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Johan de Witt (Dordrecht, Netherlands, 24 September 1625 – The Hague, Netherlands, 20 August 1672) was a key figure in Dutch politics at a time when the Republic of the United Provinces was one of the Great Powers in Europe, dominating world trade and thus one of the wealthiest and mightiest nations in the world.

Early life
Johan de Witt was born as the son of Jacob de Witt, an influential burgher from the patrician class in the city of Dordrecht which, in the seventeenth century, was one of the most important cities of the dominating province of Holland. Johan and his older brother Cornelis de Witt grew up in a privileged environment in terms of education, his father having important scholars and scientists, such as Isaac Beeckman, Jacob Cats, Gerhard Vossius and Andreas Colvius as good acquaintances. Jacob de Witt greatly valued stoicism.

Johan and Cornelis both attended the latin school in Dordrecht, which impregnated both brothers even more with the values of the Roman Republic. As Johan proved to be a highly gifted student, he was awarded by being allowed the role of Julius Caesar in a school play.

Career
After having attended the Latin school in Dordrecht (this school still exists under the name of Johan de Witt-Gymnasium), he studied at the University of Leiden where he excelled at mathematics and law. He received his doctorate from the University of Angers in 1645. He practiced law as an attorney in The Hague as an associate with the firm of Frans van Schooten.

In 1650 he was appointed leader of the deputation of Dordrecht to the States of Holland, the same year stadtholder William II of Orange died. In 1653 De Witt became raadpensionaris of Holland and, as such, the factual leader of this governing body in 1653. Controlling Holland, the most powerful province, he served as the most important administrator in the Republic of the United Provinces as a whole. Being the most influentian administrator of the United Provinces, the raadpensionaris of Holland was also referred to as the Grand Pensionary. Johan applied his mathematical knowledge to the Republic's financial and budgetary problems.

Johan de Witt brought about peace with England after the First Anglo-Dutch War with the Treaty of Westminster in the year 1654. The peace treaty had a secret annex, the Act of Seclusion, forbidding the Dutch ever to appoint William II's infant son as new stadtholder. This annex had been attached on instigation of Cromwell who felt that a relative the executed Charles I ((William III was a grandson of Charles) in power in Holland was not in the interests of England. De Witt did his utmost to prevent any member of the House of Orange from gaining any power, convincing many provinces to abolish the stadtholderate entirely. Influenced by the values of the Roman republic, he bolstered his policy by publicly endorsing the theory of republicanism. He is known to have contributed personally to the Interest of Holland, a radical republican textbook published in 1662 by his supporter Pieter de la Court.

De Witt's power base was the wealthy merchant class. The people supporting him were called the "States faction", opposed by the "Orange faction" that was popular among the artisan class. This antagonism paralleled a division between moderate and intolerant Calvinists. In the period following the Treaty of Westminster the Republic increased in wealth and influence under De Witt's leadership. De Witt created a strong navy, appointing one of his political cronies, Lieutenant-Admiral Jacob van Wassenaer Obdam, as supreme commander of the confederate fleet. Later De Witt became a personal friend of Lieutenant-Admiral Michiel de Ruyter. The Second Anglo-Dutch War began in 1665, lasting until 1667 when it ended with the Treaty of Breda, in which De Witt negotiated very favorable agreements for the Republic after the partial destruction of the British fleet in the Raid on the Medway, originally conceived by De Witt himself.

Death
His pro-French policy however would prove to be his undoing. In the Dutch rampjaar (disaster year) of 1672, when France and England during the Franco-Dutch War (Third Anglo-Dutch War) attacked the Republic, the Orangists took power by force and expelled him. Recovering from an earlier attempt on his life in June, he was assassinated by a carefully organized lynch "mob" after visiting his brother Cornelis de Witt in prison. He was decoyed into this trap by a forged letter.

