Cornelis de Houtman

Cornelis de Houtman (2 April 1565 – 1 September 1599) was a Dutch merchant seaman who commanded the first Dutch expedition to the East Indies. Although the voyage was difficult and yielded only a modest profit, Houtman showed that the Portuguese monopoly on the spice trade was vulnerable. A flurry of Dutch trading voyages followed, eventually leading to the displacement of the Portuguese and the establishment of a Dutch monopoly on spice trading in the East Indies. Cornelis de Houtman was born in 1565 in Gouda, South Holland. His father, Pieter de Houtman, was a brewer. Cornelis had a younger brother, Frederick de Houtman, born in 1571 and two sisters. In 1592, Houtman's wealthy cousin, Reynier Pauw, and several other prosperous merchants in Amsterdam formed a company, Compagnie van Verre, to finance a Dutch trading expedition to the East Indies. Their initial inspiration had been the publication of a series of maps that appeared to show the route to the East Indies. These charts were provided by noted Dutch cartographer, Petrus Plancius, who indicated he had obtained them from Spain's royal cosmographer, Bartolomeo de Lasso. That same year, Pauw sent Houtman to Lisbon along with his brother Frederick. It is unclear whether Houtman had legitimate business in Portugal or went primarily as a commercial spy to gather information about Portuguese spice trade in the East Indies. While they were gone, another Dutch merchant, Jan Huygen van Linschoten, returned to Amsterdam after spending almost nine years in Goa. He brought back extensive information about the region including crucial details on navigation and the spice trade. The merchants determined that Bantam provided the best opportunity to buy spices. On 2 April 1595, four ships left Amsterdam: the , , , and the . The voyage was beset with trouble from the beginning. Scurvy broke out after only a few weeks, due to insufficient provisions. At Madagascar, where a brief stop was planned, seventy-one people had to be buried. The 71 of the 248 sailors had died, most of scurvy.

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Related concepts (7)

Cornelis de Houtman

Dutch colonial empire

The Dutch colonial empire (Nederlandse koloniale rijk) comprised the overseas territories and trading posts controlled and administered by Dutch chartered companies—mainly the Dutch East India Company and the Dutch West India Company—and subsequently by the Dutch Republic (1581–1795), and by the modern Kingdom of the Netherlands after 1815. It was initially a trade-based system which derived most of its influence from merchant enterprise and from Dutch control of international maritime shipping routes through strategically placed outposts, rather than from expansive territorial ventures.

Portuguese Empire

The Portuguese Empire (Império Português), also known as the Portuguese Overseas (Ultramar Português) or the Portuguese Colonial Empire (Império Colonial Português), was composed of the overseas colonies, factories, and the later overseas territories governed by Portugal. It was one of the longest-lived colonial empires in European history, lasting almost six centuries from the conquest of Ceuta in North Africa, in 1415, to the transfer of sovereignty over Macau to China in 1999.