Abel Janszoon Tasman was a Dutch seafarer and explorer, best known for his voyages of 1642 and 1644 in the service of the Dutch East India Company (VOC). He was responsible for the naming of New Zealand, as well as being the namesake for Tasmania.
The United East India Company, commonly known as the Dutch East India Company, was a chartered trading company and one of the first joint-stock companies in the world. Established on 20 March 1602 by the States General of the Netherlands amalgamating existing companies, it was granted a 21-year monopoly to carry out trade activities in Asia. Shares in the company could be purchased by any citizen of the United Provinces and subsequently bought and sold in open-air secondary markets. The company possessed quasi-governmental powers, including the ability to wage war, imprison and execute convicts, negotiate treaties, strike its own coins, and establish colonies. Also, because it traded across multiple colonies and countries from both the East and the West, the VOC is sometimes considered to have been the world's first multinational corporation.
The maritime European exploration of Australia consisted of several waves of European seafarers who sailed the edges of the Australian continent. Dutch navigators were the first Europeans known to have explored and mapped the Australian coastline. The first documented encounter was that of Dutch navigator Willem Janszoon, in 1606. Dutch seafarers also visited the west and north coasts of the continent, as did French explorers.
Dirk Hartog was a 17th-century Dutch sailor and explorer. Dirk Hartog's expedition was the second European group to land in Australia and the first to leave behind an artefact to record his visit, the Hartog Plate. His name is sometimes alternatively spelled Dirck Hartog or Dierick Hartochszch. Ernest Giles referred to him as Theodoric Hartog. The Western Australian island Dirk Hartog Island is named after Hartog.
Anthony van Diemen was a Dutch colonial governor.
The Bonin Islands, also known as the Ogasawara Islands (小笠原諸島), is a Japanese archipelago of over 30 subtropical and tropical islands located around 1,000 kilometers (620 mi) SSE of Tokyo and 1,600 kilometers (1,000 mi) northwest of Guam. The group as a whole has a total area of 84 square kilometers (32 sq mi) but only two of the islands are permanently inhabited, Chichijima and Hahajima. Together, their population was 2,560 as of 2021. Administratively, Tokyo's Ogasawara Subprefecture also includes the settlements on the Volcano Islands and the Self-Defense Force post on Iwo Jima. The seat of government is Chichijima.
Willem Hesselsz de Vlamingh was a Dutch sea captain who explored the central west coast of New Holland (Australia) in the late 17th century, where he landed in what is now Perth on the Swan River. The mission proved fruitless, but he charted parts of the continent's western coast.
Willem Cornelisz Schouten was a Dutch navigator for the Dutch East India Company. He was the first to sail the Cape Horn route to the Pacific Ocean.
Chichijima (父島) is the largest and most populous island in the Japanese archipelago of Bonin or Ogasawara Islands. Chichijima is about 240 km (150 mi) north of Iwo Jima. 23.5 km2 (9.1 sq mi) in size, the island is home to about 2,120 people (2021). Connected to the mainland only by a day-long ferry that runs a few times a month, the island is nonetheless organized administratively as the seat of Ogasawara Village in the coterminous Ogasawara Subprefecture of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government. Together with the Volcano and Izu Islands, it makes up Japan's Nanpō Islands.
Martin Spanberg was a Danish-born Russian naval officer who took part with his compatriot Vitus Bering in both Kamchatka expeditions as second in command. He is best known for finding a sea route to Japan from Russian territory and for exploring the Kuril Islands. Shikotan, one of the Kurils, was renamed in his honor by the Russians in 1796.
The Daitō Islands are an archipelago consisting of three isolated coral islands, administered by Japan, in the Philippine Sea southeast of Okinawa. The islands have a total area of 44.427 square kilometers (17.153 sq mi) and a population of 2,107.
Frederick Coyett, born in Stockholm c. 1615 or 1620, buried in Amsterdam on 17 October 1687, was a Swedish nobleman and the last colonial governor for the Dutch colony of Formosa. He was the first Swede to travel to Japan and China and became the last governor of Dutch-occupied Taiwan (1656–1662).
Willem Janszoon captained the first recorded European landing on the Australian continent in 1606, sailing from Bantam, Java, in the Duyfken. As an employee of the Dutch East India Company, Janszoon had been instructed to explore the coast of New Guinea in search of economic opportunities. He had originally arrived in the Dutch East Indies from the Netherlands in 1598, and became an officer of the VOC on its establishment in 1602.
Hessel Gerritsz was a Dutch engraver, cartographer, and publisher. He was one of the notable figures in the Golden Age of Netherlandish cartography. Despite strong competition, he is considered by some "unquestionably the chief Dutch cartographer of the 17th century".
Maarten Gerritszoon Vries or Fries, also referred to as de Vries, was a 17th-century Dutch cartographer and explorer, the first Western European to leave an account of his visit to Ezo, Sakhalin, Kuril Islands and the Sea of Okhotsk.
Willem Verstegen was a merchant in service of the Dutch East India Company and chief trader of factory in Dejima.
Early Polynesian explorers reached nearly all Pacific islands by 1200 CE, followed by Asian navigation in Southeast Asia and the West Pacific. During the Middle Ages, Muslim traders linked the Middle East and East Africa to the Asian Pacific coasts, reaching southern China and much of the Malay Archipelago. Direct European contact with the Pacific began in 1512, with the Portuguese encountering its western edges, soon followed by the Spanish arriving from the American coast.
Heemskerck was the flagship of Abel Janszoon Tasman's exploratory voyage of 1642. She and her consort Zeehaen were the first European ships to explore the south coast of Australia, including Tasmania, cross the Tasman Sea, and reach New Zealand among other achievements.
