Dissertation_A Bick_May 25 - DataSpace at Princeton University

the Western Hemisphere.” 46 Far from explaining the company's collapse, Enthoven treats it as
insignificant.
As a result, over the past half-century very little research has been done on the company,
and Van Dillen's complaint about the “scarce literature over its internal history” remains as true
today as it was when he wrote in the early 1960s. 47 There are a number of excellent studies of
Dutch colonies or trading outposts in New Netherland, the Caribbean, Brazil, and, to a lesser
extent, West Africa, and a single detailed study of one of the company's five chambers,
Groningen. 48 But the debates over company politics and organization have advanced relatively
little. An important exception is the work of Henk den Heijer, who has published both a book-
length history of the WIC and a comparative analysis of the WIC and VOC as forerunners of the
modern limited liability partnership. 49 In the last three years there also have been studies of
individual directors: Janny Venema has written a new biography of Killaen van Rensselaer
(1586-1643), patroon (landholder with manorial rights) of the most successful settlement in New
Netherland; Ben Teensma has produced an elegant edition of a newly discovered manuscript by
the Leiden scholar and director Johannes de Laet (1581-1649); and Jaap Jacobs has written a
short life-sketch of Pieter Stuyvesant (c. 1612-1672), Director General of Curaçao and New
46 Enthoven and Van Ittersum, “Review Article: The Mouse That Roars: Dutch Atlantic History,” 222.
47 Van Dillen, 150.
48 A sample of these studies, organized regionally, includes Oliver A. Rink, Holland on the Hudson: An Economic
and Social History of Dutch New York (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986); Van Cleaf Bachman, Peltries or
Plantations: The Economic Policies of the Dutch West India Company in New Netherland, 1623-1639 (Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins Press, 1969); Jaap Jacobs, The Colony of New Netherland: A Dutch Settlement in Seventeenth-
Century America (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2009); Janny Venema, Beverwijk: A Dutch Village on the
American Frontier, 1652-1664 (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003); Cornelis Christiaan Goslinga,
The Dutch in the Caribbean and on the Wild Coast 1580-1680 (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1971);
Wätjen, O Dominio Colonial Hollandez no Brasil: Um Capitulo da Historia Colonial do Seculo XVII; Boxer, The
Dutch in Brazil, 1624-1654; E. van den Boogaart, Hendrik Richard Hoetink, and Peter James Palmer Whitehead,
eds., Johan Maurits van Nassau-Siegen, 1604-1679: A Humanist Prince in Europe and Brazil: Essays on the
Occasion of the Tercentenary of His Death (The Hague: Johan Maurits van Nassau Stichting, 1979); Henk den
Heijer, Goud, Ivoor en Slaven: Scheepvaart en Handel van de Tweede Westindische Compagnie op Afrika, 1674-
1740 (Zutphen: Walburg, 1997).K Ratelband, Nederlanders in West-Afrika, 1600-1650: Angola, Kongo en São
Tomé (Zutphen: Walburg Pers, 2000).
49 Den Heijer, De Geschiedenis van de WIC; Den Heijer, De Geoctrooieerde Compagnie.
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