Dissertation_A Bick_May 25 - DataSpace at Princeton University

enemy” and the positive effects of “forcing the King to great expense of fleets” to protect his
galleons and territories. 102
Where the 1633 remonstrance differed dramatically, however, was in its relative lack of
quantitative precision. In contrast to the labored and explicit calculations found in the Kort
Verhael, the components of each section were presented with only the slightest attention to exact
quantities. The language is of “innumerable quantities,” “excessively large amounts,” and
“excessive damage.” The contrast is not total, of course: the 1633 remonstrance included some
figures and estimates, especially for the number of ships the company had built, but these were
few and far between, never extracted from the text, and never summed up at the end to reinforce
the conclusions generated by the narrative. There was, in short, nothing comparable to the
exhaustive, independent quantitative and mathematical treatment that De Laet devoted to almost
exactly the same problems eleven years later in his calculations in the Kort Verhael.
And this difference is evident as well in other printed materials from the period 1644-
1645. The company's official statement in favor of the potential merger between the VOC and
the WIC—the Twee Deductien (Two Deductions), published in February of 1644—employed
considerable quantitative information, much of it drawn from a draft of De Laet's Kort
Verhael. 103 More revealing is a separate pamphlet written in the company’s defense, also
published in 1644. The anonymous Kort Discours (Short Discourse) included a series of
calculations to establish the damage the company had done to Spain, but its author’s access to
internal company documents was much inferior to De Laet's. 104 In lieu of hard numbers, the
102 Ibid., 501.
103 Twee Deductien, aen-gaende de Vereeninge van d’Oost ende West-Indische Compagnien, aen de ... Staten van
Hollandt ende West Vrieslandt, vande West-Indische Compagnie overgelevert. That this text borrowed De Laet’s
calculations, rather than the other way around, can be seen from the fact that totals for the final year covered in De
Laet’s work, 1636, were omitted. This strongly suggests that De Laet loaned an incomplete manuscript to the
pamphlet's author, and that he was completing the text of the Iaerlyck Verhael in January or early February of 1644.
104 Kort Discours, Ofte Naardere Verklaringe van de onderstaende V. Poincten, 1644.
254