Heart and Soul: Navigating Emotions aboard Dutch Ships, 1670 - 1800
This dissertation investigates the emotion practices of seafarers who traveled through Dutch imperial networks between 1670 and 1800, using two underexploited bodies of archival evidence: (a) the so-called sailing letters: personal correspondence seized by the British during the Third (1672–1674) and Fourth (1781–1784) Anglo-Dutch Wars and now held in the National Archives in Kew and (b) the criminal court records of the Dutch East India Company (VOC), housed in the Dutch National Archives.
Together these sources open a rare window onto the emotional worlds of merchants, preachers, and working-class sailors as they moved between the Dutch Republic and its maritime networks, allowing the study to reconstruct not only what these individuals expressed emotionally, but how they were taught, expected, and sometimes compelled to express those feelings.
The study is organized around two central questions: what emotional habits can be traced among seafarers aboard VOC and West India Company (WIC) ships through the sailing letters and criminal court records, and how did those habits transform as seafarers moved through the Dutch imperial networks connecting the homeland to its colonies, forts, and outposts?
Rather than treating the ship as an isolated social world, the dissertation situates emotional expression within the broader "networks of empire" — the commercial, military, and administrative infrastructures that bound the Republic to its overseas possessions — and asks how the fluid, often improvised boundaries between ship, colony, and homeland shaped the way people felt and communicated feeling.
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