Joannes or Johannes De Laet (Latinized as ''Ioannes Latius'') (1581 in
Antwerp
Antwerp (; nl, Antwerpen ; french: Anvers ; es, Amberes) is the largest city in Belgium by area at and the capital of Antwerp Province in the Flemish Region. With a population of 520,504, – buried 15 December 1649, in
Leiden
Leiden (; in English and archaic Dutch also Leyden) is a city and municipality in the province of South Holland, Netherlands. The municipality of Leiden has a population of 119,713, but the city forms one densely connected agglomeration wit ...
) was a Dutch
geographer
A geographer is a physical scientist, social scientist or humanist whose area of study is geography, the study of Earth's natural environment and human society, including how society and nature interacts. The Greek prefix "geo" means "earth" a ...
and director of the
Dutch West India Company
The Dutch West India Company ( nl, Geoctrooieerde Westindische Compagnie, ''WIC'' or ''GWC''; ; en, Chartered West India Company) was a chartered company of Dutch merchants as well as foreign investors. Among its founders was Willem Usselincx ( ...
.
Philip Burden called his ''History of the New World'', "...arguably the finest description of
the Americas
The Americas, which are sometimes collectively called America, are a landmass comprising the totality of North and South America. The Americas make up most of the land in Earth's Western Hemisphere and comprise the New World.
Along with th ...
published in the seventeenth century" and "...one of the foundation maps of Canada". De Laet was the first to print maps with the names ''
Manhattan
Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...
'', ''
New Amsterdam
New Amsterdam ( nl, Nieuw Amsterdam, or ) was a 17th-century Dutch settlement established at the southern tip of Manhattan Island that served as the seat of the colonial government in New Netherland. The initial trading ''factory'' gave rise ...
'' (now
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
) and ''
''.
Life
![Historia-Naturalis-Brasiliae](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/02/Historia-Naturalis-Brasiliae.jpg)
De Laet was born in Antwerp between September and December 1581, a son of cloth merchant Hans De Laet. In 1584, upon the fall of Antwerp to Spanish troops, the family, like tens of thousands of Protestant Flemings, fled to the Northern Netherlands and settled in
Amsterdam
Amsterdam ( , , , lit. ''The Dam on the River Amstel'') is the Capital of the Netherlands, capital and Municipalities of the Netherlands, most populous city of the Netherlands, with The Hague being the seat of government. It has a population ...
. There Johannes attended the Latin school. He matriculated as a student of Theology and Philosophy at the
University of Leiden
Leiden University (abbreviated as ''LEI''; nl, Universiteit Leiden) is a public research university in Leiden, Netherlands. The university was founded as a Protestant university in 1575 by William, Prince of Orange, as a reward to the city of Le ...
in 1597. One of his teachers there was the great humanist scholar
Joseph Justus Scaliger
Joseph Justus Scaliger (; 5 August 1540 – 21 January 1609) was a French Calvinist religious leader and scholar, known for expanding the notion of classical history from Greek and Ancient Roman history to include Persian, Babylonian, Jewish a ...
, with whom he maintained a correspondence until the latter's death. After his graduation, his father sent him to London in 1603 to gain experience as a merchant. There he married Jacobmijntje van Loor, the daughter of a well-to-do Anglo-Dutch merchant, but returned to Leiden in 1607 upon her too early death. On 7 May 1608 he married Maria Boudewijns van Berlicum in Leiden. De Laet increased his fortune by investing in land reclamations and overseas trade and became one of the founding directors of the
Dutch West Indies Company
The Dutch West India Company ( nl, Geoctrooieerde Westindische Compagnie, ''WIC'' or ''GWC''; ; en, Chartered West India Company) was a chartered company of Dutch merchants as well as foreign investors. Among its founders was Willem Usselincx ...
in 1620, an office he retained for the rest of his life. The city of Leiden sent him as an elder-delegate to the great
Synod of Dort
The Synod of Dort (also known as the Synod of Dordt or the Synod of Dordrecht) was an international Synod held in Dordrecht in 1618–1619, by the Dutch Reformed Church, to settle a divisive controversy caused by the rise of Arminianism. The fi ...
(1618–1619).
In his leisure time, De Laet spent much of his time in his study room, well-stocked with books, manuscripts, maps, globes and paintings. He published widely on topics ranging from church history to world history. He played a crucial role in the 1648 publication of ''
Historia Naturalis Brasiliae
''Historia Naturalis Brasiliae'' ( en, Brazilian Natural History), originally written in Latin, is the first scientific work on the natural history of Brazil, written by Dutch naturalist Willem Piso and containing research done by the German ...
'', a compendium of research on the flora and fauna of Brazil by
Georg Marcgraf and
Willem Piso
Willem Piso (in Dutch Willem Pies, in Latin Gulielmus Piso, also called Guilherme Piso in Portuguese) (1611 in Leiden – 28 November 1678 in Amsterdam) was a Dutch physician and naturalist who participated as an expedition doctor in D ...
, whose patron was
Johan Maurits, governor of
Dutch Brazil
Dutch Brazil ( nl, Nederlands-Brazilië), also known as New Holland ( nl, Nieuw-Holland), was a colony of the Dutch Republic in the northeastern portion of modern-day Brazil, controlled from 1630 to 1654 during Dutch colonization of the Americas ...
