Author and Title:
Godée Molsbergen (Dr. E.C.)
DE STICHTER VAN HOLLANDS ZUID-AFRIKA: Jan van Riebeeck 1618–1677
Godée Molsbergen (Dr. E.C.)
DE STICHTER VAN HOLLANDS ZUID-AFRIKA: Jan van Riebeeck 1618–1677
Collation:
First Edition: 297 pages, illustrated with 26 portraits, plates, facsimiles, maps, and tables (including a portrait frontispiece, tipped-in plates, and a folding plate), index. Publisher’s original blue cloth boards with gilt lettering and a red and gilt coat of arms blocked on the upper board, green cloth spine with gilt lettering.
First Edition: 297 pages, illustrated with 26 portraits, plates, facsimiles, maps, and tables (including a portrait frontispiece, tipped-in plates, and a folding plate), index. Publisher’s original blue cloth boards with gilt lettering and a red and gilt coat of arms blocked on the upper board, green cloth spine with gilt lettering.
Condition: A good to very good copy. The head of the green cloth spine is frayed and chipped, with light wear at the tail. The board edges and corners show light rubbing, and the lower board carries faint scuffs and marks, though the covers remain sound and the gilt and red blocking on the upper board are intact. Internally, the text block is solid and tightly bound. The text block edges are toned and foxed with a browned fore-edge. The text pages are slightly toned overall, with deeper toning and browning along the margins of the endpapers, though the plates are all present and the text remains clean.
Notes:
Dr. Everhardus Cornelis Godée Molsbergen (1875–1940) was a Dutch colonial historian and archivist who earned his doctorate at Leiden University in 1902 and lectured in history at Victoria College (later Stellenbosch University) from 1904 to 1910. Following his tenure in South Africa, he taught colonial history at Amsterdam, Leiden, and Ghent before serving as an archivist at the Landsarchief in Batavia (Jakarta) from 1922 to 1936.
Dr. Everhardus Cornelis Godée Molsbergen (1875–1940) was a Dutch colonial historian and archivist who earned his doctorate at Leiden University in 1902 and lectured in history at Victoria College (later Stellenbosch University) from 1904 to 1910. Following his tenure in South Africa, he taught colonial history at Amsterdam, Leiden, and Ghent before serving as an archivist at the Landsarchief in Batavia (Jakarta) from 1922 to 1936.
Published in Amsterdam in 1912, De Stichter van Hollands Zuid-Afrika is the foundational Dutch-language scholarly biography of Jan van Riebeeck (1618–1677), the Dutch East India Company (VOC) merchant and administrator who established the refreshment station at the Cape of Good Hope in April 1652. Drawing extensively on primary VOC archival records in both The Hague and Cape Town, Godée Molsbergen traces Van Riebeeck’s career from his birth in Culemborg and early service in the East Indies through his decade as Commander of the Cape (1652–1662) and his later years as Secretary of the Council of India in Batavia. When the Van Riebeeck Society and H.B. Thom later edited the three-volume Journal of Jan van Riebeeck in 1952, scholars noted that Godée Molsbergen's 1912 monograph had remained the definitive biographical authority on Van Riebeeck for forty years.
References:
- Extracted from Thom (H.B., ed.), Journal of Jan van Riebeeck, Volume I (A.A. Balkema for the Van Riebeeck Society, Cape Town, 1952), Introduction, pages xv–xvii, acknowledging Godée Molsbergen’s 1912 biography as the standard archival synthesis of Van Riebeeck’s life and VOC service.
- Extracted from Spilhaus (M. Whiting), The First South Africans and the Laws Which Governed Them (Juta & Co., Cape Town, 1949), pages 12–15, citing Godée Molsbergen’s research on the early Cape administration and the 1652–1662 settlement period.
- Biographical and bibliographic details verified via Everhardus Godée-Molsbergen - Dutch Wikipedia and Jan van Riebeeck - Wikipedia.
Size:
8vo (approx. 255 x 182 mm)
8vo (approx. 255 x 182 mm)
Imprint:
Amsterdam, S.L. van Looy, 1912
Amsterdam, S.L. van Looy, 1912
