Capacities

Many mentions of persons can be found in the resolutions of the States General. However, some contemporary users will not be as interested in the names of persons, but rather in the capacity in which these persons appear in the resolutions. There is also a lot of information about these capacities in the resolutions.

Contemporary users needed such information to be able to understand the resolutions. They wanted to know whether a person who was mentioned was an ‘ambassador’, ‘skipper’ or ‘widow’. That is why such qualifications are given in the resolutions for almost every mention of a person. Capacities  come in all kinds: professions, offices, family relationships or legal status. In Goetgevonden all these capacities  are considered as separate entities.

We often encounter capacities in long, recursive constructions:

„secretaris van den Heere Hamel Bruyninx, haer Hoogh Mogende extraordinaris Envoyé aen het Hof van den Keyser” (“secretary of Mr. Hamel Bruyninx, the States General’s Extraordinary Envoy to the Court of the Emperor”)

„Weduwe en Executrice Testamentair van wylen Frans Laurens Willem Grand, woonende in de Colonie van Surinaame” (“Widow and Executor of the Testament of the late Frans Laurens Willem Grand, living in the Colony of Suriname”)

Within these compound capacities we have recognised the simple capacities. Several capacities are attached to one text passage: secretary, (extraordinary) envoy and emperor for the first, widow, executor and resident for the second. Please note the following:

• The software cannot as yet distinguish the person or persons to whom the capacities are attributed: “secretary of the envoy to the emperor” is attached to “secretary” as well as “envoy” and “emperor”; 
• Place names are not part of the capacity: ‘resident in the colony of Suriname’ only gets the capacity [somewhere] ‘resident’;
• Personal names are not part of the capacity: ‘secretary of Gentleman Hamel Bruyninx’ simply becomes ‘secretary’;
• Combined capacities are not included: a ‘Widow and Executor Testamentary’ is both a widow and an executor, but ‘widow and executor’ is not an entity in this dataset.

Capacity is divided into the following categories, where one capacity can belong to multiple categories:

Nobility & Princes

Politics & Administration

Army & Militias

Services

Finance

Justice

Religion

Trade, Industry & Art

Agriculture, Shipping & Fisheries

Education & Science

Status & Relations

Geography