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Explore a range of resources created by organisations around the world, offering deeper insights into the ongoing relevance of VOC collections and histories.
A spatial database of information and resources about the Dutch East India Company and Dutch West India Company, including access to digital copies of maps, drawings, prints and paintings.
Database for Dutch wrecks and underwater sites world wide, particularly information regarding their history and investigation. Public are welcome to create an account and contribute information and comments.
A searchable dataset resulting from the Dutch Asiatic Shipping project, originally printed across three volumes. Contains compiled information regarding the voorcompagnieën and VOC shipping (1595-1795) to, from and within Asia from archival resources - predominantly those held in the Nationaal Archief. Data is listed by voyage, and can be exported as CSV with or without data regarding the number of people on board. A digitised version of the publication is also available.
Searchable datasets of information regarding the circulation of commodities in the 18th century documented in the surviving archives from the administration of the 'Boekhouder-Generaal' - documents now held in the Nationaal Archief. Datasets include a searchable database of voyages, exportable in xls, and a database of instances of cargo, also exportable in xls.
A compiled database of previously published explanations of terms regarding productions, functions, titles, sizes, weights and coins mentioned in association with or by the VOC, particularly regarding shipping and trade. It is intended as a resource for working with VOC source material.
The project aims to semantically map the information on people, places and activities about the VOC and the peoples they came in contact with that is held within the ‘Overgekomen Brieven en Papieren’ (‘Letters and papers received’, OBP) in the Nationaal Archief. The project is producing data and infrastructure, as well as experimenting with that data in their 'lab', such as creating a transcription viewer, visualisation of places, and search interface for the General Missives.
Portal, in Dutch, that brings the many maritime-historical organisations in contact with one another as well as to make their resources and activities more visible to the general public. Managed by the ‘Maritieme Koepel’ (Maritime Organisation) – a group of museums, research institutes, associations and foundations in the field of maritime history in the Netherlands, and as part of the Maritime-Historical Data Network of the Huygens ING – KNAW.
A database of registered shipwreck and other underwater cultural heritage sites and associated artefacts in Australia. This serves as the register of protected underwater cultural heritage for the Underwater Cultural Heritage Act 2018.
Dept of Climate Change, Energy, Environment and Water (Australian Government)
A research blog by historians Jelle van Lottum and Lodewijk Petram in relation to several overlapping research projects utilising the data from multiple archive sources to investigate the lives of individuals involved in the careers Dutch mercantile sailing. These research projects are 'Sailors on Dutch merchant marine in the 19th and 20th centuries', 'Human capital, immigration and the early-modern Dutch economy, c. 1700-1800 (HUMIGEC)', and the Dutch Prize Papers project.
Jelle van Lottum; Lodewijk Petram; Huygens Institute
The projects involves the digitisation and ‘sorting’ of the “Prize Papers”, papers taken from ships captured by British privateers and the Royal Navy between 1652 and 1815 as well as the court papers generated by legal proceedings to determine the legality of the ‘prize’, an expansion of the Dutch Prize Papers project. The goal is to digitise, catalogue, describe and present in an open-access research-oriented database the whole of the Prize Papers series.
Göttingen Academy of Sciences and Humanities, Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg, Germany; The National Archives, UK; Deutsches Historisches Institut London
The projects involved the digitisation of Dutch Prize Papers held by the National Archives, Kew - papers taken from ships captured by British privateers and the Royal Navy between 1652 and 1815 as well as the court papers generated by legal proceedings to determine the legality of the ‘prize’. The project targeted two specific series for digitisation within the Prize Papers, HCA 30 and HCA 32. They created a database of the documents contained within these series with data regarding the date, ship and shipmaster.
A research project that is focusing on the encounters between Australia’s Indigenous peoples and maritime voyagers in the past 1000 years of Australian History. The project aims to challenge and potentially reconfigure the way Australia is placed within global histories of exploration and so-called discovery.
This project undertaken by Jeremy Green and Adriaan de Jong with support from the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, Canberra, presents digital reproductions, transcriptions and translations of the original journals and letters describing early European maritime encounters with Western Australia. Those featured are mostly by the Dutch East India Company.
A free online eBook about the history and archaeology of the Dutch East India Company ship Batavia which wrecked in the Houtman Abrolhos Islands in 1629.
Website for the now completed ARC project 'Shipwrecks of the Roaring 40s: A maritime archaeological reassessment of some of Australia's earliest shipwrecks'. Provides summaries of the VOC ships and shipwrecks, the archaeology of Beacon Island, and access to the Beacon Island visualisation.
![logo for Stapstenen van Maritieme Geschiedenis [Stepping Stones of Maritime History] (MaSS)](/sites/default/files/user/1/2025-11/logoMaSS.png)
