Hendrik Caspar Romberg (bapt. 11 October 1744 – 15 April 1793)Information on Hendrik Casper Romberg from the VOC records. was a Dutch bookkeeper, merchant-trader and VOC Opperhoofd in Japan.
Life Hendrik Caspar Romberg was the son of Zacharias Romberg, a bookprinter/seller on Spui in Amsterdam. Hendrik was baptized not in the opposite Lutheran church, but at home.Amsterdam City Archives In 1763 he traveled to Batavia in East Asia with the Dutch East Indies Company (or Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie or VOC in Dutch). Ten years later he was appointed in Deshima as bookkeeper. Romberg spent more than ten years in Japan. It seems he was good-looking and had an affair with a Japanese prostitute.
He was the Opperhoofd, head of VOC trading post, during four discrete periods: 27 October 1782 – August 1783 November 84 – 21 November 1785 21 November 1786 – 30 November 1787 1 August 1789 – 13 November 1790
Romberg traveled five times to Edo.French, Calvin L. (1974). Shiba Kōkan: artist, innovator, and pioneer in the westernization of Japan, p. 65. On 1 May 1789, he attended a theater performance in Osaka.https://brill.com/display/book/9789004473591/BP000052.xml (p. 595) In April 1787 he presented the lord of Satsuma a sweet wine from Jurançon. In 1788 he met with Shiba Kōkan, interested in Western painting, and technique. Romberg's account of the Sangoku-maru is a scant record of the brief attempt by the Tokugawa shogunate to create a sea-going vessel in the 1780s. The ship sank; and the tentative project was abandoned when the political climate in Edo shifted.Screech, Timon. (2006).
In the off-years, he spent time in Batavia, which was at that time the VOC headquarters in the East Indies.Historiographical Institute. (1988). Historical documents relating to Japan in foreign countries, Vol. I, pp. 52, 160. The registers also listed him as chief warehouseman and paymaster.Lembaga Kebudajaan Indonesia. (1827).
Notes
References French, Calvin L. (1974). Shiba Kōkan: artist, innovator, and pioneer in the westernization of Japan. New York: Weatherhill. ; OCLC 1301516 . (1963). Historical documents relating to Japan in foreign countries: an inventory of microfilm acquisitions in the library of the Historiographical Institute, the University of Tokyo. OCLC 450710 Lembaga Kebudajaan Indonesia, Bataviaasch Genootschap van Kunsten en Wetenschappen. (1827). Verhandelingen, Vol. 6. Bataviaasch: A.C. Nix & Co. OCLC 221461228 Screech, Timon. (2006). Secret Memoirs of the Shoguns: Isaac Titsingh and Japan, 1779-1822. London: RoutledgeCurzon. ; OCLC 65177072