Roots of Van Dort Series Part V

What motivated Patriarch Cornelius Van Dort to leave the Netherland and emigrate to Ceylon in 1700?

Understandably, the Dutch V.O.C was at its heyday. The Dutch V.O.C was the paramount power in foreign lands such as Ceylon and the East Indies.

Was Patriarch Cornelius Van Dort an employee of the Dutch V.O.C and perhaps it was his first job assignment to a V.O.C outpost. Perhaps he was enticed by a promotion to a job at the V.O.C office in Ceylon. This is merely surmisations as there is nothing that explains what led him to emigrate to Ceylon.

Reading young Cornelius' contemporary Dutch history, events are recorded as follow:

1650: Dutch East India Company founds Capetown (Dap Town); has holdings in Indonesia, Ceylon, West Indies and North America.

1660: South Africa settled by Dutch peasants (Boers)

1680: Dutch settlers arrive in Capetown

1690: War of the League of Augsburg, fought mostly in Netherlands, ends with Treaty of Ryswick

About the War of the League of Augsburg 1689-1697- The European phase of the war broke out first when WIlliam III joined the League of Augsburg and the Netherlands (Grand Alliance, 12 May 1689) to resist Louis XIV's invasion of the Rhenish Palatinate (25 Sept. 1688).

Holland 1697 - 1890. After the brutally murder of Johan and Cornelis de Witt in 1672 the power of the United Netherlands began to weaken and another revolution took place.

The great prosperity of the Golden Age came to an end in "The Year of Disaster" 1672 when several Countries declared war to the United Netherlands

Hence, against that tumultous backdrop, although the Netherland was expanding territorially beyond her shores, as a young man Patriarch Cornelius would also have experienced the ravages of King William's War. It is apparent that like all his countrymen who suffered from the war in their heartland, they would rather choose to join the popular wave of emigrants to the Dutch colony frontiers.

At another period, it happened in similar fashion to his Ceylonese posterity. When the Dutch surrendered Ceylon to the British, it led some of his descendants to emigrate to Malaya, Singapore and Australia.


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