FRANCOIS VALENTIJN – preacher, plagiarist, encyclopaedist

For someone generally referred to as the Preacher of Ambon, the epitaph of plagiarist with a tendency for self-aggrandisement does not seem to be fitting. Or am I naïve… Anyway, according to my sources[1] he was both.

Born in Dordrecht where his father was deputy principal of the Latin school he read theology, philosophy and related subjects in Utrecht and Leiden. In 1684 he finished his studies and was called as a minister to the Netherlands Indies where he arrived in Batavia end-December 1685, and in April 1686 Amboina. Under the guidance of among others Rumphius he quickly mastered the Malay language and in slightly more than three months he was able to conduct his first service in early-August of that year. Against his bitter objections he was subsequently posted on Banda—he was forced to take the position as his superiors told him that it was Banda or nothing, with repayment of the travelling expenses Amsterdam-Batavia-Amboina. After 11 months on Banda he returned to Amboina (1688) where he started the translation of the Bible into Ambon Malay, and the search for a wealthy wife. This latter task was accomplished in 1692 when he married Cornelia Snaats, widow of his friend and patron Hendrik Leydekker, who had left Cornelia four children and a significant fortune. May 1694 he returned to Holland accompanied by wife and five children—four Leydekkers and one Valentijn. He returned to Dordrecht and was ready to settle down. At the request of the Compagnie and persuaded by many friends he, however,  agreed to return to the East.

Although the VOC Board had agreed to his condition that he would be posted in Amboina—and only Amboina, without any obligation to visit the outlying islands—upon arrival in Batavia he was assigned the post of army chaplain for a campaign in East Java.

Quite obviously the masters in Batavia and Amsterdam had different sets of priorities, a situation that also nowadays is not uncommon in globally operating organisations.

Message Regional Office to HQ:  we need an additional marketing unit, our geographic region superimposed on Europe would stretch from Ireland to Moscow, you have representatives in nearly all countries in that area, we have to service that area by ourselves.

No doubt Valentijn complained bitterly, but in the same way as during his first tour, he had to comply. Worn out he returned to Batavia after four months in the field. Finally, early-1707 he could continue his journey to Ambon. A further reason for complaint concerned his translation of the Bible. The VOC principles in Batavia did not approve his translation into Ambon Malay, They insisted on the use of High Malay. This fight dragged on and the Compagnie even threatened to disallow his return—at their expense.

Permission to return home was finally given in 1713 and after a difficult return voyage he settled again in Dordrecht. There he devoted himself fully to his Oud en Nieuw Oost-Indiën—more than 5,000 pages of text and over a thousand maps and illustrations which took Valentijn 15 years to complete; and in an astonishing burst of speed was printed within four years, with the last volume published some eight months before his death in 1727.

Old and New East Indies, consisting of five parts published in eight volumes, was the first encyclopaedia of the Indonesian archipelago and surrounding regions and contained sections on Amboina and the Moluccas, North and East Celebes, New Guinea, Makassar, Batavia, Java, Sumatra, China, Formosa, Japan, Persia, Coromandel, Bengal, Ceylon, Malacca, the Cape of Good Hope, and Mauritius. Plus, the lives of the Great Moguls, the Governor Generals of the Netherlands East Indies, flora and fauna of Amboina, Amboina church affairs, and accounts of his two (return) voyages to the Indies.

The systematic arrangement of this magnum opus is a bit chaotic: Sumatra, for instance, is given a place between Malacca and Ceylon (Sri Lanka), while Celebes (Sulawesi) is partially covered in Part 1 and also in Part 3. And yes, he used material of others and did not always specify original sources. And yes, it is an opinionated hotchpotch of information. Valentijn displays a lack of interest and knowledge—typical for his epoch—about the native peoples of the different islands. Of the Javanese he for instance writes that the men are typically murderous, perfidious and cruel… but also ready to cowardly knife someone for a few copper coins. And in respect of the Sumatrans (all ethnic groups of the island combined into one) he maintains that it is not necessary to describe them in detail as they do not much differ from the Javanese. But still, it is the first encyclopaedia of the region and until now retains information of great value—his maps, for instance, are exceptionally accurate, and his description of Ambon and Batavia shed light on conditions of these two places that have not been recorded anywhere else.

The amount and detail of information is moreover staggering, from the number of craftsmen by skill in a certain year in Sri Lanka, and the names and years of assignment of the heads of the Dutch trading post on Deshima Island in Nagasaki harbour, to a lion hunt in the Cape.

The whole eight volumes have been reprinted in facsimile and some parts are available from Amazon. For those interested to see more I recommend the following URL which will take you to Part 5.


http://archive.org/stream/oudennieuwoostin05vale#page/n384/mode/thumb

Enjoy!

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[1]   Encyclopaedie van Nederlandsch-Indië, Martinus Nijhoff, 1919

        ARCENGEL History of Netherlands East Indies

        Wikipedia