Johannes de Laet

Johannes de Laet , Latinized Ioannes Latius , (* 1581 in Antwerp , † 1649 in The Hague ) was a Flemish merchant, historian, geographer and one of the founding directors of the Dutch West India Company .

Life

Johannes de Laet, the son of a merchant, moved with his family to Amsterdam in 1585 after the conquest of Antwerp by the Spaniards, where he attended Latin school. From 1597 he studied in Leiden, among others, with Joseph Justus Scaliger (who only gave lessons to selected students), with whom he also corresponded later. In 1603 he went to London, probably to gain experience as a merchant, and in 1604 he was in Paris. He married the daughter of a Dutch merchant (van Loor) in London, but she died in 1606. De Laet had re-enrolled in Leiden in 1605 as a theology student, although it is not known whether he graduated. Mainly he lived in London at the time and did not return to Leiden until 1607 after the death of his wife. In 1608 he married a second time there and this marriage had over a dozen children. In 1618/19 he was sent to the Dordrecht Synod by the city of Leiden . In 1621 he was one of the 19 founding directors of the Dutch West India Company in Amsterdam. With the support of the city of Leiden, he raised capital to participate in it.

In addition to his job as a businessman, he published several books. He edited Pliny’s Natural History and Vitruvius’s Architecture Books , published a Latin-Old English dictionary (he was interested in the origins of the Dutch language and its connection to Old English), and wrote history books, including a description of America (West India) in Dutch with later translations of De Laet into Latin and French. The book was very successful, was supposed to promote trade with America and its colonization, and contained maps and descriptions of plants, animals, geography and Indians. The maps were from the cartographer of the West India and East India Company, Hessel Gerritsz, with whom he also published a map of Florida in 1630.

De Laet is also known as one of the main authors of a series of books (Respublica) by Elsevier with Latin country descriptions. Of the 48 volumes, 11 are from him (England, Scotland, Spain, Belgium, the Mughal Empire in India, Persia, France, Turkey, Italy, Poland and the Baltic States).

De Laet also published books on church history, for example on Pelagianism , and not least his expertise in this area led him to become a delegate at the Synod of Dordrecht.

He corresponded with scholars such as James Usher , Ole Worm , William Camden , Henry Spelman , Abraham Wheelocke , the British Ambassador to the Netherlands William Boswell , Simonds D'Ewes , the London antiquarian John Morris, Samuel Ward and Patrick Young .

De Laet was buried in the Pieterskerk in Leiden.

Fonts

• Nieuwe Wereldt ofte Beschrijvinghe van West-India, uit veelerhande Schriften end Aen-teekeningen van verscheyden Natien, Leiden: Bonaventure & Abraham Elseviers, 1625, 2nd edition 1630
  • Latin edition: Novus Orbis seu descriptionis Indiae Occidentalis Libri XVIII authore Joanne De Laet Antverp. Novis tabulis geographicis et variis animantium, Plantarum Fructuumque iconibus illustrati, 1633
  • French edition: L'Histoire du Nouveau Monde ou description des Indes Occidentales, contenant dix-huict livres, enrichi de nouvelles tables geographiqiues & figures des animaux, plantes & fruicts, 1640
• Historia naturalis Brasiliae, Leiden: Elsevier 1648
• De imperii magni Mogolis sive India, 1631
  • English translation by JS Hoyland: The empire of the great Mogul, Bombay 1928, Reprint 1974

literature

• Rolf H. Bremmer Jr., PG Hoftijzer (Ed.): Johannes de Laet (1581–1649): A Leiden Polymath, in: Lias. Sources and Documents Relating to the Early Modern History of Ideas, Volume 25/2, 1998, pp. 135-229
• JAF Bekkers: Correspondence of John Morris with Johannes de Laet (1634–1649), Assen 1970