Jan Wolters van de Poll

Johan Wolters van de Poll was born in Amsterdam on 2 June 1759 into a wealthy merchant family; his father was among other things a director of the Dutch East India Company. He studied law at Leiden and took his doctorate in 1779.

An Orangist

His career moved fast. From 1781 he was a captain in the civic guard, in 1785 he became schout of Amsterdam, the city's head of police and justice, and a director of the Dutch West India Company. In 1787, after the Prussian invasion restored the stadtholder's power, he joined the city council. Van de Poll supported the House of Orange, and that cost him dearly when the Patriots took power with French support in January 1795. He was dismissed from all his Amsterdam offices.

For more than ten years he stayed on the sidelines. When he began to doubt that the Netherlands would ever be independent again, he accepted a post after all: in 1806 King Louis Napoleon, Emperor Napoleon's brother, appointed him to the national legislature.

Mayor under the king

In 1808 Van de Poll became mayor of Amsterdam. It was a remarkable year: King Louis moved to Amsterdam and took over the city hall on Dam Square as his royal palace, so the city government suddenly had a king as its neighbour. That same year Van de Poll received the Grand Cross of the Order of the Union.

He was a close friend of the French envoy La Rochefoucauld, who pushed for the Netherlands to be annexed by France, and this made King Louis distrust him. In 1810 the Kingdom of Holland was indeed absorbed into France. Van de Poll became a member of the Imperial Senate in Paris and, in 1811, a count. Early in 1811 he handed over the running of Amsterdam.

After the French left in 1813 he held no further office. He died in Amsterdam on 30 January 1826. He was married to Bregje Agatha de Smeth van Deurne.