Johan Nieuhof’s Batavia - The Center for 17th- & 18th-Century Studies Events Lectures Johan Nieuhof’s Batavia Lectures Johan Nieuhof’s Batavia Date/Time Friday, April 24, 2026 1:00 pm PDT – 2:00 pm PDT Google Calendar iCal Export Lecture by Emma Gagnon, Ph.D. Candidate in Art History, University of California, Santa Barbara. Recipient of the 2025-26 Kenneth Karmiole Graduate Research Fellowship The Dutch East India Company ( Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie , or VOC) made significant strides towards establishing colonial control over the Indonesian islands in the seventeenth century. When the Company founded Batavia in 1619, the city became the administrative hub of an extensive mercantile network and served as its Asian headquarters. As the nerve center of the VOC’s governance and commerce in the region, Batavia was designed according to Dutch city-planning principles, with features such as its gridded plan, canal network, and architectural details consciously evoking cities of the Dutch Republic. Motivated by both a lively market for information about the spice trade and curiosity about the wider world and its inhabitants, Dutch publishing houses produced a profusion of printed matter about Asia, which was championed, directly or indirectly, by the VOC. These publications aimed to bring Asian landscapes and their peoples out of the realm of the unknown, transforming them into recognizable forms for the seventeenth-century Dutch reader. This talk examines the images of Batavia in Johan Nieuhof’s (1618-1672) illustrated travelogues. A career merchant in the Dutch chartered companies, Nieuhof spent years in and out of the colonial capital, and his accounts provide some of the earliest images of Batavia. This talk demonstrates how the city’s Dutch identity was defined not only by its built environment but also through the dissemination of these forms in the Dutch Republic’s print culture. In considering the visual culture of Batavia, a disconnect can be identified between the city’s architectural record and the images circulating among European audiences. The engravings produced in the Dutch Republic tended to exaggerate Dutch forms in their depictions of Batavia, which contributed to the establishment of the city’s identity as Dutch, reinforcing the VOC as its administrator, inflating the Company’s control over the region, and projecting an image of a dominant Dutch population in the East Indies. Emma Gagnon is a Ph.D. candidate in the History of Art and Architecture Department at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her dissertation, “Picturing Indonesia in the Dutch Republic: The Printed Images of Johan Nieuhof’s Sea and Land Voyage, through various Regions of the East Indies,’” examines how Nieuhof’s account of Batavia used visual and textual tropes to exaggerate VOC control over the city and its non-European inhabitants. In addition to the generosity of the Karmiole Graduate Research Fellowship at the Clark, the Scaliger Institute, Newberry Library, the Bancroft Library, the Harry Ransom Center, and the Getty Research Institute have supported her research. The lecture will take place via Zoom. To register to attend, please fill out the form here Image: (detail) “The Castle of Batavia” from Johannes Nieuhof (1669) An Embassy from the East-India Company of the United Provinces, to the Grand Tartar Cham, Emperour of China, Delivered by Their Excellcies Peter de Goyer and Jacob de Keyzer, at His Imperial City of Peking. […] Translated by John Ogilby. Printed for the author by J. Macock in London. Clark Library Rare Book Stacks. People Center Staff UCLA Core Faculty External Affiliated Faculty Fellows Supporters Research Center-Sponsored Projects Faculty Fellowships UCLA Graduate Student Funding Undergraduate Funding Working Groups Events Arts on the Grounds Conferences Core Program Lectures Music Year at a Glance Clark Library Giving