Frederik de Houtman (1571–1627) was a Dutch navigator, linguist and astronomer whose twenty-six-month captivity in Atjeh from 1599 to 1601 produced one of the earliest European grammars and dictionaries of the Malay language and the first European catalogue of southern-hemisphere stars. A member of the pioneering Godee Molsbergen’s “wilde vaart” generation of pre-VOC Dutch adventurers, De Houtman is a pivotal figure in the early Dutch-Atjeh encounter — and his Atjeh imprisonment, by his own later account, was a providential mercy.
The De Moucheron expedition of 1598
The South-Netherlander of French descent Balthasar de Moucheron, trusting the experience of the De Houtman brothers, took them into his service on a fleet of two ships, with the English pilot John Davis serving as pilot “om in opdracht van den Graaf van Essex spionnenwerk te verrichten” — to do spy-work on behalf of the Earl of Essex. Stapel records that the fleet was dispatched on 11 March 1598 under Cornelis and Frederik de Houtman and Guyon Lefort, and that “the voyage went west of Madagascar via the Comoros and Maldives to Atjeh, where one arrived in June ‘99” (De reis ging bewesten Madagascar via de Comoren en Maladiven naar Atjeh, waar men in Juni ‘99 aankwam). The voyage to the Indies took fifteen months. The Madagascar population fled at the reappearance of the rough Dutchmen. When at length the fleet reached Atjeh in June 1599, the good understanding with the Sultan lasted only briefly.
The Atjeh disaster of 1599
The Atjehnese — first with poisoned fruits and drinks, then with a kris-attack — sought to be rid of these foreigners. Stapel records that the sultan was “incited by the Portuguese” (opgestookt door de Portugeezen) and “had them treacherously assaulted” (liet de vorst hen verraderlijk overvallen). There were many dead, including Frederik’s brother Cornelis de Houtman — “Cornelis with several others came to their end” (Cornelis met verscheiden anderen kwamen hierbij om) — and many prisoners, of whom Frederik was one: “his brother Frederik and a few others were taken prisoner” (en zijn broeder Frederik en nog eenigen werden gevangen genomen). Godee Molsbergen’s terse summary runs: “Er waren veel dooden, waaronder Cornelis de Houtman, en veel gevangenen, o.a. Frederik de Houtman.” See Death of Cornelis de Houtman at Atjeh (1599) and First Dutch voyage to Atjeh (1598-1599).
Twenty-six months in Atjeh, 1599–1601
Frederik de Houtman was held prisoner in Atjeh for twenty-six months. He later interpreted the disaster as a mercy of Heaven: he saw in his captivity “de bedoeling des Hemels … om een beginsel (= begin) te wezen, daar door Gods eer en kennis … onder de Heidenen bekend gemaakt” kon worden — the intention of Heaven to be a beginning, through which God’s honour and knowledge might be made known among the heathen — for which he received “het verstand en de genade van de Maleische spraak, die in gansch Oost-Indië als een gemeene (algemeene) spraak is” — the understanding and grace of the Malay language, which in all the East Indies is a common tongue.
He recorded the fruit of that grace in the introduction to his Spraeck ende woord-boeck in de Maleysche ende Madagaskarsche talen (Hague speech- and word-book in the Malay and Madagascar languages), published in 1603, containing twelve dialogues. The Madagascar part he learned from a native “die al 4 jaar met ons volk gevaren had” — who had already sailed with our people for four years.
The Van Caerden episode of 1600
In 1600 Paulus van Caerden arrived at Atjeh with four ships under the supreme command of Pieter Both, dispatched by the Nieuwe Brabantsche Compagnie founded by Isaac Le Maire and others. De Houtman sought to use the visit to secure both his release and that of his fellow-prisoners. Stapel records that “Frederik de H[outman], hoping to procure not only his own but also his fellow-prisoners’ release, and to obtain cargo from Van Caerden, did indeed go aboard, but received from the prince no permission to repatriate; their imprisonment, however, was bearable” (Frederik de H., verhoopende niet alleen syne, maar ook zijner medegevangenen verlossing te procureeren [en] van Caerden lading te besorgen, ging wel aan boord, maar kreeg met de anderen van den vorst geen vergunning om te repatriceren; hun gevangenschap echter was dragelijk).
