Isaac Johannes Lamotius (bapt. 29 May 1646 in

Beverwijk Beverwijk () is a municipality and a city in the Netherlands, in the province of North Holland. The town is located about northwest of Amsterdam in the Randstad metropolitan area, north of the North Sea Canal very close to the North Sea coast. A ...

– 1718) or (1653–1710) was governor of Mauritius from 1677 to 1692. Lamotius was interested in arts and knowledge and became an ichthyologist; he made 250 drawings of fishes which are kept in Paris.

Family background

Isaac was the son of Johannes Lamotius, who played a main part in the capturing of

Dutch Malacca Dutch Malacca (1641–1825) was the longest period that Malacca was under foreign control. The Dutch ruled for almost 183 years with intermittent British occupation during the Napoleonic Wars (1795–1815). This era saw relative peace with litt ...

(January 1641) and married in Batavia the widow of

Matthijs Quast Matthijs Quast (died 6 October 1641) was a Dutch explorer in the seventeenth century. He had made several voyages for the Dutch East India Company to Japan, China and Siam. Pacific Expedition Matthijs Quast has become known for an unsuccessful ex ...

. As a

sergeant major Sergeant major is a senior non-commissioned rank or appointment in many militaries around the world. History In 16th century Spain, the ("sergeant major") was a general officer. He commanded an army's infantry, and ranked about third in th ...

, Johannes was stationed in

Dutch Formosa The island of Taiwan, also commonly known as ''Formosa'', was partly under colonial rule by the Dutch Republic from 1624 to 1662 and from 1664 to 1668. In the context of the Age of Discovery, the Dutch East India Company established its presence ...

(September 1642–?). In 1653 Johannes Lamotius lived in

, Netherlands.

Career

Isaac arrived on the island in September 1677. In 1682

Joan Huydecoper II Joan Huydecoper van Maarsseveen II (21 February 1625, Amsterdam – 1 December 1704, Amsterdam) was the eldest son of burgomaster Joan Huydecoper van Maarsseveen I and the brother-in-law of the collector Jan J. Hinlopen and the sheriff Jacob Bo ...

strongly urged the colonial administrators to undertake botanical research and stimulated the production of drawings of plants on the spot. He gave him instructions on how to start a herbarium. In 1685 Huydecoper requested subtropical plants. A

cucumis __NOTOC__ ''Cucumis'' is a genus of twining, tendril-bearing plants in the family Cucurbitaceae which includes the cucumber (''Cucumis sativus''), muskmelons (''Cucumis melo'', including cantaloupe and honeydew), the horned melon ('' Cucumis ...

arrived the year after in Amsterdam.Heniger, J. (1986) Hendrik Adriaan van Reede tot Drakenstein (1636--1691) and Hortus Malabaricus -- A contribution to the history of Dutch colonial botany, p. 63, 71, 161, 162. Lamotius became an expert on the fauna and fauna of Mauritius and published daily journals. In 1688 the last three

dodo The dodo (''Raphus cucullatus'') is an extinct flightless bird that was endemic to the island of Mauritius, which is east of Madagascar in the Indian Ocean. The dodo's closest genetic relative was the also-extinct Rodrigues solitaire. The ...

s were captured. Some say his fifteen years of command saw the island descend into despotism, and immorality was rife. When people complained in 1692, Lamotius and his second man were shipped to Batavia and tried in 1695, sentenced for private trade. He was banished for six years to the island of Rosengain, being chained on the most eastern of the

Banda Islands The Banda Islands ( id, Kepulauan Banda) are a volcanic group of ten small volcanic islands in the Banda Sea, about south of Seram Island and about east of Java, and constitute an administrative district (''kecamatan'') within the Central ...

Family background

Career

References

Further reading