Background
Coen was born on January 8, 1587, in Hoorn, Netherlands. He was raised in a strict atmosphere by his family in consonance with rigorous principles of Calvinists.
Coen was born on January 8, 1587, in Hoorn, Netherlands. He was raised in a strict atmosphere by his family in consonance with rigorous principles of Calvinists.
In 1601 Coen traveled to Rome to study trade in the offices of the Fleming Joost de Visscher (known in Italy as Justus Pescatore), where he learned the art of bookkeeping.
At the age of 13, Coen obtained employment with a firm of former Dutch merchants in Rome, where he remained for almost 7 years and where he learned bookkeeping, other commercial skills, and several languages. Returning to Holland in 1607, Coen sailed on December 22 of that year for the Dutch East Indies as an employee of the Dutch East India Company. He returned home in 1610, and 2 years later the company dispatched him to the Indies as commander of two ships.
At the end of 1614 Coen was named director general, the second highest post, and on April 30, 1618, he was appointed governor general at the age of 31. Coen had difficulties with the Bantamese and English over the spice trade and transferred the seat of the company in Java from Bantam to Jakarta, where the company storehouse was located. He reinforced this building, making it a reliable fortress. The English, however, concentrated a large fleet off Bantam and seized a heavily laden Dutch ship, De Swarte Leeuw. Coen demanded its return, and when this was refused, a fight ensued. His fleet held its own against a superior force until its ammunition was exhausted. He then sailed for the Moluccas, where he obtained reinforcements of 16 ships.
Upon his return to Jakarta at the end of May 1619 he found that his garrison had held out, so Coen built a Dutch center which he named Batavia. In 1621 he led a punitive expedition against the Bandanese in East Indonesia, who had been trading with the English. He decimated the population and resettled the survivors. In 1623 he resigned as governor general, but the following year the company persuaded him to take up this post again.
British opposition delayed his return, however, until 1627, when he sailed secretly for the Indies and assumed without proper credentials the governor generalship. Shortly after his arrival at Batavia, he was confronted with sieges by the Bantamese and by the kingdom of Mataram. The latter made two unsuccessful attempts to dislodge the Dutch, and during the second attack Coen was suddenly stricken with a tropical disease and died on September 21, 1629.
Coen was a committed Calvinist.
Quotations: A famed quote of his from 1618, "Despair not, spare your enemies not, for God is with us."
Coen was known in his time on account of strict governance and harsh criticism of people who did not share his views.
In 1625, Coen married Eva Ment, and in 1627 departed incognito for the East Indies with his wife, their newborn child.