The phrase hun gevangenschap echter was dragelijk — “their imprisonment, however, was bearable” — is the only characterisation Stapel offers of the conditions of captivity. The fact that Frederik was permitted to leave his prison to visit Van Caerden aboard suggests that the captivity was relatively loose, and that the sultan was using the prisoners as a diplomatic asset rather than as criminals. See also Pigskin parchment letter incident at Atjeh (1600).
The Spraeck ende woord-boeck (1603)
The dialogues in the Spraeck ende woord-boeck were partly borrowed from a Flemish-French model, as the ninth dialogue proves: it is very un-Indian in tone, going on about “komt U warmen bij het vuur” (come warm yourself by the fire), the meal, and the use of napkins. The tenth dialogue has “Hij is van Ghent. In wat strate woont hij? Hij woont bij de nieuwe Kerk, waar het schild van Engeland uithangt” — He is from Ghent. In what street does he live? He lives by the New Church, where the sign of England hangs.
The Spraeck ende woord-boeck had only an eight-year author’s right or octroy. After its expiry it was reworked by A. C. Ruil, whose work was later translated into Latin, and through that language into English. In England, the orientalist Thomas Hyde was, in the seventeenth century, the only scholar to cultivate the Malay language; in the eighteenth a Malay dictionary appeared, and in the early nineteenth two more — among them that of W. Marsden, the British colonial official known in the Archipelago from the English interregnum, “die hiermee de Hollandsche-Maleische woordenboek-schrijvers voor was” — who thereby outstripped the Dutch-Malay dictionary-writers.
Southern-hemisphere astronomy
In his twenty-six months in Atjeh, De Houtman also observed the southern sky and added to his language-book “de declinatien van vele vaste sterren staande omtrent den Zuyd-pool voor desen tydt noyt ghesien” — the declinations of many fixed stars standing around the South Pole, never before seen at this time. The Atjeh captivity thus produced not only the first Dutch-Malay dialogue-book but also one of the earliest European star-catalogues of the deep southern sky.
The Leroy release of August 1601
The release of the Houtman party came in August 1601 through the unrelated arrival of Gerard le Roy, dispatched by the Middelburgsche Compagnie of Adriaen Hendriksz ten Haeff in January 1601 with four ships. By then the political wind at the Acehnese court had shifted. Stapel records that “meanwhile the Atjehers and Portuguese had fallen into enmity, so that when in August ‘01 Gerard Leroy … here put in, Frederik de H[outman] and his men were set at liberty, even before a corresponding letter from Prince Maurits to the prince had been presented” (Intusschen geraakten de Atjehers en Portugeezen in vijandschap, zoodat toen in Aug. ‘01 Gerard Leroy … hier aanliep, Frederik de H. en de zijnen in vrijheid werden gesteld, nog vóór een desbetreffend schrijven van Prins Maurits aan den vorst was overhandigd). The release preceded the formal delivery of Prince Maurits’s letter — a detail that suggests the sultan was already inclined to release the Dutch before the formal diplomatic cover arrived.
Stapel also records that on 28 August 1601 the Dutch were “permitted to establish a factory (factorij) here, and Atjehsche envoys, provided with gifts and letters to the Prince, were sent along with two of the ships, which with a full cargo of pepper departed directly from here to Holland” (28 werd hen toegestaan hier een factorij te stichten en werden Atjehsche gezanten, voorzien van geschenken en brieven aan den Prins, met 2 der schepen, die met een volle lading peper rechtstreeks van hier naar Holland vertrokken, medegegeven). The first cargo of Acehnese pepper in Dutch hulls was the modest commercial seed of what would, after the Compagnie’s founding in 1602, grow into the great Dutch pepper trade of the Westkust.
The ships that had departed Atjeh in 1599 made for Pedir, where they beat off an Atjehnese naval attack; they then touched at the Nicobars and, after much misfortune, reached Middelburg in the summer of 1600. De Moucheron suffered heavy losses from the voyage, and John Davis turned his spy-material to English advantage. As the Dutch had once wrung the secrets of the India trade from Portugal, England now sought profit from Dutch experience — including in the Malay language.
