Isaac Titsingh

Isaac Titsingh FRS (10 January 1745 in Amsterdam – 2 February 1812 in Paris) was a Dutch surgeon, scholar, merchant-trader and ambassador.

During a long career in East Asia, Titsingh was a senior official of the Dutch East India Company (Dutch: Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie or VOC). He represented the European trading company in exclusive official contact with Tokugawa Japan, traveling to Edo twice for audiences with the shogun and other high bakufu officials. He was the Dutch and VOC governor general in Chinsura, Bengal. Titsingh worked with his counterpart, Charles Cornwallis, who was governor general of the British East India Company. In 1795, Titsingh represented Dutch and VOC interests in China, where his reception at the court of the Qing Qianlong Emperor stood in stark contrast to the rebuff suffered by Britain's ambassador George Macartney in 1793, just prior to celebrations of Qianlong’s sixty-year reign. In China, Titsingh effectively functioned as ambassador for his country at the same time as he represented the Dutch East India Company as a trade representative.

Isaac Titsingh was born in Amsterdam, the son of Albertus Titsingh and Catharina Bittner (Albertus Titsingh's second wife). His baptism took place at the Amstelkerk in Amsterdam on 21 January 1745. His father, Albertus Titsingh was a successful and prominent Amsterdam surgeon. He thus possessed the means for Isaac Titsingh to be brought up with an ‘enlightened education’ of the 18th century. Isaac Titsingh became a member of the Amsterdam Chirurgijngilde and received the degree of a Doctor of Law from Leiden University in January 1765. In March 1764 Titsingh was appointed as a freeman and 1766 went within his employment to Batavia.

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