Asian and African studies blog

The Bataviaasch Genootschap van Kunsten en Wetenschappen, or Batavian Society of Arts and Sciences, was established in Batavia in 1778. Founded by the botanist Jacob Radermacher, the Bataviaasch Genootschap is the oldest learned society in Asia founded by Europeans. After a failed attempt to gain the patronage of Stadtholder Willem V (1748–1806; William V, Prince of Orange), the governors of the BG focussed their attentions on their publication Verhandelingen van het Bataviaasch Genootschap der Kunsten en Wetenschappen, ‘Transactions of the Batavian Society of Arts and Sciences’.  They envisaged Verhandelingen as a vehicle for building an academic reputation in Holland and more widely in Europe, modelling themselves on the Hollandsche Maatschappij der Wetenschappen (Dutch Society of Sciences) in Haarlem.

A view of Batavia, the capital of the Dutch Settlements in India, by John Wells, ca. 1800. British Library, P 494

The editors (governors) of Verhandelingen announced competitions to attract contributions, with limited success. Therefore, many of the articles were written by the editors themselves. Both Radermacher and Van Iperen wrote no fewer than three articles for Vol. 1 (printed in 1779 and 1781) and van Hogendorp wrote two, including one jointly with Radermacher. Perhaps due partly to a shortage of material, during the course of the 18th century only six volumes of Verhandelingen were published: Vol. 1 in the year after its founding, in 1779, Vol. 2 in 1780, Vol. 3 in 1787, Vol. 4 in 1786 (sic), Vol. 5 in 1790 and Vol. 6 in 1792.

These early volumes of Verhandelingen are not only extremely rare, but appear to have a complex publication history, with copies of the same volume bearing different dates of printing, and sometimes being reissued at a later date. The British Library holds an incomplete set of Verhandelingen under two main shelfmark series. The earliest volumes - all originating from the private collection of Sir Joseph Banks - are assigned individual shelfmarks in the range 438.k.10-29, which covers Vols 1-15, but in a range of different editions. The earliest are Vol. 1, which contains the ‘Constitution of the Society’, printed in Batavia in 1781 and held at 438.k.13, and two issues of Vol. 2 held at 438.k.15 and 438.k.14, while copies of a third edition of Vols 1 and 2, printed in Batavia in 1825 and 1826, are also held as 438.k.28 and 438.k.29.

Because of the Society’s academic ambitions, as mentioned above, the governors also looked for printers in the Dutch Republic to print Dutch/European editions of the volumes published in Batavia. They commissioned the book sellers Arrenberg in Rotterdam and the printer Allard from Amsterdam to do a reprint of the first volume as soon as it had appeared in Batavia. Thus, the first three volumes appeared in the Dutch Republic in 1781, 1784 and 1787 respectively, and are held in the British Library as 438.k.10, 438.k.11 and 438.k.12. These Dutch editions were more elaborate than the Batavian ones, with copper engraved foldout plates in them, although Vol.1 lacks the Constitution. The British Library’s copies of Vols. 4-15 held at the 438.k. shelfmark are all printed in Batavia.

Verhandelingen van het Bataviaasch Genootschap der Kunsten en Wetenschappen, Vol. 13, printed in Batavia in 1832. British Library, 438.k.25

By the beginning of the 19th century the Society was almost moribund, but major political changes were then afoot. At the time of the founding of the Bataviaasch Genootschap in 1778, Batavia was the seat of administration of the Dutch East India Company (Verenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie or VOC), but in 1799 the VOC collapsed into bankruptcy and the governance was taken over by the Dutch state. In the early years of the 19th century, the Napoleonic wars in Europe spilled over into the Indian Ocean and Southeast Asia. A fleet assembled by the Governor-General of Bengal, Lord Minto, invaded Java in August 1811 and defeated the Franco-Dutch forces. For the next five years, Java was governed by a British administration, with Thomas Stamford Raffles as Lieutenant-Governor, and in 1812 Raffles took over the Presidency of the Batavian Society.

With Raffles’ encouragement, Vol. 7 of Verhandelingen was published in 1814, and was the first to appear mainly in English. It contained an address by Raffles as well as a number of articles by Thomas Horsfield and one each by Colin Mackenzie and John Leyden. The next issue, Vol. 8, published in 1816 – the final year of the British administration of Java – was also mainly in English.