Account from De Kleine Oosterling (1901) — the 1599 capture and 1601 release
The Wijma school reader records Frederik Houtman’s capture in the ambush at Atjeh: “Onverwachts vielen de Atjehneezen op de onzen aan. Een hevig gevecht volgde, en aan weerszijden sneuvelden er velen. Ook de schepelingen, die aan wal waren, werden gegrepen en allen, op acht na, gedood. Onder die acht was Frederik Houtman.” Frederik was thus one of the eight survivors of the crew members who were on shore at the time of the ambush. His brother Cornelis “was genoodzaakt, zijn broeder en de anderen in de handen van den trouweloochen vijand achter te laten en met de beide schepen te vertrekken.” Frederik’s captivity at the Atjehnese court thus began with his brother’s abandonment of him in 1599.
The school reader records Frederik’s release, two years later in 1601, as the result of the second Zeeland visit: “Ruim twee jaar later verschenen er twee andere Zeeuwsche vaartuigen op de kust. Er waren voor den sultan van Atjeh fraaie geschenken aan boord en ook een brief van prins Maurits. Nu kwamen de Nederlanders in de gunst bij dien vorst. Hij stelde de gevangenen in vrijheid en gaf verlof, een factorij of handelskantoor in zijn land te bouwen.” Frederik Houtman was thus released from Atjehnese captivity as part of the broader release of the Houtman-captives, secured by Maurits’s letter and gifts. In the school reader’s narrative, this frames the captivity as a beurzenruil (exchange) of letters, gifts and prisoners between the Dutch and Atjehnese courts, and establishes the diplomatic frame that would be deployed in accounts of the 1602 embassy.
Account from Coen: Koopman van Heeren Zeventien (1948) — the captivity in detail
Johan van der Woude’s biography of Jan Pieterszoon Coen gives a fuller account of Frederik’s fifteen-month captivity, from his capture on 11 September 1599 to his escape on 30 December 1600. He and twenty-seven others were initially held at Pedir, a coastal dependency of Atjeh; when the surviving Dutch ships tried to negotiate the prisoners’ release, the Sultan demanded the surrender of one of the Dutch vessels in exchange, and Frederik — communicating from captivity — advised his countrymen to refuse, arguing that the crew had no authority to surrender company property and that doing so would only invite further Acehnese aggression. The prisoners were later moved to the Atjehnese capital and kept in heavy irons, where the Sultan repeatedly pressured Frederik to abandon his Christian faith for Islam — a test of wills that Frederik resisted with notable stoicism.
In September 1600 a new Dutch fleet under Van Caerden arrived at Atjeh. When the Sultan demanded advance payment before releasing the prisoners or delivering the pepper, Van Caerden — acting on Frederik’s intelligence that the Acehnese were secretly preparing an attack — preemptively seized several Arab and Acehnese merchant vessels in the harbour. Amid the resulting chaos and blockade, Frederik and three companions fashioned a makeshift sail and oars, stole a small prau from the riverbank on 30 December 1600, and navigated through the breaking surf under cover of darkness; despite nearly capsizing, they reached the open sea and were rescued by Van Caerden’s fleet on New Year’s Eve. Frederik then advised Van Caerden to inform the Sultan of the escape to maintain a facade of good faith; the Sultan, recognising the futility of further conflict with the heavily armed Dutch ships, formally granted Frederik his freedom. See Imprisonment of Frederik de Houtman in Atjeh.
Significance
Frederik de Houtman’s Atjeh captivity is the foundational episode of European Malay studies and of European astronomy of the southern sky. The Spraeck ende woord-boeck of 1603 — composed from notes taken during his Atjeh imprisonment — directly shaped Dutch, Latin and English Malay lexicography for the next two centuries, and through W. Marsden influenced the British tradition as well. For Atjeh, De Houtman is the European prisoner who turned captivity into the earliest substantial Western record of the sultanate’s lingua franca — a Malay of the Atjeh roadstead that would become the diplomatic and commercial lingua franca of the entire Archipelago. The 1603 vocabulary is also the precondition of all later Dutch diplomacy and commerce in the Malay-Indonesian world, including the very treaties — Schouten, Truytman, 1659 — that structured the Dutch-Acehnese relationship.
