Scientists May Have Identified the World’s First Corporate Psychopath

One shipwreck, two leaders, and a horrifying lesson about the abuse of power.

Imagine a master of office politics. He charms his way into power, surrounds himself with loyalists, and pushes aside anyone who might challenge his authority. He manipulates his followers, rules through fear, and takes no responsibility when things go wrong. Cross him, and you have much to lose.

It sounds like a particularly nightmarish boss. Except this one didn’t just ruin careers. He killed people.

Corporate psychopath

The year is 1629. The man is Jeronimus Cornelisz, a Dutch merchant who seized control of a group of shipwreck survivors stranded on a tiny island off Western Australia. Under his leadership, more than 100 men, women, and children were murdered.

Nearly 400 years later, a researcher argues that Cornelisz may be the earliest identifiable example of a “corporate psychopath” working for a multinational company.

In a new study, management researcher Clive Boddy of Anglia Ruskin University examined historical accounts of Cornelisz’s behavior and compared them with 10 traits associated with workplace psychopathy. According to Boddy, the merchant displayed all 10, including manipulation, superficial charm, deceitfulness, and a lack of remorse.

But there’s another fascinating side to this grisly story.

On a nearby island, another shipwreck survivor faced the same catastrophe. Rather than terrorizing his followers, he organized them to survive and eventually helped bring Cornelisz’s murderous regime crashing down.

The contrast offers a remarkable glimpse into the psychology of leadership, and just how differently people can respond when given extraordinary power over others.

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A shipwreck and a powegrab

The Batavia had left the Netherlands in October 1628 on its maiden voyage to the Dutch East Indies, carrying hundreds of passengers and crew, merchandise, and chests of silver coins. It belonged to the Dutch East India Company, one of the world’s first multinational shareholder-owned corporations. Long before the modern office existed, this enormous trading enterprise already had shareholders, executives, and fierce internal power struggles.

Its destination was the company’s trading headquarters on Java. But trouble was brewing long before the ship reached Asia.

The expedition’s commander, Francisco Pelsaert, and its skipper, Ariaen Jacobsz, bitterly disliked each other. Cornelisz joined forces with Jacobsz, and together they plotted to seize the ship and its riches.

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The ship followed a fast route across the Indian Ocean, propelled by powerful westerly winds. However, in the early hours of June 4, 1629, the Batavia struck a coral reef in the Houtman Abrolhos archipelago, off Western Australia. The crew couldn’t free it. Dozens drowned, while the survivors scrambled onto small, exposed islands with almost no food or fresh water.

With supplies running dangerously low, Pelsaert, Jacobsz, and 46 others departed in the ship’s small, overloaded longboat to search for fresh water. After failing to find it on the nearby islands and Australian coast, they undertook a desperate voyage to Java to summon help. Hundreds of survivors were left behind.

So Cornelisz saw an opportunity.

As the most senior company official remaining, he assumed command and quickly turned the makeshift settlement into his personal kingdom. He replaced members of his ruling council with conspirators, forced followers to swear loyalty, and dispatched potential opponents to other islands, ostensibly to search for water. He even awarded himself the grand title of “Captain-General.”

Cornelisz had been plotting a mutiny before the shipwreck, and now he had an entire community at his mercy. He intended to maintain that power until a rescue ship arrived — and then seize that vessel, too.

A reign of terror and an unexpected resistance

Cornelisz’s followers collected valuables and supplies, but that was just the start of it.

Claiming that food and water could not sustain everyone, he ordered a killing campaign. Estimates of the death toll vary, but historical accounts document the murder of more than 100 people. Some women also endured sexual violence. He generally left the killing to subordinates, but demanded their complicity and ruled the remaining survivors through fear.

The murders served several purposes. Fewer survivors meant fewer mouths to feed, but also fewer potential opponents. And by forcing his followers to participate in the violence, Cornelisz made them accomplices who had much to fear if the authorities ever returned.

