Jan Huygen van Linschoten


 

 

Jan Huygen van Linschoten (1563-1610), a Dutch born on a middle class family, with a good education, although not universitary, lived on the port town of Enkhuizen, Haarlem, from where he travelled frequently, being in contact with important people.

He managed to become attached to the service of the Portuguese Archbishop of Goa, India, where he spent five years between 1583 and 1588. On his return to Holland he produced a History of his travels, important due to the inclusion of maps from Portuguese sources, at that time rarely available to Dutch, or any other cartographers. In his return, a storm made his ship sunk in Angra, where he settled for two and a half years, guarding the merchandises and studying the island and the people.
Being a good observer, he produced during this time, important documentation (as a Dutch spy) for the history of Terceira Island, publishing in 1596 Itinerario: 4 parts: 12 maps: Dutch text: Amsterdam (published by Cornelis Claesz) 1598 (English), 1599 (Latin), 1605, 1614, 1623, 1644 (Dutch), 1610, 1619, 1638 (French) Re-issued with 15 maps.

Some quotations from the Wilkipedia Encyclopedia inform about the importance of the role played by Linschoten on the discoveries adventure.


Jan Huyghen van Linschoten (1563-1611) was a Dutch Protestant merchant, traveller and historian. His second name is also spelt as Huijgen. He is credited with copying top-secret Portuguese nautical maps thus enabling the passage to the elusive East Indies to be opened to the English and the Dutch. This enabled the British East India Company and the Dutch East India Company to break the 16th century monopoly enjoyed by the Portuguese on trade with the East Indies.

In addition to detailed maps of these places, Linschoten also provided the geographic ‘key’ to unlocking the Portuguese grip on passage through the Malacca Strait; he suggested approaching the East Indies from the south of Sumatra through the Sunda Strait, thereby minimizing the danger of Portuguese attention.


Linschoten Society
A Linschoten Society was founded in 1908 to publish rare or unpublished Dutch travel accounts of voyages, journeys by land, and descriptions of countries and survives today at the Amsterdam Ship Museum.

By Antonieta Costa