François Valentijn

Place: Dordrecht

Born: 1666

Death: 1727

Biography:

François Valentijn was a Dutch minister, naturalist and author whose Oud en Nieuw Oost-Indiën (1724–26) is a massive work of five parts published in eight volumes and containing 1,200 engraved illustrations and some of the most accurate maps of the Indies of the time. He was born in Dordrecht, Netherlands in 1666 and died in 1727. He lived in the East Indies for 16 years, he was first employed by the VOC (Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie) at the age of 19 as minister to the East Indies, where he became a friend of the German naturalist Georg Eberhard Rumpf. He returned and lived in Holland for about ten years before returning to the Indies in 1705 where he was to serve as army chaplain on an expedition in eastern Java. When he finally returned to Dordrecht he would go on to write his Oud en Nieuw Oost-Indiën, a work of great importance in the history of the Dutch East India Company and the countries of Southeast Asia.