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Godert van der Capellen | |
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._Gouverneur-generaal_(1816-26)_Rijksmuseum_SK-A-3795.jpeg) Portrait byCornelis Kruseman,c. 1816–1857 | |
| Governor-General of the Dutch East Indies | |
| In office 16 January 1819 – 1 January 1826 | |
| Monarch | William I |
| Preceded by | Himself,Cornelis Theodorus Elout,Arnold Adriaan Buyskes (asCommissioners-General) |
| Succeeded by | |
| Commissioner-General of the Dutch East Indies | |
| In office 19 August 1816 – 16 January 1819 Serving with Cornelis Theodorus Elout andArnold Adriaan Buyskes | |
| Monarch | William I |
| Preceded by | John Fendall (as British Lieutenant-Governor) |
| Succeeded by | Himself (as Governor-General of the Dutch East Indies) |
| Secretary of Commerce and Colonies | |
| In office 6 April 1814 – 29 July 1814 | |
| Monarch | William I |
| Preceded by | Paulus van der Heim [nl] (Minister of the Navy and Colonial Affairs, 1811) |
| Succeeded by | Joan Cornelis van der Hoop (as Secretary-General of Commerce and Colonies) |
| Personal details | |
| Born | Godert Alexander Gerard Philip van der Capellen (1778-12-15)15 December 1778 |
| Died | 10 April 1848(1848-04-10) (aged 69) Utrecht, Netherlands |
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| Parents |
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| Alma mater | Utrecht University |
Godert Alexander Gerard Philip, Baron van der Capellen (Utrecht, 15 December 1778 –De Bilt, 10 April 1848) was a Dutch statesman. He held several important posts under theKingdom of Holland and theSovereign Principality of the United Netherlands, before he was appointed as one of theCommissioners-General of the Dutch East Indies. Later he was appointed Governor-General of that colony.
Born inUtrecht, Van der Capellen was the son of Maria Taets van Amerongen, and the cavalry colonel Alexander Philip van der Capellen.His father died when he was eight, and his education was entrusted to theWalloonminister Pierre Chevalier. He studied law atUtrecht university, and also spent time studying in underGeorg Friedrich von Martens andJohann Friedrich Blumenbach at theUniversity of Göttingen. In 1803, he married Jacoba Elisabeth van Tuyll van Serooskerken. They had no children.[1]
He started his official career in the province of Utrecht under theBatavian Republic, where he was appointed in several functions in the sphere ofPublic finance Under theKingdom of Holland he was made responsible for the integration of the formerly German areas known asEast Frisia, that had been "apportioned" byNapoleon to that kingdom. He was subsequently madelanddrost (Prefect) of that area in 1808 and soon thereafterMinister of the Interior and a member of theRaad van State. He was one of the ministers who advised king Louis to resist the advances of his brother Napoleon, but when Louis abdicated in favor of his son, he followed him in exile. He remained with the ex-king until power was returned to the son of the former Dutch stadtholder, now the "sovereign prince"William I of the Netherlands, in 1813. William appointed him envoy to the Governor-General of theAustrian Netherlands,Karl von Vincent inBrussels in May 1814. When William himself became Governor-Geral there on 1 August 1814, he appointed Van der Capellen to be his representative to do the actual governing on 12 August 1814, with the title ofSecretaris van Staat (minister). However, William recalled him already in September 1814 to become one of theCommissioners-General of the Dutch East Indies withCornelis Theodorus Elout andArnold Adriaan Buyskes, to implement the return of that colony to Dutch administration on the basis of theAnglo-Dutch Treaty of 1814.[2]
Before they could depart, however, Van der Capellen was charged with a secret diplomatic mission to theCongress of Vienna, to plead the interests of William in the former domains of his family in Germany. That mission did not succeed, but Van der Capellen brought home William's sovereignty over the formerDuchy of Luxemburg that became aGrand Duchy in a personal union with the newKingdom of the United Netherlands. When Napoleon escaped from Elba in 1815, Van der Capellen was temporarily restored to his function of acting Governor-General of the Southern Netherlands. During theHundred Days, he was in Brussels, where he showed muchsang froid in the days of theBattle of Waterloo, staying at his post, where many others fled. He was aware of the resistance of many Belgian notables against the new constitution for the Kingdom of the United Netherlands, but could not dissuade William of forcing that through.[3]
