Willem Verstegen

Willem Verstegen (also Willem Versteeghen , * around 1612 in Vlissingen ; † 1659 near Ajmer ) was a merchant in the service of the Dutch East India Company and, after an initial stay in Japan from 1633 to 1639, headed the Dejima trading post from 1646 to 1647 .

Life

Nothing is known about Willem Verstegen's youth and educational background. In 1629 he was hired by the Dutch East India Company and moved to Batavia with the rank of trade assistant . In 1632 he was sent to Japan for the first time. In those years, the company's branch, founded in 1609, was still on the islet of Hirado, northwest of Kyushu . In 1633 he was sent to Nagasaki as a subcontractor to take care of business there. There were Portuguese and also some Dutch who traded independently from the company. One of them was Melchior van Santvoort , who was stranded with the ship “De Liefde” in Ostkyushu in 1600 and has since made his way in Japan. His marriage to a Japanese woman resulted in a daughter, with whom Verstegen soon lived together.

During the 1930s, the Japanese government observed the Europeans in the country, especially the "southern barbarians"; H. the Iberian missionaries and merchants, with growing suspicion and resentment. After an uprising by the predominantly Christian rural population in the Amakusa / Shimabara area on Kyushu had been suppressed with great difficulty, the activities of the Catholic missionaries and the Portuguese merchants who cooperated with them became less and less popular. In 1639, on the orders of the Shogun, all Japanese women married to Europeans and their children had to leave the country. Verstegen also set out and was formally married to Santvoort's daughter during a stopover in Formosa, where the company maintained a base in Taiwan Bay.

In 1641, the company's branch in Japan was forcibly relocated to the small, artificial island of Dejima in Nagasaki Bay. The Dutch were now the only European nation to be tolerated, but that came at a price. The trade and her whereabouts were limited to this well-monitored establishment. In order to make it more difficult to obtain information, the training of European interpreters was also prohibited and the managers had to be replaced every year.

Dejima around the middle of the 17th century. (From: Arnoldus Montanus : Gedenkwaerdige Gesantschappen der Oost-Indische Maetschappy in't Vereenigde Nederland, aen de Kaisaren van Japan . 1669)

It was Verstegen who set off two large expeditions in 1635 when he wrote to Governor General Antonie van Diemen telling stories about the gold and silver islands high in the north, somewhere near the 37th parallel. In 1639 the first expedition to search for these islands set out from Batavia. On instructions from the Netherlands, she was also to explore the coast of Tartary, where the great gold-rich cities "Cambalu" and "Brema" were suspected, about which Marco Polo had once reported. The high command led Matthijs Quast with Maarten Geritsz de Vries as the second man. The captain of the other ship was Abel Tasman , who later became known for the discovery of Tasmania. Unfortunately, the trip into the rough waters east of Japan brought little besides the discovery of various islands, rather damaged ships and high failures due to dropsy and scurvy. You can go through your expedition journal at Teleki. The "Quastschen Insel" is shown on a map published by Philipp Franz von Siebold .

In 1642 the decision was made to make another exploration trip, this time directly to Tartary. Since Japan was possibly connected to the mainland in the north, a route east of the archipelago was chosen. Two ships were entrusted to the high command of Maarten Gerritsz de Vries in early 1643: the Fleute Castricum and the Jacht Breskens. But this undertaking also remained fruitless. In addition, on the way home, contrary to the Japanese prohibitions, the Breskens landed in northern Japan near Nambu, which led to arrests and considerable tensions between the Japanese government and the company, which could only be resolved by sending an embassy in 1650. Subsequently, no further ventures of this kind were undertaken.

From October 28, 1646 to October 10, 1647, Verstegen, who had been promoted to senior merchant in 1645, was the head of the Dejima branch. After the Breskens incident, the company tried its best to calm the situation down. For the annual trip to Edo , where the head of the factories had to pay his respects to the shogun, Verstegen had been given particularly exotic gifts: two camels, a casuarius , a cockatoo , a diorama ( perspectiefkast ), clocks, bezoar stones and others precious medicines. The reaction in the castle to Edo was overwhelming. The diorama in particular caused a stir. However, events took a dramatic turn in the summer of 1647 when an embassy from the King of Portugal appeared in Nagasaki Bay and only withdrew without having achieved anything under the pressure of considerable troop masses. The Dutch had not announced their arrival or had not announced their arrival clearly enough and, moreover, had given technical assistance in Batavia for the further crossing, which from the Japanese point of view amounted to treason. When Verstegen returned to Batavia he brought bad news with him.

