Jan Pieterszoon Coen

Jan Pieterszoon Coen (1587-1629), Dutch merchant who founded the Dutch trading empire in East Asia and became the fourth governor-general of the Dutch East Indies (now part of the Republic of Indonesia and Malaysia) in 1617. Born to a strict Calvinist family in Hoorn, Holland (now the Netherlands), Coen learned the merchant trade from a company in Rome. On his first trip to the East Indies, with the Dutch East India Company in 1607, natives of the Banda Islands in the Malay Archipelago killed the captain and 50 men in Coen's crew. He returned home but continued with the company, rising to chief merchant in 1612 and director general of the company's operations in Asia in 1614. In 1617 the Dutch government appointed him governor-general of the Dutch East Indies.

Coen used the post to solidify the Dutch monopoly on the trade of cloves and nutmeg, but the sultan of Bantam, located on the island of Java, refused to give Coen complete access to the pepper trade. Coen eventually used the military to push the Bantams from their home at Jacatra, which he razed. In its place, he founded the city of Batavia (now Jakarta) in 1619. In 1621 Coen massacred a large number of Banda Islands natives. His tenure was also notable for his repeated repudiation of English claims to Java, though his militarism eventually gained him the disfavor of his superiors. Coen died, most likely of dysentery, during his last defense of Batavia against the sultan of Mataram.