Dissertation_A Bick_May 25 - DataSpace at Princeton University

integrates his scholarly output with his role as an expert, manager, strategist, and publicist. 123
This section steps back from the narrative to examine De Laet’s responsibilities as a company
director. Following Jacob Soll, it argues that De Laet played a very similar role in the WIC that
Jean Baptiste Colbert (1619-1683) played in the French State; that is, he was an “information
master,” for whom information was a tool of politics. 124 This perspective helps complete
important parts of his biography, but it also allows us to probe the relationship between
information and power in the Dutch Republic.
As Jaap Jacobs and others have shown, De Laet's influence within the WIC stemmed
initially from his financial stake. 125 His personal investment of 54,000 guilders made him the
company’s third largest single investor and ensured him a coveted directorship in the Amsterdam
chamber, a position he retained for all but three years between 1621 and his death in 1649. 126 In
addition, De Laet was one of a handful of investors in the agricultural and trading colony of New
Netherland. 127 As his own correspondence attests, De Laet was torn between his managerial and
his scholarly commitments: after briefly stepping down as director in 1639, he wrote to the
English ambassador at The Hague, William Boswell (d. 1650), that it “was a most convenient
thing for me, for I will be more free to be with my family and to conduct my studies; and I will
not so often be an exile from my home.” 128 Four years later, when he had resumed his position,
he complained to his close friend, the Leiden scholar Claude Saumaise (1588-1653), that,
“Sometimes I greatly regret that I have shouldered this burden [...] for it is hardly possible to
123 Eric H. Ash, ed., Expertise: Practical Knowledge and the Early Modern State (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 2010).
124 Soll, The information master.
125 Jacobs, “Johannes de Laet en de Nieuwe Wereld.”
126 Regionaal Archief Leiden 501A, inv.nr. 6701; NA 1.05.01.01, inv.nr. 18*; Bekkers, “Introduction,” xvi; Jacobs,
“Johannes de Laet en de Nieuwe Wereld.”
127 Jacobs, “Johannes de Laet en de Nieuwe Wereld”; Rink, Holland on the Hudson; Venema, Kiliaen van
Rensselaer (1586-1643): designing a new world.
128 British Library Add Ms 6395, Johannes de Laet to William Boswell, August 10, 1639. John Kuhner kindly
assisted translating from the original Latin.
79