Joannes or
Johannes de Laet (Latinized as
Ioannes Latius) (1581,
Antwerp||-||-||-||}Antwerp is a city and municipality in Belgium and the capital of the Antwerp province in Flanders, one of Belgium's three regions. Antwerp's total population is 472,071 and its total area is , giving a population density of 2,308 inhabitants per km²...
– buried 15 December 1649,
LeidenLeiden is a city and municipality in the province of South Holland in the Netherlands and has 118,000 inhabitants. It forms a single urban area with Oegstgeest, Leiderdorp, Voorschoten, Valkenburg, Rijnsburg and Katwijk, with 254,000 inhabitants. It is located on the Old Rhine, close to the cities...
) was a
DutchThe Netherlands is a country in Northwestern Europe, constituting the major portion of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. It is a parliamentary democratic constitutional monarchy. The Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east...
geographerGeography is the study of the Earth and its lands, features, inhabitants, and phenomena. A literal translation would be "to describe or write about the Earth". The first person to use the word "geography" was Eratosthenes...
and director of the
Dutch West India CompanyDutch West India Company was a chartered company of Dutch merchants. Among its founding fathers was Willem Usselincx . On June 3, 1621, it was granted a charter for a trade monopoly in the West Indies by the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands and given jurisdiction over the African slave...
.
Philip BurdenPhilip D. Burden is a geographer, author of The Mapping of North America: A List of Printed Maps 1511-1670, the authoritative work on its topic.-Works:...
called his
History of the New World, "...arguably the finest description of the Americas published in the seventeenth century" and "...one of the foundation maps of Canada". de Laet was the first to print maps with the names
ManhattanManhattan is one of the five boroughs of New York City, located primarily on Manhattan Island at the mouth of the Hudson River.New York County, which has the same boundaries as the Borough of Manhattan , is the most densely populated county in the United States, with a 2008 population of 1,634,795...
,
New AmsterdamNew Amsterdam was a 17th-century Dutch colonial settlement that later became the city now known as New York City.The town outside of Fort Amsterdam on Manhattan Island in the New Netherland territory which was situated between 38 and 42 degrees latitude of the Dutch Republic as of 1624...
(now
New YorkNew York is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States and is the nation's third most populous. The state is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
) and
MassachusettsThe Commonwealth of Massachusetts is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island and Connecticut to the south, New York to the west, and Vermont and New Hampshire to the north; at its east lies the Atlantic Ocean. Most of its population of...
.
De Laet was born in Antwerp between September and December 1581, a son of cloth merchant Hans de Laet.
Joannes or
Johannes de Laet (Latinized as
Ioannes Latius) (1581,
Antwerp||-||-||-||}Antwerp is a city and municipality in Belgium and the capital of the Antwerp province in Flanders, one of Belgium's three regions. Antwerp's total population is 472,071 and its total area is , giving a population density of 2,308 inhabitants per km²...
– buried 15 December 1649,
LeidenLeiden is a city and municipality in the province of South Holland in the Netherlands and has 118,000 inhabitants. It forms a single urban area with Oegstgeest, Leiderdorp, Voorschoten, Valkenburg, Rijnsburg and Katwijk, with 254,000 inhabitants. It is located on the Old Rhine, close to the cities...
) was a
DutchThe Netherlands is a country in Northwestern Europe, constituting the major portion of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. It is a parliamentary democratic constitutional monarchy. The Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east...
geographerGeography is the study of the Earth and its lands, features, inhabitants, and phenomena. A literal translation would be "to describe or write about the Earth". The first person to use the word "geography" was Eratosthenes...
and director of the
Dutch West India CompanyDutch West India Company was a chartered company of Dutch merchants. Among its founding fathers was Willem Usselincx . On June 3, 1621, it was granted a charter for a trade monopoly in the West Indies by the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands and given jurisdiction over the African slave...
.
Philip BurdenPhilip D. Burden is a geographer, author of The Mapping of North America: A List of Printed Maps 1511-1670, the authoritative work on its topic.-Works:...
called his
History of the New World, "...arguably the finest description of the Americas published in the seventeenth century" and "...one of the foundation maps of Canada". de Laet was the first to print maps with the names
ManhattanManhattan is one of the five boroughs of New York City, located primarily on Manhattan Island at the mouth of the Hudson River.New York County, which has the same boundaries as the Borough of Manhattan , is the most densely populated county in the United States, with a 2008 population of 1,634,795...
