Talk:Jan Pieterszoon Coen

jewish?
His last name is close to being cohen, so was he jewish?
 * If he is, and you can find a reliable source to say he was, then it should be included. If you cannot find a reliable source to say he was, then it should not go in. regards. --Merbabu 01:20, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Moes, another Dutch surname, is close to Moses. Does that make people with that surname jewish? Ofcourse not. Moes translate purée, just like Coen translates to brave. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.46.65.135 (talk) 18:58, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps it could be added that his Jewish heritage is speculated, though not proven. Here is one source. http://nzetc.victoria.ac.nz/tm/scholarly/tei-GolHist-t1-body1-d2.html "Brought up as a strict Calvinist, Coen was descended from Italian Marrano-Jewish parents who had converted to Protestantism." Jewish Encyclopedia entry (written back in 1899 however) states that the topic remains open... http://web.archive.org/web/20150319132741/http://jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/4447-coen-jan-pieterszoon "Coen is said to have been of Jewish descent. The biographies, while printing voluminous details of his career as governor-general, are singularly reticent in regard to his parentage. The name or occupation of his father is not found, though one would have expected these facts to be recorded of so eminent a man. Perhaps as a convert he endeavored to conceal them. His portrait in Valentyn's "History of Java" and in Müller's "Golden Age" might well be that of a Jew. Abbing's "History of Hoorn" gives chiefly negative evidence on the subject of Coen's Jewish connection. The question of his extraction must be left undecided." --Cielovista, 18 June 2015
 * Speculations of Coen being of Jewish descent are utterly wrong. His father was Pieter Willemszoon of Twisk, a village near Hoorn, where Jan Pieterszoon Coen was born. His mother was Geertruida Jansdochter Mol. His father changed his religion from doopsgezind to calvinist when he moved to Hoorn. You can find this information in the recent biography (2015) of Coen by Jur van Goor (ISBN 987 94 6105 036 6). JRB-Europe (talk) 09:50, 13 August 2015 (UTC)


 * Koen can be a variant of Coen or a Dutch language given name and surname, popular in the Netherlands and Flanders. Although the earliest direct attestation comes from Oudenaarde, East Flanders in 1272, it is known to have been derived from the Proto-Germanic name *kōnja-, meaning "brave".[1][2] The name Koen is often an abbreviation of Koenraad. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 142.68.201.255 (talk) 01:28, 27 March 2019 (UTC)

Questions about Neutrality of Point of View
I have serious questions about the conformance to the Neutral point of view guidelines in this article. I think we can all agree that Coen was Not A Nice Man, but to heap it on, like is done in the lede, leads to a lack of balance. The Dutch version of the article does show him warts and all, but still is balanced. Other colonialists are controversial too. I just read the article on Stamford Raffles and that is much more circumspect, for instance on the subject of introducing the Cultivation System (though that wikilink is lacking in that article, so depriving Raffles of the credit). So far be it from me to sugarcoat the in our modern eyes highly reprehensible policies Coen introduced, but I think it would behoove the editor of this article to place those in their historical context. Coen's treatment of his ward Saartje Specx after she was caught in flagrante with her young man would certainly earn him a thousand tweets on #metoo, but in his time people probably thought she got off lightly. In the article it is just one more "proof" what a horrible man he was.

More important is the ruthless way he treated his English competitors. I understand this still brings froth to the mouths of red-blooded Englishmen, but that is more because the VOC got the upper hand. I think it is emblematic of the bias of this article that it cites Milton, Giles (1999). Nathaniel's Nutmeg, or, the True and Incredible Adventures of the Spice Trader Who Changed the Course of History as an "important source". This book appears to be mostly based on the propaganda of the East India Company in the 1620s that Cromwell thankfully used as one of his casi belli for the First Anglo-Dutch War, and that for the same purpose was used by Charles II of England at the beginning of the Second Anglo-Dutch War. One may root for the countrymen of one's own ancestors, of course, but there are more objective ways to look at the way Coen checkmated the English time and again. But nobody seems seriously disturbed by the way Robert Clive checkmated the French in India, at least (unlike other things) it seems not to be held against him in "his" wikipedia article, that seems well-balanced to me.

In sum, it should be possible to write a well-sourced article about Coen (there is much more biographical material than is mentioned in the article), that does not overlook his faults, but give some credit to his accomplishments. Even to the policy of monopolizing the nutmeg production in the Banka islands in itself (though the genocidal methods of course should be utterly condemned). Look at it from the viewpoint of the shareholders of both the VOC and the EIC. I bet his contemporary EIC shareholders were at the time demanding to know why the EIC did not do the same. It cannot be because the EIC was morally so far superior. And don't overlook the role of the local rulers in the exploitation of the native population. Slavery, for instance, was not a practice introduced by the VOC, but had existed in the East Indies for centuries, even before the arrival of the Portuguese. One of the first instances in which the VOC cut down spice trees in the Moluccas was when the VOC governor of Ambon lent a hand in a punitive expedition of the Sultan of Ternate around 1625 in his conflicts with Tidore and the Spaniards. Apparently, it already was a proven way to punish one's opponents --Ereunetes (talk) 23:39, 21 January 2018 (UTC)