After the departure of the British from Java in 1816, the Verhandelingen reverted to publication in Dutch, with some contributions in French or German. In 1857, on the occasion of the publication of Vol. 25, P. J. Veth wrote a short history of the Society drawing primarily on copies of the Verhandelingen. This appeared in vol. 21 of De Gids (‘The Guide’), the most distinguished literary journal in Holland, of which Veth was the editor (the British Library’s copy is held at 3535.930200 with another copy at P.P.4595). The British Library also holds an incomplete set of later issues of Verhandelingen, shelved at Ac.975/6, dating from 1860 to 1950, when the journal ceased publication. Following Indonesian independence in 1945, by 1962 the Society had essentially ceased activities, but was eventually transformed into the National Museum, with the books and manuscripts joining the newly-formed National Library in 1980.

The initial, English, title page, of the Transactions of the Batavian Society of Arts and Sciences, Vol. VIII, printed in Batavia in 1816. This is followed by the Dutch title page, of the Verhandelingen van het Bataviaasch Genootschap van Kunsten en Wetenschappen. British Library, RB.23.a.39867

We were therefore delighted to be able to acquire recently for the British Library, from Voewood Rare Books, a copy of Vol. 8, printed in Batavia in 1816, which has been assigned the rare book shelfmark of RB.23.a.39867. Vol. 8 contains 10 articles, of which three are in Dutch and seven in English, all paginated separately, starting with an Address from the President, Raffles himself (95 pp). Raffles is also responsible for an account of the eruption of Mount Tambora in 1815 (25 pp), while John Crawfurd contributed the text and English summaries of two 'ancient Javanese' (actually Sanskrit) inscriptions (6 pp).

Contents pages of Vol. 8 of the Verhandelingen van het Bataviaasch Genootschap van Kunsten en Wetenschappen, Batavia, 1816. British Library, RB.23.a.39867

The largest number of pages in the volume are occupied by three lengthy articles by Thomas Horsfield, on Medical plants of Java (53 pp), the Mineralogy of Java (47 pp), and a long ‘Essay on the Geography, Mineralogy and Botany, of the Western portion of the territory of the native Princes of Java’ (183 pp), this last essay being the only portion of this volume which is presently widely available digitally. Thomas Horsfield (1773-1859) was an American doctor who first visited Java in 1800. Entranced by the riches of the natural environment, he returned in 1801 and entered the service of the Dutch authorities. His appointment enabled him to carry out intensive research into the geology and natural history of Java, as well as indulging his interest in antiquities. Following the British occupation of Java, he continued his work with Raffles’ encouragement. While on his extensive travels around Java by river, sea and on horseback, Horsfield was constantly sketching, and some of his pictures include in the corner what appears to be a self-portrait: a small drawing of a European man, invariably with a sketchbook. When Horsfield left Java in 1818, he retired to England, where he became the first Keeper of the East India Company’s Museum from 1820 to 1859. Many of his drawings of natural history and antiquities are held today in the British Library.

Pencil sketch of of the ruins of Candi Sari in Central Java, by Thomas Horsfield, with possibly a self-portrait in the bottom right foreground, ca. 1800-1818. British Library, WD 957, f. 9 (99)

References:
Hans Groot, Van Batavia naar Weltevreden; Het Bataviaasch Genootschap van Kunsten en Wetenschappan, 1778-1867. Leiden: KITLV, 2009. 
Register op de artikelen voorkomende in het Tijdschrift voor Indische taal-land- en volkenkunde en de Verhandelingen van het Bataviaasch Genootschap van Kunsten en Wetenschappen, etc. ‘Index to the articles appearing in the Journal for Indian languages,- country and anthropological studies and the Transactions of the Batavian Society for Arts and Sciences’ by Hinloopen Labberton. Batavia, ‘s Hage, 1908. [An overview of the contents of the Verhandelingen from 1779 to 1907.]
Lian The and Paul W. van der Veur, The Verhandelingen van het Bataviaasch Genootschap: an Annotated Content Analysis. Athens: Ohio University Center for International Studies, Southeast Asia Program, 1973.

Probably the best open access to Verhandelingen is provided by the digitised set available through the Biodiversity Heritage Library, which - albeit incomplete - ranges from an 1825 printing of Vol. 1 to Vol. 61 of 1915.

Annabel Teh Gallop, Lead Curator for Southeast Asia, and Marja Kingma, Curator for Dutch collections

This guest blog post is by Mollie Arbuthnot, the Visual Arts section's doctoral placement. Her project focuses on political cartoons during the early 20th century.

It's not easy being a satirist. Rudolf von Leyden (1908-1983), a German-born cartoonist who lived most of his life in Bombay, is the main figure in this cartoon self-portrait.

'Denley in search of happiness' by Rudolf von Leyden, 1946. British Library, P2349(146). Copyright held by Rudolf von Leyden, first published in the Illustrated Weekly of India, 24 March 1946. 

