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Dutch West India Company (; ) was a company of Dutch merchant
Merchant

Merchants function as professionals who deal with trade, dealing in commodities that they do not produce themselves, in order to produce profit....
s. Among its founding fathers was Willem Usselincx
Willem Usselincx

Willem Usselincx was a merchant and diplomat.He stayed for a long time in Spain, Portugal and on the Azores. There he saw the wealth that was engendred by the colonies....
 (1567-1647?). On June 3, 1621, it was granted a charter
Chartered company

A chartered company is an association formed by investors or shareholders for the purpose of trade, exploration and colonization....
 for a trade monopoly in the West Indies (meaning the Caribbean) by the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands and given jurisdiction over the African slave trade
African slave trade

The slave trade in Africa existed for thousands of years. The first main route passed through the Sahara, tying in to the Arab slave trade. After the European Age of Exploration, African slaves became part of the Atlantic slave trade, from which comes the modern, Western conception of slavery as an institution of African-descended slaves and...
, Brazil
Brazil

Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is a country in South America. It is the List of countries and outlying territories by total area country by geographical area, occupying nearly half of South America, the List of countries by population country, and the fourth most populous democracy in the world....
, the Caribbean
Caribbean

The Caribbean is a region consisting of the Caribbean Sea, its islands , and the surrounding coasts. The region is located southeast of the Gulf of Mexico and Northern America, east of Central America, and to the north of South America....
, and North America
North America

North America is the northern continent of the Americas, situated in the Earth's northern hemisphere and almost totally in the western hemisphere....
. The area where the company could operate consisted of West Africa
West Africa

West Africa or Western Africa is the westernmost region of the African continent. Geopolitically, the United Nations subregion of Western Africa includes the following 16 countries distributed over an area of approximately 5 million square km:...
 (between the Tropic of Cancer
Tropic of Cancer

The Tropic of Cancer, or Northern tropic, is one of five major degree measures or major circle of latitude that mark maps of the Earth. It is the northernmost latitude at which the Sun can appear directly overhead at noon....
 and the Cape of Good Hope
Cape of Good Hope

The Cape of Good Hope is a rocky headlands and bays on the Atlantic Ocean coast of South Africa. There is a very common misconception that the Cape of Good Hope is the southern tip of Africa and the dividing point between the Atlantic Ocean and Indian Oceans, but in fact the southernmost point is Cape Agulhas, about 150 kilometres t...
) and the Americas
Americas

The Americas are the region of the Western hemisphere that consists of the continents of North America and South America with their associated islands and regions....
, which included the Pacific Ocean
Pacific Ocean

The Pacific Ocean is the largest of the Earth's oceanic divisions. Its name is derived from the Latin name Mare Pacificum, "peaceful sea", bestowed upon it by the Portugal explorer Ferdinand Magellan....
 and the eastern part of New Guinea
New Guinea

New Guinea, located just north of Australia, is the List of islands by area, having become separated from the Australian mainland when the area now known as the Torres Strait flooded after the last glacial period....
.






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Dutch West India Company (; ) was a company of Dutch merchant
Merchant

Merchants function as professionals who deal with trade, dealing in commodities that they do not produce themselves, in order to produce profit....
s. Among its founding fathers was Willem Usselincx
Willem Usselincx

Willem Usselincx was a merchant and diplomat.He stayed for a long time in Spain, Portugal and on the Azores. There he saw the wealth that was engendred by the colonies....
 (1567-1647?). On June 3, 1621, it was granted a charter
Chartered company

A chartered company is an association formed by investors or shareholders for the purpose of trade, exploration and colonization....
 for a trade monopoly in the West Indies (meaning the Caribbean) by the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands and given jurisdiction over the African slave trade
African slave trade

The slave trade in Africa existed for thousands of years. The first main route passed through the Sahara, tying in to the Arab slave trade. After the European Age of Exploration, African slaves became part of the Atlantic slave trade, from which comes the modern, Western conception of slavery as an institution of African-descended slaves and...
, Brazil
Brazil

Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is a country in South America. It is the List of countries and outlying territories by total area country by geographical area, occupying nearly half of South America, the List of countries by population country, and the fourth most populous democracy in the world....
, the Caribbean
Caribbean

The Caribbean is a region consisting of the Caribbean Sea, its islands , and the surrounding coasts. The region is located southeast of the Gulf of Mexico and Northern America, east of Central America, and to the north of South America....
, and North America
North America

North America is the northern continent of the Americas, situated in the Earth's northern hemisphere and almost totally in the western hemisphere....
. The area where the company could operate consisted of West Africa
West Africa

West Africa or Western Africa is the westernmost region of the African continent. Geopolitically, the United Nations subregion of Western Africa includes the following 16 countries distributed over an area of approximately 5 million square km:...
 (between the Tropic of Cancer
Tropic of Cancer

The Tropic of Cancer, or Northern tropic, is one of five major degree measures or major circle of latitude that mark maps of the Earth. It is the northernmost latitude at which the Sun can appear directly overhead at noon....
 and the Cape of Good Hope
Cape of Good Hope

