Dissertation_A Bick_May 25 - DataSpace at Princeton University

commercial and geographic information. 25 If, as Simon Schama has shown, the Dutch elite
would become increasingly uneasy with their worldly success, in the first decade of the
seventeenth century they showed every intention “to become as rich as the Spaniards.” 26
Chartered companies played a central role in this process. 27 Already in the early 1590s
companies were organized in Amsterdam, Delft, Enkhuizen, Middelburg, and Rotterdam to trade
in Asian spices. In 1602 the States General brought these companies together to form the
Vereenigde Oost Indische Compagnie (United East India Company, or VOC), a decision
intended to limit competition, strengthen the Republic, and increase pressure on Portuguese
rivals. 28 Discussions to create a company for the West Indies began around the same time, but
were postponed as a condition of the Twelve Years’ Truce with Spain (1609-1621). The WIC
therefore was not established until June of 1621. Fort Nassau, several miles east of the
Portuguese stronghold of Elmina on the Gold Coast, and the settlement at New Netherland on the
Hudson River, both established in the 1610s, were also folded into the new company. 29
Just as the Treaty of Tordesillas had divided the world between East and West, the States
General effectively divided the world between the two chief Dutch companies. However, as
many historians have noted, there were important differences between the VOC and the WIC. 30
25
Israel, Dutch Primacy in World Trade, 1585-1740; Maurice Aymard, ed., Dutch Capital and World Capitalism:
Capitalisme Hollondais et Capitalisme Mondial (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982).
26
Simon Schama, The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age (New York:
Knopf, 1987). The quotation is from the French envoy Buzanval, cited in Violet Barbour, Capitalism in Amsterdam
in the Seventeenth Century, The Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science LXVII
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1950), 26.
27
Israel, Dutch Primacy in World Trade, 1585-1740.
28
On the VOC, see F. S. Gaastra, The Dutch East India Company: Expansion and Decline (Zutphen: Walburg Pers,
2003).
29
Enthoven, Riches from Atlantic Commerce: Dutch Transatlantic Trade and Shipping, 1585-1817; Simon Hart,
The Prehistory of the New Netherland Company: Amsterdam Notarial Records of the First Dutch Voyages to the
Hudson (Amsterdam: City of Amsterdam Press, 1959); J. K. J. Jonge, De Oorsprong van Neerland’s Bezittingen op
de Kust van Guinea (’s-Gravenhage, 1871).
30
Pieter C. Emmer, “The West India Company, 1621-1791: Dutch or Atlantic?,” in Companies and Trade, ed.
Leonard Blussé and Femme Gaastra (Leiden: Leiden University Press, 1981), 71–95; Henk den Heijer, De
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