A Brill Calendar: April 8

The Voyage of "China Dirck"

Few European discoverers of the globe have been compared to Marco Polo (ca. 1254 – January 8 1324, Venice).

The Hollander Jan Huyghen van Linschoten (Haarlem, 1563 – Enkhuizen, Febrary 8 1611) may be the only one, given the title of a book by C. McKew-Parr: ‘Jan van Linschoten, the Dutch Marco Polo’ (1964). An authoritative historical survey of the Low Countries, ‘Nijhoff’s Geschiedenislexicon Nederland en België’ (The Hague & Antwerp, 1981) classifies van Linschoten as a ‘traveler and publicist’. No description could be more apt. In Portuguese employ as a mercenary, he left Lisbon on April 8, 1583; twenty years before the nascent Republic of the Seven Provinces would start a ‘United East-Indian Company’, the VOC.

In India, he acted for some six years as bookkeeper to the Archbishop of Goa, all the while collecting information on previously unrecorded civilizations. He was aided in his inquisitive zeal by Dirck Gerritszoon Pomp, also from Enkhuizen. (‘China Dirck’ was the first Dutchman to visit the ‘Realm of the Middle’). On his return to Europe, van Linschoten served from 1589 to 1591 as an agent for Fugger banking on the Azore islands.

Just before the end of the 16th century, his journals and reflections appeared in print, inspiring merchants and adventurers in the sea-faring Calvinist Provinces of the Netherlands to do at least as well as the Roman-Catholic Portuguese in exploiting the spicy riches for European consumption & trade.

It is seldom that a harbinger of the new had to wait so long before being properly recognised. In 1908, a public Association carrying van Linschoten’s name was born, with the main aim to make journals, letters and documents concerning plain sea-faring people available in print to a wider audience. Van Linschoten’s effort fulfilled a necessary condition for a ‘Golden Age’ in the Republic, which started, by and large, when he was laid to rest after a short, but distinguished life: before ‘having seen Abraham’ in the biblical parlance dear to his age & culture.