The Cape of Good Hope is a rocky headlands and bays on the Atlantic Ocean coast of South Africa. There is a very common misconception that the Cape of Good Hope is the southern tip of Africa and the dividing point between the Atlantic Ocean and Indian Oceans, but in fact the southernmost point is Cape Agulhas, about 150 kilometres t...
) and the Americas
Americas

The Americas are the region of the Western hemisphere that consists of the continents of North America and South America with their associated islands and regions....
, which included the Pacific Ocean
Pacific Ocean

The Pacific Ocean is the largest of the Earth's oceanic divisions. Its name is derived from the Latin name Mare Pacificum, "peaceful sea", bestowed upon it by the Portugal explorer Ferdinand Magellan....
 and the eastern part of New Guinea
New Guinea

New Guinea, located just north of Australia, is the List of islands by area, having become separated from the Australian mainland when the area now known as the Torres Strait flooded after the last glacial period....
. The intended purpose of the charter was to eliminate competition, particularly Spanish or Portuguese, between the various trading posts established by the merchants. The company became instrumental in the Dutch colonization of the Americas
Dutch colonization of the Americas

During the 17th century, Netherlands traders established trade posts and plantations throughout the Americas; actual colonization, with Dutch settling in the new lands was not as common as with settlements of other European nations....
.

Organization and initial activities


The GWC was organized similarly to the Dutch East India Company
Dutch East India Company

The Dutch East India Company was a trading company, which was established in 1602, when the States-General of the Netherlands granted it a 21-year monopoly to carry out colonial activities in Asia....
 (abbreviated as VOC), which had a trade monopoly for Asia
Asia

Asia is the world's largest and most populous continent. It covers 8.6% of the Earth's total surface area and, with over 4 billion people, it contains more than 60% of the world's current human population....
 (mainly present Indonesia) from 1602, except for the fact that the GWC was not allowed to conduct military operations without approval of the Dutch government. Like the VOC, the company had five offices, called chambers (kamers), in Amsterdam
Amsterdam

Amsterdam is the Capital of the Netherlands and List of cities in the Netherlands with over 100,000 people of the Netherlands, located in the Provinces of the Netherlands of North Holland in the west of the country....
, Rotterdam
Rotterdam

Rotterdam ; city and municipality in the Netherlands province of South Holland, situated in the west of the Netherlands. The municipality is the List of cities in the Netherlands with over 100,000 people in the country, with a population of 584,046 on 1 January 2007 and comprises the southern part of the Randstad, the List of metropolitan are...
, Hoorn
Hoorn

Media:Nl-Hoorn.ogg is a municipality and a town in the Netherlands, in the province of Noord Holland. It is located on the IJsselmeer, 35 kilometres north of Amsterdam, and acquired City rights in the Low Countries in 1357....
, Middelburg
Middelburg

Middelburg is a municipality and a city in the south-western Netherlands and the Capital of the province of Zeeland. It is situated on the peninsula of Walcheren....
 and Groningen
Groningen (city)

||-| |-| |-| |-| |-| |-| |-| |-| |}Groningen is the capital city of the province of Groningen in the Netherlands. With a population of 185,000, it is by far the largest city in the north of the Netherlands....
, of which the chambers in Amsterdam and Middelburg contributed most to the company. The board consisted of 19 members, known as the Heeren XIX (the Lords Nineteen).

The company was initially relatively successful; in the 1620s and 1630s, many trade posts or colonies were established. The New Netherland
New Netherland

File:Seal of new netherland.jpgNew Netherland, or Nieuw-Nederland in Dutch, was the seventeenth-century colonial province of the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands on the Eastern Seaboard of North America....
 area, which included New Amsterdam
New Amsterdam

New Amsterdam was a 17th-century Dutch colonization of the Americas settlement that later became New York City.The town developed outside of Fort Amsterdam on Manhattan Island in the New Netherland Territory which was situated between 38 and 42 degrees latitude as a provincial extension of the Dutch Republic as of 1624....
, covered parts of present-day New York
New York

The State of New York is a U.S. state in the Mid-Atlantic States and Northeastern United States regions of the United States and is the nation's List of U.S....
, Connecticut
Connecticut

Connecticut is a U.S. state located in the New England region of the northeastern United States. The state borders New York to the west and south , Massachusetts to the north, and Rhode Island to the east....
, Delaware
Delaware

Delaware is a U.S. state located on the East Coast of the United States in the Mid-Atlantic States region of the United States. The state takes its name from Thomas West, 3rd Baron De La Warr, a British nobleman and Virginia's first colonial governor, after whom Cape Henlopen was originally named....
, and New Jersey
New Jersey

New Jersey is a state in the Mid-Atlantic States and Northeastern United States regions of the United States. It is bordered on the north by New York, on the east by the Hudson River and the Atlantic Ocean, on the southwest by Delaware, and on the west by Pennsylvania....
. Other settlements were established on the Netherlands Antilles
Netherlands Antilles

