Maximiliaan le Maire (Amsterdam, February 28, 1606 - 1654? Batavia?), was the Dutch Opperhoofd at Dejima[1] from February to October 1641 and Governor of Formosa from 1643 to 1644.
Maximilaan was one of the surviving 13 or 14 children of Isaac le Maire, in 1602 one of the founders of the Dutch East India Company or "VOC", and Maria Walraven [2], and was a brother of the explorer and circumnavigator Jacob le Maire (1585-1616). He grew up in Egmond aan den Hoef.
After his services for the VOC, starting around 1630 in the Malabar, Moçambique, Hirado, Deshima, and Taiwan, where a polder was named after him, he returned home, and in 1647 remarried, in The Hague, Geertruij van Mierop. For a couple of years, he lived in Amsterdam, but in 1650 he left again for Batavia with his wife. He died after a couple of years; it is not known exactly where and when. His widow went back to the Netherlands and remarried Cornelis van der Lijn, previously a governor of the Indies, then a burgomaster of Alkmaar.
| Preceded by VOC relocated from Hirado |
VOC Opperhoofden at Dejima 1641 |
Succeeded by Jan van Elseracq |
| Preceded by Paulus Traudenius |
VOC Governor of Formosa 1643–1644 |
Succeeded by François Caron |
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