Melchior van Santvoort

Melchior van Santvoort (* ca 1570, † 1641 in Batavia ) was one of the few survivors of the ship de Liefde, which marks the beginning of the Dutch- Japanese contacts with his landing in Kyushu in 1600. He remained in Japan, where he was a merchant in Nagasaki 39 years.

Life

About Van Santvoorts early years nothing is known. 1598 he left on the " Liefde " the Netherlands in order to reach via the western route Asia. As with all on board he witnessed the landing in Japan on April 19, 1600, rescue of a disaster. They had sailed happy with four other ships through the Straits of Magellan difficult, but all bold plans were frustrated by the Spaniards and Portuguese, and not least the storms of the Pacific. In the absence of other options, " Liefde " finally steered to the Japanese island of Reich, but had chosen an unfavorable exchange rate, so that the crossing took four and a half months and the decimated crew, the ship could barely maneuver. Only six of the twenty-four survivors were to go into the situation, many died shortly after arrival in the bay of Usuki in the east of the island of Kyūshū. Nevertheless, this was a historic event, because with the arrival of the " Liefde " began the story of the Dutch- Japanese relations.

Some of the survivors are known by name. The English helmsman William Adams (1564-1620) was naturalized as Miura Anjin, was a low - ranking samurai and a small fief and made in the service of the first shogun of the Tokugawa dynasty, Tokugawa Ieyasu, deserves. January Joosten van Lodensteijn (1556-1623) also remained in the land, conducted trade, and died in 1623 on a trading voyage in the South China Sea. Melchior van Santvoort received permission in 1604, with Jacob Quaeckernaeck, the former captain of the " Liefde " to leave the country. They sailed on a " Red Seal ship" Prince of Hirado, ie on a equipped with a sealed from Shogun License merchant ship, according to Patani in the Malay Peninsula, where Jacob Cornelisz. van Neck had founded a trading post in 1602 and initiated the so lucrative spice trade of the Dutch.

Quaeckernaeck died in 1606 as commander of a VOC ship in battles with the Portuguese. Van Santvoort however, returned to Japan and was involved in trade between Japan and Southeast Asia. In September 1607 he was again in Patani and took in February of the following year a letter and gifts for Ieyasu with. When in 1609 the ships " de Roode Leeuw met pijlen " ( the Red Lion with arrows ) and " de Griffioen " ( Griffin ) einliefen from the Netherlands in Nagasaki, he pioneered with his voice and knowledge of the country the way for the merchant Jacques Speckx and reached that the Dutch ambassador, founded in 1602 two Dutch East India Company (VOC ), Abraham van den Broeck and Nicolaes Puyck, send a letter of Prince Maurits and several present ones to Edo to the court of Tokugawa Ieyasu allowed. With a sealed permission of the Shogun Speckx founded in the same year in Hirado, a commercial establishment of the company, which he headed until 1612 and again from 1614 to 1621.

Van Santvoort married Isabella, the daughter of a Japanese carpenter. He operated his business in Nagasaki, but continued to maintain close contact with his compatriots in Hirado. For this not only proves the correspondence with the factor tubal Nicolaes Coeckebacker. One of his daughters married the company - merchant Pieter van Santen, who until September 1633 who was in charge of the trading post Hirado of January. Another daughter married the merchant Willem Verstegen, who for one cycle took over the management of the 1641 laid by Dejima branch later.

During the thirties, the growing tensions appeared in Japan's relationship to the " southern barbarians " ( Nambanjin ), ie the Iberian missionaries and traders, also on the other Europeans in the country. The officials of the Dutch East India Company which remained initially unaffected, but the Dutch " free citizens " could not escape the pressure. As in 1639, all living with foreigners Japanese women together with their children had to leave the country, Van Santvoort moved with his family on Formosa to Batavia ( now Jakarta ), where they arrived in January 1640. Van Santvoort died there the following year.