The WIC, the Dutch West India Company

The first WIC (1624-1674)

During the Eighty Years war with Habsburg Spain, the Dutch Republic continued trade on a global level. This was a private trade, but competition between Dutch merchants and violent encounters with archenemies Spain and Portugal would give way to joining forces into one company.

With the end of the Twelve-Year Truce in 1621, the WIC was created on VOC model with 5 chambers, representing the maritime Dutch provinces, and 19 directors. But it proved difficult to find investors, because the beginning of the VOC had been quite expensive and there were high risks of warfare. Finally, by 1623 some 7,1 million guilders [98 million euros] were invested, and this increased to 17 million guilders [211 million euros] by 1639. The company received the monopoly on maritime trade, the right to govern colonies and to conduct privateering in the Atlantic Ocean Region. However, the basis of the company would be primarily commercial. 

Although a trading company, war and conquest were important elements of the WIC. The “Big Plan” was to take over the most important Iberian strongholds as the VOC had done in the Indian Ocean, but situation in Atlantic Ocean proved much more challenging than in Asia as the Iberian powers were much more powerful. But thanks to some privateering successes, especially Piet Hein´s conquest of the silverfleet in 1628, enough money was secured to conquer North Brazil, the largest sugar colony in the World. The WIC then focused on Africa as to secure the slave trade by taking the Portuguese possessions of Elmina in 1637 and Luanda in 1641. 

This made the WIC the strongest trading company and the biggest slave trader with 53,600 African captives traded between 1658 and 1674. But the growing colonial empire, which had to be regularly fed, defended and governed, increased the financial and administrative burden of the 19 Directors. This proved too ambitious and risky for a trading company. Another problem was the impossibility to keep the monopoly over the trade in the Atlantic world as compared to the VOC. And the WIC did not have the force and financial means to assure the slave trade or food influx of Brazil. For this reason, it was quickly decided that private trade to Brazil was allowed against a tax on merchandise.

Especially Brazil proved too difficult to exploit as it was in a quasi-continual rebellious state. After the departure of the energetic governor Johan Maurits van Nassau and the influx of 25,000 enslaved individuals until 1645, the Dutch lost the initiative and despite multiple costly attempts and the WIC lost the colony in 1654. She focused then on the trade of African captives to English, French and Spanish colonies in the Caribbean, but debts amounted 36 million guilders and it was decided in 1674 to cease activities and to transfer all actions and colonies to a new company with a new charter.

At this point, the WIC controlled different territories in the America. New Netherlands, important for fur trade and the tobacco culture, had been lost and exchanged against Surinam with the English in 1667. This territory on the Wild Coast or Guianas was not formally occupied by the Iberian powers and the Dutch also founded Essequibo and Berbice there which produced tobacco and cotton. In the Caribbean, the islands Aruba, St. Eustatius & Curaçao were taken in the 1630s. Especially Curaçao would become an important regional hub in the slave trade, formal and informal, with Spanish Americas.