Thoughts on Getting Married on a VOC Ship

“Are we going to look like those clueless people who get married on plantations?” It’s a question my fiancé and I ask each other frequently in the months leading up to our wedding. Our chosen venue: a replica of the VOC (Dutch East India Company) ship Batavia.

We both know all about the role of the VOC in the colonial system. How the company exploited, fought, and massacred local populations for access to spices. How the VOC claimed ownership of lands and participated in systems of slavery and enforced labor. How they shipped soldiers across the globe to conquer peoples and to defend stolen properties. How they shipped orphaned girls to marry colonists. My husband to be, a maritime historian by training, has studied and written about the VOC and piracy [1] and slavery [2][3] in the Indian Ocean realm.

Our wedding on the Batavia. Photo by Aline Bouma.

We both also know all about the history of the Batavia, not only as part of the VOC’s colonial system but as a particularly gruesome example. It was the flagship of a fleet and carried among other items the cut stones for the portico (gate) of the castle of the city of Batavia (now Jakarta, Indonesia). A military building meant to exercise control and power. The history of the Batavia ship is a complex and terrible one. It involves plans for a mutiny that begin with the assault of a female passenger. Before the mutiny is fully fomented, the ship is wrecked on islands off the coast of Australia. As leadership sails off for water and help, man-made disaster continues. A group of the mutineers takes power into their own hands. They murder any whom they consider weak, useless, or a threat. The surviving women are raped regularly. Groups of people escape to other islands by rafts while the brutal murders continue. As a maritime archaeologist I worked extensively on the history and archaeology of this particular ship [4][5][6]. Turning to museum studies, I investigated how the VOC is represented in museums [7] and, more recently, how museums can decolonize. As for the Batavia, my research has proven foundational and oft-cited.

We are academics with knowledge of the VOC and a particular drive to practice decoloniality in our research fields. We know about the importance of representation: how things appear. So why would we celebrate our wedding in a place that is so representative of colonial evils?

Our work is a big part of our identities, it defines us to a great extent and thus such a location illustrates what we spend a lot of our time on: re-imagining colonial histories. In fact, the two of us met at a small party in 2011 where we started talking and realized our mutual interest in VOC ships: me when they have sunk, he when they had not. It was the first thing we had in common.

We did not pick this location cluelessly, nor to glorify it. It is a place and a history which has a special meaning for our own history as a couple. But even more so, in holding our wedding there we could create opportunities (like this text) to critically engage with this past. In the wedding invite, we linked to a book and thesis I wrote about the Batavia, so our guests would have a deeper knowledge and context of the ship.

The Batavia replica also carries a different story than the original ship(wreck). It began as a grassroots project by an individual interested primarily in the experimental aspect of rediscovering historical shipbuilding techniques and tools. It took a decade to complete and relied heavily on volunteers for donations and labor. Indeed, the various workshops (smithy, carpentry, rope yard, sail-making etc) were used to provide unemployed youths with an opportunity to learn a skill that could help them find employment. The museum of the ship and wharf was run by (mainly retiree) volunteers for many years, who appreciated the opportunity to engage with visitors personally about history.

Yes, the replica ship is structurally and aesthetically beautiful. We knew the wedding pictures, and us in them, would look spectacular. But ultimately we chose the location because it represents us, our work, and our relationship. We were not clueless. Instead, we hope to have contributed to a critical conversation.

References

[6] Ariese-Vandemeulebroucke, Csilla E. 2016. Australia’s Earliest European Graves. The Great Circle: Journal of the Australian Association for Maritime History 38.1: 72-95.

[7] Ariese, Csilla E. 2012. A Series of Firsts: Australian & Dutch Representations of the Dutch East India Company (VOC). MSc thesis, University of Gothenburg.

[4] Ariese, Csilla E. 2012. Databases of the People aboard the VOC Ships Batavia (1629) & Zeewijk (1727): An Analysis of the Potential for Finding the Dutch Castaways’ Human Remains in Australia. Fremantle: Australian National Centre of Excellence for Maritime Archaeology.

[5] Ariese, Csilla E. 2010. A Twisted Truth: The VOC Ship Batavia: Comparing History & Archaeology. BA thesis, University of Gothenburg.

[3] Geelen, Alexander; Hout, Bram van den; Tosun, Merve; Windt, Mike de & Rossum, Matthias van. 2020. On the Run: Runaway Slaves and their Social Networks in Eighteenth-Century Cochin. Journal of Social History 54.1: 66-87.

[1] Hout, Bram van den. 2017. Rovers in het Vaarwater: De VOC en de Zeerovers van de Indische Archipel. MA thesis, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.

[2] Rossum, Matthias van; Geelen, Alexander; Hout, Bram van den & Tosun, Merve. 2020. Testimonies of Enslavement: Sources on Slavery from the Indian Ocean World. London: Bloomsbury Academic.