Herman Warner Muntinghe

Herman Warner Muntinghe (Amsterdam, 24 April 1773 - Pekalongan, 24 November 1827) was a Dutch chief justice of the Supreme Court of the Dutch East Indies and a colonial official who had great behind the scenes influence in the successive colonial governments of the Indies under governor-general Herman Daendels, lt-governor-general Sir Stamford Raffles, and the Commissioners-General of the Dutch East Indies. He was appointed a member of the first High Government of the Dutch East Indies in 1819.

Personal life
Muntinghe, was the son of Scato Muntinghe, a member of the Supreme Court of the province of Groningen in Groningen and Anna Elisabeth de Maffé. He partly received his education in England, attended the Latin school in Groningen from 1785 to 1787, became a student at the university there in 1787, and in 1796 was promoted to doctor of both Roman and Dutch law. He married Wilhelmina Adriana Mersen Senn van Basel.

Career
Appointed in 1801 as fiscal of the Council of Asiatic Possessions, he submitted in 1802 a memorandum concerning the actions of Sebastiaan Cornelis Nederburgh and his fellow Commissioners. Appointed on 15 April 1804 to fiscal of the colony of Suriname, he did not accept this office, because Suriname had passed to the English, but left for the Dutch East Indies as a fiscal there. In 1807 Muntinghe became second secretary of the Indies Governor-General, Albertus Henricus Wiese; in 1808 Secretary of the new Governor-General Herman Daendels; in 1809 secretary-general and in the same year president of the Supreme Court of Justice in Batavia with the rank of extraordinary Councilor of the Indies.

After the conquest of Java by the English in 1811, Muntinghe initially objected to entering the British service, but decided to do so on 18 September 1811, when it had become apparent that the French regime had ceased to exist, and a British lieutenant-governor of Java en Dependencies (Stamford Raffles) had been appointed. During the English administration Muntinghe, who was now promoted to full member of the Council of the Indies, has been of great service to Raffles, which has also been frankly acknowledged by the latter. He took an active part in the reorganization of the judiciary.

In 1813 Muntinghe presented an important memorandum concerning the landrentesystem of taxation to be eventually introduced by the British regime. After the restoration of Dutch authority in August 1816, Muntinghe was retained as president of the Supreme Court of Justice, and became a member of the "Advisory Committee", installed by the Commissioners-General of the Dutch East Indies, who had been sent out by the new Dutch king William I of the Netherlands to take over the government from the British on the basis of the Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1814, which committee was called to inform the Government about various matters. Two months later he exchanged his judicial status for that of President of the newly established Council of Finance. When the question arose whether to return to the tax system of the old VOC, or to build on the foundations laid by the British administration, Muntinghe decidedly chose the latter line of action and made this clear in a very important report of 14 July 1817, with which the Council of Finance and also the Commissioners-General essentially agreed.

In 1816 Muntinghe was appointed as a Dutch member of a joint Commission for the settlement of differences of finance which had arisen with the former British administration. In 1818 and 1819 he was employed at Palembang (and Bangka Island) as Government Commissioner, in order to clear up the difficulties that had arisen with Sultan Mahmud Badaruddin II. He acted with force against both the native princes and the English, and made the British captain Salmond, who had been sent to Palembang by Raffles, then Governor of British Bencoolen, to counter the Dutch influence there, on his refusal to leave, with his retinue, to be deported to Batavia. However, he failed to subdue the Sultan, since only the military expedition of 1821 could put an end to his resistance.

After he had been appointed a member of the High Government of the Dutch Indies in 1819, Muntinghe went on leave to the Netherlands in late 1822 for health reasons. In 1824 he was appointed a member of the commission, which drafted the articles of incorporation of the Nederlandsche Handelsmaatschappij, of which Muntinghe was a great supporter. Returning to the Indies in 1825, he remained a member of the High Government for only a short timebefore resigning for reasons of health.

He died childless on 24 November 1827 in Pekalongan.