Hendrik Pieter Nicolaas Muller

Hendrik Pieter Nicolaas Muller (2 April 1859 – 11 August 1941) was a Dutch entrepreneur, diplomat, and publicist who started his career as a businessman, trading with East and West Africa. In his mid-twenties he travelled to Zanzibar, Mozambique, and South Africa for business purposes, but showed himself a keen ethnographer as well. In 1896, he was first appointed consul and later consul general for the Orange Free State. Muller held this position all through the Second Boer War and his high-profile performance as European representative for this Boer republic won him considerable notoriety. After the Treaty of Vereeniging was signed in 1902, Muller retired to a life of travelling and writing for some years, making Muller a household name with his travel books. In 1919, the Dutch government appointed him envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary to Romania, and later to Czechoslovakia. Muller was a prolific writer. Over the course of his life he published well over two hundred articles, brochures, and books about his travels, South Africa and the Boers, and Dutch foreign policy. Muller gathered a large fortune with well appointed private investments. He bequeathed his considerable wealth to a private fund in support of academic research and cultural heritage. Biography