Melchior van Santvoort

From left to right: Blijde Boodschap , Trouwe , 't Geloove , Liefde and Hoope . (from an engraving, 17th century)

Melchior van Santvoort (* approx. 1570; † 1641 in Batavia ) was one of the few survivors of the ship de Liefde , which marked the beginning of Dutch-Japanese contacts with its landing in Kyūshū in 1600. He stayed in Japan, where he lived as a merchant in Nagasaki for 39 years.

Life

Nothing is known about Van Santvoort's early years. In 1598 he left the Netherlands on the "Liefde" in order to reach Asia via the western route. Like everyone on board, he experienced the landing in Japan on April 19, 1600 as a rescue from a disaster. They had sailed happily with four other ships through the difficult Strait of Magellan , but all bold plans failed because of the Spanish and Portuguese and not least the storms of the Pacific. In the absence of other options, the "Liefde" finally headed for the Japanese island kingdom, but an unfavorable course had been chosen so that the crossing took four and a half months and the decimated crew could hardly maneuver the ship. Of the twenty-four survivors, only six were able to walk, and many died shortly after arriving in Usuki Bay in the east of Kyushu Island. Nevertheless, this was a historic event , because with the arrival of the "Liefde" began the history of Dutch-Japanese relations.

Some of the survivors are known by name. The English helmsman William Adams (1564-1620) was naturalized as Miura Anjin, received a minor samurai rank and a small fiefdom, and made merit in the service of the first shogun of the Tokugawa dynasty, Tokugawa Ieyasu . Jan Joosten van Lodensteijn (1556–1623) also stayed in the country, traded and died in 1623 on a trade voyage in the South China Sea. In 1604, Melchior van Santvoort received permission to leave the country with Jacob Quaeckernaeck , the former captain of the "Liefde". They sailed on a " red seal ship " owned by the Prince of Hirado , d. H. on a merchant ship equipped with a license sealed by the Shogun, to Patani on the Malay Peninsula, where Jacob Cornelisz. van Neck founded a trading post in 1602 and initiated the lucrative spice trade of the Dutch.

Quaeckernaeck died in 1606 as the commander of a VOC ship in fighting with the Portuguese. Van Santvoort, however, returned to Japan and became involved in trade between Japan and Southeast Asia. In September 1607 he was again in Patani and in February of the following year took a letter and presents for Ieyasu. As in 1609, the "de Roode Leeuw met Pijlen" ships (the Red Lion with arrows) and "de Griffioen" (Griffin) from the Netherlands in Nagasaki einliefen he pioneered with its language and cultural skills the way for the merchant Jacques Speckx , reaching that the Dutch were allowed to send two envoys from the Dutch East India Company (VOC), founded in 1602 , Abraham van den Broeck and Nicolaes Puyck, with a letter from Prince Maurits and various presents to Edo to the court of Tokugawa Ieyasu. With a sealed permission from the Shogun, Speckx founded a trading post for the company in Hirado that same year , which he managed until 1612 and again from 1614 to 1621.

Van Santvoort married Isabella, the daughter of a Japanese carpenter. He ran his business in Nagasaki, but continued to maintain close contact with his fellow countrymen in Hirado. This is not only evidenced by the correspondence with the factory manager Nicolaes Coeckebacker . One of his daughters married the company merchant Pieter van Santen , who was in charge of the Hirado factory from January to September 1633. Another daughter married the businessman Willem Verstegen , who later took over the management of the branch , which was relocated to Dejima in 1641, for one rotation .

During the thirties the growing tensions in the relationship between Japan and the "southern barbarians" ( Nambanjin ), i. H. the Iberian missionaries and traders, and the other Europeans in the country. The employees of the Dutch East India Company were initially unaffected, but the Dutch “free citizens” could not escape the pressure. When all Japanese women and their children living with foreigners had to leave the country in 1639, Van Santvoort and his family moved via Formosa to Batavia (now Jakarta), where they arrived in January 1640. Van Santvoort died there the following year.

literature

• Leonard Blussé, Willem Remmelink, Ivo Smits (eds.): Bridging the divide. 400 years The Netherlands-Japan . Hotei Publishing, Leiden 2000.
• WM Mulder: Hollanders in Hirado . Van Dishoeck, Haarlem, 1985.
• Oskar Nachod : The Relations of the Dutch East India Company to Japan in the Seventeenth Century . Friese, Leipzig 1897 digitized version of the Preuss. Berlin State Library
• Christopher James Purnell (Ed.): The Log-Book of William Adams, 1614-19, with the journal of Edward Saris, and other documents relating to Japan, Cochin China, etc. The Eastern Press, London 1916. Digitized from Robarts Library , University of Toronto
• Tōkyō Daigaku Shiryō Hensanjo (Ed.): Diaries kept by the heads of the Dutch Factory in Japan . Vol. I-IV, Tokyo 1974-1981.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Blussé, Remmelink, Smits (2000), p. 15
2. ↑ Adam's fate was romanticized by James Clavell in the novel Shogun (1975).
3. ^ Nachod (1897), pp. 103f.
4. ↑ Mulder (1985), pp. 50f.
5. ^ Nachod (1897), p. 110ff, Mulder (1985), p. 50f.
6. ↑ Mulder (1985), pp. 136, 258f.