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Was the VOC funding Mozart? The diaries of Wilhelm Buschman on Kharg Island
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 November 2022
Abstract
This article considers the evidence for the business practices, goods traded, and accounts of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) upper merchant, Wilhelm Buschman, on Kharg Island in the Persian Gulf during the 1760s. Previous scholarship indicates that his widow, Anna Maria Pack, had a large inheritance, acquired on her death by her second husband, the VOC surgeon Ferdinand Dejean, who commissioned most of Mozart's flute works. A historical audit of Buschman's reports in this article reveals that the existence and source of most of that wealth was hidden from the official diaries which Buschman sent to the VOC headquarters in Batavia, on Java. The dwindling profits of the VOC, at a time of military turbulence involving Mir Mohanna, do not support Buschman's money originating from bribes even factoring in rake-offs. There is, however, evidence for a private, ring-fenced pearl trade on Kharg, which provides a good explanation. Pearls were not just jewels, but an ideal cryptocurrency for concealing, storing, selling, or shifting private wealth. The findings substantiate that it was possible for the VOC to lose out hugely to private enterprise, which was part of the culture among senior merchants. That wealth could do intercontinental economic damage. Occasionally, it was put to lasting good use.
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References
1 Verenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie = United East India Company.
2 Bleker, Otto P. and Lequin, Frank, Ferdinand Dejean 1731–1797 VOC-chirurgijn, wereldburger en opdrachtgever van Mozart (Wormer, 2013)Google Scholar. A revised version in English is in preparation.
3 Otto P. Bleker, ‘Ferdinand Dejean (1731–97): surgeon of the Dutch East India Company, man of the Enlightenment, and patron of Mozart’, The Historian 78 (Spring 2016), pp. 57–80, https://www.thefreelibrary.com/Ferdinand+Dejean+(1731-97)%3A+Surgeon+of+the+Dutch+East-India+Company%2C…-a0449417196 (accessed 7 October 2022).
4 There is a helpful chronology at https://ferdinanddejean.jimdofree.com (accessed October 2022) by Falk Steins, MA, to whom, along with Professor Otto Bleker, I am most grateful for advice and the kind sharing of sources.
5 10 December 1777, 27 December 1777, 4 February 1778, sourced at dme.mozarteum.at/DME/briefe/doclist (last accessed November 2020). The first letter mentioned three ‘small, easy and short’ concertos and a pair of quartets planned for Dejean.
6 About £2,300 is the modern equivalent. 1 guilder (Dutch Republic currency) = 1 florin (VOC currency). Mozart wrote to his father on 14 February 1778 from Mannheim explaining that Dejean had paid 96 guilders for two concertos, (K. 313, K. 314) and three quartets (with the flute as the lead instrument, K. 285, K. 285a, K. 285b). He expected Dejean's balance as agreed. https://dme.mozarteum.at/DME/briefe/letter.php?mid=987&cat= (accessed September 2022). The payment record dries up after that. Judging by their characters, it is hard to doubt that eventually the contract was mutually honoured. The concertos were long, not short, and Dejean got three, not two quartets. Mozart also wrote the Andante in C (K. 315), totalling six works for Dejean, albeit with his D major concerto (K. 314) being slightly modified and transposed from his concerto for oboe in C.
7 Dejean was born in Bonn, which long misled historians about his full identity, first published in: Lequin, F., ‘Mozart's rarer Mann’, Mitteilung der internationalen Stiftung Mozarteum 29.1–2 (1981), pp. 3–19Google Scholar.
8 Georg Dehio, Handbuch der deutschen Kunstdenkmäler Baden-Württemberg (Munich, 1964). Under Mannheim: Jesuitenkirche. St Francis Xavier (1506–1552) was the Jesuit co-founding missionary. Franz Xaver was also the name of Mozart's pupil Süssmayr.
9 Reinhardt Hootz, Kunstdenkmäler in Österreich. Ein Bildhandbuch. Vols: Salzburg, Tirol, Vorarlberg (Munich-Berlin, 1975) and Wien (Darmstadt, 1968).
