Daniel Six

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Daniel Six , also Daniël Sicx, Zix (born December 1, 1620 in Middelburg (Zeeland); † November 5, 1674 Batavia ) worked as a merchant for the Dutch East India Company (VOC) in important positions on Formosa, in Arakan and in Japan.

Map of the "Ilha Formosa" (Taiwan) at the time of the Dutch colonization (1624–62)

Dutch Formosa

Nothing is known about the setting and crossing to East India. Since he moved to Formosa as a "Unter-Küfer" ( onderkuiper ) in 1639 , he should have received appropriate training. In 1643 he was appointed commercial assistant and in 1649 sub-merchant. In March of that year he married Sara Gerrits from Amsterdam in Batavia. Five years later he rose to be a merchant and traveled to Taiwan again. In 1655 his daughter Johanna was born. 1656 he had a seat in the Council of Formosa ( Raad van Formosa ) and managed as a merchant the warehouse for heavy goods ( grove were ). In 1657 he made an inspection trip to Jilong ( Quelang ) and Tanshui ( Tamsuy ) as a commissioner .

Six also saw the end of Dutch activities on Formosa. In order to organize his troops for the fight against the Manchu ( Qing ) advancing from the north and to secure a base, the Chinese military leader Zheng Chenggong ("Koxinga"), who was acting for the cornered Ming dynasty, moved in April 1661 at the age of 25 000 men to fortress Zeelandia , the main base of the East India Company on the island. In the following nine months around three quarters of the defenders died, relief from Batavia did not take place and finally the drinking water also ran out. On February 1, 1662, Frederick Coyett , the Stockholm-born local governor of the company, surrendered and signed a handover agreement. A week later, the Dutch - men, women, children - were on board the Dutch ships lying in the roadstead. Coyett handed over the keys of the fortress to the Chinese " mandorijn Sauja" and moved with his family to Batavia. The Dutch had to hand over the goods in the warehouses to Koxinga. The age of Dutch control over southwest Formosa came to an end after 38 years.

View of Arakan and the Portuguese Settlement (1640)

Arakan

As a member of the "Council of Formosa" and thus also as a signatory to various resolutions, Six was involved in the decision to surrender. But while the General Government tried Coyett and banished him to the Banda Islands for twelve years , Six got away with it. On June 1, 1663 he worked for the (European) orphans in Batavia as a “weesmeester”, but at the end of August he was appointed head of the branch in Arakan , a kingdom in what is now Myanmar . The company had set up a trading post here at the beginning of the century, through which it bought inexpensive rice as well as Bengali slaves for its plantations. If they were initially prisoners from the fighting between Arakan and the neighboring Mughal empire , the brisk Dutch demand subsequently triggered real hunting expeditions into Bengali territory. For a variety of reasons, these slave hunts came to an almost complete standstill in the early 1960s. In this respect, Six had taken on a thankless position. Since the situation did not "improve" in the following years, it was decided in 1665 to give up the branch until further notice. Once again Six returned to Batavia.

Dejima trading post (Arnoldus Montanus, 1669)

Japan

On May 11 of the following year, he was appointed head of the Dejima office in Japan . The stay was limited to one year, but there was ample opportunity for lucrative private business. Six arrived in the summer. His official entry into service began with the departure of his predecessor Willem Volger . But even before that, he took part in an extraordinary event. The accountant Hendrik Hamel from Gorkum , whose ship "Sperwer" (Sparrowhawk) was lost on its journey to Japan in the summer of 1653, appeared with seven companions on the Goto Islands in the northwest of Kyushu . After 13 years in Korean captivity, they managed to escape by boat under dramatic circumstances. Their strange clothing and the actually forbidden landing on Goto aroused the suspicion of the Japanese authorities. While the company's ships at anchor left during the autumn, the eight had to stay in the country until the situation was further clarified, but were at least placed under the care of the trading post. At the end of October, Six had been the official head of Dejima since the 18th of that month, the Japanese governor Nagasakis asked her in detail about her experiences, about the country and the people in Korea . Hamel later published in his homeland the first and, for two hundred years, the only western report on the closed Korea of ​​the Joseon Dynasty .

