Everything about Johan De Witt totally explained
Johan de Witt (
Dordrecht,
Netherlands,
24 September 1625 –
The Hague,
Netherlands,
20 August 1672) was a key figure in
Dutch politics at a time when the
Republic of the
United Provinces was one of the
Great Powers in
Europe, dominating world trade and thus one of the wealthiest and mightiest nations in the
world.
Biography
Early life
Johan de Witt was born as the
son of
Jacob de Witt, an influential burgher from the patrician class in the city of Dordrecht which, in the
seventeenth century, was one of the most important cities of the dominating
province of
Holland. Johan and his older
brother Cornelis de Witt grew up in a privileged
environment in terms of
education, his father having important scholars and scientists, such as
Isaac Beeckman,
Jacob Cats,
Gerhard Vossius and
Andreas Colvius as good acquaintances. Jacob de Witt greatly valued
stoicism.
Johan and Cornelis both attended the
latin school in Dordrecht, which impregnated both brothers even more with the values of the
Roman Republic. As Johan proved to be a highly gifted student, he was awarded by being allowed the role of
Julius Caesar in a school play.
Career
After having attended the Latin school in Dordrecht (this school still exists under the name of Johan de Witt-Gymnasium), he studied at the
University of Leiden where he excelled at
mathematics and
law. He received his
doctorate from the
University of Angers in
1645. He practiced law as an
attorney in
The Hague as an associate with the firm of
Frans van Schooten.
In
1650 he was appointed leader of the deputation of
Dordrecht to the
States of Holland, the same year
stadtholder William II of Orange died. In
1653 De Witt became
raadpensionaris of Holland and, as such, the factual leader of this governing body in
1653. Controlling Holland, the most powerful province, he served as the most important administrator in the Republic of the United Provinces as a whole. Being the most influentian administrator of the United Provinces, the raadpensionaris of Holland was also referred to as the
Grand Pensionary. Johan applied his mathematical knowledge to the Republic's financial and budgetary problems.
Johan de Witt brought about peace with England after the
First Anglo-Dutch War with the
Treaty of Westminster in the year
1654. The peace treaty had a secret annex, the
Act of Seclusion, forbidding the Dutch ever to appoint William II's infant son as new stadtholder. This annex had been attached on instigation of
Cromwell who felt that a relative the executed
Charles I ((
William III was a grandson of Charles) in power in Holland wasn't in the interests of England. De Witt did his utmost to prevent any member of the
House of Orange from gaining any power, convincing many provinces to abolish the stadtholderate entirely. Influenced by the values of the Roman republic, he bolstered his policy by publicly endorsing the theory of
republicanism. He is known to have contributed personally to the
Interest of Holland, a radical republican textbook published in 1662 by his supporter
Pieter de la Court.
De Witt's power base was the wealthy merchant class. The people supporting him were called the "States faction", opposed by the "Orange faction" that was popular among the artisan class. This antagonism paralleled a division between moderate and intolerant
Calvinists. In the period following the Treaty of Westminster the Republic increased in wealth and influence under De Witt's leadership. De Witt created a strong navy, appointing one of his political cronies, Lieutenant-Admiral
Jacob van Wassenaer Obdam, as supreme commander of the confederate fleet. Later De Witt became a personal friend of Lieutenant-Admiral
Michiel de Ruyter. The
Second Anglo-Dutch War began in
1665, lasting until
1667 when it ended with the
Treaty of Breda, in which De Witt negotiated very favorable agreements for the Republic after the partial destruction of the British fleet in the
Raid on the Medway, originally conceived by De Witt himself.
Death
His pro-French policy however would prove to be his undoing. In the Dutch
rampjaar (disaster year) of
1672, when France and England during the
Franco-Dutch War (
Third Anglo-Dutch War) attacked the Republic, the Orangists took power by force and expelled him. Recovering from an earlier attempt on his life in June, he was
assassinated by a carefully organized lynch "mob" after visiting his brother
Cornelis de Witt in prison. He was decoyed into this trap by a forged letter.
After the arrival of Johan de Witt the city guard was sent away to stop plundering farmers, the farmers were not found. Without any protection against the assembled mob the brothers were doomed. They were taken out of the prison and on their way to the scaffold killed. Immediately after their death the bodies were mutilated and fingers toes and other parts were cut off.
Nowadays most historians assume that his adversary and successor as leader of the government stadtholder William III of Orange was involved. At the very least he protected and rewarded the killers.
Mathematician
Besides being a statesman Johan de Witt also was an accomplished mathematician. In 1659 he wrote "Elementa Curvarum Linearum" as an appendix to his translation of
René Descartes' "La Géométrie".
In 1671 his "Waardije van Lyf-renten naer Proportie van Los-renten" was published ('The Worth of Life Annuities Compared to Redemption Bonds'). This work combined the interests of the statesman and the mathematician. Ever since the Middle Ages a Life Annuity was a way to "buy" someone a regular income from a reliable source. The state for instance could provide a widow with a regular income until her death, in exchange for a 'lump sum' up front. There were also Redemption Bonds that were more like a regular state loan. De Witt showed - by using
probability mathematics - that for the same amount of money a bond of 4% would result in the same profit as a Life Annuity of 6% (1 in 17). But the 'Staten' at the time were paying over 7% (1 in 14).
The publication about Life Annuities is seen as the first mathematical approach of
chance and
probability.
The drop in income for the widows contributed no doubt to the "bad press" for the brothers De Witt. Significantly, after the violent deaths of the brothers the 'Staten' issued new Life Annuities in 1673 for the old rate of 1 in 14.
In 1671 De Witt conceived of a life annuity as a weighted average of annuities certain where the weights were mortality probabilities (that sum to one), thereby producing the expected value of the present value of a life annuity.
Edmond Halley’s (of comet fame) representation of the life annuity dates to 1693 when he re-expressed a life annuity as the discounted value of each annual payment multiplied by the probability of surviving long enough to receive the payment and summed until there are no survivors. De Witt's approach was especially insightful and ahead of its time. In modern terminology, De Witt treats a life annuity as a random variable and its expected value is what we call the value of a life annuity. Also in modern terminology, De Witt's approach allows one to readily understand other properties of this random variable such as its standard deviation, skewness, kurtosis, or any other characteristic of interest.
In addition, in his
Elementa curvarum linearum, De Witt derived the basic properties of
quadratic forms, an important step in the field of
linear algebra.
Johan de Witt in Popular Culture
The
lynching of the De Witt Brothers is depicted with a dramatic intensity in the first chapter of
The Black Tulip, a historical fiction novel written by
Alexandre Dumas, père in
1850, and this event has implications for the whole plot line of the book.
In its time, Dumas' book has helped make this tragedy known to a
French readership (and a readership in other countries into whose languages the book was translated) otherwise ignorant of Dutch history.
Further Information
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