Saartje Specx (1617–1636) was the daughter of

Jacques Specx Jacques Specx (; 1585 – 22 July 1652) was a Dutch merchant, who founded the trade on Japan and Korea in 1609. Jacques Specx received the support of William Adams to obtain extensive trading rights from Tokugawa Ieyasu, the ''shōgun'' emeritu ...

, governor of the North Quarter of the

Dutch East India Company The United East India Company ( nl, Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie, the VOC) was a chartered company established on the 20th March 1602 by the States General of the Netherlands amalgamating existing companies into the first joint-stock ...

's (VOC's) Asian trading empire, and a Japanese concubine. Saartje (Sara in English) was born at the Dutch trading base on the island of Hirado. In 1629, aged 12, she was living at

Batavia Batavia may refer to: Historical places * Batavia (region), a land inhabited by the Batavian people during the Roman Empire, today part of the Netherlands * Batavia, Dutch East Indies, present-day Jakarta, the former capital of the Dutch East In ...

Java Java (; id, Jawa, ; jv, ꦗꦮ; su, ) is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea to the north. With a population of 151.6 million people, Java is the world's List ...

under the protection of Jan Coen, governor of the

Dutch East Indies The Dutch East Indies, also known as the Netherlands East Indies ( nl, Nederlands(ch)-Indië; ), was a Dutch colony consisting of what is now Indonesia. It was formed from the nationalised trading posts of the Dutch East India Company, which ...

, and Eva Ment. There she fell in love with 15-year-old Pieter Cortenhoeff, a Eurasian standard-bearer in the VOC army, and was found making love to him in Coen's private apartment. When the Governor heard of this, a contemporary writer attested, "his face turned white and his chair and the table trembled." Coen had Cortenhoeff beheaded and had to be dissuaded from having Saartje drowned. Instead she was severely beaten in front of the Town Hall of Batavia. Under the rules governing the VOC's Asian possessions, Saartje Specx, as a part-Asian, had no right to live in the

Netherlands ) , anthem = ( en, "William of Nassau") , image_map = , map_caption = , subdivision_type = Sovereign state , subdivision_name = Kingdom of the Netherlands , established_title = Before independence , established_date = Spanish Netherl ...

. On her father's return to Java she made a good marriage to

Georgius Candidius Georgius Candidius (1597– 30 April 1647) was a Dutch Reformed Church missionary to Dutch Formosa from 1627 to 1637. He was the first missionary to be stationed on the island. Name Candidius's Latinate first name is sometimes Germanified to Geor ...

, a Calvinist minister, and accompanied him to the Dutch trading base in Formosa (

Taiwan Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia, at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the nort ...

), where she died, aged 19, in 1636.

Jacob Cats Jacob Cats (10 November 1577 – 12 September 1660) was a Dutch poet, humorist, jurist and politician. He is most famous for his emblem books. Early years Jacob Cats was born on 10 November 1577 in Brouwershaven as son of Adriaen Cornelis ...

wrote a pamphlet about the couple, which was sold 50,000 copies. In 1931,

J. Slauerhoff Jan Jacob Slauerhoff (15 September 1898 – 5 October 1936), who published as J. Slauerhoff, was a Dutch poet and novelist. He is considered one of the most important Dutch language writers. Youth Slauerhoff attended HBS (secondary school) in Le ...

wrote a play on Jan Pieterszoon Coen where the story was told again.

References

* C. Gerretson. ''Coen's Eerherstel''. Amsterdam: Van Kampen. 1944. 1617 births 1636 deaths Dutch people of Japanese descent Indonesian people of Japanese descent 17th-century Dutch East Indies people 17th-century Indonesian people {{Netherlands-bio-stub