Pieter Nuyts or Nuijts (1598 – 11 December 1655) was a Dutch explorer, diplomat and politician. He was part of a landmark expedition of the Dutch East India Company in 1626–1627 which mapped the southern coast of Australia. He became the Dutch ambassador to Japan in 1627, and was appointed governor of Formosa in the same year. Later, he became a controversial figure because of his disastrous handling of official duties, coupled with rumours about private indiscretions. He was disgraced, fined and imprisoned, before being made a scapegoat to ease strained Dutch relations with the Japanese. He returned to the Dutch Republic in 1637, where he became the mayor of Hulster Ambacht and of Hulst. Nuyts is remembered today chiefly in the place names of various points along the southern Australian coast, named for him after his voyage of 1626–1627. During the early 20th century, he was vilified in Japanese school textbooks in Taiwan as an example of a "typical arrogant western bully".
Early life
Pieter Nuyts was born in 1598 in the town of Middelburg in Zeeland, Dutch Republic, to Laurens Nuyts, a merchant, and his wife Elisabeth Walraents, wealthy Protestant immigrants from Antwerp. After studying at the University of Leiden and gaining a doctorate in philosophy, he returned to Middelburg to work in his father's trading company. In 1613, Pieter Nuyts, who was staying in Leiden with the Orientalist Erpenius, is known to have met with the Moroccan envoy in the Low Countries Al-Hajari. Al-Hajari wrote for him an entry in Pieter's album amicorum stating:
The excellent young man Peter Niutsius has asked me to write something for him, so I say to him: Be obedient to the commands of the almighty God and do not worship anyone but him, and be obedient to your parents and humble towards them [...]. In 1620, Pieter married Cornelia Jacot, also a child of immigrants (émigrés) from Antwerp, who was to bear four of his children: Laurens (born around 1622), Pieter (1624) and the twins Anna Cornelia and Elisabeth (1626). In 1626 he entered service with the Dutch East India Company (VOC) and was seen as one of their rising stars.
Australian expedition
On 11 May 1626 the VOC ship 't Gulden Zeepaert (lit. 'the Golden Seahorse') departed from Amsterdam with Nuyts and his eldest son Laurens aboard. Deviating from the standard route to the VOC's East Asian Batavia headquarters, the ship continued east and mapped around 1,500 kilometres (930 mi) of the southern coast of Australia from Albany, Western Australia to Ceduna, South Australia. The captain of the ship, François Thijssen, named the region 't Landt van Pieter Nuyts (lit. 'the land of Pieter Nuyts') after Nuyts, who was the highest-ranking official on the ship. Today several areas in the state of South Australia still bear his name, such as Nuyts Reef, Cape Nuyts and the Nuyts Archipelago; names given by the British navigator and cartographer Matthew Flinders. Later Nuytsia floribunda, the Western Australian Christmas Tree, was also named for him.
Ambassador to Japan On 10 May 1627, a month after completing his Australian voyage, Nuyts was simultaneously appointed both governor of Formosa (Taiwan) and ambassador to Japan for the Dutch East India Company, travelling in this capacity to the court of the shōgun Tokugawa Iemitsu, ruler of Japan. At the same time Hamada Yahei, a Japanese trader based in Nagasaki with frequent business in Formosa, had taken a group of sixteen native Formosans to Japan and had them pose as rulers of Formosa. His plan was to have the Formosans grant sovereignty over Taiwan to the shōgun, while Nuyts was in Japan to assert rival Dutch claims on the island. Both embassies were refused an audience with the shōgun (the Dutch failure being variously attributed to Nuyts's "haughty demeanour and the antics of his travel companions" and "Hamada's machinations at the court").
Governor of Formosa
On returning from his unsuccessful mission to Japan, Nuyts took up his position as the third governor of Formosa, with his residence in Fort Zeelandia in Tayouan (modern-day Anping). One of his early aims was to force an opening for the Dutch to trade in China – something which had eluded them since they arrived in East Asia in the early 17th century. To further this goal, he took the Chinese trade negotiator Zheng Zhilong hostage and refused to release him until he agreed to give the Dutch trading privileges. More than thirty years later it was to be Zheng's son Koxinga who ended the reign of the Dutch on Formosa.
Nuyts acquired some notoriety while governor for apparently taking native women to his bed, and having a translator hide under the bed to interpret his pillow-talk. He was also accused of profiting from private trade, something which was forbidden under company rules. Some sources claim that he officially married a native Formosan woman during this time, but as he was still legally married to his first wife Cornelia, this seems unlikely. His handling of relations with the natives of Formosa was also a cause for concern. Nuyts had a low opinion of the natives, writing that they were "a simple, ignorant people, who know neither good nor evil". In 1629 he narrowly escaped death when after being feted at the aboriginal village of Mattau, the locals took advantage of the relaxed and convivial atmosphere to slaughter sixty off-guard Dutch soldiers – Nuyts was spared by having left early to return to Zeelandia. This incident was later used as a justification for the Pacification Campaign of 1635–1636. It was during Nuyts's tenure as governor that the Spanish established their presence on Formosa in 1629. He was greatly concerned by this development, and wrote to Batavia urgently requesting an expedition to dislodge the Spanish from their strongholds in Tamsuy and Kelang. In his letter he stressed the potential for the Spanish to interfere with Dutch activities and the trade benefits the Dutch could gain by taking the north of the island. The colonial authorities ignored his request, and took no action against the Spanish until 1641.
Hostage crisis
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