VOC - Dutch East India Company

Rekeningen uit de Scheepssoldijboeken 1662-1805
(Accounts from Ships' Pay Ledgers 1662-1805)
Het © Nationaal Archief 2010-2014, Den Haag, Nederland

Introduction
A ship's pay-ledger consists of a series of rekeningen courant (current accounts). At least two pages have been reserved for each employee. Viewed superficially, the left and right hand pages resemble the debit and credit sides of a somewhat overgrown household account book. Closer inspection reveals that it is more complicated. (See the webpage with a model of the layout of the ship's pay-ledgers)

The left hand page. The following items are listed from top to bottom: 1) two months' wages in advance to the employee; 2) his outfit, for which the employee was responsible, with, if necessary, money borrowed from the VOC; 3) if required, any other amount owed by the employee (the vaderlandse schuld or home debt); 4) a single or multiple amounts paid by the VOC in the Dutch Republic to family members or proxies of the employee out of his credit accrued during his appointment in Asia; 5) the final payment in the Dutch Republic after the end of his Asian career, either after his death or upon repatriation.

The right hand page. The following items are listed from top to bottom: 1) the payment, either credited partly or fully by the VOC, for salary due during the voyage to Batavia; 2) any eventual debt from the left hand page deducted from this; 3) sums credited to the employee by the VOC, based on either the whole or, as the case may be, part of the wage he had earned during a whole or part of a financial year (1st September up to and including 31st August). The amount of these sums depended on the extent to which the employee used his official wage to cover his living costs and the amount of private income he had at his disposal, for instance from private trade. These entries were always related to activities carried out in the past financial year. Should the employee have been posted to one particular establishment for many years, his wage was entered annually on 31st August. A new entry was also made in the ledgers each time the employee moved to another establishment. Each time a new wage was credited to his account his place of work was mentioned. There is one exception to the rule that the geographical career of an employee can be traced from the mention of his posting: those employees who were posted on the island of Deshima in Nagasaki Bay (Japan) were registered as being employed in Batavia.

It should be stressed that the items listed on the right hand side of the ship's pay-ledgers are not payments made to the employee while in Asia. This is obvious from the current accounts of the employees who made no claim on payments in the Dutch Republic during the whole of their working lives in Asia (items on the left hand page). In these accounts, the sum of the amounts credited on the right hand page is the only one mentioned on the left hand page as the only amount paid out (final payment) by the VOC in the Dutch Republic.

The items noted on the right hand side refer only to the official VOC wages and therefore do not take account of any emoluments and legal profit shares. There was one exception to this rule for the employees in Canton. Their legal, sometimes considerable, profit shares are noted in the ship's pay-ledgers.

In by far and away the largest number of cases, the series of items concludes either with the date and place of death, or with the date on which the employee left Batavia or arrived in the Dutch Republic. In some cases the last amount credited on the right hand page is the last information about the career of an employee; there is no mention of his decease or of his departure or of his return to the Dutch Republic. It is only very seldom that both the date of departure from Asia and the date of return to the Dutch Republic are noted on the right hand side of the ship's pay-ledgers. Perhaps it was arranged so that the date of departure from the East was recorded if an employee had no paid function on board during his homeward voyage, and, conversely, that the latter had been the case when his date of arrival in the Dutch Republic is recorded.
Source:Tanap