Interpretations of colonial representations : reflections on alterity, colonial history, and intercultural contact

Abstract

This book offers a collection of essays about the interpretations of colonial representations, most of them in relation to the Dutch East India Company (VOC). The history of a world wide operating trading company like the VOC offers a great variety of contact histories, ranging from situations of 'first contact' to the development of 'multicultural communities'. In these histories representation is always immanent. It is manifest in the construction of social images, as well as in the effects of social behaviour. In this book the focus is on media that transmit representations of other people: language, pictures, scientific discourses, narratives, and text editions.