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{{Short description|Dutch military officer and colonial administrator}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=August 2019}}
{{Infobox person
| name = Hendrik van Rheede
| image = HenricusAdrianusVanRheede (cropped).jpg
| image_size = 220
| birth_date = 13 April 1636
| birth_place = [[Amsterdam]], [[Dutch Republic]]
| death_date = 15 December 1691
| death_place = At sea
}}

'''Hendrik Adriaan van Rheede tot Drakenstein''' (13 April 1636 – 15 December 1691) was a Dutch military officer and colonial administrator of the [[Dutch East India Company]]. Between 1669 and 1676 he served as a governor of [[Dutch Malabar]] at [[Kochi]] 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. Many plants such as the vine ''[[Entada rheedei]]'' are named for him. {{botanist|Rheede|border=0|inline=1}}

== 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 (province)|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., Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie) and served alongside [[Johan Bax van Herenthals]] (who would also take an interest in natural history).<ref>{{cite journal|title=The origins of Clifford's herbarium|first1=D. Onno|last1=Wijnands|first2=Johannes|last2=Heniger|year=1991|doi=10.1111/j.1095-8339.1991.tb02288.x |journal=Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society|volume=106|issue=2|pages=129–146}}</ref> Van Rheede served under Admiral [[Rijcklof van Goens]] in campaigns against the [[Portugal|Portuguese]] on the west coast of India in erstwhile [[Dutch Malabar]]. He gained rapid promotion becoming an [[ensign (rank)|ensign]].  In 1663, during a siege of [[Kingdom of Cochin|Cochin]], he was ordered to arrest the old queen of Cochin Rani Gangadhara Lakshmi to keep her safe, and this act saved her life from the massacre of the royal family. The subsequent king of Cochin, Vir Kerala Verma was crowned by the VOC and Van Rheede was appointed as the 'regedore maior' or the first councillor of the kingdom of Cochin. Van Rheede maintained cordial relations with the king and helped him in administration as well as mediation with the other kingdoms of Malabar. During the next two years, van Rheede traveled extensively in Malabar on behalf of VOC to get trade monopolies from the Malabar princes by negotiations and occasionally using military forces against reluctant princes. In 1665 he was appointed as commander in [[Jaffna]] and had [[Johan Nieuhof]] who at the time was the Dutch chief at Tuticorin, arrested for smuggling [[pearls]]<ref>Heniger (1986):22.</ref> and sent to Batavia for trial.

In 1667 van Rheede was back in Malabar as the Chief of Quilon to undertake the management of the Company factory there. Quilon was the centre of the pepper, cinnamon and opium trade in South Malabar. However Van Rheede did not like his work there and tendered his resignation and was transferred back to Ceylon as the first captain in command of all troops of the Company there. In 1669 Van Rheede seems to have been forced to resign from the Dutch East India Company by Van Goens.<ref name=currsci>Ram (2005)</ref> The resignation was made as he opposed the repressive measures of Van Goens and instead favoured negotiation, but in 1670 he is appointed as commander of Dutch Malabar. In 1671 he fought with the [[Zamorin|Zamorin of Calicut]]. In 1672 he had to deal with the former VOC-employee [[François Caron]], then serving the [[Louis XIV's East India Company|French East India Company]].{{fact|date=September 2024}}

In 1677 Van Rheede moved to Jakarta, being appointed in the Counsel of India. He stayed for about six months but the conflict with Van Goens grew fiercer. He returned to [[Amsterdam]] in June 1678. Since 1680 he could call himself Lord of [[Mijdrecht]] (Mydrecht). In 1681 he signed a contract with the botanists [[Jan Commelin]] and [[Johannes Munnicks]] and began work on the manuscript of the [[Hortus Malabaricus]].{{fact|date=September 2024}}

In 1684 he was empowered by the "directors" (Council of Seventeen) of the Company to inspect the [[Cape Colony]], [[Ceylon]] and [[Dutch India]] to combat corruption within their employees.<ref>Adams (1996)</ref> He appointed Isaac Soolmans to accompany him. They visited [[Simon van der Stel]] in [[Cape of Good Hope]], and [[Groot Constantia]]; the area [[Drakenstein Local Municipality|Groot Drakenstein]] was named after him.<ref>Mentzel (1944):61.</ref> Van Rheede recommended measures for [[forestry]] and [[viniculture]]. Rheede, the Lord of Mydrecht, also made rules on how slaves would be treated and he decreed that slave children had to be taught to read and write with any flogging requiring permission.<ref>{{cite book|url=https://archive.org/stream/historyofsouthaf00fairuoft#page/56/mode/2up|page=56|author=Fairbridge, Dorothea|title=A history of South Africa|year=1918|publisher=Oxford University Press|place=London}}</ref> In 1687 Governor Van der Stel opened this region to farmers. Van Rheede was a bachelor, but had adopted a girl from Malabar with an unknown Dutch father.<ref>Heniger (1986):87, 90.</ref> He met with Van Goens junior, an ambitious administrator on his way to Batavia. Both men didn't like each other at all. Some time before Van Goens had given orders—afraid for competition anywhere else in the world—to extirpate all the acclimatizating [[cinnamon tree]]s which were destined for the Amsterdam Municipal Garden. It is possible that the rare trees for the [[Grand Pensionary]] [[Gaspar Fagel]] were then also destroyed.<ref>Heniger (1986):72.</ref>

