Pieter Nuyts was a Dutch East India Company official born in Zeeland, who served at the Hirado trading post in Japan before being appointed Governor of Formosa in 1627. During his tenure he sought to tighten company control over indigenous villages on the island, and clashed repeatedly with missionary George Candidius over the boundaries between ecclesiastical and administrative authority. In 1628, the Japanese merchant Hamada Yahyoe arrived in Taiwan with armed men and took Nuyts hostage, demanding compensation for grievances against the company — an incident that threw Dutch-Japanese relations into crisis. The East India Company, unwilling to let a single governor's miscalculations endanger its lucrative Japan trade, arrested Nuyts and handed him over to Japanese authorities in 1632 as a diplomatic hostage. He remained imprisoned in Japan for several years before finally being released and returning to the Netherlands. In his later years he served as a member of the Zeeland provincial assembly. Nuyts's diplomatic failures inflicted lasting damage on Dutch commercial ambitions in East Asia, exposing the inherent tension between colonial governance and trade pragmatism that would shadow the VOC throughout its engagement with the region.

• Appointed Governor of Formosa in 1627; clashed with missionary George Candidius over the limits of ecclesiastical authority on the island.

• Taken hostage by Japanese merchant Hamada Yahyoe in 1628; handed to Japan as a diplomatic pawn in 1632 to salvage Dutch trade relations.