Dissertation_A Bick_May 25 - DataSpace at Princeton University

over trade was simply the projection of greater central authority over colonial affairs in the
United Provinces itself. The free traders offered no critique of slavery, and many, including De
Laet, evidently supported the company's participation in the slave trade. But the whole thrust of
their campaign was predicated on the idea of attracting free settlers, and the conviction that these
settlers—rather than soldiers or slaves—would form the productive bedrock of a colony in which
central authority was relatively weak, both in the colony and at home.
After 1638, when the States General re-opened the trade to Brazil, the free traders
shifted their attention to Africa. While their initial arguments addressed the need to deliver more
slaves to Brazil than the company had been able to do, and thus formed part of a potential answer
to the general question of how to build the colony, they came to focus with increasing
transparency on profit itself; it was not for nothing that De Laet wrote of the “lucrative trade in
blacks” in his Iaerlyck Verhael, published in November 1644. 163 This focus took concrete form
when the revolt in Pernambuco in 1645 halted the slave trade to Brazil, and merchants looked to
São Tomé and Curaçao for access to new markets. The company’s entry into the slave trade, in
other words, was stimulated by an imperial vision for Dutch Brazil, backed by the States
General. But with no market to meet the supply, Dutch participation in the trade largely became
detached from imperial considerations and oriented towards market demand.
The difference between the earlier and later debates can be seen in the respective
positions taken by Johan Maurits. In 1638 he supported both free trade and the slave trade, as
twin elements for stabilizing Dutch Brazil and the sugar industry. In fact, the two were intimately
connected, since only free colonists with access to capital would be able to purchase the slaves
163 De Laet, Iaerlyck Verhael van de Verrichtingen der Geoctroyeerde West-Indische Compagnie; Unger, “Essay on
the History of the Dutch Slave Trade,” 53.
220