Hendrik van Rheede

Hendrik Adriaan van Rheede tot Drakenstein (Amsterdam, 13 April 1636 – at sea, 15 December 1691) was a military man and a colonial administrator of the Dutch East India Company and naturalist. Between 1669 and 1676 he served as a governor of Dutch Malabar and employed twenty-five people on his book Hortus Malabaricus, describing 740 plants in the region. As Lord of Mydrecht, he also played a role in the governance of the Cape colonies. The plant Entada rheedii is named for him.

Biography

Van Rheede was born into a family of noblemen that played a leading role in the political, administrative and cultural life of the province of Utrecht. His mother, Elisabeth van Utenhove, died in 1637 while his father, Ernst van Rheede, Council at the Admiralty of Amsterdam, died when he was four. Hendrik Adriaan, the youngest of seven children, left home at the age of fourteen. In 1656 he joined as a soldier in the Dutch East India Company (V.O.C.) and served alongside Johan Bax van Herenthals (who would also take an interest in natural history). Van Rheede served under Admiral Rijcklof van Goens in campaigns against the Portuguese on the west coast of India in erstwhile Dutch Malabar. He gained rapid promotion becoming an ensign. In 1663, during a siege of Cochin, he was ordered to arrest the queen there and this act saved her life from the massacre of the royal family. The subsequent king of Cochin maintained cordial relations with him and Van Rheede was the Dutch captain who mediated with the Kingdom of Cochin. In 1665 he was appointed as commander in Jaffna and had Johan Nieuhof locked up for smuggling pearls.