Dissertation_A Bick_May 25 - DataSpace at Princeton University

This formulation, which must previously have been discussed and rejected, broke
decisively with the structure of the VOC. That company was accountable to the States General
and met with its representatives at least once a year at the so-called Haags Besoigne
(Consultations in The Hague), but its management was in the exclusive hands of merchants
based in the maritime cities of Holland and Zeeland. 25 By placing one of its representatives on
the WIC's board of directors, the States General relinquished this more passive, consultative role
and sought instead to assume an active role in shaping company policy. Once again, the
negotiations faltered, but an important shift nevertheless had been registered in the relationship
between company and state.
For Willem Usselincx, who began drafting an alternative charter shortly thereafter, this
formulation was totally unacceptable: including a delegate appointed by the States General on
the WIC’s board, he believed, would only confuse the roles of merchant and statesman, without
adequately providing the company with the political support it would need. Usselincx’s draft
proposed instead that the WIC be governed by a Raedt van Indien, an institution transparently
modeled on contemporary Iberian practice. Founded in 1524, Spain's el Real y Supremo Consejo
de Indias (Supreme Council for the Indies) was the central organ by which the King
administered his American possessions. A sprawling bureaucracy, it was responsible for all
matters relating to war, trade, and the administration of justice. And at its summit sat a group of
eight well-connected noblemen and lawyers who reported directly to the King. 26
Usselincx was under no illusions that such an institution could be precisely replicated in
the United Provinces, which was after all a Republic rather than a monarchy. Instead, he
proposed a bi-cameral structure. Article 39 of his draft proposed a smaller, nine-person version
25 F. S. Gaastra, The Dutch East India Company: Expansion and Decline (Zutphen: Walburg Pers, 2003).
26 Stafford Poole, Juan de Ovando: Governing the Spanish Empire in the Reign of Phillip II (Norman: University of
Oklahoma Press, 2004).
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