Archive Research into Dutch Naval Logbooks, and Preliminal Open Access of its Digitization

Abstract We carried out research into nineteen century Dutch logbooks, especially a series of naval logbooks kept at the National Archive in the Hague. It is voluminous archive, with its 500 metres containing an enormous amount of data. Our initial concern was meteorological data recorded in logbooks. We have digitized part of the archive, for six ships with a duration of about one hundred months, in order to reconstruct the climate of the past. Also in the process of this archival research, we became gradually aware of much wider and various implications this archive has as historical material. We decided to make our preliminary digitization open-access at the JCDP (Japan-Asia Climate Database Program) website. We hope that this will be more widely used by those who have historical concerns about maritime history, the history of environment in Asia and around Japanese seas, Dutch-Japanese relationships, and Dutch overseas history.