Jeremias Van Vliet

Jeremias Van Vliet (in Thailand also: Wan Walit - วัน ว ลิต ; *  1602 in Schiedam , Holland ; † February 1663 there ) was a merchant and factor in the Dutch East India Company (VOC). In his capacity as director of the VOC trading office in Ayutthaya , the capital of the Siamese kingdom , he was an important western chronicler of the history of Siam until 1642.

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Jeremias Van Vliet was born in the Dutch city of Schiedam around 1602 . Not much is known of his youth, only that he was one of the younger of five sons of Eewout Huybrechtszoon and Maritge Cornelis's daughter van Vliet, both wealthy citizens of the city of Schiedam.

Like his two older brothers Eewout and Daniel, he joined the Dutch East India Company ( Dutch: Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie ; VOC) to seek his fortune in back India . In May 1628 Jeremias sailed with the rank of assistant with the Het Wapen van Rotterdam to Batavia (today: Jakarta ), where he arrived in February 1629 after a long journey around the Cape of Good Hope .

After a few months in Batavia, Van Vliet was sent to Japan in June 1629, where he worked his way up to the rank of junior merchant in the Hirado trading post over the next three years. There he got to know the trade of VOCs between Japan , Taiwan and Siam. In January 1633 he was returned to Batavia reporting to Joost Schouten, who had recently been appointed director of the trading office in Ayutthaya, the capital of the Kingdom of Siam . With the sailing ship Delft , Schouten and Van Vliet sailed to Ayutthaya in order to set up a permanent trading post there.

Since Joost Schouten traveled for a long time on many trips, Van Vliet initially ran the business of VOC in Siam as deputy director, and was then appointed director himself in 1638. He held this post until 1642. In 1638 he married the entrepreneur Osoet Pegua (also known as Tjau Soet) from the Mon ethnic group , with whom he had three daughters. However, contrary to what was common in Europe at the time, the marriage could be divorced again, which is why contemporaries sometimes viewed it only as cohabiting .

In April 1642 he finally turned his back on Ayutthaya to marry Catharina Sweers, the sister of VOC council member Solomon Sweers, in Batavia. In September of the same year he was offered the prestigious post of Governor of Malacca , which certainly benefited him from his marriage and his good relationship with Antonio van Diemen , Governor General of the Dutch East Indies . Shortly before van Diemen's death in April 1645, he was appointed a councilor for the East Indies. However, a short time later he was charged with corruption and illicit private transactions as governor in Batavia. In August 1646, the Batavia court found Van Vliet guilty on all counts. He was stripped of his rank, salary and VOC membership. Nevertheless, presumably at the instigation of his brother-in-law Solomon Sweers, he kept his place on the Council of East India until he was able to return to Holland under honorable circumstances in December 1646. He was employed as the admiral of a fleet of nine sailors sailing back to the Netherlands across the Indian Ocean around the Cape of Good Hope. In August 1647 he reached the port on Texel safely.

Only a few details of his further life in Holland are known today. It is not known whether he asked for another job with the VOC, although he may have tried. However, there is evidence that he persisted in seeking custody of his three daughters with Osoet Pegua, who had in the meantime gained a certain influence at the Siamese court. Only after the death of Osoet Pegua was his daughter Maria Van Vliet able to travel to Batavia in 1658 to marry a certain de Vos with the rank of junior merchant. It is not known whether Van Vliet ever saw his daughters again.

Jeremias Van Vliet was elected mayor ( Burgemeester ) in his hometown of Schiedam in 1652 . He held this position until his death in February 1663.

Literary works

In his capacity as director of the VOC trading office in Ayutthaya, Van Vliet wrote four books between 1636 and 1640, which today represent a valuable contribution to the history of Siam in the early 17th century.

• The chronicle of the "picnic incident" ( Historically Verhael van't gene des Vereenighde Oost-Indische Compagnies Dienaers, ..., in the city of Judia, wedervaren is ) is actually an excerpt from Van Vliet's diary in which he speaks for the Tried to justify events: a group of drunken Dutch sailors allegedly insulted a prince and desecrated a Buddhist temple during an excursion. Because of this, they were originally sentenced to death by the king, but were later released through Van Vliet's diplomacy. Van Vliet was initially accused of inability to handle this incident, but was able to convince his superiors of the opposite on a trip to Batavia based on his diary. The manuscript was published in 1647 in a leather-bound volume by Jan Jansz in Amsterdam, together with a description of the catastrophic sinking of the sailor Batavia .
• The description of the Kingdom of Siam ( Beschrijving van het Koningrijk Siam ... ) is - as far as is known - the first detailed description of Ayutthaya as a major Asian capital and trading city. Van Vliet wrote it in 1637–1638. LF van Ravenswaay translated the description into English in 1910 and published it in the Journal of the Siam Society .
• The brief history of the kings of Siam ( Cort Verhael van't naturel eijnde der volbrachte tijt ende successie der Coningen van Siam ... ) was initially not published. It rested in the VOC archives until it was rediscovered by Professor Seiichi Iwao in the 1930s. He translated it into English in 1970.
• The historical story of King Prasat Thong ( Historiael Verhael der Sieckte ende Doot van Pra Interra-Tsia 22en Coninck in Siam ... ) was translated into French by the French historian Abraham de Wicquefort in 1663, this French version in turn by HWMundie for Prince Damrong Rajanubhab in 1904 into English. In 1938 it was published in the Journal of the Siam Society .

literature

Source used

• Chris Baker, Dhiravat na Pombejra, Alfon van der Kraan, David K. Wyatt: Van Vliet's Siam . Silkworm Books , Chiang Mai 2005, ISBN 974-9575-81-4

Continuing

• Bhawan Ruangsilp: Dutch East India Company Merchants at the Court of Ayutthaya. Dutch Perceptions of the Thai Kingdom, c. 1604-1765. Brill, Leiden 2007, ISBN 978-90-04-15600-5

Individual evidence

1. ↑ in detail Dhiravat na Pombejra: VOC Employees and their Relationships with Mon and Siamese Women. A case study of Osoet Pegua. In: Other Pasts. Women, Gender and History in Early Modern Southeast Asia. Center for Southeast Asian Studies, University of Hawai'i, Honolulu 2000, pp. 195-214.
2. ^ Marc Frey : Eurasian Interactions. Siam and the Dutch East India Company during the Seventeenth century. In: Southeast Asian Historiography - Unraveling the Myths. Essays in Honor of Barend Jan Terwiel. River Books, Bangkok 2011, p. 173.
3. ↑ Barbara N. Ramusack: Women in South and South East Asia. In: Women in Asia. Restoring Women to History. Indiana University Press, Bloomington IN 1999, p. 89.
4. ^ LF van Ravenswaay: Translation of Jeremias van Vliet's Description of the Kingdom of Siam. In: Journal of the Siam Society , Volume 7, No. 1, 1910, pp. 1-108. Online (PDF, last accessed October 31, 2012; 11.7 MB)
5. ^ Jeremie van Vliet: Historical Account of Siam in the XVII century. In: Journal of the Siam Society. Volume 30, No. 2, 1938, pp. 95-154. Online (PDF, last accessed October 31, 2012; 4.7 MB)

Web links

• Data from Van Vliet's first trip to Batavia
• Dates of Van Vliet's return from Batavia to Texel