Van Rheede sailed to [[Colombo]] and after two months to Bengal. He visited many VOC trading posts, especially around [[Hooghly (town)|Hooghly]]. His next destination was the [[Dutch Coromandel|Coromandel]] and he stayed for one year in [[Nagapattinam]]. In 1690 he founded a seminary in [[Jaffna]]. Then he went to [[Tuticorin]] and Malabar. In the end of November 1691 he sailed to [[Dutch Suratte]], but died at sea, off the coast of [[Bombay]] on 15 December 1691. Some authors suggest that he was poisoned by VOC employees while others that he was sick already for a while.<ref>Heniger (1986):81.</ref> Van Rheede was buried at [[Surat]] on 3 January 1692 in the presence of his daughter Francine and many notables. Among the attendants was also Van Rheede's secretary [[Hendrick Zwaardecroon]], the future [[Governor-General of the Dutch East Indies]]. <ref>[http://www.atlasofmutualheritage.nl/detail.aspx?page=dafb&lang=en&id=1947 Drawing of ''the funeral procession of Esquire van Rheede''] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070927100608/http://www.atlasofmutualheritage.nl/detail.aspx?page=dafb&lang=en&id=1947 |date=2007-09-27 }}</ref>

== Work in natural history ==

[[File:HortusMalabaricus.jpg|thumb|260px|[[Book frontispiece|Frontispiece]] of volume 1]]

Hendrik van Rheede's work on the plants of the [[Malabar region]] began in 1674<ref>Heniger (1986):145.</ref> and it was around 1675 that the draft of the first volume of the ''[[Hortus Malabaricus]]'' was produced. Since 1660, the Dutch East India Company had encouraged publication of scientific work and the documentation of the useful plants by Van Rheede would help in the fight against local diseases. The first volume of the ''Hortus Malabaricus'' was published in 1678, a compendium of the plants of economic and medical value in the south Indian Malabar region, was undertaken when "[[Jonkheer]]" Hendrik van Rheede was the Dutch Governor of Cochin and continued for the next three decades. It was published in twelve volumes in Latin, with the names of the plants written in four languages: Latin, [[Sanskrit]], Arabic and [[Malayalam]].<ref name=anh>Fournier (1987)</ref> Mentioned in these volumes are 742 plants of the Malabar region which in his time referred to the stretch along the [[Western Ghats]] from [[Goa]] to [[Kanyakumari district|Kanyakumari]]. The ethno-medical information presented in the work was extracted from [[palm leaf manuscript]]s by a famous practitioner of herbal medicine named [[Itty Achudan|Itty Achuden]]. Achuden was an vaiydan ("healer") of the local Ezhava tradition<ref>{{cite journal|title= Subaltern Medicine and Social Mobility: The experience of the Ezhava in Kerala|first= Burton |last=Cleetus| journal=Indian Anthropologist| volume=37| issue=1| year=2007| pages=147–172| jstor=41920032 }}</ref> (that has in recent times been included under the label of Kerala Ayurveda<ref>{{cite journal|title=Medicine as Culture: Indigenous Medicine in Cosmopolitan Mumbai| first=Leena| last= Abraham| journal =Economic and Political Weekly| volume= 44| issue=16 |year=2009|pages=68–75| jstor=40279158}}</ref>). He was supported by a team of three Konkani physicians: Appu Bhatt, Ranga Bhatt and Vinayaka Pandit, The compilations were edited by a team of nearly a hundred including physicians, professors of medicine and botany, amateur botanists (such as professor [[Arnold Seyn]], [[Theodorus Janssonius van Almeloveen|Theodore Jansson of Almeloveen]], [[Paul Hermann (botanist)|Paul Hermann]], [[Johannes Munnicks]], [[Jan Commelin]], [[Abraham Poot]], the translator of a Dutch version), Indian scholars and ''vaidyas'' (physicians) of Malabar and adjacent regions, and technicians, illustrators and engravers, together with the collaboration of company officials, clergymen (Johannes Casearius and Father Mathew of St. Joseph). He was also assisted by the King of Cochin and the ruling Zamorin of Calicut.<ref name=currsci />

