Showing papers by "Michael North published in 2019"

Domestic Interiors in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Batavia

Abstract: This chapter focuses on the interior decoration of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Batavia homes. On the basis of probate inventories, I’ll try to shed a special light on the households of non-Dutch people, such as the Chinese and the Muslim population. While Dutch families appear to have incorporated Asian decorative objects from the beginning, a greater exchange between Western and indigenous patterns in Chinese and Asian households seems to have been taken place only in the eighteenth centuries to a larger extent. In the following, I shall reconstruct facets of domestic interior decoration and answer the question to what extent the different ethnic groups accommodated specific styles and furnishings.