10 These details are discernible on an engraving by A. Gatternicht, Heckel (Mannheim, 1840).
11 Dehio, Handbuch, under Schwetzingen. It is essentially a freemasons’ architectural theme park.
12 Zuidervaart, H. J. and Van Gent, R. H., ‘A bare outpost of learned European culture on the edge of the jungles of Java. Johan Maurits Mohr (1716–1775) and the emergence of instrumental and institutional science in Dutch Colonial Indonesia’, Isis 95.1 (2004), pp. 1–33CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed. Jakarta was a small village outside the VOC citadel.
13 S. Martin, ‘The symbolic portrait of Mozart's patron, Dr Ferdinand Dejean’, Hektoen International Journal of Medical Humanities (Spring 2018), https://hekint.org/2018/04/12/symbolic-portrait-mozarts-patron-dr-ferdinand-dejean/ (accessed September 2022). Eileen Deeley and members of the Siam Society kindly furnished me with several interpretive ideas at a 2019 presentation in Bangkok.
14 E. J. Gunson, ‘Jean Baptiste Wendling (1723–1797): Life, Works, Artistry and Influence, including a Thematic Catalogue of all his Compositions’, (unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Western Australia, 1999). I thank Dr Gunson for much general advice.
15 Professor Mathew Grenby, University of Newcastle, kindly suggested that I undertake research involving the VOC funding Mozart. This article, too, draws on questions posed in an Royal Asiatic Society presentation on Dejean's portrait, namely ‘What was traded in the Gulf to generate the funds?’ and ‘Is this the end of the road—what more can be researched?’ I am grateful to Professor Stockwell and the Society for these ideas.
16 Sultan bin Muhammad al-Qasimi, ‘Power Struggles and Trade in the Gulf. 1620–1820’, (unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Durham, 1999).
17 W. Floor, ‘The Dutch on Khark Island: a commercial mishap’, International Journal of Middle East Studies 24.3 (August 1992), pp. 441–460.
18 W. Floor and D. T. Potts, The Persian Gulf Khark. The Island's Untold Story (Washington DC, 2017).
19 A. A. Amin, British Interests in the Persian Gulf (Leiden, 1967), passim.
20 I thank Nadine Groffen and colleagues at the Nationaal Archief (hereafter NA) for extracting and scanning hundreds of pages. Buschman's reports from Kharg are all catalogued in NA Fonds code 1.04.02.
21 Latinized by him to Wilhelmus in most documents.
22 Naamlijst van de Studenten, sedert de oprichting de Hoogeschool te Groningen ingeschreven, Vol. 1, p. 382, in Bleker and Lequin, Ferdinand Dejean, pp. 57–58.
23 jck.nl/en/page/elburg (accessed September 2022).
24 P. C. Molhuysen, P. J. Blok and K. H. Kossmann, Nieuw Nedelandsch Biografisch Woordenboek. Zesde Deel (Leiden, 1924).
25 J. Buschman, Jacobs en Moses Testamenten (Campen, 1752).
26 G. J. Buschman, Disputatio Juridica Inauguralis de Statu Hominum (Groningen, 1752), pp. 1–16. The ‘G’ initial abbreviates the Latin form of Wilhelm.
27 Considering criteria for antisocial personality disorder in DSM-5, APA (Arlington, 2013). Perry, R., ‘Mir Muhanna and the Dutch: patterns of piracy in the Persian Gulf’, Studia Iranica 2 (1973), p. 90Google Scholar, reviewed Niebuhr's account.
28 EIC Marriages, Bombay, 1755, British Library (hereafter BL).
29 This is Buschman's own spelling, presumably phonetic to him.
30 The Persians had invited the VOC to Kharg, approved by the VOC headquarters in Batavia in 1753.
31 NA, 3003, p. 1893.
32 Marshall, P. J., ‘British society in India under the East India Company’, Modern Asian Studies 31.1 (February 1997), pp. 89–108CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
33 British India Office Ecclesiastical Returns, 1 January 1746–14 November 1747. Records on Anna's mother's birth and ethnic origin have not come to light, the likely explanation being that she was either Indian or Anglo-Indian.