Surrounded by discarded drafts and piles of newspapers with depressing and terrifying headlines, he desperately searches for inspiration. Meanwhile his editor pokes his head round the door demanding "something really funny this week."

This is just one of a collection of von Leyden's satirical cartoons at the British Library. They were made in the 1930s and 40s, and the library has both original drawings (WD4491) and a set of the cartoons (P2349) as they were published in Bombay newspapers at the time.

The cartoon series in The Illustrated Weekly of India ran from the mid-30s to the late 40s, a tumultuous time in Indian and world history. Both von Leyden's personal life and the cartoons themselves give a fascinating insight into this period.

Life and times of Rudolf von Leyden

It’s not entirely clear why von Leyden moved to India in 1933. He was born in 1908 in Berlin to a middle-class family, the younger of two sons, and lived in Germany throughout his youth. Of course, as a man of Jewish descent and with leftist political interests, it would have been dangerous for him to have stayed in the country for long after the rise of Nazism, but it doesn’t necessarily follow that that was his main motivation for choosing India, or that he was fleeing persecution at the time that he left.

Rudolf’s elder brother, Albrecht, had been living and working in Bombay since 1927. Rudolf had just finished his studies (he received his PhD in geology from the University of Göttingen in 1932) and was looking to embark on his own career. Perhaps it just seemed an opportune moment to start a new adventure. Whatever the reasons, Rudolf arrived in Bombay in 1933.

He swiftly left geology behind, and began working in publicity a textiles firm, but also soon showed his interest in visual art. He set up the Leyden Commercial Art Studio, produced watercolour scenes on his travels around India, and began working on his series of political cartoons.

He was a central figure in the art scene in Bombay, working as the main art critic of The Times of India, collecting Indian artworks from various periods, organising exhibitions, and actively promoting young, contemporary artists. He was a contributing editor of the leading art review MARG from 1946 and served as an adviser for the acquisitions and art commissions of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), which owned one of the most important collections of post-independence Indian art.[1]

He also became a collector of, and later an authority on, antique board games and Indian playing cards. It was, however, as an art critic that he was probably best known in his lifetime.

Von Leyden was clearly a man of great energy and full of enthusiasm for his new life in India. Krishen Khanna, one of the artists who had been supported by von Leyden as a young man, reminisced: ‘[His] wanderlust was something everybody knew about. [He] thought nothing of going to the most inaccessible of places to see an old sculpture or a disused and ruined temple. Sleeping under an open sky and eating what the local population would provide with relish. […] [He] seemed to take it all so blithely. “While Lolly and I were trekking in Kashmir, we spent a day climbing Hara Kukh” as if that was some little hillock on [their] way. So when I expressed my surprise at [his] prowess for climbing, [he] came out with a long list of places which [he] said [he] had to traverse as a part of [his] doctorate in geology. My goodness, I’d always thought [he] had a doctorate in art history.’[2]

Wartime tensions

The position of a German national in British India was somewhat precarious, even before the outbreak of the war. Many were arrested as enemy aliens from 1939. Von Leyden had managed to acquire a British passport by that time, and used his contacts to help other German-speaking emigres to navigate the British authorities.

One fellow cartoonist, Walter Langhammer, and his wife Käthe were rescued from exile and arrest when von Leyden sent Langhammer’s cartoons to several influential people in Bombay, to prove his political disposition and loyalty to the British government. It worked, and both Walter and Käthe were able to return to Bombay, where Käthe worked as a censor for the British Army for the remainder of the war.[3]

It seems that von Leyden himself may have been able to use his own cartoons and position at The Times of India to protect himself from suspicion in a similar way.

All of von Leyden’s own cartoons were signed with the pseudonym ‘Denley,’ and were vehemently anti-German during the war. The gallery owner Kekoo Gandhy, a personal friend of von Leyden’s, attributed his use of a pseudonym to modesty. [4] But, the specific choice of the very English-sounding Denley must have been partially motivated by the desire to fit in at the Times and to distance his cartoons from his German roots. (Denley is, of course, also an anagram of Leyden.)

This all goes to highlight von Leyden’s unusual position, straddling several worlds: he was a European in a colonial space, but nonetheless with an ambivalent relationship to British colonial powers due to his German roots; a political émigré, part of a small but significant community of European Jews in cosmopolitan Bombay during the war; and a man deeply interested and invested in Indian culture and especially the flowering of Indian contemporary art.

The cartoons

His cartoons are characteristic for their freshness and sense of urgency, which is especially evident in the artist proofs. You can imagine von Leyden finishing his latest effort and cycling pell-mell across Bombay (as he apparently often did to get his work to the newspaper office in time to go to press) with the ink still wet.

