The WIC (1621-1674, 1674-1791)

Since the late sixteenth century, several Dutch trading companies were already ac­tively trading to the West Coast of Africa, the Wild Coast between the estuaries of the Amazon and Orinoco in South America, the Salt dunes of Venezuela, Portuguese Brazil, and North America.

The attempts by the States-General to synchronize and organize trade and war­fare in the Atlantic sphere under one umbrella did not work out well in the Atlantic even though this idea had some very eloquent proponents.^[2120] From the beginning there was continuous friction between the privateering-oriented Zeeland members and the trade-oriented Amsterdam participants.

During the Twelve Years' Truce with Spain (1609-1621), Dutch shipping was able to sail safely to Caribbean and Brazilian destinations to load salt and Brazilian sugar, commodities which were in high demand in Europe. After the war began anew, they continued to do so surreptitiously. This explains why Amsterdam trading interests never fully supported the WIC. Yet in 1621 the West India Company was estab­lished with the declared aim of engaging in aggressive privateering to harm Spanish and Portuguese trading interests in the Atlantic, and to gain a niche in the profitable trade between West Africa and the New World. The charter conferred the trade mo­nopoly in the Caribbean and gave jurisdiction over the Atlantic slave trade, South America, the Caribbean, and North America. The formerly profitable Dutch associ­ation with Portuguese merchants in navigation to Brazil was now forbidden. In the first years of its existence the Company almost exclusively concentrated on priva­teering against Spanish and Portuguese shipping or sending predatory raids to the Brazilian coast.

In 1629 The WIC allowed a group of investors to found patroonships in New Netherland, the region in present-day New York where since 1624 Dutch colonists had been settling down to engage in the fur trade with the Iroquois by exchanging pelts for European products. This colony, with Nieuw Amsterdam as its cap­ital, soon spread out as far as the Delaware River to the west and Renselaerswijck (today's Albany) to the north, but was of little economic use.^[2122] Under the treaty of Breda (1667), which concluded the Second Anglo-Dutch War, New Netherland was ceded to the English in exchange for the island of Run in the Banda archipelago (Indonesia) and the plantation region of Suriname.

In 1630 a Dutch fleet under the command of Hendrick Lonck seized the port of Recife in the rich sugar-producing territory of Pernambuco in Brazil, which was baptized New Holland. Shortly afterward, Curasao (1634), Statia, and several other islands in the Caribbean ended up in Dutch hands as well. Yet even after the conquest of the coastal area around Recife, Portuguese settlers continued to offer stiff resist­ance. This heavy fighting became a drawn-out guerrilla war which ruined the sugar plantations. As the WIC lacked funds necessary to revive the colonial economy, and as its shareholders who insisted on quick returns refused to advance funds, the directors found themselves forced to abolish some of the company's privileges and hand out to private shipowners the right to trade in wood and salt. In addition, the States-General extended privateering licenses to private shipowners. It is estimated that the Company lost on average 3 million guilders a year on the Brazilian colony of New Holland.

In order to solve these problems, the WIC directorate appointed Count Johan Maurice of Nassau, a German cousin of the Dutch stadtholder Frederik Hendrik, as governor of Brazil with the promise that he would be provided with a fleet of 32 ships and an army of 7,000 soldiers. That promise never materialized. Johan Maurits asserted that a population policy aimed at promoting Dutch immigration could only succeed through freedom of trade. Any hindrance of trade would lead toward “the road of ruin.” According to him, the Company should derive its in­come primarily from tolls and taxes on local agriculture. In the end it was decided that the Company would keep monopoly rights on the trading in slaves, timber, dyes, weapons, and ammunition, but would leave the other trade activities free. Independent merchants were, however, forced to pay import and export tolls.

Those Portuguese moradores (plantation owners) who accepted Dutch rule were given the opportunity to repair the war damages to their estates. In 1637 Johan Maurice dispatched from Recife a fleet of seven ships to the Gold Coast to conquer the Portuguese fortress Sao Jorge da Mina for the company, which was of eminent use for the slave trade. But, however great a diplomat and patron of the arts and sci­ences Johan Maurice may have been, he was certainly not frugal with the resources at his disposition. The colony and the WIC with it sank ever deeper into debt. At his court, Johan Maurice employed no less than 46 artists and scientists, continually at work recording the flora, fauna, topography, and ethnography of Brazil. Artists like Frans Post and Albert Eeckhout are best remembered for the extraordinary oil paintings of Brazilian landscapes, plantation life, and the redoubtable cannibalistic Tapuya tribes which were bestowed by Johan Maurice upon the Danish king, and still are on display in the National Museum of Copenhagen.

In December 1640 the population of Portugal rose successfully against Spanish rule and elected the duke of Braganza as their new king.

