Mr. P. Mijer was vice-president of the high court of Justice and the high military court of Justice of the Dutch East Indies, and in 1848 he requested permission by the government in Batavia to publish several historical documents. Because the mentioned documents were of historical importance back at the time, and still are nowadays, the Corts Foundation has scanned this book publication by Mijer and created a full search with text recognition. It does justice to what Mijer himself envisioned and stated in the publication introduction: ‘... with dual objectives to make the exact texts of the oldest and most important documents of the former colonial governmental system sustainable for the future and to spread the knowledge of her main principles to a general audience.’

It concerns a collection of instructions by Dutch authorities dating back to 1609, 1617, 1632, 1650, 1807, 1815, 1818, 1827, 1830 and 1836, addressed from Holland to the Governor Generals and the Council of the Indies and their succeeding government institutions. Mijer searched for original manuscrips in Batavia and especially from the early 17th century, but found only ‘unmarked and unofficial’ copies. He used these for his publication. Possibly the real originals can be found in the Netherlands in the archives of the so called ‘Staten Generaal’. Additionally he used a number of instructions from the early nineteenth century, a period with political changes in the Netherlands and French and British rule over the East Indies.

The digital version of this publication can be viewed here and downloaded for free.
Mijer, Batavia (1848, 560 pages) - [Open online viewer] [PDF - 18mb]