When was abel tasman born and died

Abel Janszoon Tasman — October 10, , was a Dutch seafarer, explorer, and merchant. He was the first known European expedition to reach the islands of Van Diemen's Land now Tasmania and New Zealand and to sight the Fiji islands, which he did in Tasman was one of a wave of European seafarers and explorers whose journeys, navigation skills and map making aided both the colonial and the commercial enterprises of the expanding imperial powers.

The Dutch Empire emerged as the third largest. The Enlightenment had placed humanity at the center of the world, which people now wanted to understand scientifically and geographically to place resources known and yet to be discovered at the service of humankind, to make human life happier. Little thought at this stage was given to the rights or happiness of the animal world or even of the indigenous people whose lands were settled as a result of colonial expansion.

The island that Tasman claimed on December 3, , later known as Tasmania, would become a British colony. Its Aborigine population was decimated at the hands of the European interlopers.

What did abel tasman discover

While Tasman can not be blamed for this genocide , it represents an example of the negative aspect of the colonial enterprise, which Tasman's voyages helped make possible. However, from the perspective of a value based understanding of history , positively, colonialism also joined the world together. Humanity can only develop a new consciousness of the inter-connectedness and sanctity of all life, of shared responsibilities to steward, protect and preserve the planet , because people across the globe were first made aware that they all belong to the same human family.

Abel Tasman was born in in Lutjegast, the Netherlands , a village in the province of Groningen. He was first heard of at the end of when, as a widower living at Amsterdam, he married Jannetjie Tjaers. He was shortly afterwards in the service of the Dutch United East India Company and by was mate of a ship trading from Batavia now Jakarta to the Moluccas.

In July of that year he was appointed master of a small ship, the Mocha.