Jan Pieterszoon Coen Statue in Batavia

Photo: Spaarnestad

Jan Pieterszoon Coen was the Governor General of the VOC for two terms in the area that was then known as the Dutch East Indies. He served in 1619-1623 and 1627-1629 and is known as the figure who founded the city of Batavia.

J. P. Coen first worked at the VOC in 1607. VOC was a giant multinational company whose most important area of ​​operation was Indonesia as a place to get spices which sells well in Europe.

The fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans closed the most important trade route between Asia and Europe, the Silk Road. This prompted Europe to explore the oceans to find the direct source of spices. Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, England competed to carry out shipping expeditions to find a new continent of spices.

J. P. Coen was included in the initial wave of Dutch people who came to the archipelago and became governor-general a few dozen years later. Early in his career in the VOC he witnessed his boss Verhoeff being killed on Banda Island where they got their spices. These memories made an impression and made Coen take revenge when he was governor-general. He brought about 2,000 troops and massacred nearly 15,000 Bandanese in 1619.

After being appointed governor-general, Coen moved the VOC headquarters from Banten to Jayakarta. Coen captured Jayakarta from the Mataram Sultanate and built a new city on it, namely Batavia. Initially, Coen wanted to name it after Niew Hoorn, aka New Hoorn, the city where Coen was born. However, the VOC headquarters in the Netherlands did not agree and gave the name Batavia, the first tribe of Dutch inhabitants.

To commemorate Coen's services, in 1869 a statue of him was erected on the 250th anniversary of the founding of the city of Batavia. The photo above shows a statue of Jan Pieterszoon Coen in front of the Ministry of Finance building in Batavia. This statue was later destroyed during the Japanese occupation in 1943.