Yet the soldiers he had marooned elsewhere hadn’t died as intended. In fact, they were about to become his worst nightmare.

The group, led by a soldier named Wiebbe Hayes, had been sent away under the pretense of searching for water. Cornelisz apparently expected the men to perish on the barren-looking islands.

Instead, Hayes and his companions discovered two freshwater wells, along with plenty of fish, seabird eggs, seals, and wallabies. They had stumbled upon something the murderous merchant had failed to find: enough resources to survive.

Two groups

One survivor reportedly believed there was enough food to sustain everyone for a thousand years. It was almost certainly an exaggeration, but it captured just how different life had become for the two groups.

As survivors escaped Cornelisz’s massacres and joined them, Hayes’s group grew to 46 men and a boy. By then, word of the atrocities had reached them. Hayes organized the men into a fighting force, fashioning makeshift pikes from shipwreck debris, collecting chunks of coral to hurl at attackers, and building a crude stone fort on a hill. He also posted sentries to watch for approaching enemies.

Then, 20 of Cornelisz’s men attempted to invade. Hayes’s defenders stood their ground, forcing the attackers to retreat without bloodshed. A second assault failed, too. During a third confrontation, Cornelisz attempted to use negotiations as cover for a surprise attack. But the defenders turned the tables, killing several mutineers and capturing Cornelisz himself.

The ordeal still wasn’t over. The remaining mutineers launched another attack, this time armed with muskets. Some of Hayes’s defenders were killed. Just as the resistance appeared to be in serious trouble, a rescue ship appeared on the horizon.

Both sides raced to reach it first. The mutineers hoped to hijack the vessel, while Hayes’s men desperately needed to warn its captain. Hayes’s group won the race, exposing the plot and bringing the mutiny to an end. Cornelisz was tried and hanged, while Hayes was rewarded with a promotion.

The episode offered a startling contrast between leaders who treated people as expendable and those who organized them to survive.

“The same playbook we see in toxic workplaces today appears in this case from 1629,” Clive Boddy, a management researcher at Anglia Ruskin University, said in a statement.

A centuries-old problem

The same shipwreck had produced two very different kinds of leaders. One used his authority to exploit and terrorize the people around him. The other organized his followers, found resources, and protected those who depended on him.

In a new paper, Boddy compared Cornelisz’s reported behavior with 10 traits in a workplace psychopathy measure. Drawing heavily on historian Mike Dash’s Batavia’s Graveyard, along with eyewitness accounts and trial records, he concluded that Cornelisz displayed all 10, from superficial charm and habitual deceit to lack of remorse and refusal to accept blame.

For Boddy, the remarkable thing isn’t simply that Cornelisz was extraordinarily cruel. It’s how recognizable his methods of obtaining and retaining power appear today.

He cultivated loyal insiders, removed potential challengers, divided people who might otherwise have opposed him, and created a climate in which disobedience carried terrifying consequences. These are extreme versions of behaviors that researchers studying abusive corporate leadership still recognize.

Boddy has examined similar patterns in modern organizations. In an earlier case study of a British charity, managers described a chief executive whose bullying leadership coincided with departing staff and falling organizational performance.

More broadly, a 2026 review of workplace studies found that psychopathic traits were associated with bullying, although results varied substantially between studies.

The massacre itself is well documented. Archaeologists have recovered victims’ remains from Beacon Island, and forensic analysis has documented injuries inflicted with sharp weapons.

But the psychological assessment is another matter. Boddy assessed historical descriptions, not a living person, and the analysis cannot establish Cornelisz’s mental state with clinical certainty. Nor were Hayes’s and Cornelisz’s groups randomly assigned to identical conditions: their access to water and food differed.

What the shipwreck does offer is a chilling illustration of how leaders can shape a group’s fate. Nearly 400 years later, the methods Boddy identifies remain disturbingly familiar — even if modern workplaces are worlds away from the horrors of a shipwrecked island.

The study was published in the Asian Journal of Business Ethics.