The West India House in
Amsterdam, headquarters of the GWC from 1623 to 1647.
Warehouse of the GWC in Amsterdam.
(; ) was a
chartered company of
Dutch merchants. Among its founding fathers was
Willem Usselincx (1567-1647?). On June 3, 1621, it was granted a
charter 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,
Brazil, the
Caribbean, and
North America. The area where the company could operate consisted of
West Africa (between the
Tropic of Cancer and the
Cape of Good Hope) 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
Dutch colonization of the Americas.
Organization and initial activities
The GWC was organized similarly to the
Dutch East India Company (, abbreviated as
VOC), which had a trade monopoly for
Asia (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,
Rotterdam,
Hoorn,
Middelburg and
Groningen, 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 area, which included
New Amsterdam, covered parts of present-day
New York,
Connecticut,
Delaware, and
New Jersey. Other settlements were established on the
Netherlands Antilles, several other Caribbean islands,
Suriname and
Guyana. 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 (capital Mauritsstad, present-day
Recife) was formed, taking over
Portuguese possessions in Brazil. In Africa, posts were established on the
Gold Coast (now
Ghana) and briefly in
Angola. In the Americas,
fur (North America) and sugar (South America) were the most important trade goods, while African settlements traded slaves—mainly destined for the plantations on the Antilles and Suriname—gold, and ivory.
Decline
This chain of successes quickly ended, however. New Holland was lost to
Portuguese Brazil in 1654, after a long war, and many other trading posts were also destroyed or captured by rival European nations. The New Netherland colonization effort did not spread further either, in part due to a fierce rivalry with the
English, 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 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