34 Anon., Hudud al-'Alam. The regions of the world: a Persian geography, 372 AH/982 AD, V. Minorsky (ed. and trans.) (London, 1937), p. 58. Written for a prince of Guzgan, now northwest Afghanistan. A farsang or parasang is an Arabian day's walk of 3.5 miles, remarkably accurate for the 150 mile distance as the crow flies.
35 D. T. Potts, ‘Pearl ii. Islamic period’, Enc. Iranica (2008), pp. 1–14.
36 Goswami, Chhaya, ‘Pearls, pearlers and Indian pearl traders in the Persian Gulf’, Proceedings of the Indian History Congress 71 (2010–2011), pp. 928–940Google Scholar.
37 Carter, Robert, ‘The history and prehistory of pearling in the Persian Gulf’, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 48.2 (2005), pp. 139–209CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
38 W. Floor, ‘Pearl fishing in the Gulf in 1757’, Persica 10 (1982), pp. 209–222.
39 Ibid., p. 210.
40 W. Floor, ‘The Bahrain project of 1754’, Persica 11 (1984), pp. 129–148.
41 Floor, ‘Pearl fishing’, p. 213.
42 NA, 2909, pp. 9–14.
43 NA, 2937, pp. 33–40.
44 BL, India Office Records (IOR) G/29/9, 24 July 1756 and G/29/10, 5 August 1756. Quoted secondarily in al-Qasimi, Thesis.
45 £24,000 contemporaneous equivalent; at least £3.362 million modern equivalent on the most conservative axis, as per www.measuringworth.com/pierremarteau.com (last accessed November 2020).
46 Edward Ives, A Voyage from England to India in the Year 1754 (London, 1773), Book I, Chapter 14, p. 215. A Dutch edition was published in Amsterdam in 1779. From the 2016 bathygraphy of Kharg and Khargu, the reefs are all shallow, at around 2 fathoms, less than 5 metres. Also, nothing climatic, seismic, or volcanic is on record to explain a loss of pearls at the time that is of interest.
47 At the time, this was the diving bell invented by the astronomer Edmond Halley.
48 Stan du Plessis, ‘Pearls worth Rds 4000 or less: Reinterpreting eighteenth century sumptuary laws at the Cape’, Economic Research Southern Africa, Working paper (2013), p. 336.
49 J. Fourie, ‘ An Inquiry Into the Nature, Causes and Distribution of Wealth of the Cape Colony, 1652–1795’, (unpublished PhD dissertation, Utrecht University, 2012).
50 Carsten Niebuhr and Robert Herron (trans.), Niebuhr's Travels Through Arabia and Other Countries in the East (Edinburgh, 1792), Vol. 2, pp. 110–112.
51 NA, Fonds code 1.11.01.01, item 461.
52 C. L. O. Buderi and L. T. Rikart, ‘The Iran-UAE Gulf Islands dispute. A journey through international law, history and politics’, in The Gulf Islands Dispute in Historical Perspective, (eds) M. Fitzmaurice and S. Singer. Queen Mary Studies in International Law, Vol. 29 (Leiden, 2018).
53 Habib Borjian, ‘The language of the Kharg Island’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 29.4 (October 2019), pp. 659–682. I also thank Dr Borjian for his most kind help excluding a Turkish Arabic text for this article.
54 Perry, J. R., ‘Mir Muhanna and the Dutch: Patterns of piracy in the Persian Gulf’, Studia Iranica 2 (1973), pp. 79–95Google Scholar.
55 Ibid., p. 89.
56 Els M. Jacobs, Koopman in Azië. De handel van der Verenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie tijdens de 18de eeuw (Zutphen, 2000), p. 126.
