His father, Cornelis Jan Witsen, was burgomaster, head bailiff and administrator of the Dutch West India Company.

It can be compared with Doctrine for Naval Architecture by fellow-shipbuilder Anthony Dean, a mayor of Harwich and also a mentor of Peter the Great.

[5] It led to a correspondence between him and Peter the Great on modernising the Imperial Russian Navy, then backward by Western European standards.

This led to an order for warships from Amsterdam shipyards in return for an ukase (negotiated by Witsen) on Dutch-Russian trade, guaranteeing to supply the Republic with grain, wood, talc, tar and skins.

In 1692 he published a compendium titled "Noord en Oost Tartarye", describing Siberia and the surrounding areas, though without literary references.

The second enlarged edition, a bulky book, also written in the 17th century Dutch, presents a rather complicated mixture of various texts with encyclopaedic details.

In the text, for instance, we find lists of 900 Georgian and 700 Kalmyk words and illustrations of the writing systems of Tibetan, Manchu and Mongolian languages.

In 1688, Witsen was visited and invited more than once to discuss William III's proposed crossing to England, but he had great doubts and did not know what to advise.

After the crossing went ahead, Witsen went to London in the next year to find a way of meeting the costs of 7,301,322 guilders the city of Amsterdam had incurred in supporting it.

[8]: 251–252 Already in his youth Witsen started to collect Siberian curiosities and artworks, gathering corals, lacquer, books, paintings, weapons, porcelain, insects, seashells, stuffed animals and precious stones into his house on Herengracht on the Golden Bend.

Witsen died in Amsterdam and was buried in Egmond aan den Hoef, not far from his country house, called "Tijdverdrijf" (=to pleasurably pass time).

His nephew Nicolaes Witsen (II) (1682-1746) inherited his library but was only moderately interested; 2,300 books were auctioned in 1728 and 1747; most in Latin, Dutch and French.

[16] Nicolaes Witsen (III) the younger (1709-1780) inherited the manuscripts collected by several family members; sold at auction in 1761.

[17] In 1886 did it become known that copies of Nicolaas Witsen's diary and notes were kept in a Paris library;[18] 300 years later his travelogue to Moscovy could be published.