Leiden University Libraries Digital Collections

This digital collection consists of ninety serials and journals related to the colonial enterprise in the Dutch East and West Indies. The publications are mainly in Dutch and cover the period of the last quarter of the nineteenth century to the middle of the twentieth century. They pertain to the cultivation of tropical products such as coffee, tea, sugar and rubber, and the botanical gardens in Bogor. Apart from these specialized serials the collection includes several well-known, more general journals such as Weekblad voor Indië, Nederlands Indië: Oud & Nieuw, and Onze koloniën. Another valuable source is Djåwå, a journal dedicated to the study of indigenous cultures of the Dutch East Indies.

The publications are full-text searchable, and downloadable if no copyright exists on the material. The level of access varies due to copyright restrictions. Some titles can be accessed on library premises only. Information on access restrictions for individual titles is found in the title description.

Colonial Journals formerly belonged to the collection of the Royal Tropical Institute (KIT) in Amsterdam. Leiden University Libraries acquired the KIT heritage collection – titles collected before 1950 – after the closure of the KIT library in 2013. The modern publications on the Caribbean, Surinam and Indonesia were originally donated to the KITLV Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies in Leiden. With the closure of the KITLV library in 2016 the 12.000 publications were moved to the Leiden University Library.