Early Modern Indian Ocean Commodities Thesaurus from VOC Archives

Featuring 3787 concepts for commodities shipped in the early modern Indian Ocean World, sourced from Dutch East India Company archives. It includes 2294 concepts marked as 'NOT YET CLASSIFIED' and serves as reference data for entity annotation and query expansion within the GLOBALISE research infrastructure.

Use Cases

• Integrate the 3787 commodity concepts as reference data for named entity annotation in historical shipping documents.
• Use the hierarchical classification to expand queries for commodity-related research within the GLOBALISE infrastructure.
• Analyze the 2294 'NOT YET CLASSIFIED' concepts to prioritize future taxonomy development efforts.
• Link commodity concepts from this thesaurus to specific shipping lists from the Bookkeeper-General Batavia and Monsoon Traders Database.

Strengths

• Contains 3787 distinct commodity concepts for structured analysis.
• Sourced from authoritative Dutch East India Company (VOC) archives.
• Specifically designed for integration with the GLOBALISE research infrastructure.

Limitations

• A significant portion (2294 concepts) is marked as 'NOT YET CLASSIFIED', limiting immediate analytical utility.
• The dataset is a thesaurus of concepts, not a tabular dataset of transactions, limiting direct statistical use.
• Temporal coverage is specific to the eighteenth century, limiting applicability to other historical periods.

Provenance

Source

Dutch East India Company (VOC) archives, specifically the Bookkeeper-General Batavia and Monsoon Traders Database.

Collection Method

Sourced and compiled from historical shipping lists for thesaurus creation.

Time Range

Eighteenth century.

Freshness

Documents in Version 1 are dated October 2023.

Geography

Indian Ocean World.