Jan Pieterszoon Coen (1587 – 1629) was born in Hoorn on 8 January 1587. He was the founder of Batavia and also an officer of the Dutch East India Company in Indonesia (VOC) in the early seventeenth century, holding two terms as its Governor-General of the Dutch East Indies.
He was long considered a national hero in the Netherlands, for providing the impulse that set the VOC on the path to dominance in the Dutch East Indies. A quote of his from 1618 is well known, "Despair not, spare your enemies not, for God is with us".
