In 1872, the Dutch ministers of foreign affairs and the colonies opened a consulate at Jiddah, at the time a province of the Ottoman Empire. The primary task of the consulate for the next eight decades became protecting, caring for, administering and, significantly, monitoring the political activities of, the many Indonesian pilgrims visiting the holy places. The archive of the consulate and later legation contains correspondence and other documents, such as reports, registers and statistical surveys from 1872 until 1950. More generally, the archive also contains reports and other documents that can be used for the study of the political situation in the Middle East in this tumultuous period and its economic exploitation, including documents on slavery in the region, petroleum extraction, infrastructural development, such as road building and separate files kept for Aden, Eritrea, Hadhramaut, Iraq and Yemen.