Background Dutch Colonial Maps

KIT has digitized its remarkable historical map collection and made it available online. One of the largest collections of maps of the former Dutch colonies is thereby accessible via Internet for scientists, cartographers and other interested parties in the Netherlands and abroad. The digitization of the map collection is part of the multiple-year project ‘KIT Erfgoed Extra’. Sponsored by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, this project has enabled KIT to overcome a backlog in the management and preservation of colonial heritage documents and objects.

KIT possesses an extensive collection of land and nautical maps of (sub-) tropical regions. Containing topographical overview maps and map series, city maps, thematic maps and national atlases per country, the collection comprises some 27,000 maps and over 1000 atlases in total. The collection is frequently consulted for scientific research and in the planning of development projects, emergency relief and peacekeeping missions. The collection also serves as a source of international arbitration in determining land and sea borders. The historical section forms the basis of the collection, consisting mainly of maps of the Dutch East Indies, the Dutch Antilles and Suriname dating back to the time that KIT operated as ‘Colonial Institute’. This section comprises around 15,000 maps and 150 atlases from the period 1850-1950.

There has always been much interest in directly perusing the historical collection. However, with a view to preservation this direct perusal is not recommended since it considerably contributes to the deterioration of this antique material. In an effort to serve both interests, KIT decided to digitize its entire collection of land and nautical maps from the period 1850-1950 and to make them accessible via Internet. The Institute is the first in the Netherlands to undertake this effort.

Short explanation of the search options
The digitized map collection can be researched in a number of ways.

Firstly, through the library catalogue. This catalogue contains descriptions of all the maps, enabling the visitor to search for maps in the same way as for books and journals: on title, author, and so on. Please note that it is not necessary here to fill out all the fields if you don’t want to. Just one field is enough. The title description of historical maps always lists the name of the location as it was known at the time, for instance Batavia instead of Jakarta, Celebes instead of Sulawesi, etcetera. This catalogue listing mostly concerns larger cities, regions or islands; smaller and unfamiliar locations are generally not represented at this level. After entering a search command in the library catalogue, an overview is offered of all relevant title descriptions, along with a thumbnail picture of the map.

By clicking on a thumbnail, the respective digital map is retrieved and the visitor is transferred from the catalogue into the map viewer. This viewer offers various functions such as zooming in and out, defining a frame and shifting the map.

Once at this level, the visitor can also proceed to search the entire historical collection for geographical locations and to select a type of map. This option is called viewer-based location search.

This search function is activated by clicking on the magnifier icon in the viewer’s right-hand menu bar. This prompts a new screen with a search-field in which to enter the sought location.

The search-field below can be used to specify whether to search the entire collection or to restrict it to a certain area (in this case Indonesia, Suriname or the Dutch Antilles). For example, searching for Batavia in ALL COUNTRIES will also return maps in Suriname containing locations called Batavia.

In the overview displayed, we choose BATAVIA CAPITAL OF A COUNTRY.

Next, an overview screen appears with the maps that correspond to this selection. The upper-left corner of the screen displays the word TYPE with a pull-down menu with ALL TYPES as default setting. Clicking on this menu enables defining a selection of different types of maps. In this illustration we choose BUILDINGS, resulting in the display of 20 drawings of buildings from the capital city of Batavia in the former Dutch East Indies.

Note 1: When searching for a geographical location in the manner described above, that is, directly in the viewer, it makes no difference whether one enters the historical name or the current name. In other words, searching for the capital city of Batavia or Jakarta at this level delivers the same results. Besides cities and towns, it is also possible to search for certain mountains, mountain ranges, lakes and regions. The circle gives an approximate indication of the location on the map. It can be switched off by clicking on the circle icon in the right-hand margin.

Note 2: The database with geographical locations is (thus far) limited, serving only as a search aid. At present it contains some 70,000 locations. This number will probably be increased in the future.

Contact
KIT Information & Library Services
Map room
Peter Levi
T. 020 5688312
E. p.levi@kit.nl

• communication@kit.nl
•   | 
• print this page