page_title: Dutch West India Company
section_title: Decline
hierarchical_section_title: Dutch West India Company / The West India Company / Decline
caption_attribution_description: Pakhuis van de WGC in Amsterdam
context_page_description: The Dutch West India Company was a chartered company of Dutch merchants as well as foreign investors. Among its founders was Willem Usselincx and Jessé de Forest. On 3 June 1621, it was granted a charter for a trade monopoly in the Dutch West Indies by the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands and given jurisdiction over Dutch participation in the Atlantic slave trade, Brazil, the Caribbean, and North America. The area where the company could operate consisted of West Africa and the Americas, which included the Pacific Ocean and the eastern part of New Guinea. 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 largely ephemeral Dutch colonization of the Americas in the seventeenth century. From 1624 to 1654, in the context of the Dutch-Portuguese War, the GWC held Portuguese territory in northeast Brazil, but they were ousted from Dutch Brazil following fierce resistance.
  After several reversals, GWC reorganized and a new charter was granted in 1675, largely on the strength in the Atlantic slave trade.
context_section_description: In North America, the settlers Albert Burgh, Samuel Blommaert, Samuel Godijn, Johannes de Laet had little success with populating the colony of New Netherland, and to defend themselves against local Amerindians. Only Kiliaen Van Rensselaer managed to maintain his settlement in the north along the Hudson. Samuel Blommaert secretly tried to secure his interests with the founding of the colony of New Sweden on behalf of Sweden on the Delaware in the south. The main focus of the GWC now went to Brazil.
  Only in 1630 did the West India Company manage to conquer a part of Brazil. In 1630, the colony of New Holland (capital Mauritsstad, present-day Recife) was founded, taking over Portuguese possessions in Brazil. In the meantime, the war demanded so many of its forces that the Company had to operate under a permanent threat of bankruptcy. In fact, the GWC went bankrupt in 1636 and all attempts at rehabilitation were doomed to failure.
  Because of the ongoing war in Brazil, the situation for the GWC in 1645, at the end of the charter, was very bad. An attempt to compensate the losses of the GWC with the profits of the VOC failed because the directors of the VOC did not want to. Merging the two companies was not feasible. Amsterdam was not willing to help out, because it had too much interest in peace and healthy trade relations with Portugal. This indifferent attitude of Amsterdam was the main cause of the slow, half-hearted policy, which would eventually lead to losing the colony. In 1647 the Company made a restart using 1.5 million guilders, capital of the VOC. The States General took responsibility for the warfare in Brazil.
  Due to the Peace of Westphalia the seizing of Spanish ships was no longer allowed. Many merchants from Amsterdam and Zeeland decided to work with marine and merchants from Hamburg, Glückstadt (then Danish), England and other countries. In 1649, the GWC obtained a monopoly on gold and enslaved Africans in the kingdom of Accra (present-day Ghana). In 1662 there were contacts with the owners of the Asiento, which were obliged to deliver 24,000 enslaved Africans. In 1663 and 1664 the GWC sold more enslaved Africans than the Portuguese and English together.
  The first West India Company suffered a long agony, and its end in 1674 was painless. The reason that the GWC could drag on for twenty years was due to its valuable West African possessions, due to its slaves.
caption: Warehouse of the GWC in Amsterdam
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