Dirk Hartog’s Sea Chest

This chapter charts the affective power and significance that Dutch East India Company (Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie or VOC) objects have held from the seventeenth century to the present, because of their physical form and their location and assemblage with other objects on the Australian coast. The chapter explores how objects and people not only operate in relation to each other, but also in particular spaces and in specific historical contexts. Thus, the emotional and social power of these objects has created varied narratives over time that situate first the VOC, then the Dutch nation, as a global power, demonstrate the frailty of human capacity, celebrate the ambition and achievement of individual discoverers, and allow a new vision of Australia and its communities to emerge.