After the arrival of Johan de Witt the city guard was sent away to stop plundering farmers, the farmers were not found. Without any protection against the assembled mob the brothers were doomed. They were taken out of the prison and on their way to the scaffold killed. Immediately after their death the bodies were mutilated and fingers toes and other parts were cut off. Nowadays most historians assume that his adversary and successor as leader of the government stadtholder William III of Orange was involved. At the very least he protected and rewarded the killers.

Mathematician
Besides being a statesman Johan de Witt also was an accomplished mathematician. In 1659 he wrote "Elementa Curvarum Linearum" as an appendix to his translation of René Descartes' "La Géométrie".

In 1671 his "Waardije van Lyf-renten naer Proportie van Los-renten" was published ('The Worth of Life Annuities Compared to Redemption Bonds'). This work combined the interests of the statesman and the mathematician. Ever since the Middle Ages a Life Annuity was a way to "buy" someone a regular income from a reliable source. The state for instance could provide a widow with a regular income until her death, in exchange for a 'lump sum' up front. There were also Redemption Bonds that were more like a regular state loan. De Witt showed - by using probability mathematics - that for the same amount of money a bond of 4% would result in the same profit as a Life Annuity of 6% (1 in 17). But the 'Staten' at the time were paying over 7% (1 in 14).

The publication about Life Annuities is seen as the first mathematical approach of chance and probability.

The drop in income for the widows contributed no doubt to the "bad press" for the brothers De Witt. Significantly, after the violent deaths of the brothers the 'Staten' issued new Life Annuities in 1673 for the old rate of 1 in 14.

In 1671 De Witt conceived of a life annuity as a weighted average of annuities certain where the weights were mortality probabilities (that sum to one), thereby producing the expected value of the present value of a life annuity. Edmond Halley’s (of comet fame) representation of the life annuity dates to 1693 when he re-expressed a life annuity as the discounted value of each annual payment multiplied by the probability of surviving long enough to receive the payment and summed until there are no survivors. De Witt's approach was especially insightful and ahead of its time. In modern terminology, De Witt treats a life annuity as a random variable and its expected value is what we call the value of a life annuity. Also in modern terminology, De Witt's approach allows one to readily understand other properties of this random variable such as its standard deviation, skewness, kurtosis, or any other characteristic of interest.

In addition, in his Elementa curvarum linearum, De Witt derived the basic properties of quadratic forms, an important step in the field of linear algebra.

In Popular Culture


The lynching of the De Witt Brothers is depicted with a dramatic intensity in the first chapter of The Black Tulip, a historical fiction novel written by Alexandre Dumas, père in 1850, and this event has implications for the whole plot line of the book.

In its time, Dumas' book has helped make this tragedy known to a French readership (and a readership in other countries into whose languages the book was translated) otherwise ignorant of Dutch history.

Consulate General and Special Legation
For fourty-eight years, the Consulate (General) of the Orange Free State in the Netherlands was the primary representation of the government of the Orange Free State in Europe. Between 1854 and 1902 the republic was represented by four consuls. All were Dutchmen, although one was born in South Africa, but lived most of his life in the Netherlands (C. Hiddingh), and one lived and worked a considerable part of his life in the Orange Free State (H.A.L. Hamelberg).

During its existence the profile of and work done by the Consulate General was very much decided by the incumbent office holders, as well as by political developments in South Africa.

Consul U.G. Lauts (1854–1856)

 * Main article: Ulrich Gerard Lauts

Ulrich Gerard Lauts (Amsterdam, 19 May 1787 – Utrecht, Netherlands, 25 July 1865), originally a merchant, later a teacher and professor of Dutch language and literature at the Museum for Science and Arts in Brussels and later at the Royal Naval Institute in Medemblik. Lauts was an early protagonist of the cause of the South African Voortrekkers and Dutch migration to the new Boer republics.

Lauts was appointed consul of the Orange Free State in the Kingdom of the Netherlands on 15 October 1854, with a request to the Dutch government to recognise him as such, which happened in May 1855.

