Van Overstraeten travels to Batavia to take up office as an extraordinary member of the Justice Council. During the stay on Cape Hope, he starts with a journal, because life is so different there, compared to home. In his impressions, he describes daily life on the Cape, his stirring voyage to Batavia and his first experiences there.
Some twenty years later, Van Overstraeten is the general governor during whose rule the Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie (VOC) was dissolved.
His travel journal is an interesting document for the formation of an image of the social and cultural life in these two important VOC settlements.
Adrienne Zuiderweg is the editor of this first printed edition.

Journaal van een reis door de West Indien, 1792-1793.
(in Dutch)

The well-off young man Pieter Constantijn Groen from Amsterdam leaves for West-Indië in August 1792 to take notice of 'verscheide kundigheden die Europa niet opleverd' (several experiences that Europe doensn't provide).
He stays on various plantations to learn the planter's trade and he meets governors and other members of the colonial elite. Furthermore, he goes into the South-American wilderness with a group of 'Indians'. Both slavery and the attached colonial ethics, especially regarding the treatment of black and coloured women, are accepted without question. He describes his many amourous escapades in great detail.
The text is introduced and commented on by Han Jordaan.