They all share a signature style, featuring a bold black outline, minimal colouration, and a gentle political wit that poked fun at local government as well as heads of state, military leaders, and the ‘resident foreigner’ in India, including himself.

During the war years, the cartoons were jingoistically anti-German, albeit with an irreverent eye on international affairs. One example is captioned ‘Moscow Ballet’ and features Anthony Eden, Viacheslav Molotov, and US Secretary of State Cordell Hull as three ballerinas performing for their allied leaders (you can make out Churchill, Stalin, and Roosevelt in the front row), while a disgruntled Hitler turns to Goebbels, saying: “I thought you told me they could not keep in step…?”

'Moscow ballet' by Rudolf von Leyden, 1943. Copyright held by Rudolf von Leyden, first published in the Illustrated Weekly of India, 14 November 1943. British Library, P2349(37) 

This fragile corps de ballet didn’t last long, of course, and von Leyden’s post-war cartoons show the beginnings of Cold War tensions. One casts Stalin in the role of Zeus, depicted as a huge moustached bull, carrying Europa off eastwards on his back (to the despair of the other Grecian maidens, Truman, Atlee, and de Gaulle).

Another major theme from this period was Indian independence. Von Leyden was unsparing in his depictions of the divides in Indian society, with several images focussing on the conflicts and unwillingness to compromise between different groups.

A 1946 cartoon shows ‘The House of India’s Freedom’ precariously balanced on scaffolding as construction work grinds to a halt, the two builders, Hindu and Muslim, refusing to speak to one another, and the solid foundation stones of unity, compromise, and goodwill languishing unused. Another pokes fun at the state bureaucracy, depicting politicians feverishly drafting plans and proposals by candlelight, as a larger-than-life Clive of India muses: ‘Fancy having so much trouble giving it back…’

'The freedom of India' by Rudolf von Leyden, 1946. Copyright held by Rudolf von Leyden, first published in the Illustrated Weekly of India, 2 June 1946. British Library, P2349(166) 

 In the family

In the late 30s, von Leyden’s parents also moved to Bombay to join their two sons, fleeing the worsening situation in Nazi Germany. It turns out that this was a whole family of amateur artists.

After the war, in 1948, the four of them held a joint charity exhibition. Their father exhibited his sculptures, their mother watercolours, Albrecht, who was apparently the best painter of the lot, showed oil paintings and Rudolf sent his cartoons.

The Times carried an exhibition review, which claimed:

‘All four of the Leydens are amateurs. In Bombay one has become so accustomed to seeing professionals putting on shows of amateurish merit that it is refreshing to come across a family of amateurs presenting an exhibition of professional standard’.[5]

On Rudolf’s cartoons, and making reference to his fame as an art critic, the reviewer wrote:

‘Of the many inherent injustices of life in our civilisation some of the most galling are that pupils cannot give marks to their teachers, that motorists cannot summon the traffic constable, and that artists do not get a chance to criticise the art critic. Once in a lifetime there comes this chance but – alas – paradoxically, the victim at hand is not the sort of fellow one would relish running down.

R.V. Leyden’s cartoons are outstanding for their political wit. In the execution of the actual drawings he works so hard to overcome his lack of training that, in the end, most of his cartoons are better drawn than the average “professionals”.’[6]

By Mollie Arbuthnot, doctoral candidate at University of Manchester, department of Russian and East European Studies. She is currently at the British Library as a doctoral placement in autumn 2018.

[1] Devika Singh, ‘German-speaking exiles and the writing of Indian art history’ in Journal of Art Historiography no.17 (December 2017), https://arthistoriography.files.wordpress.com/2017/11/singh.pdf, accessed 5/11/2018, p.15.

[2] Krishen Khanna, ‘To Rudolf von Leyden: A Letter out of Season’ in Anil Bhatti and Johannes H. Voigt eds. Jewish Exile in India 1933-1945 (New Delhi: Max Mueller Bhavan, 1999), pp.186-189 (p.188).

[3] Margit Franz, ‘Transnationale & transkulturelle Ansätze in der Exilforschung am Beispiel der Erforschung einer kunstpolitischen Biographie von Walter Langhammer,’ in Margit Franz et al. Mapping Contemporary History: Zeitgeschichten im Diskurs (Vienna, Köln, Weimar: Böhlau Verlag, 2008), p.251.

[4] Kekoo Gandhy, ‘Some Personal Reminiscences of Rudi von Leyden,’ in Rudolf von Leyden: Cartoons (exhibition catalogue), p.3.

[5] ‘Leyden Family’s Art Works: Bombay Exhibition’ in The Times of India, 22 May 1948, p.9.

[6] Ibid.