[[Carl Linnaeus]] made use of Rheede's work,<ref name=anh/> noting in the preface of his ''[[Genera Plantarum]]'' (1737) that he did not trust any authors except ''[[Johann Jakob Dillenius|Dillen]]'' in ''Hortus Elthamensis'', Rheede in ''Hortus Malabaricus'' and [[Charles Plumier]] on American plants and further noted that Rheede was the most accurate of the three.<ref>Mueller-Wille & Reeds (2007)</ref> Many of Linneaeus' specific epithets based on Rheede originate from Malayalam names.<ref>{{cite journal|title=Carl Linnaeus's Acquaintance with Tropical Plants|author=Stearn, W.T.|journal=Taxon|volume=37| issue=3|series=Symposium Tropical Biology: Principles and Practice|year=1988|pages=776–781|doi=10.2307/1221114|jstor=1221114 |bibcode=1988Taxon..37..776S }}</ref> While visiting the Cape in 1685, van Rheede considered a work on African plants of economic importance, ''Hortus Africanus'', but this idea was never realized.<ref>{{cite journal|first1=G. |last1=Scott|first2=M.L.|last2=Hewett|title=Pioneers in ethnopharmacology: The Dutch East India Company (VOC) at the Cape from 1650 to 1800|journal= Journal of Ethnopharmacology|volume=115|issue=3|year=2008|pages= 339–360|doi=10.1016/j.jep.2007.10.020|pmid=18079078}}</ref>
{{commonscat|Hendrik Adriaan van Rheede tot Drakenstein}}

==Notes==
{{reflist}}

== References ==
* {{cite journal|author=Adams, Julia| title=Principal and Agents, Colonialists and Company Men: The decay of Colonial Control in the Dutch East Indies|journal=American Sociological Review| volume = 61| issue=1| year=1996| pages=12–28| doi=10.2307/2096404| jstor=2096404}}
* {{cite journal|author= Fournier M. |title= Enterprise in botany: Van Reede and his Hortus malabaricus – Part l. |journal= Archives of Natural History|year=1987| volume= 14| issue=2|pages=123–58|doi=10.3366/anh.1987.14.2.123|pmid= 11622404 }}
* {{cite book|first1=J.|last1=Heniger|title=Hendrik Adriaan Van Reed Tot Drakestein 1636-1691 and ''Hortus Malabaricus''|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=8VWN_LnFZKwC|year=1986|publisher=CRC Press|isbn=978-90-6191-681-9|page=145}}
* {{cite book|year=1944|place=Cape Town|publisher=Van Riebeeck Society|title=A geographical and topographical description of the Cape of Good Hope. Part 3.|translator=Mentzel, O.F. |url=https://archive.org/stream/geographicaltopo03ment#page/60/mode/2up}}
* {{cite journal|title=A translation of Carl Linnaeus's introduction to Genera plantarum (1737) |author=Mueller-Wille, S & K. Reeds |url=http://www.philoscience.unibe.ch/documents/kursarchiv/SS03/MuellerWille2007a.pdf |journal=Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences |volume=38 |year=2007 |issue=3 |pages=563–572 |doi=10.1016/j.shpsc.2007.06.003 |pmid=17893065 |url-status=dead |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20110716031921/http://philoscience.unibe.ch/documents/kursarchiv/SS03/MuellerWille2007a.pdf |archivedate=2011-07-16 }}
* {{cite journal|url=http://www.iisc.ernet.in/currsci/nov252005/1672.pdf |author=Ram, H.Y. Mohan |year=2005|title=On the English edition of Van Rheede's ''Hortus Malabaricus'' by K. S. Manilal(2003)|journal=Current Science|volume= 89|issue=10|pages=1672–1680}}

==External links ==
* [https://archive.org/details/mobot31753003370076 Hortus Malabaricus (scanned)]

{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Rheede, Hendrik Adriaan van}}
[[Category:1636 births]]
[[Category:1691 deaths]]
[[Category:17th-century Dutch colonial governors]]
[[Category:17th-century Dutch botanists]]
[[Category:Botanists active in India]]
[[Category:17th-century Dutch writers]]
[[Category:Hortus Malabaricus]]
[[Category:Scientists from Utrecht (city)]]
[[Category:Dutch nobility]]
[[Category:Military personnel from Utrecht (city)]]
[[Category:Dutch Malabar]]
[[Category:Army officers of the Dutch East India Company]]
[[Category:Biology and natural history in the Dutch Republic]]
[[Category:People from Dutch India]]
[[Category:Dutch expatriates in India]]
[[Category:Explorers of South Asia]]
[[Category:17th-century nobility]]

Hendrik van Rheede - Revision history

Sergqpm at 21:44, 3 March 2026