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{{Use dmy dates|date=August 2019}}
{{short description|Dutch explorer}}
{{Infobox person
|name = Samuel van der Putte
|birth_date = {{Birth date|df=yes|1690|02|26}}
|birth_place = [[Vlissingen]], [[Dutch Republic]]
|death_date = {{Death date and age|df=yes|1745|09|27|1690|02|26}}
|death_place = [[Batavia, Dutch East Indies]]
|occupation = Explorer, linguist, naturalist
|known_for = Exploration of Tibet
}}

'''Samuel van der Putte''' (26 February 1690 – 27 September 1745) was a Dutch explorer, linguist, and naturalist most famous for his journeys in Asia, especially to [[Qing Tibet|Tibet]].

==Life==
Van der Putte was born on 26 February 1690{{sfnp|Lequin & al.|1989}} in [[Vlissingen]] in the [[Dutch Republic]].<ref name=marker>{{harvp|Markham|1876|p=[https://archive.org/details/pts_narrativesofmiss_3721-1221/page/n69 lxii]}}.</ref> He was the son of the Dutch vice-admiral [[Karel van der Putte|Karel]] or [[Carel van der Putte]] and his wife Johanna Cornelia Samuels Biscop.<ref name=marker/> Admiral Van der Putte died when Samuel was five years old.{{sfnp|Lequin & al.|1989}}{{efn|[[Clements Robert Markham|Markham]] mistakenly gives 1725.<ref name=marker/>}}

He studied law in [[Leiden]], getting his degree in 1714 and returning to work in Vlissingen, where he became an [[alderman]] the next year.<ref name=marker/> In 1718, he left for Italy, improving his Italian and studying medicine in [[Padua]]. He returned to the Netherlands in 1721 but soon left for [[Constantinople]] in the [[Ottoman Empire]]. From there, he visited the [[Aegean Archipelago]], [[Cairo]], the [[Sinai Peninsula|Sinai]], and [[Ottoman Palestine|Palestine]].{{sfnp|Lequin & al.|1989}} From [[Aleppo]] in Syria, he traveled with a [[caravan (travellers)|caravan]] to [[Isfahan]], [[Safavid dynasty|Persia]], and thence to Dutch-allied [[Kingdom of Cochin|Cochin]] in India.<ref name=marker/>

He travelled extensively through India<ref name=market>{{harvp|Markham|1876|p=[https://archive.org/details/pts_narrativesofmiss_3721-1221/page/n69 lxiii]}}.</ref> disguised as a Muslim trader,{{sfnp|Gandolfo|2004|p=107}} meeting the Jesuit missionary [[Ippolito Desideri]] in [[Patna]]{{sfnp|Sweet|2018|p=122}} in August 1725.{{sfnp|Lequin & al.|1989}} He copied about 20 pages of Desideri's notes on Tibet and, after visiting [[Dutch Ceylon]] the next year, he passed through the [[Mughal Empire]] and followed Desideri's route through [[Nepal]]{{sfnp|Lequin & al.|1989}} and [[Ladakh]]<ref name=gin&juice/> to [[Lhasa]] in [[Qing Tibet|Tibet]],{{sfnp|Lequin & al.|1989}} reaching it about 1728.<ref name=gin&juice/>{{efn|[[Perceval Landon|Landon]] misdates this trip to 1724.<ref name=lando/> [[Derek John Waller|Waller]] misdates it to 1718.<ref name=sooey>{{harvp|Waller|1990|p=[https://books.google.com/books?id=sqkeBgAAQBAJ&pg=PA6 6]}}.</ref>}} The [[Dalai Lama]] at the time was the 7th incarnation, [[Kelzang Gyatso]], but the warlord [[Polhané Sönam Topgyé]] had just overcome a coup with Chinese help. He maintained his position by permitting their [[amban]]s to station troops in Lhasa and act as ''de facto'' governors.

