Reflections on Encoding Languages in Historical Data: Working With the Multilingual Dimension of the Dutch East India Company Archives

This article investigates the challenges of encoding languages in historical data through the example of a reference dataset: a thesaurus in SKOS format of commodities traded by the Dutch East India Company (VOC). The VOC archives, from which this thesaurus draws a lot of its data, are far from purely Dutch. The company’s multilingual workforce and interactions across Asia resulted in records influenced by a multitude of languages, full of loanwords and citations. This is further complicated by the VOC’s role in colonising regions and suppressing local languages, resulting in some languages po... Mehr ...