Table 2

Melee weapons and armor as requested for a certain year in the Generale Eis. For details see below.

Product unit 1656    1657    1658    1659    1660    1661    1662    1663   
Entire melee weapons
Swords, straight and curved piece 1000 1000 1500 1100 1000 800 2000 2000
Sabres for the soldiers piece 500 1500
Long pikes piece 1000 300 500
Half pikes piece 1000 200 200
Half ship pikes piece 500 200 200
Long ship pikes piece 500 200 200
Halberds piece 40 30 10
Bare pikemen´s weapons piece 25 30 40
Boarding axes piece 100 100
Pardesans piece 300
Pieces and accessories
Blades, all kinds piece 850 250 600 200 65 100 750
Knobs, all kinds piece 2000 200 1225 600 600
Common armature for pikes piece 1000
‘Spaen’ (thin wood) for scabbards bushel 60 60 100 40
Scabbard lockets (‘Oorijsers’) piece 500 1000 2000 1000 1000 2000 1000
carrying belts for swords or sabres   piece 800 1000
Armor
Morion helmets piece 100 100 50 30 800

Source for the data is the Generale Eis for the years 1656-1663, to be found in voc Archive 13473. Please note that the subcategories here applied are my own: there are no categories like “entire melee weapons” in the text of the actual Eis, which lists all needed items in a seemingly random order. In addition, not by far all goods listed in the Eis are included in these tables, which in that case would have become intolerably long and intransparent. As tools for making powder alternately show up in the category “for the armoury” and under “for the powder makers”, I have left those out here. In addition, materials that rarely showed up in the tables, in very small amounts, or did not seem particularly interesting to include in statistics are not listed. Products that have been left out for this reason are copper and iron thread, nails and screws, and needles and other sewing materials (mostly for making cartridges.)

As to the translation of the various products’ names: I have put quite some effort into this but I am no weapon’s expert. In addition, the Eis uses various names for several products. Where I was almost certain that two names signified one product, I have merged these. In some cases, it was however impossible to discover the distinction between categories. For example, ‘langscherp’ is a name that usually signifies chain shot or bar shot, but ‘draadkogels’, chain shot, is in many cases a separate category. Similar problems arose with all the various types of powder horns, which I have just left separate. In some cases, I suppose one would have had to work at the Company warehouses to be able to know what product was actually requested. The tables are therefore less exact than might be desirable, and only give an impression of the products requested and sent. Anyone who wants to use these data for his own research and finds my selection, categorizations and translation rather too sketchy, is welcome to contact me for my ‘raw material’, i.e. untranslated, uncategorized tables listing all products, plus notes.

« Previous: Table 1
Next: Table 3 »