Today, I would like to talk
about colonial banqueting and Orientalism
in the early 17th century capital of the Dutch Republic,
Amsterdam.
I will do so
within the context of a particularly lavish banquet
that was thrown by officials of the Dutch East India Company
at the headquarters in Amsterdam, 2nd of September 1638.
And unfortunately, no visual materials have survived
of the events.
But on this slide I included a painting of an imagined
but similar banquet by the painter Pieter Claesz from 1627
to give you an impression what the original event
may have looked like.
The guest of honor of this lavish banquet
was no one less than Marie de Medicis, the exiled queen mother of France,
whom we see entering Amsterdam here
in this carriage in early September 1638.
And the banquet that was
organized for her displayed perhaps for the very first time in Europe.
a wide array of spices, dishes and valuable material objects
from across the Asian continent, carefully arranged
according to size, color and occasionally region
From the Maluku Islands
it was on display nutmeg and candied fruits, from Persia and China
there was silk porcelain, pottery and pearls.
There were spices, including cinnamon,
cloves, benzoine, ginger and dragons blood.
There were minerals, niters, salts, borax, vegetables, including rhubarb
dyes and pigments such as indigo and gamboge
waxes and oils, including beeswax
and mace oil, incense and myrrha sweets such as mace cookies
and at least one pheasant dish.
Now, the Dutch East India Company
was founded in 1602
and unique for trading companies in Europe at the time.
The state general of the Dutch Republic had granted
the East India Company the exclusive rights to trade
and wage war for the Republic in Asia.
And it was precisely this unique right that the Dutch East
India Company sought to advertise their banquet for Marie de Medicis.
And this is why
the writer of the commemorative book on the Medicis visit to Amsterdam,
the Amsterdam based poet Caspar Barlaeus
sort of framed the banquet in terms of Dutch colonial conquest,
the expansionism in Asia.
This is why
Caspar Barlaeus in his commemorative book here,
translated from the original Latin, writes, quote,
The Dutch East India Company recruits soldiers,
raises and sends armies, wages
war in another world, conquers cities, seizes
islands, operates fleets.
In short, it initiates and accomplish
those things which are not far removed
from the efforts of the great powers, end quote.
So in other words, Casper Barlaeus sought to demonstrate
that the East India Company in fact operated on an equal footing
with other European colonial powers
at the time.
Barlaeus and its commemorative book then went on to demonstrate
that the banquet sought to target almost all of the five senses.
He writes, quote, the eyes of the Medicis darted around
and she imagined while enjoying the sight and touch of the foreign
and unusual banquets that she ate together with Indians,
Moluccans, Persians, Arabs, Japanese and Chinese
by a pleasant movement of the mind, end quote.
In other words, the banquet also sought to have synesthetic
effects meant to persuade participants, and especially the Medicis
of the pleasurable riches that the Dutch
had forcibly imported from the Asian continent.
I would like to propose that the banquet
can be seen as a performance of Orientalism.
And Orientalism is a term that was first coined
by the scholar Edward W Said in 1978.
Said defines Orientalism, quote,
as a Western style for dominating, restructuring
and having authority over the Orient, end quote.
And subsequently, I would argue that banquet
did not seek to give an accurate representation
of all the spices and valuable material objects
that could be important by the Dutch from Asia,
but rather sought to vaguely appeal
to the pleasures and desires of Europeans, the Dutch
and the French as represented by the Medicis in particular.
So in the words of Edward W.Said
we may argue that the banquet strives to evoke
a fabulously rich world.
Thanks so much for your attention.