January 8, 1587 - Jan Pieterszoon Coen

Jan Pieterszoon Coen (Dutch pronunciation: [jɑn ˈpitərsoːn ˈkun]; 8 January 1587 – 21 September 1629) was a Dutch naval officer of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) in the early 17th century, serving two terms as governor-general of the Dutch East Indies. He was the founder of Batavia, capital of the Dutch East Indies.

A famous quote of his from 1618, Despair not, spare your enemies not, for God is with us, illustrates his single-minded ruthlessness, and his unstinting belief in the divinely-sanctioned nature of his project. Using such self-professed divine sanction to violently pursue his ultimate goal of a trade monopoly in the East Indies, Dutch soldiers acting on Coen's orders perpetrated numerous wanton acts of destruction in the spice islands of (now) eastern Indonesia, including the infamous Banda Massacre of 1621.

Content sourced from en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan Pieterszoon Coen under CC BY-SA 4.0.