Zacharias Wagenaer

Zacharias Wagenaer (also spelled Wagener, Wagenaar or Wagner) was a merchant in the service of the Dutch East India Company (VOC), and as such was opperhoofd of Deshima and the only German governor of the Dutch Cape Colony.

Zacharias was a native of Dresden, and in 1633 he settled in Amsterdam where he worked for a cartographer and publisher Willem Blaeu. The next year he joined the Dutch West India Company as a soldier. He was shipped to Dutch Brazil, where three years later he was hired as a writer by the newly arrived governor of the colony. During his stay in Brazil he kept a sort of diary with 109 water-color drawings of plants, animals and humans which he published as “Thier-Buch”. In 1641 he was back in Dresden, but once again left for the Netherlands, and took a position with the Dutch East India Company (VOC).

In 1643 he sailed for the Indies as a midshipman and in the same year he was promoted to assistant. Next, in 1646, he was promoted to under-merchant and in 1651 to merchant. The next year he became a member of the Court of Justice at Batavia and was sent on a mission to Canton to open up trade relations again, which proved fruitless. In 1657 he rose to the rank of opperhoofd, a chief merchant, of the VOC in Japan. From 1662 until 1666 he was Commander of the Cape Colony and made foundation of the Castle of Good Hope. At the Cape he constructed a waterbasin, supplying the ships with fresh water, a hospital, a school and a church. After he resigned his post at the Cape, Wagenaer served the VOC for two more years, until he died in Amsterdam in 1668.