The Netherlands Antilles , previously known as the Netherlands West Indies or Dutch Antilles/West Indies, is part of the Lesser Antilles and consists of two island group in the Caribbean Sea: Cura?ao and Bonaire, just off the Venezuelan coast, and Sint Eustatius, Saba and Sint Maarten, located southeast of the Virgin Islands....
, several other Caribbean islands, Suriname
Suriname

Suriname , officially the Republic of Suriname is a country in northern South America. Originally, the country was spelled Surinam by English settlers who founded the first colony at Marshall's Creek, along the Suriname River, and was Geographical renaming Nederlands Guyana, Netherlands Guiana or Dutch Guiana....
 and Guyana
Guyana

Guyana , officially the Co-operative Republic of Guyana and previously known as British Guiana, is the only state of the Commonwealth of Nations on mainland South America....
. The largest success for the GWC in its history was the seizure of the Spanish silver fleet, which carried silver from Spanish colonies to Spain by Piet Heyn in 1628; privateering was at first the most profitable activity. In 1630, the colony of New Holland
Dutch Brazil

Dutch Brazil, also known as New Holland, was the northern portion of Brazil, seized by the Dutch Republic during the Dutch colonization of the Americas....
 (capital Mauritsstad, present-day Recife
Recife

File:P?r-do-Sol_na_Jaqueira.jpgRecife is the fourth largest Metropolitan area in Brazil and the capital of the state of Pernambuco. The population was 1,549,980 in 2007....
) was formed, taking over Portuguese
Portugal

Portugal , officially the Portuguese Republic , is a country on the Iberian Peninsula. Located in southwestern Europe, Portugal is the westernmost country of mainland Europe and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the west and south and by Spain to the north and east....
 possessions in Brazil. In Africa, posts were established on the Gold Coast
Gold Coast (British colony)

Gold Coast was a United Kingdom colony on the Gulf of Guinea in west Africa that became the independent nation of Ghana in 1957.The first European ethnic groupss to arrive at the coast were the Portugal, in 1471....
 (now Ghana
Ghana

The Republic of Ghana is a country in West Africa. It borders C?te d'Ivoire to the west, Burkina Faso to the north, Togo to the east, and the Gulf of Guinea to the south....
) and briefly in Angola
Angola

Angola, officially the Republic of Angola , is a country in south-central Africa bordering Namibia to the south, Democratic Republic of the Congo to the north, and Zambia to the east, and with a west coast along the Atlantic Ocean....
. In the Americas, fur
Fur

Fur is a Hair of any non-human mammal, also known as the pelage. It may consist of short ground hair, long guard hair, and, in some cases, medium awn hair....
 (North America) and sugar (South America) were the most important trade goods, while African

Decline


This chain of successes quickly ended, however. New Holland was lost to Portuguese Brazil
Colonial Brazil

In the History of Brazil, Colonial Brazil comprises the period from 1500, with the arrival of the Portugal, until 1815, when Brazil was elevated to United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil, and the Algarve with Portugal....
 in 1654, after a long war, and many other trading posts were also destroyed or captured by rivaling European nations. The New Netherland colonization effort did not spread further either, in part due to a fierce rivalry with the English
England

native_name =|conventional_long_name = England|common_name = England|image_flag = Flag of England.svg|image_coat = England COA.svg|symbol_type = Royal Coat of Arms...
, who conquered New Netherland in 1664, and in part due to the difficulty of attracting settlers under the company's initial policy of the Patroon
Patroon

A patroon was a landholder with manorial rights to large tracts of land in the 17th century Dutch colony of New Netherland in North America . By charter of 1629, the Dutch West India Company first started to grant this title and land to some of its invested members....
 system, which granted vast power over settlers to the men who brought them to the colony. After years of debts, the original GWC folded in 1674, and a new, reorganised company was formed. Piracy was abandoned, and the company concentrated mainly on the African slave trade and its remaining possessions in Suriname and the Antilles.

After the British took control of Suriname for several years in the 1780s, the GWC appeared unable to recover. In 1791, the company's stock was bought by the Dutch government, and its territories were placed under Dutch government control.

See also

  • Dutch East India Company
    Dutch East India Company

    The Dutch East India Company was a trading company, which was established in 1602, when the States-General of the Netherlands granted it a 21-year monopoly to carry out colonial activities in Asia....
  • British East India Company
    British East India Company

    The East India Company was an early England joint-stock company that was formed initially for pursuing trade with the Indies, but that ended up trading with the Indian subcontinent and China....
  • French East India Company
    French East India Company

    The French East India Company was a commercial enterprise, founded in 1664 to compete with the British East India Company and Dutch East India Company East India companies....
  • List of director generals of New Netherland
  • Economic History of the Netherlands (1500 - 1815)
    Economic History of the Netherlands (1500 - 1815)

    The Economic History of the Netherlands , is the history of an economy that some consider to be the first "modern" economy, continuously existing to this day....


External links

  • Dutch Portuguese Colonial History: history of the Portuguese and the Dutch in Ceylon, India, Malacca, Bengal, Formosa, Africa, Brazil. Language Heritage, lists of remains, maps.
  • The GWC ship the Halve Maan.
  • Text of the Charter of the Dutch West India Company: 1621