Enslaved Demography: Daghregisters Batavia. Enslaved and Total Population Records from the Daily Journals of Batavia Castle (1678-1807)

These records referred to the total population of the inner and outer city of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) headquarters in Asia, Batavia (nowadays Jakarta, capital of Indonesia), while retaining a focus on either the total or the enslaved population. Most of these Journals are part of the collection of Indonesia’s National Archives, the Arsip Nasional Republik Indonesia (ANRI), and while the post-1682 Daily Journals have not been transcribed, they have been digitized in recent years by the ANRI and made publicly available.

However, to my knowledge, the data has not yet been collected and published as a whole, although there are other census datasets available for Batavia. These records are not complete, as a number of volumes of the Daily Journals are missing. Adding to that, some surviving Journals were damaged by ink- or paper-related issues, sometimes causing data to be illegible.