. Marcgraf had written his portion of the work in a secret cipher, but died before the work was published. De Laet decoded it. A further contribution by De Laet was his preface to this important work, which emphasized the comparability of Northeast Brazil with other areas with a similar climate. The work subsequently circulated widely in northern Europe and beyond in scientific circles, and was not supplanted as an authoritative text for a hundred fifty years. He also edited Pliny's ''Historia naturalis'' and Vitruvius' ''De architectura'', wrote a detailed account of the New World and compiled an (unpublished) Old English-Latin dictionary – to mention just a selection of his forty publications. His correspondents include the English antiquaries
William Camden
William Camden (2 May 1551 – 9 November 1623) was an English antiquarian, historian, topographer, and herald, best known as author of ''Britannia'', the first chorographical survey of the islands of Great Britain and Ireland, and the ''Ann ...
, Sir
Henry Spelman
Sir Henry Spelman (c. 1562 – October 1641) was an English antiquary, noted for his detailed collections of medieval records, in particular of church councils.
Life
Spelman was born in Congham, Norfolk, the eldest son of Henry Spelman (d. 1581 ...
,
Sir William Boswell,
Abraham Wheelock
Abraham Wheelock (1593 in Whitchurch, Shropshire – 25 September 1653) was an English linguist. He was the first Cambridge professor of Arabic.
Cambridge
He graduated MA from Trinity College, Cambridge in 1618, and became Fellow of Clare Colleg ...
, Sir
Simonds D'Ewes
Sir Simonds d'Ewes, 1st Baronet (18 December 1602 – 18 April 1650) was an English antiquary and politician. He was bred for the bar, was a member of the Long Parliament and left notes on its transactions. D'Ewes took the Puritan side in the Civ ...
,
James Usher,
Patrick Young, John Morris, and the Danish
antiquary
An antiquarian or antiquary () is an fan (person), aficionado or student of antiquities or things of the past. More specifically, the term is used for those who study history with particular attention to ancient artifact (archaeology), artifac ...
Ole Worm
Ole Worm (13 May 1588 – 31 August 1654), who often went by the Latinized form of his name Olaus Wormius, was a Danish physician, natural historian and antiquary. He was a professor at the University of Copenhagen where he taught Greek, Lati ...
.
De Laet died in December 1649 while in
The Hague
The Hague ( ; nl, Den Haag or ) is a city and municipality of the Netherlands, situated on the west coast facing the North Sea. The Hague is the country's administrative centre and its seat of government, and while the official capital of ...
. He was buried in the
Pieterskerk in Leiden on the 14th, next to Maria Boudewijns who had died in 1633.
Works
''History of the New World''
His ''History of the New World'' was published in several editions by Bonaventure & Abraham Elseviers, Leiden. The first edition was published in
Dutch
Dutch commonly refers to:
* Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands
* Dutch people ()
* Dutch language ()
Dutch may also refer to:
Places
* Dutch, West Virginia, a community in the United States
* Pennsylvania Dutch Country
People E ...
in 1625 as
''Nieuwe Wereldt ofte Beschrijvinghe van West-Indien, uit veelerhande Schriften ende Aen-teekeningen van verscheyden Natien''; a second edition also in Dutch, came out in 1630 as ''Beschrijvinghe van West-Indien door Joannes De Laet. Tweede druk: In ontallycke placesen verbetert, vermeerdert, met eenige nieuwe caerten, beelden van verscheijden dieren ende planten
verciert.''
A
Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...
edition from 1633, prepared by himself, was entitled ''Novus Orbis seu descriptionis Indiae Occidentalis Libri XVIII authore Joanne De Laet Antverp. Novis tabulis geographicis et variis animantium, Plantarum Fructuumque iconibus illustrata''; in 1640 he published a French edition, in his own translation, as ''L'Histoire du Nouveau Monde ou description des Indes Occidentales, contenant dix-huict livres, enrichi de nouvelles tables geographiqiues & figures des animaux, plantes & fruicts''.
''L'Histoire du Nouveau Monde ou description des Indes Occidentales, contenant dix-huict livres, enrichi de nouvelles tables geographiqiues & figures des animaux, plantes & fruicts''
Each successive edition had significantly updated maps.
Other works
* ''The Empire of the Great Mogul'', translated by J.S. Hoyland with S.N. Bannerjee. Taraporevela, Bombay, 1928. Reissued Munshiram Manoharlal, New Delhi, 1975, .
* "Persia", 1633
Notes and references
Notes
References
* J. A. F. Bekkers, ''Correspondence of John Morris with Johannes de Laet (1634–1649)'' (Assen, 1970).
* Rolf H. Bremmer Jr and P. G. Hoftijzer, eds., ''Johannes de Laet (1581-169): A Leiden Polymath'', special issue of ''Lias. Sources and Documents Relating to the Early Modern History of Ideas'', vol. 25/2 (1998), 135–229, with contributions on the contents of his scholarly correspondence, his role in the Synod of Dort, his polemics with Hugo Grotius on the origin of the Native Americans, on his personal library, and on his Vitruvius edition.
* Rolf H. Bremmer Jr, '"Mine is Bigger than Yours": The Anglo-Saxon Collections of Johannes de Laet (1581-1649) and Sir Symonds D'Ewes', ''Anglo-Saxon Books and Their Readers'', ed. Thomas N. Hall and Donald Scragg (Kalamazoo, MI, 2008), 136–174.
* ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography''
* Genealogical date fro
(in Dutch)
External links
a map of New Granada from ''L'Histoire du Nouveau Monde...''
Map of New England
1624
* Open Library
Joannes de Laet 1593 - 1649
{{DEFAULTSORT:Laet, Joannes De
1581 births
1649 deaths
Burials at Pieterskerk, Leiden
Dutch geographers
Linguists from the Netherlands
De Laet, Joannes
Leiden University alumni
Leiden University faculty
Administrators of the Dutch West India Company
Scientists from Antwerp
Businesspeople from Antwerp
Participants in the Synod of Dort
17th-century Dutch cartographers