This dataset brings together information about polities that existed in the 1600-1815 period, their rulerships and rulers that find mention in the VOC archives.

While some polities that feature in this dataset are well known and information about their chronological details and lists of rulers have been fairly straightforward to piece together, details of majority of the polities are so difficult to reconstruct that even secondary histories on polities recorded here shy away from either providing us with complete lists of rulers or plotting the precise dates of the polities existence. By creating this dataset, we aim to highlight and even redress the conspicuous gaps that we possess in our historical awareness of the political landscape (principally) of early modern Asia, and some parts of Africa.

This dataset is not a product of original research but is based on information from existing datasets and other secondary sources. The datasets and other secondary sources used in this dataset are predominantly published in English, Dutch or other European languages.

Please refer to the dataset documentation and data envelope for this information: - GLOBALISE - Polities Documentation - GLOBALISE - Polities DataEnvelope

Please refer to the dataset documentation for this information: - GLOBALISE - Polities Documentation

The GLOBALISE Project Datasets are structured datasets created and curated to serve as historical contextualization information for the GLOBALISE project's infrastructure that is being developed to accentuate the accessibility of the Dutch East India Company archive.

This dataset was migrated from the IISH Data Collection to DataverseNL in January 2026. It was previously published as: Hids, Maartje; Brink, Femke; Berentzen, Sterre; Berg, Tanne van den; Pham, Thuy Dung; Nijman, Brecht; Wissen, Leon van; Rossum, Matthias van; Kuruppath, Manjusha, 2026, "GLOBALISE - Early Modern Polities in the Dutch East India Company Archives (1600-1815)", https://hdl.handle.net/10622/SOS0KC, IISH Data Collection, V1 under the persistent identifier hdl:10622/SOS0KC.