Career
He also went to Angola three times. He was one of the first Europeans to describe societies in West and Central Africa and in detail trade strategies along the African coast. The family lived in Hamburg for a while and left around 1597 for Amsterdam.
At the time the VOC began to develop, the younger Pieter joined it as a tradesman and climbed the career ladder.
He became chief-tradesman and admiral. In 1611 he brought in a cargo of 65,000 pounds of ivory to Amsterdam, after capturing a Portuguese ship.
In 1614 he visited Mocha and drank "something hot and black, a coffee". He was made the VOC"s manager in Dutch Suratte.
He described the Ethiopian slave Malik Ambar.
From 1616 the establishment there blossomed, with new minor establishments being set up in the hinterland., though in 1617 the Duyfken, under his command, was wrecked on the Surat coast. He operated in Maritime Southeast Asia beside January Pieterszoon Coen and was present at the battle of Jakarta in 1619. Pieter van den Broecke took over from Coen as head of the Banda Islands.
The islands were held to be important to trade due to their superior cloves and nutmeg, and so the Dutch were at that time enforcing a trade monopoly on the unwilling local population through drastic measures.
So many inhabitants were killed on Banda that the island had to be deliberately repopulated. Descendants of the Van den Broecke family continue to live on Banda.
