François Valentyn
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François Valentyn or Valentijn (17 April 1666 – 6 August 1727) was a Dutch Calvinist minister, naturalist and author whose Oud en Nieuw Oost-Indiën ("Old and New East-India") describes the history of the
Biography
François Valentyn was born in 1666 in
In total, Valentyn lived in the East Indies 16 years. Valentyn was first employed by the V.O.C. (Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie) at the age of 19 as minister to the East Indies, where he became a friend of the German naturalist Georg Eberhard Rumpf (Rumphius). He returned and lived in Holland for about ten years before returning to the Indies in 1705 where he was to serve as army chaplain on an expedition in eastern Java. He finally returned to Dordrecht where he found time to write his Oud en Nieuw Oost-Indiën (1724–26) a massive work of five parts published in eight volumes and containing 1,200 engraved illustrations and some of the most accurate maps of the Indies of the time.[2][3]
Apart from
Writings
Valentyn probably had access to the VOC's archive of maps and geographic trade secrets, which they had always guarded jealously. Johannes II van Keulen (d. 1755) became
While Valentyn's maps and diagrams were prized possessions, his scholarship, judging by 21st-century standards was unscrupulous. Valentyn included illustrations of a
He died in The Hague, Netherlands, in 1727. In 2003/2004, the complete work was published again as a facsimile. With this, the stipulation in Valentyn's will that the work would never be republished was broken.
References
- ^ ISBN 9789625936277.
- ^ ISBN 9789625934709.
- ^ ISSN 2543-1587.
Bibliography
- Valentijn, François (1724). Oud en Nieuw Oost-Indiën (in Dutch). Te Dordrecht: By Joannes van Braam, boekverkooper. OL 25412097M.
- Huigen, Siegfried (2009) Het historiografische gebruik van Aziatische bronnen door François Valentyn 'Kennis van zeer veel fraeje zaaken'. ('Knowledge of many beautiful things.' The historiographic use of Asian sources by François Valentyn). In: Nieuw Letterkundig Magazijn 27, nr. 1, p. 23-30.
External links
- Media related to François Valentijn at Wikimedia Commons
- Oud en Nieuw Oost-Indiën Volume 1, Volume 2, Volume 3, Volume 4, Volume 5
- François Valentijn Between Ethics And Aesthetics