Unlike other visitors to the interior of China at the time, usually Catholic missionaries, Van der Putte was acting as a commercial agent.{{sfnp|Sweet|2018|p=122}} Besides an anonymous French trader who reached Lhasa in 1717, Van der Putte is the only foreign layman known to have visited Tibet during the 18th century.<ref name=mkay/> He had been obliged by local [[xenophobia]] and Qing border regulations to again disguise himself as a native on his journey<ref name=lando/><ref name=market/> to avoid assault or arrest and deportation to [[Guangzhou]] and [[Portuguese Macao]]. In [[Lhasa]], he learned [[Standard Tibetan]] and befriended its [[lama]]s<ref name=market/> while staying with the [[Capuchin monks|Capuchin]] mission<ref name=mkay/><ref name=sooey/> kept by [[Gioacchino da San Anatolia]],{{sfnp|Sweet|2018|p=122}} [[Francesco della Penna]], [[Cassiano da Macerata]], and others. His religious opinions scandalized the Italian monks, whose letters variously describe him as [[agnosticism|agnostic]] or heretical. Cassiano nonetheless describes him as an honest man.{{sfnp|Lequin & al.|1989}}

He left Lhasa for [[Beijing]]<ref name=mkay/> (then romanized as "Peking") in 1731{{sfnp|Lequin & al.|1989}} in the company of a caravan of lamas bound for the imperial capital.<ref name=market/> It followed the same route later made famous by [[Abbé Huc]]'s account of his travels.<ref name=market/> A passage of Putte's journals quoted in a missionary's letter describes his passage of the upper [[Yangtze]] (under the name "Bicin" or "Bi-tsion") on hide boats; the river was so wide and passage so slow that the travelers were obliged to rest on an island in the middle of the stream before completing the crossing the next day.<ref name=market/> The route continued north through [[Qinghai Province|Qinghai]] ("Koko Nor") and east across the [[Ordos Loop]] to the [[Great Wall of China]] northwest of the capital.

After his visit to Beijing, he returned to Lhasa in 1736 along a more southerly route that took him through [[Kham]] and southeastern Tibet.{{sfnp|Gandolfo|2004|p=108}} While in Lhasa, he stayed at the house that had been abandoned by the Catholic monks during his absence.{{sfnp|Gandolfo|2004|p=108}} During one of his visits in Lhasa, his conversation with the son of a minister from [[Sikkim]] led to his creating a manuscript map of the states of the central [[Himalayas]],{{sfnp|Gandolfo|2004|p=109}} the first European map to correctly mark [[Bhutan]] (under a variation of the name "[[Drukpa Lineage|Drukpa]]"){{sfnp|Gandolfo|2004|p=108}} as an independent state in the correct location instead of as a misunderstanding of [[Tibet]].{{sfnp|Gandolfo|2004|p=93}} He reached India again around 1737,<ref name=mkay/>{{efn|[[Perceval Landon|Landon]] misdates this to 1735.<ref name=lando>{{harvp|Landon|1905|pp=[https://books.google.com/books?id=WNW5wDY3qDgC&pg=PA8 8–9]}}.</ref> [[Derek John Waller|Waller]] misdates it to 1730.<ref name=sooey/>}} using the arduous western route through western Tibet and [[Kashmir]].{{sfnp|Lequin & al.|1989}}

Returned to India, he witnessed [[Nader Shah]]'s 1739 [[Sack of Delhi]]<ref name=market/> following the [[Battle of Karnal]] before leaving [[Bengal]] to settle in [[Batavia, Dutch East Indies]] in 1743. His last journey seems to have been a visit to [[Mount Ophir]] in [[Dutch Malacca]] in September of that year.<ref name=market/> Intending to return home to the Netherlands, he fell ill and died on 27 September 1745<ref name=market/> at Batavia.<ref name=gin&juice>{{harvp|Jina|1995|pp=[https://books.google.com/books?id=9QTJbvggV6EC&pg=PA18 18–19]}}.</ref><ref name=sooey/>

==Works==
The importance of Van der Putte's exploration was less than that of some of his contemporaries since his constant travels kept him from publishing any public narrative of his observations. Instead, from his deathbed in Batavia, his will directed that his journal and many notes{{mdash}}which he had kept on slips of paper during his travels<ref name=market/><ref name=lando/>{{mdash}}be burned.<ref name=gin&juice/> He did this to prevent their "improper use",<ref name=gin&juice/> which some have taken to mean risking the addition of fraudulent notes in order to exploit the authority of his name<ref name=market/> and others to mean permitting their use by the British.<ref name=mkay>{{harvp|McKay|1998|p=[https://books.google.com/books?id=7-QrBgAAQBAJ&pg=PA303 303]}}.</ref> Nonetheless, some scholars have compiled what is known of his travels (mostly through the letters of the various missionaries) and some of his surviving belongings are kept at the museum in [[The Hague]].<ref name=gin&juice/>

