- Pieter van Woensel (doctor)
:"Not to be confused with
Pieter van Woensel (politician) ."Pieter van Woensel (Haarlem , 1747 –The Hague , 1808) was a physician, adventurer, travel writer, ships doctor, political cartoonist and a colorful author under the pseudonym Amurath-Effendi, Hekim-Bachi in the satiricalalmanac "de Lantaarn" (the Lamp). Typical for Van Woensel is his love for the peculiar, dislike for the easy route and inborn tendency towards the paradoxical.Life
Van Woensel was a student at the
Leiden University . In 1771 he left forSaint Petersburg as an army physician. For an appointment at the Hospital of the Petersburg Cadets he hadJan Hendrik van Kinsbergen to thank. In 1780, he returned to Amsterdam. In 1781, he published "the Present State of Russia", a book that was also published in Russia itself. In 1782, he translated a French work on the abolition of slavery. Unrest drove him and in 1784, he spent one and a half years inConstantinople and published on Turkish society in 1789, an important reason why his work caused so much interest.He joined a group travelling to India, but in Bagdad he decided to travel by himself, because the company bored him. Van Woensel went to
Erzurum and climbedmount Ararat in wintry conditions. BecauseTrabzon on theBlack Sea had been hit by the plague, diverted to theCrimea , where he served in the Russian fleet. He stayed in Sebastopol and describes the visit ofCatharina II of Russia at the newly conquered territory. He published his researches on the plague. In their war against the Russians, the Turks, according to Van Woensel, could benefit from biological warfare, such as deliberately spreading the plague.Back in Amsterdam, he was appointed naval-physician to the
Admiralty of Amsterdam . Van Woensel travelled as a ship doctor with the fleet toSurinam ,Demerara andBerbice . In 1797, he travelled again to Russia as a secret agent, seeing the coronation ofPaul I of Russia on 5 April.In his almanac van Woensel wrote in favor of a divorce procedure and, as an atheist himself, tolerance towards Muslims and Jews. He states that the prime function of the state is to provide work for its inhabitants. The almanac was banned because he wrote under a pseudonym, banned since the state regulation of 1798. In 1802, Van Woensel published a translation of "
Don Quixote ". In 1804 his "Rusland beschouwd" (Russia considered...) was published. Van Woensel called a spade a spade and uttered his opinions on slavery andserfdom . He was critical of Russian policies carried out byGrigori Potemkin , a wind bag according to Van Woensel.Literature
*Waegemans, E. Pieter van Woensel: een Nederlands criticaster in Russische dienst. In: Noord- en Zuid-Nederlanders in Rusland 1703-2003. Baltic Studies (2004), edited by E. Waegemans & H. van Koningsbrugge.
*Wesselo, J.J. (1969) Pieter van Woensel. Alias Aurath-Effendi, Hekim-Bachi. In: Tirade, p. 446-71.External links
* http://www.dbnl.org/tekst/woen003aant01_01/
* http://www.dbnl.org/tekst/bork001nede01/woen003.htm
* http://www.dbnl.org/tekst/knuv001hand03/knuv001hand03_0016.htm
* http://www.home.zonnet.nl/neasden/jcw-qui7.htm
* http://www.amerigo.nl/turkije/9075179030.html
* http://coo.let.rug.nl/magazijn/linkpagina's/literatuur/woensel.html
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