Tracing Personal Accounts in Colonial Knowledge Networks: Towards a Watermark Database for the Cape Colony, 1652–1795

This paper initiates a watermark database that authenticates dates and origins for paper at the Cape Colony during the period of Dutch administration (1652–1795). Since surveys of watermarks used in mainland Europe do not adequately correspond to those used at the Cape, it is important to examine paper from the Cape. This article presents the first survey of such watermarks by studying the paper used by the Dutch East India Company (the VOC) to minute the Resolusies (Resolutions) of the Council of Policy meetings, connecting those watermarks with the dates of specific governors, commissioners, and chambers. The survey accomplishes three tasks: it allows for the tracing of paper routes and knowledge networks in the early modern world, it reinforces the reliability of historical records for this period of Cape and South African history, and it improves accuracy for establishing sources for the paper and its watermarks, wherever they ultimately end up. Since the Cape did not have a printing press until after the period of Dutch administration, the weight of handwritten tradition was important in the communication and dissemination of ideas, more so than elsewhere in the colonial world. A watermark database based on VOC archives would therefore be a valuable aid to the study of the manuscript culture of this region, which is still too little known.