In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the Dutch East India Company (VOC) owned a large number of trading branches along the entire coast of India. Many impressive graves, forts, cannons and memorial stones can still be found there as silent witnesses.
Written in stone is about the Indian east coast, formerly called the Coromandel Coast. The impetus for the book was the discovery of a Hindu temple carved from the rock, where more than a hundred names of Dutch people were carved on the walls between 1662 and 1818 as if it were a 'guest book'. Who these people were, what they did here and what their lives looked like: this is what this book is about.
In addition, it provides a description of the cemeteries with transcripts of the funerary texts and the biographical data of the persons involved. With its hundreds of unique photos and its thorough approach based on contemporary archive material, this book is an important source of knowledge about the life of the higher VOC servant.
Written in stone appeared at the exhibition 'Photos from distant countries: Ferry André de la Porte' in the Rijksmuseum on the occasion of 400 years of the VOC.
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