Photo: Arthur Brand.
A box given to art sleuth Arthur Brand contained records from the Dutch East India Company. They had been stolen a decade ago from the Hague in the Netherlands.
Everyone likes a mystery, especially one that gets solved in a satisfactory way. Of course, “satisfactory” is in the eye of the beholder. I myself like to have the perp brought to justice. Other people prefer something brutally realistic.
France 24 reported recently on a mystery solved by Arthur Brand, the “Indiana Jones of the Art World.” In this case, the perp is long gone.
“A Dutch art sleuth has recovered a priceless trove of stolen documents from the 15th to the 19th century, including several UNESCO-listed archives from the world’s first multinational corporation. Arthur Brand [ said] the latest discovery was among his most significant.
” ‘In my career, I have been able to return fantastic stolen art, from Picassos to a Van Gogh … yet this find is one of the highlights of my career,’ Brand told AFP.
“Many of the documents recount the early days of the Dutch East India Company (VOC), whose globetrotting trading and military operations contributed to the Dutch ‘Golden Age,’ when the Netherlands was a global superpower.
“VOC merchants criss-crossed the globe, catapulting the Netherlands to a world trading power but also exploiting and oppressing the colonies it conquered. The company was key to the slave trade during that period, with generations of enslaved people forced to work on Dutch plantations. …
“The company was also a leading diplomatic power and one document relates a visit in 1700 by top VOC officials to the court of the Mughal emperor in India.
” ‘Since the Netherlands was one of the most powerful players in the world at that time in terms of military, trade, shipping, and colonies, these documents are part of world history,’ said Brand.
UNESCO agrees, designating the VOC archives as part of its ‘Memory of the World’ documentary heritage collection.
” ‘The VOC archives make up the most complete and extensive source on early modern world history anywhere,’ says UNESCO on its website.
“The trove also featured early ships logs from one of the world’s most famous admirals, Michiel de Ruyter, whose exploits are studied in naval academies even today. …
“No less enthralling is the ‘who-dunnit’ of how Brand came by the documents.
“Brand received an email from someone who had stumbled across a box of seemingly ancient manuscripts while clearing out the attic of an incapacitated family member.
“This family member occasionally lent money to a friend, who would leave something as collateral – in this case the box of documents. …
“Brand investigated with Dutch police and concluded the documents had been stolen in 2015 from the vast National Archives in The Hague. The main suspect – an employee at the archives who had indeed left the box as collateral but never picked it up – has since died. …
“The art detective said he spent many an evening sifting through the documents, transported back in time.
” ‘Wars at sea, negotiations at imperial courts, distant journeys to barely explored regions, and knights,’ he told AFP.
” ‘I felt like I had stepped into Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island.’ ” More at France 24, here.
Don’t you love that UNESCO has a category of valuables called “Memory of the World”? Wow, what else belongs to the Memory of the World, and is it being protected for the very reason that we don’t remember it? Is Robert Louis Stevenson in Memory of the World?
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