Although the incidence seems higher, in the general population only about one person in a hundred is a psychopath: this percentage, however, rises to 4% if we look at the corporate context. The so-called corporate psychopathsliterally “corporate psychopaths” or psychopathic managersare individuals who use charm to gain the trust of employees, surround themselves with a group of loyalists, create a climate of terror in the company, sow discord among rivals, eliminate those who challenge them and avoid taking the blame for their actions, pursuing power, money and control above all else.
Today we have several examples of this type of leader (Silicon Valley is full of them): but which was the first in history?
According to a study published in theAsian Journal of Business Ethicsthe name of the first psychopathic manager in history is Jeronimus Cornelisz, a Dutchman who in 1629 killed over 100 people who survived the shipwreck of the ship he was traveling on. There Bataviaa vessel of the Dutch West India Company, was supposed to arrive in Java, Indonesia, but was shipwrecked on one of the islands of the Houtman Abrolhos archipelago, off the coast of Australia.
The ship’s officers took a rowboat and set sail for Java to seek help, leaving the survivors (between 180 and 250 people, according to estimates) without a guide. The submerchant Jeronimus Cornelisz immediately filled that power vacuum, establishing a regime of terror.
Identikit of a psychopathic leader of the seventeenth century
Even before sailing to Java, Cornelisz had shown some signs of mental imbalance: married and with a child, he had left the child with a wet nurse sui generis – a prostitute suffering from syphilis. When the child died of syphilis, he abandoned his wife to set sail for the Indies.
Before the shipwreck he was already plotting a mutiny to steal the treasure on board; once on the Australian island he immediately tried to get rid of Wiebbe Hayes, a potential rival, by sending him with other people to nearby islands with the excuse of looking for water.
Unfortunately for him, however, Hayes and his companions found water and food, and survived. Meanwhile Cornelisz, self-appointed captain general, had decided to kill over 100 people, including women and children, to “reduce the number of mouths to feed”; as if that wasn’t enough, he made a girl his sexual slave by repeatedly raping her. Fortunately, Cornelisz was eventually captured and, upon the officers’ return, tortured and executed.
Past and present leadership
By analyzing Cornelisz’s behavior with a model for assessing psychopathy in management developed by study author Clive Roland Boddy, all the characteristics associated with psychopathic bosses emerged.
«It was a natural experiment in leadership: a group (led by Hayes, Ed) prospered, while the other (led by Cornelisz) has fallen into an abyss of death and abuse”, comments the author.
The case of Batavia it is certainly extreme, but it is true that the mental health of employees is very linked to the ways of doing things of their bosses: this is demonstrated by the data relating to Japan, where in 2025 over a thousand cases of work-related mental disorders were recognized − 76 resulting in suicides or attempted suicides and 222 caused by physical or psychological mistreatment by superiors and colleagues.
