dutch author whose chief contribution to the historical literature on the Netherlands East Indies was a substantial biography of Jean Chrétien Baud published in 1878. The work appeared at a time when Dutch colonial history was being written up systematically by a generation of archivally minded scholars — among them Netscher, Levyssohn Norman, Hoek, Jeekel, De Sturler and Van Hogendorp — whose publications Van der Kemp mined for the documentation underpinning his own articles.
The Baud biography
Meyer’s study of Baud, which Van der Kemp cites as Mr. P. Myer’s werk over Jean Chrétien Baud (1878), runs to several hundred pages and draws extensively on Baud’s private correspondence with the Minister of Colonies Falck. It is from pages 180–191 of this work that Van der Kemp quotes a remarkable letter written by Baud from The Hague on 28 November 1822. In it Baud warned Falck against the dangers of an insufficient Dutch presence in the East Indian archipelago and urged a vigorous colonisation policy, partly to provide a counterweight should Java ever be threatened by a foreign power. Strikingly, Baud is reported to have predicted that the North Americans would one day seize the Philippines — a forecast that Van der Kemp, writing in 1900, treats with approval and notes had been drawn to public attention by Colonel W. C. Nieuwenhuyzen in De Nederlandsche Spectator of 10 December 1898.
The passage in which Van der Kemp invokes Meyer comes in the chapter discussing the Anglo-Dutch Treaty of London negotiations of 1824. The Americans were already a visible presence in the archipelago and Fagel and Falck, the Dutch plenipotentiaries, had been instructed to obtain from the Achehnese sultans a commitment that they would never permit a foreign establishment on their soil. This concern, Van der Kemp notes, was “no idle rumour”, and Baud’s letter of 1822 — preserved and contextualised by Meyer — was a key piece of evidence.
Significance
Meyer’s role in the present article is that of a source-citer rather than an actor. He is one of a network of late-nineteenth-century Dutch writers whose editorial labours made the archives of the early colonial state accessible to a later generation. Without his transcription and contextualisation of Baud’s correspondence, Van der Kemp’s reconstruction of the considerations behind the 1824 treaty and the Treaty of Pedir would have been markedly poorer.
See Also
Source
Raffles’ Atjeh-overeenkomst van 1819, by P. H. van der Kemp, in Bijdragen van het Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde van Nederlandsch-Indië, 6e Volgr., Deel VII (1900), pp. 159-239. Universiteitsbibliotheek Vrije Universiteit, LS.08781.
P. Meyer (also rendered Mr. P. Myer in the older Dutch spelling) was a nineteenth-century Dutch author whose chief contribution to the historical literature on the Netherlands East Indies was a substantial biography of Jean Chrétien Baud published in 1878. The work appeared at a time when Dutch colonial history was being written up systematically by a generation of archivally minded scholars — among them Netscher, Levyssohn Norman, Hoek, Jeekel, De Sturler and Van Hogendorp — whose publications Van der Kemp mined for the documentation underpinning his own articles.
The Baud biography
Meyer’s study of Baud, which Van der Kemp cites as Mr. P. Myer’s werk over Jean Chrétien Baud (1878), runs to several hundred pages and draws extensively on Baud’s private correspondence with the Minister of Colonies Falck. It is from pages 180–191 of this work that Van der Kemp quotes a remarkable letter written by Baud from The Hague on 28 November 1822. In it Baud warned Falck against the dangers of an insufficient Dutch presence in the East Indian archipelago and urged a vigorous colonisation policy, partly to provide a counterweight should Java ever be threatened by a foreign power. Strikingly, Baud is reported to have predicted that the North Americans would one day seize the Philippines — a forecast that Van der Kemp, writing in 1900, treats with approval and notes had been drawn to public attention by Colonel W. C. Nieuwenhuyzen in De Nederlandsche Spectator of 10 December 1898.
The passage in which Van der Kemp invokes Meyer comes in the chapter discussing the Anglo-Dutch Treaty of London negotiations of 1824. The Americans were already a visible presence in the archipelago and Fagel and Falck, the Dutch plenipotentiaries, had been instructed to obtain from the Achehnese sultans a commitment that they would never permit a foreign establishment on their soil. This concern, Van der Kemp notes, was “no idle rumour”, and Baud’s letter of 1822 — preserved and contextualised by Meyer — was a key piece of evidence.
Significance
Meyer’s role in the present article is that of a source-citer rather than an actor. He is one of a network of late-nineteenth-century Dutch writers whose editorial labours made the archives of the early colonial state accessible to a later generation. Without his transcription and contextualisation of Baud’s correspondence, Van der Kemp’s reconstruction of the considerations behind the 1824 treaty and the Treaty of Pedir would have been markedly poorer.
See Also
Source
Raffles’ Atjeh-overeenkomst van 1819, by P. H. van der Kemp, in Bijdragen van het Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde van Nederlandsch-Indië, 6e Volgr., Deel VII (1900), pp. 159-239. Universiteitsbibliotheek Vrije Universiteit, LS.08781.