Maybe I should formulate my complaint in a more positive way. My question is basically: Why should there be an article about Coen almost 400 years after his death, if all he did was abuse women, and exterminate blameless natives? Apparently, not too long ago there were people who did see something positive in him. I am not an expert on Coen, or colonialism, or the 17th century, so I made a quick scan of the historiographical horizon in matters Coen. I found this historiographical article by Jurrien and Foskellen van Goor: Jan Pieterszoon Coen, the start of a colonial career, in Prelude to Colonialism: The Dutch in Asia (2004). The article is in English, but most of the works discussed are unfortunately in Dutch. But the article will give an impression of the general gist, and which different (often conflicting) takes on the subject exist. One important thing I took away from the article is that Coen deserves to be seen as more than just a functionary in the VOC (he started as a bookkeeper, after all :-), but that he was a true Empire Builder in the mold of Raffles or Clive. That is because he developed a strategic vision about the construction of the "Dutch Empire", that went beyond just taking over parts of the pre-existing Portuguese empire and business model, and convinced his superiors in the Lords XVII to let him implement that vision. Because of that the "empire" did not die with him, as it otherwise very well might have done. Another important take away is the nature of the "empire". In that respect the following book is important: Saliha Belmessous, Empire by Treaty: Negotiating European Expansion, 1600-1900 (Oxford UP, 2014) The main thesis of this book is that the Dutch empire-building strategy was not primarily subjecting native peoples with brute force, but making treaties with local potentates, at least in some respect to mutual advantage (though they may have been unequal). Coen was the first exponent of this strategy, and together with Hugo Grotius he put a legal framework around it in works like Mare Liberum, and later De jure belli ac pacis. The main tenet of this legal framework was pacta sunt servanda (agreements should be kept). Coen believed in this tenet unconditionally and it was a major problem for him that his native interlocutors did not necessarily hold the same tenet. Hence the conflict that led to the unpleasantness in the Banda islands (something that is not explained in the article Dutch conquest of the Banda Islands, which is a fine example of lying by omission). The murder of admiral Pieter Willemsz. Verhoeff in an ambush by Bandanese chiefs in 1609 made a deep impression on Coen, who apparently just escaped being killed himself. I just made a quick tour of the relevant English wikipedia articles about the matter, curious what those would contain about that epochal (for the Dutch) event, and the answer is: hardly anything. The article about Verhoeff gives the impression that he was in a traffic accident. But for Dutch historians the incident rises to the same tragic heights as the Amboyna massacre does in English historiography. It is known as the "Bandanese Treason", which incidentally shows what the Dutch most resented about the event: not that a few Dutchmen were killed, but that it showed the "utter untrustworthiness" of the Bandanese. In other words, a typical example of a culture clash. Fortunately, in 2015 a new Coen biography, based on the extensive VOC archives, was published that shows him in this "empire-building perspective". This is Jur van Goor, ''Jan Pieterszoon Coen (1587–1629). Koopman-koning in Azië'' I don't know if the English version ever saw the light. Hope this is useful for anybody taking on the task of editing the article.--Ereunetes (talk) 00:51, 23 January 2018 (UTC)
 * For your question "Why should there be an article about Coen almost 400 years after his death, if all he did was abuse women, and exterminate blameless natives", his wholesale slaughter and enslavement of the natives shocked contemporaries as unusually severe and even drew a reprimand from the company’s directors . Further he not only killed natives, but basically also killed Malay and Javanese traders, as well as Chinese and Arabs. The murder of Verhoeff is basically self inflicted, as it is basically unreasonable request to build eventual Fort Nassau, Banda Islands. He sent 750 soldiers ashore to commence their fort, choosing the abandoned Portuguese foundation as the location, which was abandoned because conflict with native. The Bandanese, threatened by the new fort and the strength of the Dutch presence, and opposed to the Dutch plan to monopolise the Bandanese nutmeg industry attacked the Dutch, ambushed Admiral Verhoeven.  I don't disagree that this article need to be better developed and have more citation, but I disagree with NPOV. I believe Coen is controversial enough, for his massacre, even for Dutch, as In 2011 a group of citizens from Hoorn asked the City Council to remove the statue, as in their opinion Coen was a mass murderer, who used violence as a means to establish a VOC monopoly in the spice trade in the East Indies. While in the end, decision basically just to change the text in the information panel. .  Draconins (talk) 23:26, 7 August 2018 (UTC)
 * Sorry to react this late. My original post of 23 January 2018 elicited Draconins reply only on 7 August 2018, and I have not revisited this talk page since 2018. I am afraid Draconins did not take the trouble to rerad the sources I cited or he might have reacted less apodictic. It may be all water under the bridge after five years, but recent edits to the lede make me believe that my objections to the article still stand. Ereunetes (talk) 21:49, 15 September 2023 (UTC)
 * I found this article that casts doubt on the story that all 15,000 inhabitants of the Banda islands at the time of the 1621 Dutch conquest were massacred. It is true that the islands were depopulated, but many of the "missing" may simply have moved to neighboring islands and there formed a distinct Bandanese population up to this day. Ereunetes (talk) 21:42, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

after the death / killing of George Floyd,
there are George Floyd protests

also (19 june 2020) in his birth town Hoorn. --Neun-x (talk) 15:08, 21 June 2020 (UTC)