This had little impact on his further career. On September 7, 1650, he became an associate member of the Council of India, and a week later chairman of the college for minor judicial affairs. In 1651 he moved as a commissioner ( commissaris ) with an embassy to Tonkin and Quinam (Quảng Nam) in Indochina. Here he uncovered a considerable private trade in the Dutch trading post. This was usually at the expense of the company, which is why one tried again and again (in vain) to suppress such activities. He then sailed to Zeelandia on Formosa to check the books there and to visit the facilities. The checks took part in u. a. The Dresden-born businessman Zacharias Wagener took part, who a few years later became a factory manager in Japan and also had a remarkable career. On January 16, 1652, Verstegen rose to the (ordinary) "Council of India", but received permission for the crossing to Europe on October 9, for no apparent reason. The events after that have not been clarified.

Whatever happened in Europe, Verstegen did not end his life at home. In February 1658 we find him in with his sons Geraerdt and Melchior, his daughter and a niece in Surat on the northwest coast of India. On January 11th, he moved to Ahmedabad north of Surat. The Mughal ruler there, Dara Shikoh, was involved in succession wars and was looking for European gunners. On October 6, 1659, Verstegen was killed during a battle near Ajmer . His son Melchior joined the company on May 20, 1661 in Batavia as a commercial assistant.

literature

• Wolfgang Michel : Travel of the Dutch East India Company in the Japanese archipelago . In: Lutz Walter (Ed.): Japan. Seen through the eyes of the west. Printed maps of Europe from the early 16th to the 19th centuries. Extended catalog edition. Prestel, Munich et al. 1994, ISBN 3-7913-1291-X , pp. 31-39.
• WM Mulder: Hollanders in Hirado. 1597-1641 . Van Dishoeck, Haarlem 1985, ISBN 90-228-3889-7 .
• PH Pott: Willem Verstegen, een extra-ordinaris Raad van Indië as avonturier in India in 1659 . In: Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- and Folklore . Vol. 112, No. 4, 1956, ISSN  0006-2294 , pp. 355-382 ( digitized version ).
• Paul Graf Teleki : Atlas for the history of the cartography of the Japanese islands . In addition to the Dutch journal of Mathys Quast's and AJ Tasman's journey to the discovery of the Gold Islands in the east of Japan in 1639 and its German translation. Hiersemann, Budapest et al. 1909, (reprint: Kraus, Nendeln 1966).
• Lutz Walter (Ed.): Japan. Seen through the eyes of the west. Printed maps of Europe from the early 16th to the 19th centuries. Extended catalog edition. Prestel, Munich et al. 1994, ISBN 3-7913-1291-X .
• Willem Wijnaendts van Resandt: De Gezaghebbers of the East Indian Compagnie op hare Buiten-Comptoiren in Azië . Uitgevereij Liebaert, Amsterdam 1944 ( Genealogische Bibliotheek 2).
• Kees Zandvliet: Golden opportunities in geopolitics. Cartography and the Dutch East India Company during the lifetime of Abel Tasman . In: William Eisler, Bernard Smith : Terra Australis. The furthest shore . Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney 1988, ISBN 0-642-13464-2 , pp. 67-84 (exhibition catalog, Sydney, Art Gallery of New South Wales, July 27 - October 9, 1988).

Remarks

1. ↑ The most comprehensive biography to date was given by PH Pott. Some of the information provided by Wijnaendts van Resandt is incorrect.
2. ↑ This Shimabara uprising began as a levy against the tax burden and gained more and more religious traits in the course of the fighting.
3. ↑ PDF file
4. ↑ On the early Western Japan maps see Walter (1994)
5. ↑ The processes are described in Verstegen's service diary ( dagregister ). See Historiographical Institute at the University of Tokyo: Japan's Daghregister sedert 28 October 1646 to 10 October 1647 .