Sixen's rotation ended on November 6, 1667. On the occasion of the farewell audience with the Nagasaki governor, who like Six had also brought his successor Constantin Ranst with him, an official request was made in the name of the Shogun for the delivery of medicinal plant seedlings, seeds, and a still the dispatch of an experienced herbal specialist and distiller. This was the first Japanese attempt to set up a Western-style production cycle for pharmaceutical oils with European help. In order to improve the trading climate, the company made every effort to meet such special requests.

Six apparently had very good connections in the Batavian government, because the following year he managed to run the Japanese trading post again for a rotation (October 25, 1668 - October 14, 1669). In 1670 he actually planned to go to Nagasaki again, but was sent to Malacca on May 13, 1671 . From there he returned to Batavia on January 9, 1673.

literature

  • JL Blussé, NC Everts, W. Milde, Tsʾao Yung-Ho (ed.): De dagregisters van het Kasteel Zeelandia, Taiwan, 1629–1662. Deel IV; 1655-1662. Instituut voor Nederlandse Geschiedenis, The Hague, 2000.
  • Frederik Coyett: 't Verwaerloosde Formosa, of waerachtig verhael, hoedanigh door Verwaerloosinge der Nederlanders in East India, het Eylant Formosa, van den Chinesen Mandorijn, end Zeeroover Coxinja, overrompelt, avoiding, end ontweldight has become. Reprint published by GC Molewijk: Walburg Press, Zutphen 1991, ISBN 90-6011-711-5 , (works uitgegeven door de Linschoten-Vereeniging 90). ( Digitized version )
  • Van Galen, Stephan Egbert Arie: Arakan and Bengal: the rise and decline of the Mrauk U kingdom (Burma) from the fifteenth to the seventeeth century AD. Doctoral thesis, Leiden University, 2008. Digitized at Leiden University
  • Valentijn, François: Oud en Nieuw Oost-Indiën, vervattende Een Naaukeurige en Uitvoerige Verhandelinge van Nederlands Mogentheijd. Dordrecht-Amsterdam, 1726.
  • Wijnaendts van Resandt, Willem: De Gezaghebbers of the East Indian Compagnie op hare Buiten-Comptoiren in Azië. Amsterdam: Uitgevereij Liebaert, 1944.
  • Wolfgang Michel, Elke Werger-Klein: Drop by Drop - The Introduction of Western Distillation Techniques into Seventeenth-Century Japan. Journal of the Japan Society of Medical History, Vol. 50 (2004), No. 4, pp. 463-492. ( Digitized in Kyushu University Repository )

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Monographs on D. Six are not published, the most extensive collection of biographical data to date can be found in Wijnaendts van Resandt, pp. 145f.
  2. ↑ The cooper took care of the barrels for water, food, cargo, etc. This was an important task in Taiwan's hot and humid climate. All the more so since all the water for the fortress Zeelandia, which is located on a headland, had to be obtained from inland.
  3. ↑ Wijnaendts van Resandt, p 145
  4. ↑ Blussé et al. (2000), p. 144
  5. ↑ Koxinga turned out to be a magnanimous winner. The text of the surrender agreement is contained in the Zeelandia Fortress diary. See Blussé et al. (2000), p. 703
  6. ↑ Blussé et al. (2000), p. 703
  7. ↑ Six is ​​mentioned in several places in Frederik Coyetts' T Verwaerloosde Formosa (1675) (see Molewijk, pp. 157, 226f. Etc.)
  8. ↑ Wijnaendts van Resandt, p 145
  9. ↑ More on this in van Galen (2008).
  10. ↑ With this regulation, the Japanese side tried to prevent too much familiarity with the conditions in the country and a closer relationship with the Japanese on site. However, this did not prevent the surreptitious trade.
  11. ↑ Nationaal Archief (The Hague), NFJ 79, Dagregister by Wilhem Volger, September 14, 1666.
  12. ↑ Nationaal Archief (The Hague), NFJ 79, Dagregister by Wilhem Volger, September 14, 1666.
  13. ↑ More on this in Michel / Werger-Klein (2004).
  14. ↑ Nationaal Archief (The Hague), NFJ 82, Dagregister by Daniel Six, October 25, 1668 - October 14, 1669.
personal data
SURNAME Six, Daniel
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Six, Ino
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Dutch merchant in East Asia
DATE OF BIRTH December 1, 1620
PLACE OF BIRTH Middelburg
DATE OF DEATH November 5, 1674
Place of death Batavia