Willem Cornelisz Schouten was a Dutch navigator for the Dutch East India Company. He was the first to sail the Cape Horn route to the Pacific Ocean. In 1615 Willem Cornelisz Schouten and his younger brother Jan Schouten sailed from Texel...

Michiel Jansz van Mierevelt, Dutch painter, was born at Delft, the son of a goldsmith, who apprenticed him to the copperplate engraver Hieronymus Wierix. He subsequently became a pupil of Willem Willemz and Augusteyn of Delft, until Anthoni...

Jan Janszoon van Haarlem, commonly known as Reis Mourad the Younger, was a Dutch pirate in Morocco who converted to Islam after being captured by a Moorish state in 1618. He began serving as a pirate, one of the most famous of the 17th-cent...

Frederick de Houtman was a Dutch explorer, navigator, and colonial governor who sailed along the coastal regions of western Australia on the first Dutch expedition to the East Indies from 1595 until 1597, during which time he made observati...

Willem Janszoon Blaeu: Author, printer, and publisher of geographic maps and globes, which he signed until 1621 with the Latinized name of Guljelmus Caesius. Pupil and friend of Tycho Brahe (1546-1601), from whom he acquired the astronomica...

Edward Cecil, 1st Viscount Wimbledon, was an English military and naval commander and a politician who sat in the House of Commons at various times between 1601 and 1624. Cecil served with the English forces in the Netherlands between 1596...

Jan Adriaanszoon Leeghwater (De Rijp, The Netherlands) was a Dutch mill builder and hydraulic engineer. He was involved in the reclamation of the Beemster polder, the first polder in the world created from a lake by draining the water using...

Piet Pieterszoon Hein (Heyn) was a Dutch naval officer and folk hero during the Eighty Years' War between the Netherlands and Spain. Hein was born in Delfshaven (now part of Rotterdam), the son of a captain, and he became a sailor while he...

Sir Peter Paul Rubens was a Flemish Baroque painter, and a proponent of an extravagant Baroque style that emphasized movement, colour, and sensuality. He is well known for his Counter-Reformation altarpieces, portraits, landscapes, and hist...

Gerrit Janszoon Vos was a Dutch classical scholar and theologian. In 1600 he was made rector of the latin school in Dordrecht, and devoted himself to philology and historical theology. From 1614 to 1619 he was director of the theological c...

Cats was contemporary with Hooft and Vondel and other distinguished Dutch writers in the golden age of Dutch literature, but his Orangist and Calvinistic opinions separated him from the liberal school of Amsterdam poets. He was, however, in...

Philip III, King of Spain, King of Portugal, King of Naples and Sicily was the king of Spain and Portugal and Algarves (as Philip II Portuguese: Filipe II), from 1598 until his death. His chief minister was the Duke of Lerma. Philip III mar...

Dirk Hartog was a 17th-century Dutch sailor and explorer. Dirk Hartog's expedition was the second European group to land in Australia and the first to leave behind an artifact to record his visit,the Hartog plate. His name is sometimes alte...

Willebrord Snellius was a Dutch astronomer and mathematician, known in the English-speaking world as Snell. In the west, especially the English speaking countries, his name has been attached to the law of refraction of light for several cen...

Peter Minuit, Pierre Minuit or Peter Minnewit was a Walloon from Wesel, in present-day North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, then part of the Duchy of Clèves. He was the Director-General of the Dutch colony of New Netherland from 1626 until 1633...