57 The VOC buildings appear to have been cleared in the twentieth century. Photos of Kharg circa 1880 by Albert P. H. Hotz, a Dutch businessman, now in the Nederlands Fotomuseum, show pearl fishers, the VOC fort, and a large, arcaded stone building.
58 Perry, ‘Mir Muhanna’, p. 85.
59 Floor, ‘The Bahrain project’, p. 139.
60 Mir Mohanna draws popular interest in Iran today, most recently with a recent play about him by actor Sirus Kahurinejad (Tehran Times, 28 January 2018). An oil tanker was named after him in 1991. A heavily restored, conical-domed tomb on Kharg, sometimes attributed as his, is actually six centuries old. Nevertheless, it perpetuates the status of his fascinating character in Kharg folklore.
61 W. Floor, The Persian Gulf, the Rise of the Gulf Arabs, the Politics of Trade on the Persian Littoral 1747–1792 (Washington DC, 2007), pp. 30–31, comments on an English translation of the 1756 report to Batavia.
62 Perry, ‘Mir Muhanna’, passim.
63 Jacobs, Koopman in Azië, passim.
64 al-Qasimi, Thesis, p. 162.
65 BL, Gombroon diaries, Vol. 13, EIC Agent's letter to the Presidency, 24 December 1761.
66 Frank Lequin and Albert Meijer, Samuel van de Putte, een mandarijn uit Vlissingen (1690–1745) (Middelburg, 1989), Vol. 1, p. 168.
67 He directed the destruction of his papers. Similar to Ives, geographic travel lacked credibility—why destroy papers if you were a scientific geographer? Historiographically, Asian espionage formed a high-quality, primary source.
68 NA, 6850, p. 1186, line 7.
69 British India Office Ecclesiastical Returns, Bombay, 8 September 1755.
70 Kuno, Goro, ‘The absence of yellow fever in Asia: history, hypotheses, vector dispersal, possibility of YF in Asia and other enigmas’, Viruses 12 (2020), p. 1349CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed, and kind personal communications.
71 Thanks to Dr Harriet Mitchison for this, on presenting to Newcastle Lit and Phil in 2019. Recorded by C. G. Grüner, quoting Dejean on Batavia post mortems in H. D. Gaub, Anfangsgründe (Berlin, 1797).
72 Mosquitoes were only discovered as the vector as late as 1897. The Dutch in Batavia blamed malodorous, silted-up mud flats. Reviewed in Van der Brug, P. H., ‘Malaria in Batavia in the eighteenth century’, Tropical Medicine and International Health 2.9 (1997), pp. 892–902CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
73 Bleker, ‘Ferdinand Dejean’, and personal communication.
74 CBG Centrum voor Familiegeschiedenis Versamelingen, VIBDNI004853.
75 As per www.measuringworth.com (accessed September 2022) for historic-modern conversion, 2019 data, and www.pierre-marteau.com (accessed October 2022) for historic guilder-pound conversion. www.measuringworth.com was used for monetary conversions in this article as it is multiaxial. Figures are approximate on the most conservative axis for modern values. Data from other instruments vary, but remain within the order of magnitude.
76 Bleker, ‘Ferdinand Dejean’.
77 Gemeente Archief Amsterdam, Notarieel Archief 13.647, Notaris Geniets 755, 780. Sourced by Otto Bleker.
78 NA, 1.02.20 VOC Het archief van de Legatie in Turkije, 1668–1810 (1811), inventory number: 671. Brieven van Pyrault, de Lon and Mareyk, 1767. A gracious translation for me by Kioumars Ghereghlou, Libraries of Columbia University, helped exclude another text in Turkish Arabic script, mentioned in Floor, ‘The Dutch on Khark Island’, p. 449. Conversion instruments as per www.measuringworth.com, note 75.
79 NA, 3156, p. 46.
80 James Cook RN., Captain Cook's Journal During his First Voyage Round the World Made in HM Bark Endeavour, 1768–1771. A Literal Transcription of the Original Manuscripts, (ed.) W. J. L. Wharton (London, 1893), Chapter 9 ‘From Torres Strait to Batavia’.
