Anthony van Diemen

Anthony van Diemen was a colonial administrator who as governor-general of the Dutch East Indian settlements (1636–45) consolidated the Dutch interests in Southeast Asia.

He was born in Culemborg in the Netherlands, and moved to Amsterdam in hope of improving his fortune as a merchant but failed in it. Then he joined the Dutch East India Company, serving in Batavia from 1618 and finally becoming governor-general in 1636. His career was marked by a Dutch spice monopoly in the area. He intensified the Dutch attack on Portuguese holdings in Asia with an invasion of Ceylon, and by 1644 the Dutch had conquered Ceylon’s cinnamon-producing areas and had established posts on India’s Coromandel Coast. He also succeeded in seizing the key Portuguese stronghold of Malacca in 1641, and in 1642 the Dutch captured all of Formosa (Taiwan), driving out the Spanish.

Under his rule commercial relations with Tonkin (Vietnam) and Japan were established. By the end of his administration, the United Provinces of the Netherlands had become the paramount commercial and political power in insular Southeast Asia. He also initiated the exploring expeditions of Abel Tasman and Frans Visscher in 1642 and 1644 on which they discovered Tasmania, New Zealand, Tonga, Fiji, and the northern coast of Australia.