The present article departs from the inherent problems of grasping the voice of
the subaltern other in a colonial context. While postcolonial theoreticians have
occasionally spoken pessimistically about the possibilities of reconstructing the
agency of dominated categories of non-Westerners, recent research on early
Southeast Asia has on the contrary envisaged new lines of inquiry through
an ingenious use of the extant sources, preferably through interdisciplinary
communication. But can we use the colonial archive in order to highlight social
history in non-literate societies such as those of eastern Indonesia where the
colonial texts do not resonate with the indigenous ones? This article scrutinizes
materials from the VOC (Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie) post in Kupang
(1653-1800) in order to find data usable for such a history. It is argued that
letters, reports, legal minutes, diaries, etcetera. have a good potential due to the
regularity and minute detail of the record.