Two of his notes known to have survived were two undated manuscript maps, one that drawn of the eastern Himalayan states mentioned above and the other a map of Tibet with its places named in [[Classical Tibetan|Tibetan]] and Italian. Both were held by a museum in [[Middelburg, Zeeland|Middelburg]], where they were destroyed by Allied bombing during [[World War II]].{{sfnp|Gandolfo|2004|pp=109–110}} The Himalayan map survived in duplicate thanks to its inclusion by Sir [[Clements Markham]] in his book on [[George Bogle (diplomat)|George Bogle]]'s later trip to Tibet.{{sfnp|Gandolfo|2004|p=110}}

==References==

=== Notes ===
{{noteslist}}

=== Footnotes ===
{{reflist|30em}}

=== Bibliography ===
{{refbegin}}
* {{citation |last=Gandolfo |first=Romolo |contribution=Bhutan and Tibet in European Cartography (1597–1800) |contribution-url=http://crossasia-repository.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/2608/1/9_SpdrPglt.pdf |pages=90–136 |title=The Spider and the Piglet: Proceedings of the First Seminar on Bhutan Studies |location=Thimphu |publisher=Center for Bhutan Studies |date=2004 }}.
* {{citation |last=Huc |first=Évariste Régis |authorlink=Évariste Régis Huc |editor-last=Hazlitt |editor-first=William |editor-link=William Hazlitt (registrar) |url=https://archive.org/details/travelsintartary02huce/page/n11 |title=Travels in Tartary, Thibet, and China during the Years 1844–5–6 |location=London |publisher=National Illustrated Library |date=1853 |ref={{harvid|Hazlitt|1853}} }}.
* {{citation |last=Jina |first=Prem Singh |title=Famous Western Explorers to Ladakh |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=9QTJbvggV6EC |date=1995 |publisher=Indus Publishing Co |location=New Delhi |isbn=81-7387-031-4 }}, reprinted 2004.
* {{citation |last=Landon |first=Perceval |author-link=Perceval Landon |title=Opening of Tibet: An Account of Lhasa and the Country and People of Central Tibet and of the Progress of the Mission Sent There by the English Government in the Year 1903–4 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=WNW5wDY3qDgC |location=New York |publisher=Doubleday, Page, & Co |date=1905 |isbn=9788120611450 }}, reprinted by Asian Educational Services 1996.
* {{citation |last=Lequin |first=Frank |authorlink=Frank Lequin |author2=Albert Meijer |display-authors=1 |date=1989 |ref={{harvid|Lequin & al.|1989}} |title=Samuel van der Putte, een Mandarijn uit Vlissingen |location=Middelburg |publisher=Stichting VOC Publicaties }}. {{in lang|nl}}
* {{citation |last=Markham |first=Clements Robert |authorlink=Clements Robert Markham |title=Narratives of the Mission of George Bogle to Tibet and of the Journey of Thomas Manning to Lhasa |url=https://archive.org/details/pts_narrativesofmiss_3721-1221/page/n3 |location=London |publisher=Trübner & Co |date=1876 }}.
* {{citation |last=McKay |first=Alex |contribution=Tibet: The Myth of Isolation |contribution-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=7-QrBgAAQBAJ&pg=PA302 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=7-QrBgAAQBAJ |title=New Developments in Asian Studies |editor-last=Van der Velde |editor-first=Paul |editor2=Alex McKay |display-editors=0 |pages=302–318 |location=London |publisher=Kegan Paul |date=1998 |isbn=0-7103-0606-7 }}, reprinted by Routledge 2011.
* {{citation |last=Sweet |first=Michael Jay |contribution=Gleanings from the ''Account Book'' 1: New Light on Some Episodes of His Life in Tibet |title=Buddhist–Christian Studies |volume=38 |date=2018 |pages=119–123 |location=Honolulu |publisher=University of Hawaiʻi Press }}.
* {{citation |last=Waller |first=Derek John |title=The Pundits: British Exploration of Tibet and Central Asia |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=sqkeBgAAQBAJ |date=1990 |location=[[Lexington, Kentucky|Lexington]] |publisher=University Press of Kentucky |isbn=9780813149042 }}, reprinted 2004.
{{refend}}

{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Van der Putte, Samuel}}
[[Category:18th-century Dutch explorers]]
[[Category:1690 births]]
[[Category:1745 deaths]]
[[Category:17th-century Dutch naturalists]]
[[Category:Linguists from the Dutch Republic]]
[[Category:People from Vlissingen]]

Samuel van der Putte - Revision history

Onliporno at 00:44, 27 May 2025