Dissertation_A Bick_May 25 - DataSpace at Princeton University

community saw greater profits in private trade, merchants and magistrates in Zeeland supported
the company's monopoly as a means to protect their share in colonial markets where Amsterdam
would otherwise enjoy considerable advantages. 15 These accounts interpret the debate primarily
in terms of the ways that it exposed inter-regional conflicts within the Dutch Republic. In a
forthcoming article, Arthur Weststeijn argues that its significance was far greater. By tracing a
"crooked historical route" from pamphlets written in the 1630s to Pieter de la Court and the abbé
Raynal, he suggests that the debate “played an important role in the development of free trade
ideology throughout the Enlightenment.” 16
Weststeijn's route begins with an examination of De la Court's critique of monopolies in
the 1660s as being antithetical to commercial liberty. In the specific case of the WIC, according
to De la Court, the company's emphasis on “Princely wars” and “Monarchical conquests,” rather
than free trade, was largely responsible for the loss of Dutch Brazil. 17 Had the trade been open,
he argued, the colony might have thrived:
By an open trade, and consequently well-founded colonies, not only the mighty Lands of Brazil,
Guinea, Angola, São Tomé, &c, could have easily been defended with small expenses against all
foreign aggression, but, which is very considerable, we would have been able to carry on an immense
trade with our own Nation, without fear that a foreign Potentate would seize our ships, goods, or
debts. 18
The dissemination of De la Court's writings throughout Europe, and especially in England and
France, brought this assessment to the attention of, among others, both Raynal and Adam Smith,
who blamed the WIC monopoly for the “slow and languid” progress of Dutch colonial
15 Van Dillen, “De West-Indische Compagnie, het Calvinism en de Politiek.”
16 Weststeijn, “Dutch Brazil and the Making of Free Trade Ideology,” 1–2. This text will appear in the forthcoming
collection The Legacy of Dutch Brazil, edited by Michiel van Groesen. Cited with permission of the author.
17 Ibid., 7.
18 Cited in ibid. The translation is Weststeijn’s.
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