Baron Casper van Breugel Douglas

Breugel Douglas, Casper baron van (1896-1982)
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© Huygens ING - Amsterdam. Source: GT Witte, 'Breugel Douglas, Casper baron van (1896-1982)', in Biographical Dictionary of the Netherlands . URL:http://resources.huygens.knaw.nl/bwn1880-2000/lemmata/bwn1/bwn4/breugel [12-11-2013]

BREUGEL DOUGLAS, Casper baron van (1896-1982)
Breugel Douglas, Casper baron van , diplomat (Vevey (Switzerland) 5-1-1896 - Cannes (France) 10-8-1982). Son of Robert baron van Breugel Douglas and Vera Vassilievna Khlebnikoff. Married on 7-8-1928 with Aga Ioana Maria Berendei. From this marriage 1 daughter was born.image of Breugel Douglas, Casper baron van

Casper van Breugel Douglas, a descendant of a Brabant regent family that was ennobled in 1815, attended the five-year HBS in The Hague and, after obtaining his final diploma, was appointed to the Department of Foreign Affairs. In July 1921 he took the exam for embassy attaché and subsequently attended the naval conference in Washington (1921/1922) as one of the secretaries of the Dutch delegation. He then worked at the legations in Brussels (1922/1923) and Constantinople (1923). In November 1923 Van Breugel Douglas was promoted to embassy secretary, in which rank he was successively attached to the Dutch representations in Rio de Janeiro (1923-1926), Bucharest (1927/1928) - where he married the daughter of a Romanian court dignitary -, Berlin (1928/1929), Copenhagen (1929/1930), Ankara (1930-1932) and Washington (1933-1937). In the latter post he worked since February 1934 in the rank of embassy councilor. In May 1937 he was appointed extraordinary envoy and plenipotentiary minister in Athens.

Van Breugel Douglas' career thus proceeded in the usual manner: his promotions came after the required number of years, albeit with some delay. He proved himself to be a typical representative of the aristocratic mentality that prevailed in the Dutch diplomatic service in the pre-war years. He himself once remarked that tact, a sense of duty and intellectual preparedness were requirements for the proper functioning of the corps. In his eyes, people with an aristocratic background were therefore the most suitable for this. It was precisely such views that would lead to clashes with diplomatic personnel of a lower origin in his further career. In addition, Van Breugel Douglas turned out to be a rather headstrong person. The ambassador liked to be in high company and, not without pride, mentioned a number of officer's and knight's crosses he had received.

After the German occupation of Greece in April 1941, Van Breugel Douglas had to leave his post in Athens. At the end of December, he was sent to China, because he was the only one immediately available for this diplomatic post at that time. A major disadvantage was that his knowledge of the problems of Dutch-Chinese relations was minimal. That is why, on his way to his new destination, he followed a crash course in Batavia, which was mainly intended to supplement his knowledge of the problems resulting from the presence of a large number of Chinese in the Dutch East Indies. Given the political divisions to which China had fallen prey in those years, Van Breugel Douglas was instructed to carefully prepare a few visits to the Japanese-occupied cities of Shanghai and Peking. He also had to maintain unofficial contacts with the puppet regime established by the Japanese under the leadership of Wang Ching-wei in Nanking. But primarily the envoy had to concentrate on the relationship with the Nationalist government under the leadership of Chiang Kai-shek in Chungking.

Before Van Breugel Douglas had properly settled in Chungking, an important part of his instructions had already been overtaken by events. With the capitulation of the Dutch East Indies in