Joannes de Laet

Joannes de Laet was a Dutch merchant, geographer and director of the Dutch West India Company.

De Laet was born in Antwerp in 1581 as a son of cloth merchant Hans De Laet. His family settled at Amsterdam after the town fell into the Spanish hands, where Joaness attended the Latin school and graduated theology and philosophy at the University of Leiden.

After graduation, his father sent him to London in 1603 to gain some experience as a merchant. Joannes increased his fortune trough his marriages and by investing in land reclamations and overseas trade. In 1620 he was one appointed one of the founding directors of the Dutch West Indies Company holding that post until his death.

Fond of science, Joannes spent his free time in his study room surrounded by books, manuscripts, maps and globs. Although he wrote a lot of works on different topics, his “History of the New World” was described as "...arguably the finest description of the Americas published in the seventeenth century" and "...one of the foundation maps of Canada".

De Laet was also remembered as the first to print maps with the names Manhattan, New Amsterdam (now New York) and Massachusetts.