Datasets:
license: mit
task_categories:
- token-classification
language:
- nl
tags:
- digital_humanities
size_categories:
- 1K<n<10K
Dataset Card for Dataset Name
The globalise_NER_token_classification dataset is a fine-grained dataset for the training of token-classification NER models on Dutch East-India Company texts (17th to 18th century).
Dataset Details
Dataset Description
The dataset provides 15 fine-grained labels detailing activities and people of the Dutch East-India Company (VOC), and can be used to train NER token-classification models for the period 17th-18th century and the domain of VOC texts. The texts are taken from the Overgebleven Brieven & Papieren corpus, and preprocessed for annotation as described in (Arnoult et al., 2025).
- Curated by: Brecht Nijman
- Funded by: Dutch Research Council (NWO)
- Shared by: Globalise team
- Language(s) (NLP): nl (Early Modern Dutch)
- License: MIT
Dataset Sources
- Repository: globalise-huygens/finegrained-hist-ner
- Paper: [tbd]
Uses
The dataset is intended for training NER token-classification models for Early Modern Dutch in the VOC domain.
Direct Use
Training or data-augmentation for Dutch historical NER models.
Out-of-Scope Use
The training data represents a historical variant of Dutch and a restricted domain (VOC documents), and is not expected to be useful for other variants of Dutch or domains.
Dataset Structure
Annotations were collected in several rounds: a first part of the training data was collected together with the validation data, with a random split based on token sequences; a later round of annotations was split by document between additional training data and test data. See (Arnoult et al., 2025) for more details.
| train | validation | test | |
|---|---|---|---|
| sequences | 576 | 78 | 98 |
| tokens | 44695 | 6001 | 10133 |
| entities | 5932 | 893 | 887 |
Dataset Creation
Curation Rationale
The dataset was created to provide domain-specific NER labels for the processing of the Overgebleven Brieven & Papieren corpus.
Source Data
The Overgebleven Brieven & Papieren corpus, a collection of various documents written under the VOC administration: reports, ship inventories, letters, etc.
Data Collection and Processing
The source corpus was preprocessed as follows:
- HTR: with Loghi (Koert et al. 2024)
- word tokenization: with SpaCy nl_core_news_lg
Documents were manually reconstructed from page scans to provide coherent contexts for annotations. 26 documents were selected for annotation, spanning the years 1618 to 1782.
Who are the source data producers?
The corpus texts were written by the VOC administration, and later collected by the Huygens Instituut and its predecessors.
Annotations
The annotations enrich the texts with 15 NER tags, identifying common entity types (persons, locations, organisations), VOC-domain types (commodities, ships) and providing fine-grained types for people (profession, status). The tagset is described further in (Arnoult et al., 2025).
Annotation process
Who are the annotators?
idem.
Personal and Sensitive Information
The dataset contains personal information about past people.
Bias, Risks, and Limitations
The source corpus is biased, representing the standpoint of an early colonial organisation that notably used military force and engaged in slave trade.
Recommendations
Users should be aware of the often violent character of the texts underlying the annotations.
Citation
BibTeX:
[tbd]
APA:
[tbd]
Dataset Card Contact
Sophie Arnoult