Stamps
A former Tax Administration official once said: ‘If a civil servant has to write something down more than once, he’ll have a stamp made for it.’ Stamps are the first step towards automation: human actions are standardised, automated, so that they require as little effort as possible.
Our collection has many stamps from 1800 to the present day. The oldest stamps date back to the Batavian-French period. The French occupation brought bureaucracy with it, including the establishment of the Tax Administration, the Land Registry, the Assay Office and the Civil Registry. Governing a country centrally requires centrally controlled administration. Seals and stamps were used to validate documents.
Tax forms, stamps...at first glance, boring objects – but they can still teach us a lot about the past. What was taxed? What was important to people?