Godert Alexander Gerard Philip, Baron van der Capellen (Utrecht, 15 December 1778 – De Bilt, 10 April 1848) was a Dutch statesman. He held several important posts under the Kingdom of Holland and the Sovereign Principality of the United Netherlands, before he was appointed as one of the Commissioners-General of the Dutch East Indies. Later he was appointed Governor-General of that colony.
Contents
Life
Personal life
Born in Utrecht, Van der Capellen was the son of Maria Taets van Amerongen, and the cavalry colonel Alexander Philip van der Capellen.
His father died when he was eight, and his education was entrusted to the Walloonminister Pierre Chevalier. He studied law at Utrecht university, and also spent time studying in under Georg Friedrich von Martens and Johann Friedrich Blumenbach at the University of Göttingen. In 1803, he married Jacoba Elisabeth van Tuyll van Serooskerken. They had no children.
Career
He started his official career in the province of Utrecht under the Batavian Republic, where he was appointed in several functions in the sphere of Public finance Under the Kingdom of Holland he was made responsible for the integration of the formerly German areas known as East Frisia, that had been "apportioned" by Napoleon to that kingdom. He was subsequently made landdrost (Prefect) of that area in 1808 and soon thereafter Minister of the Interior and a member of the Raad van State. He was one of the ministers who advised king Louis to resist the advances of his brother Napoleon, but when Louis abdicated in favor of his son, he followed him in exile. He remained with the ex-king until power was returned to the son of the former Dutch stadtholder, now the "sovereign prince" William I of the Netherlands, in 1813. William appointed him envoy to the Governor-General of the Austrian Netherlands, Karl von Vincent in Brussels in May 1814. When William himself became Governor-Geral there on 1 August 1814, he appointed Van der Capellen to be his representative to do the actual governing on 12 August 1814, with the title of Secretaris van Staat (minister). However, William recalled him already in September 1814 to become one of the Commissioners-General of the Dutch East Indies with Cornelis Theodorus Elout and Arnold Adriaan Buyskes, to implement the return of that colony to Dutch administration on the basis of the Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1814.