Johan van Oldenbarnevelt
1547 – 1619 Dutch statesman, Land's Advocate of Holland
Dutch statesman who drove the 1602 merger that created the VOC, the first joint-stock company granted sovereign powers, and was later executed after a political and religious split.
- Religion
- Protestant, Remonstrant sympathizer
- Affiliations
- States of Holland, Dutch Republic
Johan van Oldenbarnevelt was the leading civil official of the young Dutch Republic and the architect of its finances and diplomacy. He pushed the rival trading ventures of the Dutch cities to merge in 1602 into the United East India Company, the VOC, granting it a monopoly on Asian trade and the sovereign right to wage war, sign treaties, and build forts. This chartered company became the model for the modern joint-stock corporation. He fell out with the stadtholder Maurice of Orange over religious disputes between Remonstrants and Counter-Remonstrants and over war policy; charged with treason in a trial widely seen as political, he was beheaded in The Hague in 1619.
Connections
- associate of Jan Pieterszoon Coen — Championed the VOC charter that Coen would later enforce with ruthless force in the Indies.
In the timeline
- 1602 Founding of the Dutch East India Company architect of the merger and charter
- 1602 The VOC is chartered as a sovereign company the statesman who drove the charter
- 1602 Dutch East India Company granted sovereign powers the statesman behind the grant