Saartje Specx (17th Century Dutch-Japanese, Famous Prisoner Batavia, Wife of First Missionary Fromosa) and Her Grave by Pineapple Stretch

May 01, 2021

Terrence Ying-Tai Lai 賴英泰 in a recent talk I attended mentioned 'Sara's Grave 莎拉之墓' in Tainan. Saartje Specx story, unknown to many including myself, is most fascinating.

A 17th-century watercolor drawing of the Dutch East India Company’s Fort Zeelandia, present-day Tainan, taken from the Eugenius-atlas, which was commissioned by Laurens van der Hem, a Dutch lawyer and map collector. (Wikipedia)

Saartje's grave in green circle.

Pineapple stretch, women prison, graveyard, Amsterdam (a farm) clearly labelled.

(Terrence Ying-Tai Lai 賴英泰 talk at Linking Publishing 聯經書房)

Page one of a piece I found online.

Saartje Specx (1617–1636) was the daughter of Jacques Specx, governor of the North Quarter of the Dutch East India Company's (VOC's) Asian trading empire, and a Japanese concubine.

Saartje (Sara in English) was born at the Dutch trading base on the island of Hirado. In 1629, aged 12, she was living at Batavia in Java under the protection of Jan Coen, governor of the Dutch East Indies, and Eva Ment. There she fell in love with 15-year-old Pieter Cortenhoeff, a Eurasian standard-bearer in the VOC army, and was found making love to him in Coen's private apartment. When the Governor heard of this, a contemporary writer attested, "his face turned white and his chair and the table trembled." Coen had Cortenhoeff beheaded and had to be dissuaded from having Saartje drowned. Instead she was severely beaten in front of the Town Hall of Batavia.

Under the rules governing the VOC's Asian possessions, Saartje Specx, as a part-Asian, had no right to live in the Netherlands. On her father's return to Java she made a good marriage to Georgius Candidius, a Calvinist minister, and accompanied him to the Dutch trading base in Formosa (Taiwan), where she died, aged 19, in 1636.

Jacob Cats wrote a pamphlet about the couple, which was sold 50,000 copies. In 1931, J. Slauerhoff wrote a play on Jan Pieterszoon Coen where the story was told again.

Georgius Candidius was born in 1597 at Kirchardt in the Palatinate. Before arriving in Formosa in 1627 Candidius worked in Ternate, Moluccas. Having arrived in Taiwan he refused to live in the Dutch castle Zeelandia and settled in the native village of Sinckan (modern-day Sinshih) instead.

In 1632 he married Saartje Specx, daughter of Governor-General Jacques Specx. Specx had previously evoked a scandal in Batavia and Holland when she was discovered making love to a young soldier in the private quarters of Specx's predecessor, Jan Pieterszoon Coen, who was known for his harsh discipline. Narrowly escaping a death sentence, she was flogged and her lover beheaded.

Candidius returned to the Netherlands in 1639 and went to Batavia (Jakarta) in the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia) in 1643. There, he served as rector of the Latin school until his death on 30 April 1647.

Sun-Moon Lake in central Taiwan was named Lake Candidius in his honour and is referred to thus in older English writings, although this name was not adopted by the local inhabitants and later fell into disuse.

(Wikipedia)