Georg Eberhard Rumphius

Georg Eberhard Rumphius (originally: Rumpf; baptized c. November 1, 1627 – June 15, 1702) was a German-born botanist employed by the Dutch East India Company in what is now eastern Indonesia, and is best known for his work Herbarium Amboinense produced in the face of severe personal tragedies, including the death of his wife and a daughter in an earthquake, going blind from glaucoma, loss of his library and manuscripts in major fire, and losing early copies of his book when the ship carrying it was sunk. In addition to his major contributions to plant systematics, he is also remembered for his skills as an ethnographer and his frequent defense of Ambonese peoples against colonialism.

Rumphius was the oldest son of August Rumpf, a builder and engineer in Hanau, and Anna Elisabeth Keller, sister of Johann Eberhard Keller, governor of the Dutch-speaking Kleve (Cleves), at that time a district of the Electortel (Kurfürstentum) of Brandenburg. He was baptized Georg Eberhard Rumpf in Wölfersheim, where he grew up. He went to the Gymnasium in Hanau. Though born and raised in Germany he spoke and wrote in Dutch from an early age, probably as learned from his mother. He was recruited by the West India Company, ostensibly to serve the Republic of Venice, but was put on a ship "De Swarte Raef" (The Black Raven) in 1646 bound for Brazil where the Dutch and Portuguese were fighting over territory. Either through shipwreck or capture he landed in Portugal, where he remained for nearly three years. Around 1649 he returned to Hanau where he helped his father's business.

A week after his mother's funeral (December 20, 1651) he left Hanau for the last time. Perhaps through contacts of his mother's family, he enlisted with the Dutch East Indies Company (as Jeuriaen Everhard Rumpf) and left as a midshipman, December 26, 1652, aboard the ship Muyden for the Dutch East Indies. He arrived in Batavia in July 1653, and proceeded to the Ambon archipelago in 1654. By 1657 his official title was "engineer and ensign", at which point he requested a transfer to the civilian branch of the company and became second merchant ("onderkoopman") on Hitu island, north of Ambon. He became a merchant ("koopman") in 1662. He then started to undertake a study of the flora and fauna of these Spice Islands. In 1666 he was appointed as "secunde" at Ambon directly under Joan Maetsuycker, the governor-general in Batavia, who would later give him dispensation from his ordinary duties to complete this study. Maetsuycker was a barrister-at-law and a patron of science. He would become known as Plinius Indicus (the Pliny of the Indies). This was the name under which he was made a member by the Academia Naturae Curiosorum in Vienna in 1681.

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