Lauts was impopular with the Dutch government, which may have caused the delay in his acceptance, but also led to a request for his replacement before the year was out (see below). When that request was discussed in the Volksraad in February 1856, it turned out that Lauts' appointment had been a private action of the State President and Government Secretary and was never confirmed by the Volksraad – as was required by law – and thus Lauts was sacked without further ado. He was also the diplomatic agent for the South African Republic, a position he kept until his death in 1865.

As consul general Lauts' importance was limited; he mainly made his name through his publications and conteacts with leading Afrikaner and Dutch emigrant politicians in the Boer republics. For the Orange Free State he negotiated the gift of a flag and coat-of-arms by King Willem III of the Netherlands.

The part of Lauts' archives dealing with South Africa was bought by the South African government in 1925, and is kept in the Provincial Archives of the Transvaal in Pretoria as the "Lauts Collection".

C. Hiddingh (1861–1871)

 * Main article: Cornelis Hiddingh

Cornelis Hiddingh, RNL (Cape Town, Cape Colony, 10 June 1809 – Arnhem, Netherlands, 4 September 1871), South Africa born, studied law in the Netherlands and remained there. He travelled to the Orange Free State early in 1856 as special envoy of the King of the Netherlands. From 1861 to 1871 he was Consul General of the Orange Free State in the Netherlands, residing in Arnhem.

In 1855 King Willem III appointed Hiddingh his special envoy to the newly formed Boer republics of the Orange Free State and Transvaal, to present the flag and coat-of-arms, as a gift to the government and people of the Republic. The initiative for the design and production of both parafernalia had come from state president Hoffman and government secretary Groenendaal of the Orange Free State. However, Hofmann was no longer in office when Hiddingh arrived and the new state president, Boshoff, was in the dark about the parafernalia ordered by his predecessor. Boshoff was very cautious, in order not to offend the British government, and hesitated to receive Hiddingh in an official capacity. It led to a political row.

The Dutch government had also charged Hiddingh with another diplomatic errant. He was asked to carefully inform the government of the Orange Free State that consul Lauts was perhaps not the best person to represent the republic, and propose a replacement. Hiddingh had Jacob Spengler in mind, president of the Amsterdam Chamber of Commerce. The Volksraad adopted the proposal and decided to offer Spengler the position. However, State President Boshoff did not give a follow-up to the decision, and consequently Spengler was never appointed or even asked.

As a result, the Consulate Generalship remained vacant between 1856 and 1861, although the Dutch government and the general public regarded Hiddingh as their main – semi-official – contact with the Orange Free State. On 10 September 1861 the government of the Orange Free State appointed Hiddingh consul general in the Kingdom of the Netherlands. The Dutch Royal Decree with his acceptance was issued on 27 November 1861. Again, as with Lauts, the Volksraad was not asked to ratify the appointment, a judicial mistake only repaired three years later, on 8 February 1864. The consulate was established in Arnhem, Hiddingh's residence at the time.

In 1867 the government of the Orange Free State charged Hiddingh with the task to buy a present for W.F.G. Nicolaï, the composer of the music for the national anthem of the Orange Free State. Hiddingh term of office as consul general was cut short by his sudden and untimely death in a train accident.

The archives of the Consulate General under Hiddingh were originally part of the Hiddingh family archives in The Hague, but were transferred to what are now the Provincial Archives of the Free State in Bloemfontein in May 1934.

