A Brill Calendar: May 30

Joris van Spilbergen and the Nature of Service

Few ideals on which ‘the idea of a university’ rests are more propounded than the mission to serve.

During the infancy of academic activity at Leyden – say, during the first four lustra, until the armistice between the Republic and Habsburg Spain in 1609 – these tasks covered an indefinable range. When, for instance, Joris van Spilbergen (Antwerp, Flanders November 1568 – Bergen op Zoom, Brabant, January 1620) published at the end of his life a scholarly book, ‘Oost- en West-Indische Spieghel der nieuwe navigatie’ (1619) – ‘East- and West-Indian Looking-glass of New Navigation’ – he embodied this variety.

He was the first northern European to set foot in Ceylon, on May 30 1602 – negotiating with its King (even before the founding of a redoubtable East India Company), in order to oust together the Portuguese from His Majesty’s vast island. Spilbergen had been a pirate before, made and lost a fortune, polished diamonds for a living and circumnavigated the globe. It is seldom that salad days of a University coincide with so many new realities and possibilities; while there was no guarantee that there existed a reliable method to reach them.