On 29 October 1815 the Commissioners-General could finally depart for theDutch East Indies aboard a Dutch naval squadron commanded by Buyskes. Van der Capellen himself arrived inBatavia on 19 May 1816, a few days before the other two Commissioners, because he traveled in a different ship. On 18 August 1816, the British allowed the Commissioners to take over the government ofJava. In the almost three years that followed, Van der Capellen acted as the "executive", fulfilling the role of acting-Governor-General, whereas Buyskes took care of military matters, and Elout did most of the legislative work. On 16 January 1819 thetriumvirate ended and Van der Capellen formally assumed the Governor-Generalship, as head of the new High Government of the Dutch East Indies.[3]
On 28 April 1822, he was made a Baron. In 1824 he cancelled contracts of native rulers in theVorstenlanden with European and ethnic Chinese businessmen for long-running leases of land, because he feared that the common Javanese people would be exploited.[a] This forced the native chiefs to pay back the advances they had received. They responded by further exploiting the cultivators. Hard-pressed cultivators had to pay taxes in money and turned to Chinese moneylenders.[5] This caused unrest inYogyakarta. As the post-Napoleonic Wars boom in coffee andsugar exports faded, the budget of the colony went into deficit. Much money was also needed to quell unrest outside of Java, like theFirst expedition to Palembang (1819),Second expedition to Palembang (1821),Padri War (1821–1837),Expedition to the West Coast of Borneo (1823),First Bone War (1824–1825), and especially theJava War with PrinceDiponegoro that started during his tenure in office. Baron van der Capellen made an inspection tour of theMoluccas andCelebes in 1824 and abolished the hated spices monopoly and the limit on the number of spice trees.[b][7] These measures were not popular with the colonial establishment and theOudgastenpartij.Herman Warner Muntinghe's proposal for the establishment of theNederlandsche Handelmaatschappij (NHM) in which King William heavily invested, was adopted in 1825.[8] Van der Capellen was opposed to giving the important role to the NHM that king William decreed. He was generally opposed to seeing Indies revenue that was needed for the Indies government, leak away to the Mother country. In this context there was an incident in which the High Government refused to follow an order to deliver part of the coffee harvest to the NHM, intended as payment for advances the company had made to the Dutch governmentin Patria, and instead sold the coffee at auction for the benefit of the Netherlands' Indies government. This occasioned the Dutch government to sendLeonard du Bus de Gisignies as a Commissioner-General to investigate Van der Capellen's conduct.[c] He soon took over the Governor-Generalship himself; Van der Capellen was dismissed as of 1 January 1826.[8]
After his return in the Netherlands Van der Capellen was named President of the Board of Trustees of theUniversity of Utrecht in 1828. In 1838, he attended the coronation ofQueen Victoria inLondon as the Dutch envoy. Van der Capellen then served as theLord Chamberlain of KingWilliam II. He spent much time inParis, often as the guest of kingLouis Philippe I. The events of theFrench Revolution of 1848 that he experienced in France, took a heavy emotional toll on Van der Capellen. He returned to his estateVollenhove nearDe Bilt in the Netherlands, where in a moment of temporary insanity he ended his own life on 10 April 1848.[9]
Media related toGodert van der Capellen at Wikimedia Commons| Political offices | ||
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| Preceded byas British Lieutenant-Governor | Commissioner-General of the Dutch East Indies 1816–1819 With:Cornelis Theodorus Elout Arnold Adriaan Buyskes | Succeeded by Himself as Governor-General |
| Preceded byas Commissioners-General | Governor-General of the Dutch East Indies 1819–1826 | Succeeded by |
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| Government appointed (1800–1948) |
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