Historians are acutely aware of the gap between formal histories of Churches and the reality of the experiences of local worshippers. Moreover, records of parish, diocese or voluntary religious organisations, which might have allowed local priests and people to have a voice, have often been lost – discarded as ephemera or, particularly in the case of colonial Churches, destroyed by the vagaries of climate and insects. Here, by contrast, is a remarkable historical source. The Dutch Reformed Church in colonial Ceylon provides the minutes of the consistory of the Dutch Reformed Church held in the Wolvendaal Kerk in Columbo, 1735–44, and 1750–97. They cover much of the century and a half when the Dutch East India Company, based in Batavia, controlled the coastal areas of the island, between the defeat of the Portuguese and the assumption of rule by the British. The volume would have been more useful had there been more significant editing, particularly in providing serious social and political background to the Dutch Church and its members, but there is a wealth of fascinating detail here, on church government within the Dutch empire, the appointment of ministers, deacons and elders, attempts at missionary work and the translation and printing of parts of the Bible into local languages. We hear the consistory wrestling with tricky issues of church order: Dutch visitors bringing (or failing to bring) letters of attestation from their local churches; people claiming to have been baptised by Roman Catholic priests and desiring admission to communion; carelessness over church registers; predikants unable to preach in local vernaculars; schoolmasters failing to attend church; and – consuming much time – disciplinary visits to church members who had lapsed or were living lives of scandal (irregular sexual liaisons or rumours of them, slander, drunkenness, feuding of various kinds) which had to be rectified before admission to communion. There was even a notable consistory member, a predikant, whose drunken behaviour almost ended in his dismissal. Behind all this is evidence of a resurgent Catholicism, abhorrent to the consistory members, a legacy of the Portuguese and now openly challenging the established Calvinist Church. Historians of colonial Churches and missions generally will find much in this collection, but it will be most useful to students of the Dutch colonial Church and begs for comparisons with the South African experience.