choked off in the wake of the dispute between Nuyts and Hamada at the behest of the Japanese authorities in Edo. All their overtures to the Japanese court failed, until they decided to extradite Pieter Nuyts to Japan for the shōgun to punish him as he saw fit. This was an unprecedented step, and was representative of both the extreme official displeasure with Nuyts in the Dutch hierarchy and the strong desire to recommence Japanese trade. It also demonstrates the relative weakness of the Dutch when confronted by powerful East Asian states such as Japan, and recent historiography has suggested that the Dutch relied on the mercy of these states to maintain their position. A measure of the upset he caused to the Dutch authorities can be gauged by the contents of a letter from VOC Governor-General Anthony van Diemen to VOC headquarters in Amsterdam in 1636, expressing his concern about plans to send a highly paid lawyer to Batavia to draw up a legal code: Nuyts was held under house arrest by the Japanese from 1632 until 1636, when he was released and sent back to Batavia. During this period he passed the time by mining his collection of classical Latin texts by writers such as Cicero, Seneca, and Tacitus to write treatises on subjects such as the elephant and the Nile Delta, exercises which were designed to display rhetorical flair and high style. He also further annoyed Dutch authorities by spending lavish sums on clothing and food, things for which the VOC had to foot the bill. Nuyts was released from captivity in 1636, most likely due to the efforts of François Caron, who knew Nuyts from serving as his interpreter during the unsuccessful Japanese embassy of 1627. On returning from Japan, Nuyts was fined by the VOC, before being dishonorably dismissed from the company and sent back to the Netherlands. Return to the Dutch Republic On returning to his home country he first went back to his city of birth Middelburg, before starting a career as a local administrator in Zeelandic Flanders, and settling in Hulst shortly after the town had been wrested from the Spanish in 1645. He eventually rose to be three times mayor of Hulster Ambacht and twice mayor of Hulst. Thanks to powerful allies in the Middelburg chamber of the VOC he was able to successfully appeal for the cancellation of the fines