January 8, 1587 - Jan Pieterszoon Coen
His tenure as governor-general of the Dutch East Indies was defined by the violent enforcement of commercial monopoly — a goal he pursued with a conviction that made institutional brutality not merely tolerable but righteous in his own framing. The Banda Massacre of 1621, carried out under his direction, effectively annihilated the indigenous population of the nutmeg-producing Banda Islands, clearing the way for Dutch plantation control. What makes Coen a figure of lasting historical reckoning is not simply the scale of the violence but its instrumental logic: destruction as a business method, sanctioned by colonial authority and, in his own words, by God.
From Wikipedia
Jan Pieterszoon Coen (Dutch pronunciation: [jɑn ˈpitərsoːn ˈkun]; 8 January 1587 – 21 September 1629) was a Dutch naval officer of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) in the early 17th century, serving two terms as governor-general of the Dutch East Indies. He was the founder of Batavia, capital of the Dutch East Indies. Renowned for providing the impulse that set the VOC on the path to dominance in the Dutch East Indies, he was long considered a national hero in the Netherlands. Since the 19th century, his legacy has become controversial due to the brutal violence he employed in order to secure a trade monopoly on nutmeg, mace and cloves. He led the final Dutch conquest of the Banda Islands in 1621, which culminated in the Banda massacre, which saw 2,800 Bandanese killed and 1,700 enslaved by the Dutch. This is regarded as an act of genocide and earned him the nickname of 'Butcher of Banda'.
A famous quote of his from 1618, Despair not, spare your enemies not, for God is with us, illustrates his single-minded ruthlessness, and his unstinting belief in the divinely-sanctioned nature of his project. Using such self-professed divine sanction to violently pursue his ultimate goal of a trade monopoly in the East Indies, Dutch soldiers acting on Coen's orders perpetrated numerous wanton acts of destruction in the spice islands of (now) eastern Indonesia, including the infamous Banda Massacre of 1621.
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