Maps and textual sources in the Dutch East India Company (VOC) archives were meant to be together. Maps were vital for understanding textual information about places. Written sources, in turn, enriched knowledge from maps. Previously, information from these sources could not be reintegrated because no suitable techniques existed to reunify them. Today emerging techniques of georeferencing on maps and machine generated transcriptions on text and maps make this possible. This project applies these methods to the VOC archives on early modern Kerala, India. This enables us to reconceptualize Kerala's early modern topography and support writing new histories of the region.
This project is funded by the NWO OC XS grant number 406.XS.24.02.046.