Seventeen

António Pedro Marques · 23 May 2011, 10:48 · from 2011-May.txt.gz

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From: entonio at gmail.com (=?UTF-8?B?QW50w7NuaW8gUGVkcm8gTWFycXVlcw==?=)
Date: Mon, 23 May 2011 11:48:33 +0100
Subject: (urth) Seventeen
In-Reply-To: <110412.27544.qm at web32104.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
References: <110412.27544.qm at web32104.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <4DDA3B81.3000308 at gmail.com>

Nicholas Gevers wrote (23-05-2011 10:43):
> A possible reference by Wolfe is to the Dutch East India Company of the 17th and
> 18th centuries, which was governed by a board of managers or factors called the
> "Heere Seventien" or Group of Seventeen. Given the Company's association with
> the sea, and origin in a country partly reclaimed from the sea, Wolfe might have
> intended a coded pelagic reference, thus to Abaia, Scylla, and the rest. The
> DEIC didn't have a very savoury reputation. Of course, the only overt reference
> to the Dutch in the entire Briah Cycle is in *On Blue's Waters* and *Return to
> the Whorl*, with Dorp and its doughty sailors...

Yet one in which he explicitly decries the outcome of a society giving 
absolute power to inflexible Law and its enforcers...

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