The Part Borne By The Dutch In The Discovery Of Australia 1606-1765

OCCASION AND OBJECT OF THE PRESENT WORK.

In writing my biography of Tasman, forming part of Messrs. Frederik Muller and Co.'s edition of the Journal of Tasman's celebrated voyage of discovery of 1642-1643, I was time and again struck by the fact that the part borne by the Netherlanders in the discovery of the continent of Australia is very insufficiently known to the Dutch themselves, and

altogether misunderstood or even ignored abroad. Not only those who with hypercritical eyes scrutinise, and with more or less scepticism as to its value, analyse whatever evidence on this point is submitted to them, but those others also who feel a profound and sympathetic interest in the historical study of the remarkable voyages which the Netherlanders undertook to the South-land, are almost invariably quite insufficiently

informed concerning them. This fact is constantly brought home to the student who consults the more recent works published on the subject, and who fondly hopes to get light from such authors as CALVERT, COLLINGRIDGE, NORDENSKIOLD, RAINAUD and others. Such at least has time after time been my own case. Is it wonderful, therefore, that, while I was engaged in writing Tasman's life, the idea occurred to me of republishing the documents relating to this subject, preserved in the State Archives at the Hague--the repository of the archives of the famous General Dutch

Chartered East-India Company extending over two centuries (1602-1800)—and in various other places? I was naturally led to lay before Messrs. Frederik Muller and Co. the question, whether they would eventually undertake such a publication, and I need hardly add that these gentlemen, to whom the historical study of Dutch discovery has repeatedly been so largely indebted, evinced great interest in the plan I submitted

to them.[*]

[* See my Life of Tasman, p. 103, note 10.]

Meanwhile the Managing Board of the Royal Geographical Society of the Nether lands had resolved to publish a memorial volume on the occasion of the Society's twenty-fifth anniversary. Among the plans discussed by the Board was the idea of having the documents just referred to published at the expense of the Society. The name of jubilee publication could with complete justice be bestowed on a work having for its object once more to throw the most decided and fullest possible light on achievements of our forefathers in the 17th and 18th century, in a form that would appeal to foreigners no less than to native readers. An act of homage to our ancestors, therefore, a modest one certainly, but one inspired by the same feeling which in 1892 led Italy and the Iberian Peninsula to celebrate the memory of the discoverer of America, and in 1898 prompted

the Portuguese to do homage to the navigator who first showed the world the sea-route to .