Account from Vijftig jaren economische staatkunde in Atjeh (1923)
Frederik de Houtman was the Dutch commander who survived the fatal first Dutch voyage to Atjeh of July 1599 — in which his brother Cornelis de Houtman and 68 sailors were killed — and who, twice the Sultan’s prisoner, twice instrumental to his countrymen, regained his freedom through the embassy sent by Prince Maurice.
Captivity and the Van Caerden affair
After the surprise attack by the Sultan’s bands, Frederik de Houtman fell into captivity, and when the Dutch ships sailed home in July 1600 he remained behind. When admiral Paulus van Caerden, a companion of Pieter Both, came to the Indies for the account of some Brabant shipowners and likewise tried to open trade relations with Atjeh, the Sultan — again at the instigation of the Portuguese — prepared an assault upon him; the Sultan reckoned, however, without his host, “in casu without Frederik de Houtman”, who, having learned of the plans, managed to escape from his captivity and warned the admiral of the threatening danger, so that this assault also failed without loss of life. Frederik nevertheless deemed it undesirable to return to the mother country: to plead the interests of his countrymen as well as possible, he placed himself anew in the hands of the Sultan of Atjeh, trusting, if need be, in the help of Van Caerden. That admiral however “rewarded De Houtman’s magnanimity very badly”: after lingering some time on the coasts of Atjeh, he knew nothing better to do than to seize four ships belonging to Arabs and to leave the coast, no longer concerning himself about his countrymen living in captivity.
Liberation
Frederik de Houtman and his fellow-sufferers owed their freedom to the favourable turn of 1601–1602, when, after a Portuguese embassy from the under-king of Goa had demanded an island of Atjeh for the building of a fort, a few Zealand ships of the Middelburg fleet under the admirals De Roy and Bickers arrived in the roadstead with gifts and a letter from Prince Maurice for the Sultan. An agreement was concluded permitting the Hollanders to found a factory, and to this favourable turn it was due that Frederik de Houtman and his companions regained their liberty.
See Also
Account from Land en Volk van Atjeh Vroeger en Nu
Brother of Cornelis; together made the discovery voyage to the East. Received poorly in Atjeh in 1599, with one of the brothers killed and the other imprisoned.
Source: J. Jongejans, Land en Volk van Atjeh Vroeger en Nu (Baarn: Hollandia Drukkerij N.V., c. 1938), pp. 30.
Source
Tijdens de O.I. Compagnie, by Dr. E. C. Godee Molsbergen, Oud-Hoogleeraar, Landsarchivaris te Batavia (Amsterdam: N.V. Swets & Zeitlinger Boekhandel en Uitgevers Mij., 1932), chapters XXIII, XXXII (“Het Kasteel van Verre. De brief op varkensvel in Atjeh. Bali en Holland één! Van Neck’s reis in 1600”; “Atjehers in het kamp van Maurits. De zeeslag bij Bantam”), pp. 81, 114–118 of the numbered-letter sequence. Cf. Atlas N.I. No. 46 en 47, bl. 16, on the Spraeck- ende woord-boeck.
De Koloniën, by Dr. F. W. Stapel, in Geschiedkundige Atlas van Nederland (‘s-Gravenhage: Martinus Nijhoff, 1931), kaart 19, blz. 27–28 (tekst bij blad 1: De eerste reizen der Nederlanders — Eenige der volgende reizen naar O. Indië, a. C. en F. de Houtman en Lefort (Atjeh) 1598/9).
Vijftig jaren economische staatkunde in Atjeh, by Joh. Langhout (The Hague: N.V. Boekhandel v/h W. P. van Stockum & Zoon, 1923), pp. 10–13.
Land en Volk van Atjeh Vroeger en Nu, by J. Jongejans, Oud-Resident van het Gewest Atjeh en Onderhoorigheden, with a foreword by Dr. H. Colijn (Baarn: Hollandia Drukkerij N.V., c. 1938), pp. 30.