August Frederik Beutler (c. 1728 in Dinkelsbühl – ? in Cape Town) was an ensign (sergeant 1747–49, ensign 1749–54) in the employ of the Dutch East India Company who headed an epic 1752 reconnaissance expedition lasting 8 months from 29 February to November, eastward from Cape Town as far as the present-day site of Butterworth. Beutler wrote a comprehensive account of his pioneering expedition which was first published in 1896 by the historian George McCall Theal and in 1922 by the Dutch historian Everhardus Cornelis Godée Molsbergen (1875–1940). The mandate of the expedition was to report on the tribes living along the route, the possibility of trade and on anything else that might be profitable to the Dutch East India Company.