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45 of 45 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Even the footnotes are fascinating!, February 12, 2002
By A Customer
I've read many seafaring/adventure/historical non-fiction narratives (as well as novels) and Batavia's Graveyard does them all one better. Like most Americans, I had never heard of the Batavia incident, so I was in suspense during this entire reading experience. The author, Mike Dash, gives a engrossing account of the survivors' ordeal, but, more importantly, he does an excellent job of placing the Batavia's story within the context of the 1600s and the Dutch sea trade. I was fascinated by the description of life in the Netherlands by the history of the Dutch East India Company--a corporation so heartless and corrupt that it makes Enron look warm and fuzzy. Like In the Heart of the Sea, this is a book that places one sensational, disturbing event within a much larger, and richer history. Mike Dash's stylish, compelling writing are to be commended, as well. Even the nearly 100 pages of endnotes themselves (which detail Mr. Dash's outstanding research) add a lot to the appreciation of this book. Take it from a history--and reading--addict: this is one of the best historical narratives to be written in years.
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28 of 30 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Harrowing History, April 3, 2002
"Absolutely nothing in this book is invented." Mike Dash starts off his book _Batavia's Graveyard_ (Crown) with this declaration for a good reason. The story is quite literally incredible. Dash's previous book, the excellent _Tulipomania_, wittily described the improbable craze of speculating on tulip bulbs in Holland in the seventeenth century, but the tulip madness is relatively well known. Stories of the fate of the ship _Batavia_ in 1629 in the service of the Dutch East India Company, however, were wildly popular at the time, but have gradually been forgotten. The story was spectacular enough that there were memoirs, eyewitness accounts, pamphlets, books, and court testimony, all of which Dash has dug through with notable thoroughness. The bizarre tale of the _Batavia_ reads like a thriller. The main character in the tale is Jeronimus Cornelisz, who had newly joined the Dutch East India Company to make his fortune. He was probably brought up as a member of the Anabaptists, a small protestant sect with a history of fanaticism and resistance to worldly governments, based largely on the belief that the Second Coming of Christ was just around the corner. He had also joined a social organization which had dangerous philosophies, and he came to antinomianism, the creed that one can exist in a state of perfection and thereby avoid following any moral law. "All I do, God gave the same into my heart," he explained. He planned a mutiny to take over the ship and become a pirate, but about a month before arriving at the destination Java, it crashed into a coral reef off Australia's western coast. Cornelisz, the highest ranking official left on the islands, took charge with real self assurance, eloquence, and charisma, and hell descended. The sailors seemed to have found his talk and his leadership irresistible, and he frequently spoke of the wealth that could be theirs if they were to take over any rescue ship. He began to thin the population by the simple means of murder. He and his loyal henchmen began killing those whom they distrusted, and then those who were unneeded. After that, although there was sufficient drinking water from rainfall and sufficient food from seals and birds, the killing continued because it was entertaining for those in power to continue it. The scenes of murder and mayhem are unpleasant, but not much more so than those of the legal interrogations under torture and the executions which followed the affair. There are few pure heroes described here, and the book shows that while the Company got richer and richer, those on the sea who made it happen had brutal lives and little recompense. That may strike a chord for our own times, as may the picture of a man of God bringing unimaginable destruction for the sake of his own power. Dash has, however, wisely avoided any parallels to the present, and any didacticism. He has told an amazing tale, with extraordinary detail for events of so many years ago, and has brought it up to date with archeological and forensic research. This is as gripping a page-turner as a factual account has any right to be.
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18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Ghosts From a Godless Island, February 2, 2005
This review is from: Batavia's Graveyard: The True Story of the Mad Heretic Who Led History's Bloodiest Mutiny (Paperback)
The setting for this book is an obscure chain of coral reefs in the 1620s. I would've never thought that incidents from so long ago and far away could inspire nightmares. But this book is every bit as chilling as "In Cold Blood" or "Helter Skelter." We'll never understand how people can commit barbarities against innocent women and children, as Jeronimus Cornelisz and his sycophants did. But eyewitness accounts and archaeological evidence, which were utilized by Mike Dash for this book, offer a testament to the grim reality of such atrocities.
The story of the "Batavia" has been related before: in the year 1628, the flagship vessel of a fleet of Dutch East Indian traders smashed into a previously unknown group of jagged coral islands off the west coast of Australia in the dead of night. While the captain and over-merchant sailed to Indonesia for help, the charismatic under-merchant set himself up as caretaker/dictator of the desperate survivors of the wreck. He turned out to be a 17th-century version of Charles Manson. He not only convinced enough naïve, under-educated, and cowardly sailors to follow him into mutinying against the East India Company, but he managed to order them into gleefully murdering over 100 of their fellow castaways.
Mike Dash's book is undoubtedly the most complete account of the "Batavia" incident written thus far. The bibliographical notes he provides comprise a book in itself. For the first time, he examines the culture and background that produced a monster like Cornelisz, digging into ancient town records in Friesland, Amsterdam, and Haarlem. It's riveting to think that Cornelisz may have been acquainted with the infamous bacchanalian painter Torrentius, who was a neighbor of his in Haarlem. Dash tries to make this claim, but he is unable to provide any proof. Similarly, there is no evidence that Cornelisz' behavior was inspired by a radical Anabaptist religious philosophy, although Dash makes a number of such implications early in the book. He contradicts himself at the end when he (more convincingly) argues that Cornelisz was a classic example of a sociopathic personality, who possessed an exaggerated egocentrism while lacking the human emotions of empathy and remorse.
This is an engrossing, albeit disturbing book. I would not recommend it for anyone who's sensitive to graphic and detailed descriptions of ways to exterminate humans. Also, be aware that the "mad heretic" claim under the main title is very misleading. Heresy was a popular word bandied during the days of the Roman Catholic Inquisition, but it has nothing to do with Cornelisz. From the evidence available, his actions don't seem to be informed by any obsessive religious creed. And as far as being "mad," there is no evidence of his being insane under our modern definitions. He was very much in control of himself. Which is the most chilling reality of all.
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