81 Out of a total of 720 VOC surgeons, in the third quarter of the eighteenth century. Iris Bruijn, Ship's Surgeons of the Dutch East India Company. Commerce and the Progress of Medicine in the Eighteenth-Century (Leiden, 2009), p. 199.
82 NA, 3156, p. 16.
83 Beknopte beschryving der Oostindische etablissementen (Amsterdam, 1792), p. 276.
84 Schama, S., ‘Wives and wantons: versions of womanhood in seventeenth-century Dutch Art’, The Oxford Art Journal 3.1 (April 1980), pp. 5–13CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
85 Dieter von Fintel, Sophia du Plessis and Ada Jansen, ‘The wealth of Cape Colony widows: inheritance laws and investment responses following male death in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries’, Economic History of Developing Regions 28.1 (2013), pp. 87–108.
86 Schmidt., A. ‘Generous provisions or legitimate shares? Widows and the transfer of property in seventeenth-century Holland’, The History of the Family 15.1 (March 2010), pp. 13–24CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
87 W. M. Bons, ‘Kinderen van der Verenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie. De levenslopen en carrières van der in Azië geboren zoonen en dochters van VOC dienaren in de 18e eeuw’, (unpublished MA dissertation, University of Leiden, 2015).
88 Bruijn, Ship's Surgeons, p. 217. Aasdom law originated in North Holland.
89 Ibid., pp. 226–227.
90 Ives, A Voyage, p. 224. Falk Steins spotted that Bosman was Buschman and kindly shared that extract.
91 Ibid., p. 214. Ives was also interested in the 1740 Batavian massacre and recorded a second-hand account from a former VOC governor, which is detailed, interesting, and impartial. The whole book is well written.
92 Ibid., p. 202.
93 Niebuhr, Travels through Arabia. These are my translations from the German edition: C Niebuhr, Reisebeschreibung nach Arabien und andern umliegenden Ländern (Copenhagen, 1778), Chapter ‘Anmerkungen zu Charedsch’, section June–July, 1765, passim. Charedsch is Kharg.
94 After the Dutch departure from Kharg, there was an evident upsurge in slavery. Floor reviewed how, in 1841, there were 1,217 slaves on 117 ships harboured at Kharg. W. Floor, The Persian Gulf. The Rise and Fall of Bandar-E Lengeh. The Distribution Center for the Arabian Coast, 1750–1930 (Washington DC, 2010), p. 14. The sheikh of Lengeh charged a half dollar for each slave transported through his port. African slave trading was banned in Persia in 1848, while the British developed increasing agreements with Gulf states to search ships and prevent it. Disbrowe briefly seized Kharg in 1856, declaring it a free port, to keep trade flowing and prevent slavery, during the war over Herat. Illustrated London News, 4 April 1857, p. 310.
95 BL, Gombroon diary, Vol. 8, Francis Wood to agency, 3 May 1756.
96 NA, 2996, pp. 4–16.
97 NA, 3027, pp. 24–25.
98 NA, 3064, pp. 15–19.
99 NA, 3092, pp. 320–322.
100 NA, 3092, p. 320 et seq.
101 NA, 3092, pp. 316–318.
102 NA, 1.04.02 Surat papers.
103 Profuse thanks to the historian Dr Jordy Geerlings for expert help with the eighteenth-century Dutch. The dictionary Nederduitsch en Engelsch Woordenboek, Tweede Deel (Amsterdam, 1824) proved to be the most useful for this project, because it was advanced in scholarship, yet close enough in time to the then demised VOC to retain a rich source of specialist mercantile vocabulary. Earlier and later dictionaries were less helpful.
104 NA, 3156, p. 7.
105 NA, 3156, pp. 18–19.
106 NA, 3184 passim; details in the next section below.
107 NA, 3156, pp. 6–7.
108 NA, 3156, p. 8.
109 NA, 3156, p. 8.
110 NA, 3156, p. 9. Van Mareyk recorded that they numbered 200–300, implying an individual black slave soldier's annual pay was 20–30 florins, which is £250–£380 per annum modern equivalent and equating to a VOC under merchant or merchant's monthly pay: NA, 1.2.20, 671.
