Pieter van den Broecke

Pieter van den Broecke was a cloth merchant in the service of the Dutch East India Company, known as one of the first Dutchmen to taste coffee.

His family originally from Antwerp settled at Amsterdam around 1597. Pieter joined the Dutch East India Company, which was at the phase of expansion, and soon became chief-tradesman and admiral.

During his visit to Mocha in 1614, he had an opportunity to drink "something hot and black, a coffee". Although he is best known as the successor to Jan Pieterszoon Coen on the Banda Islands, and a manager at Surat trading post, he also visited Cape Verde and Angola several times between 1605 and 1612, and left a journal of his observations.

His manuscript, entitled “Short history and Journal Notes of the Remarkable and Long Voyage to Cape Verde, Angola and East Indies” (1634) is one of the earliest European descriptions of the communities in West and Central Africa. It also contains detailed description of the sophisticated commercial strategies of Dutch merchants then trading on the Atlantic coast of Africa.