Dissertation_A Bick_May 25 - DataSpace at Princeton University

ambitions. 21 Although neither Specx nor De Laet could have known this, the early 1640s marked
the high-water point of Dutch territorial expansion in the Atlantic Basin and the apex of colonial
enthusiasm, especially around the trades in Brazilian sugar and African slaves. The chapter
argues that their detailed calculations of value involved fantasy, as well as facts, and that the
tension between these two elements was a crucial part of the company's lobbying campaign in
the winter of 1645. In finally deciding to send a relief fleet to Brazil, the States of Holland and
the States General reasoned that the colony’s value outweighed both the risks and the costs of
military action.
2. Calculating the Value of the New World
Jacques Specx was not present at the meeting of the Heren XIX in Middelburg, but by this time
he had become an influential voice in the Amsterdam chamber and in the company's negotiations
with the States of Holland. In March 1644 he represented the WIC in the latter body, arguing its
case in favor of a merger with the VOC, and in mid-September of 1645 he was one of the
Amsterdam directors who carried the company's request to the States of Holland for 700,000
guilders to send additional soldiers to Brazil. 22 During discussions in early October, Specx was
asked by the States of Holland to review the company’s books and provide a complete, up-to-
date record of all the subsidies the company had received from each of the provinces, as a pre-
condition for further support. 23 And at the Haags Besogne in early December he was responsible
21
Schmidt, Innocence Abroad; Nicolás Wey Gómez, The Tropics of Empire: Why Columbus Sailed South to the
Indies (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2008).
22
Den Heijer, “Plannen voor Samenvoeging van VOC en WIC.” For a biographical sketch see Chapter Four.
23
Staten van Holland en Westvriesland, Gedrukt Resoluties, entry for October 7, 1645.
230