H.A.L. Hamelberg (1872–1896)

 * Main article: H.A.L. Hamelberg

Hamelberg was in the Netherlands when Hiddingh was killed. President Brand wrote to him to consider taking up the position of consul general, if he decided to stay in Europe. Actually this was not Brand's first choice: he preferred Hamelberg to return to Bloemfontein and tak up his position as government secretary again. Hamelberg accepted the offer, however, and was appointed consul general on 4 April 1872 (accepted by Royal Decree 13 July 1872). The acceptance was done under recognition of Hamelberg as 'foreign citizen', or as

Hamelberg received more

H.P.N. Muller (1896–1902)

 * Main article: Hendrik Pieter Nicolaas Muller

The Consulate General during the South African War
At the outbreak of the South African War on 11 October 1899, work at the Consulate General grew rapidly and took on an ever more intricate and complex form. All of a sudden the consulate needed to provide services for

Secretariat

 * J.J. Bergansius - June 1902


 * Gerrit Bernard Fortuyn (born Arnhem 7 June 1880), son of Roelandus Johan Herman Fortuyn (1851-1938; Cabinet Secretary in the State Secretariat of the South African Republic) and Greta de Visser (1850-1911).

Fortuyn studied law in Groningen when he was recruited for the Consulate General. In service from 1899 to 1902. In March 1900 he accompanied H.P.N. Muller on a secret mission to Bern (Switzerland) to promote the republican interests with representatives of several European nations. From Switzerland Fortuyn followed Muller to Italy later that month, for further discussion with the Italian government.

During the war, Fortuyn repeatedly returned to Groningen to continue his studies, inter alia in the Spring of 1900 and again in September of that year. After the closure of the consulate Fortuyn established a private law practice in Amsterdam. Later he moved to Groningen, the hometown of his wife Hermanna Johanna Kolff, where he became director of the Insurance Company "De Nederlanden van 1845". Muller and the Fortuyn family remained friends during the remainder of the former's life.

Although of Dutch descent Fortuyn grew up in the Transvaal, where his father worked. At the outbreak of war Fortuyn was a student in the Netherlands. Together with W.M.R. Malherbe he was recommended to H.P.N. Muller in December 1899 by W.J. Leyds, envoy of the South African Republic.

commies van Staat, lid gemeenteraad ’s-Gravenhage en Provinciale Staten van Zuid-Holland, advocaat en procureur, †, tr. ’s-Gravenhage 2 Maart 1899 Jkvr. Hermina Clasina den Beer Poortugael, geb. Breda 19 nov. 1874, † Zeist 18 febr. 1945, dr. van Jhr. Jacobus Catharinus Cornelis den Beer Poortugael en Louisa Wilhelmina Elisabeth Amarantha Heule. NA 42 (1949) 14-16.
 * Aeneas, Baron Mackay (Amerongen 1 January 1872 – Zeist, Netherlands 30 July 1932), son of Theodoor Philip, Baron Mackay (1840-1922; mayor, member of parliament, president of the Algemene Rekenkamer) and Juliana Anna, Baroness van Lynden (1844-1935).


 * W.M.R. Malherbe, student from the South African Republic, together with G.B. Fortuyn recommended to H.P.N. Muller by W.J. Leyds, envoy of the South African Republic. Malherbe, a son of the Treasurer General of the South African Republic, returned to South Africa in December 1899 with a group of young Afrikaners, to take part in the war. His career as commando was short-lived. Malherbe was soon taken prisoner and sent to a prisoner-of-war camp in Bellary, British India.

Zie bio.
 * J.A.N. Patijn - June 1902


 * A.Q. de Raaijdt - June 1902


 * B.L.C. van den Steenhoven, lawyer


 * R.W.A. Voigt -1902 Afrikaans student when recruited in 1899


 * J.W.J. Wessel Roux was an Afrikaans student when recruited early in 1900. Roux had studied in England, but established himself in the Netherlands after the outbreak of war. Muller had much confidence in the young man, and less than a month after he had appointed him as secretary, Muller left him in charge of the Consulate General, while he himself went on a secret mission to Switzerland (5 March 1900).


 * Haro Casper Ypeij (Leeuwarden, Netherlands, 20 April 1862 – Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany, 5 August 1934) was the eldest of the consular secretaries and the only one who was not a student. Ypeij was an accountant by training and already married when he volunteered for service in the secretariat. Ypeij was also the only secretary to continue professionally in a consular career, eventually becoming consul of the Netherlands in Brussels.