School of Liberal Arts and Science

This article presents an analysis of the paper-and office work at two South Asian corners in the early modern Dutch empire. The article engages with current approaches to the histories of bureaucracy and empire that emphasize the lived experience of "paperwork" in order to gain a localized understanding of what constituted empire. The article focuses on the production and use of pattas, olas, and thombos in the offices of the Dutch zamindar-fiscaal in Chinsurah (Bengal) and the Dutch disāva in Jaffna (Sri Lanka). Dutch bureaucracy in these spaces was entrenched in local practices, and created through processes of layering and blending, as evidenced by material and linguistic characteristics. The deeds and registers recorded essential aspects of life such as labor, marriage, and transactions of property, and the article shows how such paperwork mattered to villagers in Chinsurah and Jaffna. The production of the deeds and registers itself could include a public spectacle, and we argue that this performative aspect of the local bureaucracy added to the perceived relevance of the paperwork. Furthermore, through an analysis of legal cases we reconstruct the use and abuse of these bureaucracies by Dutch officials and local inhabitants, which signifies a parasitical relationship that is characteristic of so many imperial and colonial spaces. Through a focus on the local bureaucratic practices, the authors shed new light on questions about the character of the Dutch empire, where things never turned out to be exactly as they appeared at first sight. At the core of this contribution lies the paperwork produced in the eighteenthcentury offices of the zamindar saheb fiscaal in Chinsurah, Bengal and the disāva in Jaffna, Sri Lanka (Ceylon). Although the vernacular titles might suggest that we would be dealing here with Bengali and Tamil or Sinhalese bureaucracies, the officials holding these offices were actually Dutchmen. These Dutchmen held the rank of (junior) merchants within the organization of the Dutch East India Company (VOC). Certainly when looked at from the present day,