Hendrik Caspar Romberg

A meeting of Japan, China, and the West, by Shiba Kōkan.

Hendrik Caspar Romberg (1744 - 1793) was a Dutch bookkeeper, merchant-trader and VOC Opperhoofd in Japan.

Life

Hendrik Caspar Romberg was the son of Zacharias Romberg, a bookprinter/seller on Spui in Amsterdam.[1] Hendrik was baptized not in the opposite Lutheran church, but at home.[2] In 1763 he traveled to Batavia in East Asia with the Dutch East Indies Company (or Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie or VOC in Dutch). Ten years later he was appointed in Deshima as bookkeeper. Romberg spent more than ten years in Japan. It seems he was good-looking had an affair with a Japanese prostitute.[3]

He was the Opperhoofd, head of VOC trading post, during four discrete periods:

Romberg traveled five times to Edo.[5] In an unknown year he attended a theater performance in Osaka.[6] In April 1787 he presented the lord of Satsuma a sweet wine from Jurançon.[7] In 1788 he met with Shiba Kōkan, interested in Western painting, and technique.[8] Romberg's account of the Sangoku-maru is a scant record of the brief attempt by the Tokugawa shogunate to create a sea-going vessel in the 1780s. The ship sank; and the tentative project was abandoned when the political climate in Edo shifted.[9]

In the off-years, he spent time in Batavia, which was at that time the VOC headquarters in the East Indies.[10] The registers also listed him as chief warehouseman and paymaster.[11]

Notes

References

Preceded by
Isaac Titsingh
VOC Opperhoofden at Dejima
1782-1783
Succeeded by
Isaac Titsingh
Preceded by
Isaac Titsingh
VOC Opperhoofden at Dejima
1784-1785
Succeeded by
Johan Parkeler
Preceded by
Johan Parkeler
VOC Opperhoofden at Dejima
1786-1787
Succeeded by
Johan Parkeler
Preceded by
Johan Parkeler
VOC Opperhoofden at Dejima
1789-1790
Succeeded by
Petrus Chassé
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