Until the 1780s, the Dutch East India Company (VOC) was the largest organisation in the shipping traffic between Europe and Asia. The numbers of ships sent by the VOC to and from Asia far exceeded those of ships sailing under the flag of the English or the French East India companies. Most of this Dutch-Asiatic shipping took place in the eighteenth century. Between 1700 and 1796, 2,957 voyages were made to Asia and 2,369 voyages back to Europe. Among the commanders of Dutch East Indiamen in the eighteenth century, more than a thousand made an outward or homeward-bound voyage two or more times and at least six hundred others completed a single voyage. These commanders in the service of the VOC (schippers in Dutch) are the subject of a new book by the doyen of Dutch maritime historians, Jaap Bruijn. For this book, Bruijn has studied the records and careers of a few hundred schippers in depth.

The book consists of two parts. The first part examines the social background and onshore lives of commanders in the towns in Holland and Zeeland (Enkhuizen, Hoorn, Middelburg, Delft, Rotterdam and Amsterdam) where the six Chambers of the VOC were based and where most of the commanders came from. Each chapter on a city outlines the local economy and discusses key characteristics of the local group of VOC schippers such as their origins, wealth, residence, marital status, religious affiliation, business affairs and social mobility. Other chapters look at commanders outside the Chamber towns and at naval officers employed by the VOC after 1740. The second part of the book, entitled ‘Commanders at sea’, is thematically organised and is more analytical in nature. Chapters in this part discuss aspects such as training and examination, appointment, income (normal and private), life on board, discipline, shipping disasters and professionalisation. The book concludes with a brief comparison between VOC schippers and commanders of other European companies, and with a summary of the main patterns and changes in the characteristics of VOC commanders in the eighteenth century.

Bruijn's book is a pioneering study of its kind. It is the first collective biography ever of commanders of East Indiamen of a European nation in the early modern period. It is well-researched, it is written in a readable style and it provides a wealth of arresting detail and insights. A few examples may suffice. VOC-commanders did not only receive a much higher fixed pay that ‘anybody else who sailed for a living’ in the Dutch Republic (p. 312), but also enjoyed substantial fringe benefits (such as bonuses for fast voyages) and ample opportunities to make huge sums of money from trade in private goods. It was not unusual for commanders to take slaves on board from Asia or the Cape, who ‘probably lived at home’ with them in the Netherlands (p. 231). The idea floated by some Dutch naval officers in the eighteenth century (and a few twentieth-century historians, including Charles Boxer, in their wake) that VOC-schippers in the late eighteenth century were incompetent navigators and that the Company directors stifled any attempt at innovation, turns out to be no more than a myth. Most of the VOC-commanders were in fact very good at their job and the VOC was, until the very end, not at all averse to introducing changes in ship design or navigation. VOC-commanders came off well in comparison with their colleagues in other European companies.

Apart from some remarks in the chapter on private income and at a few other places, the book, alas, hardly deals with the VOC schippers' activities at sea or ashore in Asia. A follow-up study on this subject would be welcome, because after all commanders frequently made a number of voyages in Asia before returning to Europe. Another issue that Bruijn's book touches upon, but does not fully address, is the power relations between commanders and VOC directors. While VOC directors were, if necessary, perfectly capable of disciplining individual commanders, they were apparently not as able to withstand the resistance of commanders as a group. In 1752, for example, the directors ‘because of rising discontent among the commanders’ gave them permission ‘to double the amount of the private goods they transported’ (p. 214). What determined the power relations between commanders and directors over time? It is one of the merits of Bruijn's fine study that it gives rise to such intriguing questions for further research.