Willem Benjamin Craan

Willem Benjamin Craan (Batavia, 23 August 1776 — Schaerbeek, 16 June 1848) was a Dutch (and later Belgian) surveyor and cartographer, who is best known for his 1816 map of the battlefield of the Battle of Waterloo in which he provided the initial dispositions of all armies concerned, based on information gleaned from many participants in the battle from all sides.

Craan was born in the Dutch East Indies, a colony of the Dutch East India Company in those days. He was the son of Jacobus Johannes Craan and Johanna Henriëtte Breekpot. His father was an opperkoopman (chief merchant), employed by the company. He married Joanna Frederika Hahn on 4 October 1795 in Hillegom. Craan studied at Leiden University and obtained a doctorate in law on 27 August 1795 (the Batavian Republic had just been established). He was not very interested in the law profession, however, dedicating himself in the next fifteen years to mathematical studies and music.

When he found himself in Aix-la-Chapelle in December, 1810, he was appointed by the local prefect to the position of cadastral surveyor for the département de la Roer (one of the départements of the First French Empire to which the Netherlands had by then been annexed). He performed so well in this function that the next year he was promoted and put in charge of the Cadastre of the département de la Lippe (in Germany).

The fall of the Empire in 1814 put him out of work, so he travelled to Brussels, then the capital of the former Austrian Netherlands, which now were about to become part of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands. The Sovereign Prince of the Netherlands (the future king William I of the Netherlands) appointed him as chief of the Cadastre of the department of the Dyle on 21 October 1814.

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