,
New AmsterdamNew Amsterdam was a 17th-century Dutch colonial settlement that later became the city now known as New York City.The town outside of Fort Amsterdam on Manhattan Island in the New Netherland territory which was situated between 38 and 42 degrees latitude of the Dutch Republic as of 1624...
(now
New YorkNew York is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States and is the nation's third most populous. The state is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
) and
MassachusettsThe Commonwealth of Massachusetts is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island and Connecticut to the south, New York to the west, and Vermont and New Hampshire to the north; at its east lies the Atlantic Ocean. Most of its population of...
.
Life
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
AmsterdamAmsterdam is the capital and largest city of the Netherlands, located in the province of North Holland in the west of the country...
. There Johannes attended the Latin school. He matriculated as a student of Theology and Philosophy at the University of Leiden in 1597. One of his teachers there was the great humanist scholar
Joseph Justus ScaligerJoseph Justus Scaliger was a French religious leader and scholar, known for expanding the notion of classical history from Greek and Ancient Roman history to include Persian, Babylonian, Jewish and Ancient Egyptian history.-Early life:He was born at Agen, the tenth child and third son of Italian...
, with who 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 May 7, 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 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 DortThe Synod of Dort was a National Synod held in Dordrecht in 1618/19, by the Dutch Reformed Church, in order to settle a serious controversy in the Dutch churches initiated by the rise of Arminianism. The first meeting was on 13 November, 1618, and the final meeting, the 154th, was on 9 May, 1619...
(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, edited Pliny's
Historia naturalis and Vitruvius'
De architectura, wrote a detailed account of the New World and compiled an (unpublshed) Old English-Latin dictionary—to mention just a selection of his forty publications. His correspondents include the English antiquaries
William CamdenWilliam Camden was an English antiquarian, historian, and officer of arms. He wrote the first topographical survey of the islands of Great Britain and Ireland and the first detailed historical account of the reign of Elizabeth I of England.- Early years :Camden was born in London...
, Sir
Henry SpelmanSir Henry Spelman was an English antiquary, noted for his detailed collections of medieval records, in particular of church councils. He was the eldest son of Henry Spelman Sir Henry Spelman (born Congham c.1562 and died 1641) was an English antiquary, noted for his detailed collections of...
, Sir William Boswell, Abraham Wheelock, Sir
Simonds D'EwesSir Simonds d'Ewes, 1st Baronet was an 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 Civil War...
, James Usher,
Patrick YoungPatrick Young was a Scottish scholar and royal librarian to King James VI and I, and King Charles I. He was a noted Biblical and patristic scholar.-Life:...
, John Morris and the Danish antiquary
Ole WormOle Worm , who often went by the Latinized form of his name Olaus Wormius, was a Danish physician and antiquary.-Life:...
.
De Laet died in December 1649 while in
The HagueThe Hague is the third largest city in the Netherlands after Amsterdam and Rotterdam, with a population of 485,818 and an area of approximately 100 km²...
. He was buried in the
PieterskerkThe Pieterskerk is a late-Gothic church in Leiden dedicated to Saint Peter. In around 1100 the site held the county chapel of the counts of Holland, rebuilt in 1121 - the present building took approximately 180 years to build, starting in 1390...
in Leiden on the 14th, next to Maria Boudewijns who had died in 1633.
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
DutchDutch is a West Germanic language spoken by over 22 million people as a native language, and over 5 million people as a second language.
"1% of the EU population claims to speak Dutch well enough in order to have a conversation." Outside the European Union the number of second language...
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. http://stuyvesant.library.uu.nl/GetPage.asp?bron=0&pagina=1&offset=0&mode=text&highlight=
A
LatinLatin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. Through the Roman conquest, Latin spread throughout the Mediterranean and a large part of Europe...
edition from 1633, prepared by himself, was entitled
Novus Orbis seu descriptionis Indiae Occidentalis Libri XVIII authore Joanne de Laet Antverp. Novis talulis 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.
http://stuyvesant.library.uu.nl/GetPage.asp?bron=0&pagina=1&offset=0&mode=text&highlight=
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, ISBN 81-7069-041-2.
External links