Joachim Rendorp

Joachim Rendorp was born in Amsterdam on 19 January 1728, the son of the brewer and burgomaster Pieter Rendorp and Margaretha Calkoen. He studied law, became an alderman in 1756 and married Wilhelmina Hildegonda Schuijt that same year. Only one of their five children survived to adulthood.

A city at war

In 1781 Rendorp was first chosen as one of Amsterdam's four burgomasters, and he served many more times, up to the year of his death in 1792. It was a turbulent time. Amsterdam merchants had held secret talks with the rebel Americans, and when the British found out in 1780 they declared war on the Republic: the Fourth Anglo-Dutch War. Rendorp tried to appease the British ambassador, without success. In 1781 he received Emperor Joseph II, who was visiting Amsterdam incognito.

Caught in the middle

Rendorp belonged to the States Party and opposed the stadtholder, but he also opposed the democratic Patriots, a reform movement of the 1780s. In 1781 he led an Amsterdam delegation to Stadtholder William V to demand the dismissal of his powerful adviser, the Duke of Brunswick. The stadtholder was furious. Patriot newspapers in turn attacked Rendorp for his moderation, and in 1785 he had journalists and publishers fined and jailed.

In May 1787, during riots in the city, Patriots looted his house. After the Prussian invasion and the fall of Amsterdam on 10 October 1787 he returned to the city government, and he was burgomaster again in 1789, 1790 and 1792.

Art lover

Rendorp and his wife collected art, including ten flower still lifes by Jan van Huysum, and had their portraits made by Jean-Étienne Liotard and Tischbein. In 1782 he bought Joannes de Mol's porcelain factory. His memoirs of the English war appeared in 1792. He died in Amsterdam on 21 September 1792.