111 NA, 3156, p. 11.
112 NA, 3156, p. 12.
113 NA, 3156, p. 13.
114 NA, 3156, p. 15.
115 Deductie gedaan uit den name ende van wegens bewindhebberen van de Oost-Indische Compagnie ter kamer Amsterdam, eerst requiranten van appoinctement van anticipatie, en nu gedaagdens by mandament van revisie, ter eenre, op ende jegens Aaltje Fransse, weduwe van Cornelis Canter, Jan Canter, en Hendrik van Greuningen, als in huwelyk hebbende Anna Canter, zeggende te zyn moeder, broeder, en zwager respective, van Frans Canter, alle wonende te Amsterdam. Injunction, VOC (Amsterdam, 1752). Remarkably, this injunction against his assets in VOC Roman-Dutch law was made into a printed publication. The VOC was angry.
116 BL, IOR, Gombroon diaries 29/8, 6 and 7 April 1755.
117 NA, 3156, p. 18.
118 Doornbos, K., Shipwreck and survival in Oman, 1763: the fate of the Amstelveen and thirty castaways on the South coast of Arabia (Amsterdam, 2014)Google Scholar. Based on the log book of the third mate, Cornelis Eyks, 30 survivors made a gruelling desert trek all the way to Muscat.
119 NA, 3156, p. 21.
120 NA, 3156, p. 22.
121 NA, 3156, p. 28.
122 NA, 3156, p. 30.
123 NA, 3156, p. 31.
124 NA, 3156, p. 44.
125 NA, 3156, pp. 37–38.
126 NA, 3156, pp. 55–60.
127 NA, 2909, pp. 1–8, 194.
128 NA, 3101, p. 2760 et seq. This was far more likely a drunken affray than military action.
129 NA, 3184, pp. 38–39.
130 NA, 3184, pp. 40–41.
131 NA, 3184, p. 31.
132 NA, 3184, p. 30.
133 NA, 3184, p. 31.
134 NA, 3184, p. 41.
135 NA, 3184, p. 44.
136 NA, 3184, p. 42. The concept of consuming fresh, energizing food when ill dated back to at least medieval times.
137 NA, 3184, p. 42.
138 NA, 3184, p. 43.
139 NA, 3184, p. 41.
140 NA, 3184, p. 41.
141 NA, 3184, p. 46.
142 Discussed in al-Qasimi, Thesis, p. 128.
143 Amin, British interests, passim.
144 Iranicaonline.org/articles/kharg-island-02 (accessed 7 October 2022), for interim historic population data.
145 Niebuhr, Reisebeschreibung nach Arabien. June–July, 1765, passim. Niebuhr did not clarify what animals he grazed.
146 NA, 3184, p. 30.
147 NA, 3184, p. 30.
148 NA, 3184, p. 45.
149 Amin, British interests, p. 150.
150 Jacobs, Koopman in Azië, pp. 16–17, 218–219.
151 Kromhout, B.. ‘Het faillissement van 's werelds eerste multinational. “De VOC redden was een prestigekwestie”’, Historisch Nieuwsblad (July 2001)Google Scholar. This is not an academic journal, but the article is a very good review of the spectrum of opinions.
152 BL, Bombay archives, Basra diaries, Vol. 199, p. 361.
153 Detailed copy of the deed discussed in Bleker, ‘Ferdinand Dejean’. Minutes of notarial deeds, 1753–1789, 506, Regionaal Archief, Leiden. She also declared valuable pearls, though still valued under the legal limit. An exceptional portrait of a Javanese-looking girl in the Art Gallery of Ontario wearing lavish pearls could be Anna's maid, Anna Canangan, in 1772 on the occasion of her baptism in the Hooglandse, Kerk: Leiden Archief. With extraordinary rarity, the Dejeans had adopted her, giving her the opportunity for such privileges.