Jean Baptiste August Kessler

Jean Baptiste August Kessler (Batavia, 15 December 1853 - Naples, Italy 14 December 1900) was a Dutch entrepreneur and oil explorer who was largely responsible for the growth and development of the Royal Dutch Petroleum Co., now known as Royal Dutch Shell.

Kessler, who was known by his middle name August, was born in a family of 12 children, four of whom died in infancy. He became managing director of the Royal Dutch nearly from its inception. Aeilko Jans Zijlker acquired the original oil concession in Indonesia and the "Royal" imprimatur but died suddenly of a tropical disease in 1890. The board of directors turned to Kessler, who was a son-in-law of Geldolph Adriaan De Lange, one of the directors, to head a committee of inquiry into whether the faltering enterprise was still viable. He took the post with the understanding he would be made managing director and run the company. Kessler had vast experience in the Dutch East Indies, having abandoned his studies at the Delft University at the age of 23 to seek his fortune there.

Kessler literally built the Royal Dutch almost from scratch, under very difficult circumstances: "an inclement climate, a hostile jungle and ineradicable lalang (sharp, tough grass), local crews difficult to manage, equipment that did not fit, tropical diseases, operational set-backs such as fires, and absence of adequate geological know-how", wrote J. Ph. Poley in Eroica: The Quest for Oil in Indonesia (1850-1898). "There were also financial, regulatory and procedual hurdles to overcome...The Company survived mainly thanks to the turn-around effected by Jean Baptiste August Kessler

The hard work amid difficult surroundings led to Kessler's death one day shy of his 47th birthday. In 1898, oil production in the overworked oil field dropped precipitously. Kessler managed to get a concession for a new oil field from the local Sumatran king and in 1900 he went back to Dutch East Indies one last time. When he arrived he was sick and after only a few days he telegraphed the head office in The Hague that he needed to recuperate and would take the next boat back. He died from a heart attack when his ship made port in Naples, the first stop after the Suez Canal.

Kessler, according to Jonker and van Zanten, was "really Royal Dutch's founding father, the man who created the business and sustained it against the odds, perhaps even against economic common sense. His absolute firmness of purpose had built solid foundations" before his untimely death from exhaustion in the effort to create the nascent company.

After his death, he was succeeded by a man he had hired as his deputy, Henri Deterding, in 1901. Deterding would later declare, "As a pioneer in oil, the part played by J.B. August Kessler stands second to none."

August and his wife Margo had four sons and two daughters. One of their sons, Jean Baptiste August "Guus" Kessler Jr., eventually became director-general of Royal Dutch Shell after Deterding resigned in 1936; he also played tennis for the Netherlands in the 1906 Olympics in Athens. Their oldest son, Geldolph Adriaan Kessler, also worked for the Royal Dutch before he left to help form and run the Hoogovens, the Dutch steel company. Dolf Kessler and his brother Boelie Kessler played football for the Dutch national side.