In theory the circle of commerce had been closed: the agenda of securing stra­tegic footholds on the Gold coast, Angola, and Brazil to create the intended trian­gular trade pattern had been accomplished, albeit at a very high cost. The Company began to build up a huge deficit. An organization, which with initial funding from silver fleet booty and its efficient organization had once been able to dispatch large military forces to Brazil and Africa, found itself called to account by the financiers in Amsterdam as it was realized that the WIC investments were not profitable.

When in 1644 the States-General were called upon to renew the charter of the already technically bankrupt WIC, the directors sought state support, claiming that their enterprise had played an invaluable role in the war against Spain by fitting out more than 800 privateers with 67,000 crew members between 1623 and 1636. Over these past years, the WIC had had 24,000 people on its payroll and had spent in all some 45 million guilders. According to the directors, that huge investment had yielded a total booty of 600 seized, burned, or sunk Spanish ships and a total damage to the Spanish crown of 75 million guilders.

King John IV of Portugal, an immensely rich entrepreneur, understood that the remaining Portuguese settlements Bahia and Rio, with their abundant sugar pro­duction, constituted a potential vacca de leite’ for his impoverished country.

The events that eventually led to the Dutch loss of Brazil are a fascinating collec­tion of stratagems, bribery, treason, and dogged perseverance on both sides, and can be related here only briefly. A spontaneous revolt erupted in the spring of 1645, which was partly suppressed by the Dutch authorities and then lingered in the hin­terland of Recife. In the summer of the same year, two Dutch army commanders were bribed and surrendered the important fortress of Pontael to the insurgents. Recife was soon encircled and besieged, with the result that the WIC lost control of most of its territorial possessions in northern Brazil. In 1646 a relief fleet was sent from Holland, but it did not have enough force to dislodge the Portuguese from their positions around Recife.

When the Portuguese king sent an Armada, allegedly to protect Bahia from fur­ther Dutch attacks, the States-General at long last took action: it decided to put an end to the Brazilian revolt. This decision, however, was not welcomed by the Amsterdam merchant elite, who had by then already figured out for themselves that the Brazilian adventure was a losing proposition, and that the profitable carrying trade to the ports of Portugal and Portuguese Brazil was too important and prof­itable to risk a war with that country. Yet as long as Amsterdam was not willing to offer financial succor to the WIC, the political elite of Zeeland province refused to sign the Treaty of Münster which was to put an end to the Eighty Years' War with Spain. The Amsterdam merchants finally gave in and declared themselves ready to subsidize a new relief fleet if their Zeeland colleagues would sign the Treaty of Münster.

In 1648 two major engagements occurred at Guararapes which resulted in crushing defeats that sealed the fate of the Dutch colony. The coup de grace was given four years later. When a Portuguese fleet of 66 sails laid siege to Recife in December 1653, the High Council of Recife decided on January 22, 1654, to surrender.

Under the conditions of the Tabora capitulation, all Dutch citizens and their Portuguese families were allowed either to stay or to leave the country. Among these were some 5.000 Jewish inhabitants of Portuguese origin, some of whom moved to Suriname, where they gave a tremendous boost to sugar production in the years that followed. More than 600 moved to the Dutch Republic, and the rest settled in Curasao and New Amsterdam (New York), where they trusted that they would be allowed freely to practice their religion.^[2124]

In 1674 the first WIC was declared bankrupt. Its successor, the second WIC, started out with a capital outlay of only 1.2 million guilders. The only monopoly that remained was the slave trade centered on Elmina and the trade to Africa, and the exclusive rights to supply the Dutch colonies in the West Indies with slaves. The slave trade showed a triangular pattern between the Netherlands, El Mina castle on the Gold Coast, and the island of Curasao, which functioned as the dis­tribution center of slaves in the Caribbean. The trade in gold and ivory was carried out directly between Dutch ports and the West African coast. Postma has calcu­lated that between 1675 and 1731, 20 million guilders of gold, 3.5 million guilders worth of slaves, and another 2.2 million guilders worth of ivory were exported from Africa. Between 1630 and 1674 the WIC is said to have transported 70,000 African slaves, of whom 23,000 went to Brazil. Until 1740, the second WIC brought another 86,000 slaves to America.^[2125] After the WIC monopoly on the Dutch slave trade was terminated, private entrepreneurs continued this trade until 1795 at an annual rate between 1,000 and 6,000 slaves. The Dutch share in the total aggregate of almost 300 years of slave trade in the Atlantic is assessed at about 10 percent.

Stripped of its monopoly on the slave trade in 1730 and the exclusive right to supply the Dutch colonies in the West Indies with slaves in 1738, the Company henceforth was entrusted with the administration of the possessions on the Gold Coast, the Antilles, and Essequibo and Demerara on the “Wild Coast” of South America. In 1791 the curtain fell for this moribund “body without a soul.”