Dirk de Graeff van Polsbroek

Dirk de Graeff van Polsbroek (Amsterdam, August 28, 1833 – 27 June 1916, The Hague) was a successful Dutch diplomat in Japan. From July 1863, he held the post of Consul General and Political Agent in Japan. He played a major part in the many negotiations between various Western countries and Japan. He represented Denmark, Sweden and Norway in Japan and temporally Prussia and Switzerland.

Biographie

Dirk de Graeff van Polsbroek (ca. 1863 Photograph by Dr A.F. Bauduin at Dejima)

Dirk de Graeff van Polsbroek was born at Amsterdam on 28 August 1833 as a son of Gerrit de Graeff (IV.) Squire of Zuid-Polsbroek, Purmerland and Ilpendam and Carolina Ursulina Stephania Engels. He lived in Japan with his Japanese housekeeper Koyama Ochō with whom he had a son Pieter (Yokohama, 8 June 1861 - 7 August 1914, Bwool (Netherlands Indies). In 1872 he married Bonne Elisabeth Royer. One of his five children was the politician Andries Cornelis Dirk de Graeff who became Netherlands' Ambassador at Tokyo and Governor General of the Netherlands Indies.

When he went to the Dutch Indies in 1853 he added 'van Polsbroek' to his name, probably to discern himself from a brother in the Colonial Army there. After having worked for the Netherlands Indian government in Batavia, he was appointed on Dejima in June 1857 as assistant 2nd class to the Factory of Dutch Trade. In July 1859, at the time of the opening of the Japanese harbours to trade with foreign countries, he became acting Vice-Consul at Kanagawa. In 1863, when the direction of the Japanese affairs changed from the Ministry of the Colonies to that for Foreign Affairs, he was appointed Consul General and Political Agent. In 1868 he became (titular) Resident Minister of The Netherlands in Japan. He ended his career as a diplomat in 1870 by refusing an appointment in Peking. He was the first western diplomat, who presented his credentials to Emperor Meiji in his new capital Tokyo in February 1869.[1] He was partner in Textor & Co., a trading company established at Dejima in 1858 with his colleague Carl Julius Textor. He was one of the founders of the Yokohama Races (horse racing in Yokohama)[2]

De Graeff negotiated treaties for other European countries with Japan or aided their envoys: Belgium, Denmark, the Hanze cities, Switzerland and Sweden/Norway to mention a few[3] On leave in The Netherlands in 1870, when he was ordered by the Minister for Foreign Affairs to Peking, De Graeff resigned from his position and became a Commissioner of the Netherlands Trading Society (Nederlandsche Handel-maatschappij)[4] living at The Hague. He was a member of the government commission which received the Iwakura-Mission to The Netherlands in 1873. In the 1870s he received the title of Jonkheer De Graeff and on that occasion he had to drop his self-styled addition to his name 'van Polsbroek'.

Dirk de Graeff died on 27 June 1916 at The Hague.

Notes

  1. ↑ Painting in the Meiji shrine at Tokyo
  2. ↑ Yokohama Horse Racing Museum
  3. ↑ Documents and letters in the National Archives at The Hague, Foreign Affairs No. 3141-3147; Consular Archives of Nagasaki and Yokohama 1860-1869)
  4. ↑ National Archive The Hague, Archive of the Netherlands Trading Society

Literature