[1] The early life of Hogendorp had been that of a wealthy child, but when he was 12 years old, his father lost his wealth and was forced to take the family to the Dutch East Indies where he got a position with the VOC, thanks to a recommendation from stadtholder William V, Prince of Orange.

The two boys were thanks to the stadtholder's wife princess Wilhelmina placed at the Prussian Cadet Corps in Berlin, where they got a military education.

Meanwhile, the hostilities with Great Britain had ceased, so the expedition sailed on to the Dutch East Indies, where Hogendorp met his father for the last time.

He put them down in a number of letters to his brother Gijsbert Karel, in which he decried the situation in Java in the waning days of the VOC.

He proposed extensive changes to the structure of government and finance on Java, including property rights for the Javanese, transforming the 'bupati' into a salaried bureaucracy, and reforming the taxation system, many of which foreshadowed the ideas of Herman Willem Daendels and Stamford Raffles.

They conspired to appoint Johannes Siberg, the son-in-law of Alting, as third Commissioner-General, effectively neutralizing Frijkenius who did not want to join the clique, and took control of the Dutch East Indies.

[5][6] Back in Patria the Asiatic Council of the Uitvoerend Bewind made an attempt to have him indicted, to which Hogendorp wrote an apologia, entitled Verdediging aan het Committé tot den O.I.

Pointing to British successes in Bengal, van Hogendorp suggested that by redistributing land to the common Javanese "serf", there would be much more individual incentive to work and thus increased productivity, making the colony more profitable.

These ideas drew the attention of the Asiatic Council of the Staatsbewind of the Batavian Republic, which had taken over from the now defunct Heren XVII (directors of the VOC).

[7] The draft report, which bears some similarity to the ideas of Abbé Raynal, was rejected by Nederburgh and the old VOC officials who believed it too radical, and who realized that the Dutch depended on the very indigenous rulers, or Regents that the plan would essentially undermine.

Furthermore, they held firm to the belief that the colonies existed as mercantile assets, to be exploited for the benefit of the chartered company it was,[j] and rejected any alternatives that would give more rights to either the natives or competitors from other nations.

[7] Nevertheless, a few years later during the administration of Herman Willem Daendels[l] as Governor-General, largely on account of both the "bericht" and the state of war the nation found itself in, Hogendorp's ideas proved influential again.

[8] After the adoption of the watered-down "Charter" a vacancy appeared to open up in the government of the Indies: Governor-General Johannes Siberg's position had become untenable and the Staatsbewind looked for a replacement.

Hogendorp did succeed in opening up the navigation through the Dardanelles to the Black Sea for Batavian shipping, but a project to have Russia guarantee the sovereignty of the Republic (in view of the threat of Imperial France), remained unsuccessful.

The new king saw the talents of Hogendorp and appointed him member of the new Council of State, and made him president of its Affairs of War section in 1806.

[n] His sojourn was shortened by the invasion of Austria by Napoleon in the course of the War of the Fifth Coalition, which led to the flight of the Austrian Emperor Francis I from Vienna in November 1809, which prompted Hogendorp to return home post-haste.

He had to rule with an iron fist to be able to supply the French army, and to organize an auxiliary Lithuanian corps for the Grande Armée.

[11] In early December 1812, Louis Henri Loison was sent with a reserve division of 10,000 newly drafted German and Italian boys to help extricate the remains of the Grande Armée in its retreat.

At night-time, the soldiers were camping on the ground and the temperature dropped to minus 35 degrees Celsius, which proved catastrophic for them.

An attack of podagra initially laid him low, but he soon was sufficiently recuperated that he could rejoin Napoleon before the battle of Bautzen on 20 May 1813.

[13] When Napoleon escaped from Elba, beginning the Hundred Days, Hogendorp made the mistake of immediately traveling to France to offer his services.

[16] And "... six months after the publication of this play, with his name to it, he attempted to have it represented on the stage at The Hague, on 20 March 1801; but the East Indies Gentry, not thinking it proper to exhibit the most illustrious actions of themselves and their noble ancestors upon a stage to vulgar European spectators, went to the play provided with little half-penny whistles and trumpets, and kept up such a tremendous whistling and trumpeting from the very moment the curtain began to be drawn up, that not a syllable of the play could be heard – and, if these Gentlemen could, they would also have extinguished the candles, to keep in darkness what themselves and their ancestors never intended for the light.