Netherlands: Today’s GLOBALISE Project ….“GLOBALISE and Sri Lanka–related archival materials”
The GLOBALISE project is a digital archival and historical initiative developing an online research platform to make around 5 million scans of the Dutch East India Company archives accessible to a wide international audience. Using AI-based techniques, the project aims to support new ways of searching, reading, and interpreting early modern records.
The Dutch East India Company (VOC) was a Dutch colonial trading company active during the 17th and 18th centuries across large parts of present-day Africa, Asia, and Australia. As a result, the VOC archives contain extensive information about these regions, including a substantial body of material relating to historical Sri Lanka.
Spanning more than two centuries and a wide geographical area, the archive is held by the Dutch National Archives (part of inventory number 1.04.02). While the material has already been digitised, it is being further enhanced within GLOBALISE through technical tools such as handwritten text recognition (HTR). This work has resulted in a first version of fully searchable transcriptions for the entire corpus.
For more information about the project, including access to the transcription viewer and background on the project, see: https://globalise.
Below are several examples of materials from the GLOBALISE corpus relating to historical Sri Lanka. By clicking on the links provided, you can view both the original scans and the AI-generated transcriptions produced in the current beta version of the platform.
Map of Corles in Sri Lanka (Report of Governor Gerrit de Heere from his all Ceylon Tour, 1698) https://bit.ly/45p4dF7
Fort Batticaloa http://bit.ly/
Fort Callature https://bit.
Joannes Ruell’s Grammar of the Sinhala Language from the archives (1700) and the published book (1708) in Googlebooks
Gift lists to the court of Kandy
Lists of seeds
The project does not stop here. By the end of 2026, GLOBALISE will launch a significantly expanded research platform. Alongside an improved transcription environment, the quality and accuracy of the AI-generated transcriptions will continue to be refined. The new version will also integrate historical thesauri and contextual definitions of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Dutch terminology, place names, and personal names directly into the viewer, further supporting interpretation and discovery.
Those interested in staying informed about project developments are welcome to subscribe to the GLOBALISE newsletter via the project website or to follow the project on LinkedIn.
We are also keen to hear perspectives from potential users. If you would like to share your thoughts on what such a platform should offer, you can fill in a short questionnaire (10–15 minutes) before 2 February: https://forms.
