Rijcklof van Goens

Rijcklof Volckertsz. van Goens (24 June 1619 – 14 November 1682) was the

Governor of Zeylan The following is a list of governors of Dutch Ceylon. The Dutch arrived on the island of Ceylon on 2 May 1639. Parts of the island were incorporated as a colony administrated by the Dutch East India Company The United East India Company ...

and

Governor-General of the Dutch East Indies The governor-general of the Dutch East Indies ( nl, gouverneur-generaal van Nederlands Indië) represented Dutch rule in the Dutch East Indies between 1610 and Dutch recognition of the independence of Indonesia in 1949. Occupied by Japanese ...

. He was the

from 12 May 1660 to 1661, then in 1663 and finally from 19 November 1664 to 1675 during the

Dutch period in Ceylon Dutch Ceylon ( Sinhala: Tamil: ) was a governorate established in present-day Sri Lanka by the Dutch East India Company. Although the Dutch managed to capture most of the coastal areas in Sri Lanka, they were never able to control the Kand ...

. He was also served as Council Member of

India India, officially the Republic of India ( Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the ...

during 1679. Van Goens’ managed to monopolize the cinnamon trade, get hold of the Malabar pepper and drive away the Portuguese from Ceylon and the Coromandel Coast for the VOC. Van Goens was born in Rees. He wrote extensively about his travels to Java,

Ceylon Sri Lanka (, ; si, ශ්‍රී ලංකා, Śrī Laṅkā, translit-std=ISO (); ta, இலங்கை, Ilaṅkai, translit-std=ISO ()), formerly known as Ceylon and officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, is an ...

and

. His writing about visits to the palaces of

Sultan A