What the Study Found
- Dutch East India Company merchant Jeronimus Cornelisz matched all 10 items on a corporate psychopathy checklist, the author reports.
- Stranded in 1629 with about 200 survivors, he replaced his council with allies, split off possible rivals and ruled through fear.
- The paper puts deaths under his rule at 96 to 115; Wiebbe Hayes’s group, on an island with wells, held out against the mutineers.
- One author scored one man from historical accounts, so the result is a reasoned reading of the record, not a clinical test.
IN 1629, on a scatter of coral islands off Western Australia, two groups of stranded men raced to meet a rescue yacht, one meaning to warn its crew and the other to seize the ship.
A new case study argues the toxic boss playbook is nearly as old as the shareholder company, since its author found a stranded 1629 merchant matched all 10 psychopathy checklist items. The merchant was Jeronimus Cornelisz, an under-merchant (a junior manager) with the Dutch East India Company, which was founded in 1602 and is regarded as the first multinational owned by shareholders. He held command only because his superiors had sailed for help, which left him the most senior company man among roughly 200 stranded people.
The company held a state-granted spice monopoly and powers most firms never get: it could employ soldiers, wage war, execute convicts and found colonies. Its shares changed hands in Amsterdam, in what the paper counts as the first stock exchange, which is why the author treats the company as a test of whether corporate psychopaths are a modern phenomenon.
Clive Boddy, who studies corporate psychopathy at Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge, built this historical case study from existing records rather than new data. The backbone is historian Mike Dash’s 2003 account, Batavia’s Graveyard. Boddy adds the expedition commander’s journal, a pastor’s letters, survivor and trial testimony, and forensic studies of skeletons from the island graves. He then scored Cornelisz on a 10-item checklist for spotting psychopathy in managers (the Psychopathy Measure, Management Research Version 2), which Boddy has written up elsewhere.
A Council Packed With Mutineers
Control came first. Cornelisz swapped the lawful members of his ruling council of four for fellow mutineers, then had his supporters sign personal oaths of allegiance to him and to each other.
Next he ordered groups of people onto two other islands, ostensibly to look for fresh water, and left them there. Divide and conquer? That is how Boddy reads it, a way to spread any opposition thinly before it could organize. The paper says he expected the exiles to starve or die of thirst, since both islands looked barren and waterless.
Boddy is blunt about the pattern: “The same playbook we see in toxic workplaces today appears in this case from 1629.” By the paper’s list, the playbook starts with charm to win trust and ends with blame deflected, with loyal backers, removed challengers, divided rivals, a climate of fear and a hunger for power, money and control in between.
On Beacon Island, where the mutineers had their base and supplies were short, Cornelisz told his men the population would have to shrink if they were to survive. After that, 96 to 115 captive passengers and crew were murdered (a figure the paper takes from a 2020 review), and some women were subjected to sexual violence. Boddy, following Dash, reads the killing as calculated: fewer mouths to feed, fewer non-mutineers, a frightened remainder, and recruits made complicit by taking part. Cornelisz mostly ordered the killings rather than carrying them out, leaving that to subordinates, though the paper says he poisoned a baby himself. The pastor’s journal reports survivors living in constant fear of being murdered.
Same Wreck, Different Leader
On West Wallabi Island, meanwhile, the soldiers Cornelisz had left behind were not dying of thirst: under Wiebbe Hayes they found two freshwater wells, seabird eggs, plentiful fish and wallabies. They also fashioned pikes from wreckage, fortified a hill with a small coral fort, and faced four attacks from the mutineers before the rescue yacht Sardam appeared. Hardly the death trap Cornelisz had in mind.
Boddy calls the contrast “effectively a natural experiment in leadership,” with one group prospering while the other descended into murder. It is a loose experiment: by the paper’s own account, Beacon Island had no fresh water beyond rain and salvage, while West Wallabi had wells, so the two leaders did not face quite the same circumstances. There is also a single rater: Boddy scored the case himself, largely from one historian’s book (and a semi-fictionalized account alongside it), against a bar of eight items out of 10 drawn from his own earlier work.
Boddy argues that employers should weigh character, ethics and values when choosing senior leaders. Values-based appraisals, he suggests, may screen out psychopathic candidates. He cites earlier research tying such leaders to bullying, harassment and staff turnover. That evidence comes from modern workplaces, though, not from Cornelisz’s reef.
Boddy names another candidate for the same checklist: Jan Coen, the company’s governor general, described in the paper as ruthless. Whether the company itself was systemically psychopathic, the paper adds, is a question for another study.
Reference
Boddy, C. R. (2026). Asia bound: shareholder capitalism, corporate psychopathy and psychopathic leadership. Asian Journal of Business Ethics. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13520-026-00274-y
- Study type: Historical case study of one individual; peer-reviewed, Asian Journal of Business Ethics (Springer Nature), open access, published 9 September 2026
- Sample size: One individual (Jeronimus Cornelisz) rated on 10 checklist items; about 200 survivors in the surrounding group
- Corpus: Historian Mike Dash’s 2003 account, the commander’s journal, a pastor’s letters, survivor and trial testimony, skeletal studies and one semi-fictionalized account
- Analytic frame: Psychopathy Measure, Management Research Version 2 (10 items), applied retrospectively by the author; the bar for a verdict is eight of 10
- Period covered: The 1629 Batavia shipwreck and mutiny, with background from the company’s founding in 1602
- Funding / conflicts of interest: Funding: not reported in the text reviewed. Competing interests: none declared by the single author
- Data availability: No datasets were generated or analyzed
- Main limitation: Not author-stated: one rater scored one man, largely from a historian’s book, and the two island groups faced different resources, so leadership and geography cannot be separated
FAQ
Can anyone really judge a man’s personality nearly 400 years after his death?
Judging a man’s personality nearly 400 years after his death is not something the paper does with a clinical test. Boddy scored Cornelisz’s recorded behavior against a 10-item checklist, using Dash’s account and other records. That makes the result an interpretation of the record by one rater, not an assessment of the man himself.
Was Wiebbe Hayes a better leader, or did his island just have better resources?
Whether Wiebbe Hayes was a better leader or simply had a better island is something this case cannot settle on its own. Boddy argues that a better leader than Cornelisz would have found the water and kept all the survivors alive, as Hayes’s soldiers did. But by the paper’s own account Beacon Island had no fresh water beyond rain and salvage, while West Wallabi had two wells, so the two groups did not face the same conditions.
Why does the Dutch East India Company matter to a story about corporate psychopaths?
The Dutch East India Company matters because it is regarded as the first multinational owned by shareholders, which lets Boddy ask whether corporate psychopaths are a modern phenomenon. It held a state-granted spice monopoly and could wage war and found colonies. Its shares traded in Amsterdam, in what the paper counts as the first stock exchange.
What should employers take from a case this old?
What employers should take from a case this old is a pointer rather than a proven method. Boddy argues that character, ethics and values deserve more weight when choosing senior leaders, and suggests values-based appraisals may screen out psychopathic candidates. The harms he cites, such as bullying, harassment and staff turnover, come from modern workplace research rather than from Cornelisz’s case.
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