[VOC - ANNUAL DIRECTORY - BATAVIA].

Naamboek, van de Wel-Edele Heeren der Hooge Indiasche Regeering, zoo tot, als buiten Batavia; ... zo als dezelve onder ultimo December 1771. alhier in weezen zyn bevonden: ...Batavia (now Djakarta, Indonesia), Egbert Heemen (printer to the VOC), [1772]. 8vo. Annual VOC directory for the city of Batavia, the East Indies as a whole, Ceylon, and other lands where the VOC (Dutch East India Company) had settlements. Modern half calf with late eighteenth- or early nineteenth-century marbled sides, red sprinkled edges.

      (2 blank), (2), 110, (4), (2 blank) pp. Cf. Landwehr 1498 & 1499 (no ed. betw. 1766 & 1775/76); Karlsruher Virt. Kat. (1 copy each for 1767/68, 1770/71, 1773/74); NCC (no ed. betw. 1766 & 1807/08); OCLC (no ed. before 1784/85); STCN (no ed. betw. 1751 & 1775/76). The only recorded copy for this year of an annual directory printed by the VOC's printer at Batavia in the East Indies. All editions between 1766 and 1775/76 appear to be lost or unique (we have traced single copies for 4 of those 8 years, including the present copy of the 1771/72 edition). It covers not only the city of Batavia itself and the East Indies, but also other regions where the VOC had settlements, including an extensive section on Ceylon (pp. 65-82), a shorter one on Bengal (pp. 88-91) and a very short one on Japan (p. 99). The directory gives an extraordinary wealth of information, listing not only the VOC's governors general from 1610 to the time of publication (with exact dates and other information), military and church officials, merchants, ships' captains, bookkeepers and medical doctors, but also carpenters, smiths, sail makers, coopers, masons, coin minters, surveyors, the printers' censor, the inspector of lepers, the Batavian city midwife, and even some unemployed. For nearly all, it reports the date when they took up the named position or joined the VOC. Of special interest at Batavia (with their dates) are the printer of the almanac himself (1767), the master map-maker to the Company's East Indian fleet, Klaas de Loos (1769), and the master bookbinder to the Secretary of the Directors, Augustus Thomszens (1766). The last ten pages list people associated with the VOC who left or died in the course of the year 1771. All in all, a wealth of information (much unavailable in any other surviving source) for both the general study of the VOC and life in its territories, and for the two thousand or so individual people named.Directories (lists of people and their positions, often classed with almanacs but in this case much closer to a modern annual trade directory or telephone directory) were printed at Amsterdam for the VOC from at least 1724, but none printed at Batavia itself is known to survive before 1751 and only those for a few scattered years survive from the first quarter century. From at least the present year, they include data up to the last day of the named year, so that they were clearly published early in the following year (that of 1766 stopped at the end of September and was probably published toward the end of the named year). Egbert Heemen may have printed the directory every year from 1767/68 to 1779/80, but we have traced only 7 editions in a total of 9 copies for these 13 years. The present edition collates: [pi]4 A-G8 = 60 ll., with [pi]1 & G8 blank. It is set in several sizes of roman and italic types dating from the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, with a tailpiece built up from fleurons at the end.In fine condition with only an occasional minor smudge, and with "No. 5" in ink in a contemporary hand on the first (blank) page. A fine copy of a unique VOC annual directory, printed in Batavia.