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had three children—Anna Pelsaert, who was born around 1588, Francisco, and Oeyken, who was five years younger than her brother and thus born around 1600. The children took their surname from Barbara’s second husband, Dirick Pelsaert, who was a man of German stock. Dirick came originally from Aachen, but his marriage to Barbara was of short duration, and contemporary records attest that her three offspring were voorkinderen—“forechildren”—that is, the children of an earlier marriage, the details of which have not yet been traced. Barbara’s father, Dirick van Ganderheyden, who brought Pelsaert up, earned a good living as administrator of the estates of various noble widows, heiresses, and monasteries in the Southern Netherlands. He died in the autumn of 1613 and was buried in Antwerp, though it seems he had not lived there. His cousin was Hans van Ghinckel of Middelburg, who secured Pelsaert his introduction to the VOC. Kolff and van Santen, De Geschriften, pp. 4–7.

Joining the VOC Unusually, Pelsaert was required to lodge a surety of 1,000 guilders with the Company before he was accepted. Probably this was because—being less than 25 years of age—he was still a minor by the standards of the time. Kolff and Van Santen, De Geschriften, p. 7.

Inaccuracies concerning Pelsaert’s antecedents, relations, and personal history have crept into the record as a result of erroneous statements by the genealogist H. F. Macco, whose Geschichte und Genealogie der Familen Peltzer (Aachen, np, 1901), p. 323 incorrectly states that the commandeur was brother-in-law to the important VOC director Hendrik Brouwer. The “Francoys Pelsaert” mentioned as Brouwer’s relative, who came from Eupen, appears to have been an entirely different person; Kolff and van Santen, De Geschriften, p. 7. Unfortunately Macco’s error had already been perpetuated by Henrietta Drake-Brockman in her Voyage to Disaster (Nedlands, WA: University of Western Australia Press, 1995), pp. 13–14, and from there it entered the Batavia literature generally.

Pelsaert in India As they evolved, the VOC’s trading bases overseas were divided into three quarters. The governor-general of the Indies took direct responsibility for the Spice Islands themselves, which were by far the most important of the Company’s possessions and made up the “Eastern Quarter.” The factories in Japan, China, and Formosa made up the “Northern Quarter,” and Surat, which was established in 1606, became the administrative center for the “Western Quarter,” which included the trading centers of Persia and the Coromandel Coast. Pelsaert took control of the factory at Agra in 1623–4 on the death of his predecessor, Wouter Heuten. His first caravan to Surat (1623) included 146 packs of cloth, 15 packs of indigo, and three female slaves. Kolff and van Santen, De Geschriften, pp. 7–12, 13, 17–9, 25–8; Drake-Brockman, op. cit., pp. 11, 15–20, 21n.

Agra Pelsaert stayed in the city some half a dozen years before the Mogul emperor Shah Jehan began the construction of its most famous monument, the Taj Mahal.

“. . . one of the Company’s more vigorous and efficient servants . . .” Drake-Brockman, op. cit., pp. 21–7.

Pieter van den Broecke He lived from 1585 to 1640 and wrote a journal, still extant, which is an important source for the history of Dutch trade in West Africa and northern India. He owed some of his success, in turn, to the sponsorship of Gerard Reynst, who eventually became governor-general of the Indies. By 1626–7, Van den Broecke and Pelsaert had, however, fallen out spectacularly over the latter’s suspicion that his friend planned to claim much of the credit for Pelsaert’s achievements in India. Van den Broecke’s fame rests on his journal, but recent research into his years with the VOC have shown that while well regarded as a diplomat, he was notorious for the poor state of his accounts, which were slipshod and impenetrable. Whether this failing was the consequence of genuine ineptitude or a deliberate attempt to conceal private trading is difficult to say. K. Ratelband (ed.), Reizen naar West-Africa van