Roll Books of the Danish Asiatic Company

At the moment I am diving into the wonderful archive of the Danish Asiatic Company, which is preserved at the Danish National Archives in Copenhagen.

So far the most interesting part is the roll books, where the crew of seemingly all ships in service of the Company is listed. Since I am investigating the merchants, I am especially interested in the section called Negotien, meaning the traders section of the crew.

Here, everyone from the leading supercargoes, who were in charge of the trade in China, to the merchant’s boys can be found, with name, position, various forms of payments as well as interesting notes as can be seen in the margin in the image above.

The merchants on board the chinamen often took out loans from other merchants in Copenhagen at interest rates of 30-36%, the so-called bottomry loans or bodmeri-lån in Danish.

So far it seems there were on average 10-15 members of Negotien on each ship, including supercargoes, assistants, apprentices, boys and servants and I am currently building a database of all of them to follow their careers and provide a foundation to learn more about these people in the coming years.