Catia Antunes & Filipa Ribeiro da Silva

amsterdam merchants in the slave

trade and african commerce, 1580s-1670s

Abstract
Historians have failed to assess the share of slave trade and African commerce
in the portfolio of European merchants during the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries. Was the slave trade a central or peripheral activity for Early Modern
European entrepreneurs? What was the role of the slave trade when compared to
other businesses carried out by these merchants? These questions are answered
by an insight in the business choices of the largest Amsterdam slave traders
between the 1580s and 1670s, using as primary sources the Transatlantic Slave
Trade Database (tstd) and the notarial archives of Amsterdam.

In 1944, Eric Williams published Capitalism and Slavery. He placed ‘in histori-
cal perspective the relationship between early capitalism as exemplified by Great
Britain, and the Negro slave trade, Negro slavery and the general colonial trade of
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries’.1 Williams argued for a link between
capital accumulation from the slave trade and the British Industrial Revolu-
tion and for a connection between the growth of industrial capitalism and
abolitionist ideas. For Williams, capital accumulation from the slave trade and
the plantation economy had helped finance the Industrial Revolution. When
industrial capitalism became the engine of economic growth in Great Britain,
he argued, the plantation complex and associated slave trade became second-
ary in the priorities of entrepreneurs and state officials. For these reasons, the
development of an abolitionist movement was deeply ingrained in the rise of
industrial capitalism.2 The debate around Williams’ proposal ensued in the
1960s and 1970s, but it gained new strength with the new approaches of the

1. Eric Williams, Capitalism and slavery (Chapel Hill 1944) ix.

2. Supporters: Richard Sheridan, ‘The plantation revolution and the Industrial Revolu-
tion, 1625-1775’, Caribbean Studies 9:3 (1969) 5-25; Critics: Roger Anstey, ‘Capitalism and
slavery: a critique’, Economic History Review 21:2 (1968) 307-320; Stanley Engerman, ‘The
slave trade and British capital formation in the eighteenth century: a comment of the Wil-
liams Thesis’, Business Studies Review 46:4 (1972) 430-443; Howard Temperley, British anti-
slavery, 1833-1870 (London 1972); Keith Aufhauser, ‘Profitability of slavery in the British
Caribbean’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History 5:1 (1974) 45-67; Robert Thomas and Richard

tijdschrift voor sociale en economische geschiedenis  9 [2012] nr. 4, pp. 3-30

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 4 » Catia Antunes & Filipa Ribeiro da Silva

1980s and beyond.3 The results of this debate also reached the Netherlands.
In the article ‘The Long Goodbye’, Seymour Drescher deemed Williams’
premises unsuitable to explain the Dutch case. For Drescher, there was no
link between the capital accumulation of the Dutch slave trade and the plan-
tation economy and the industrialization process, since the Netherlands was
one of the last northwestern European countries to industrialize and one in
which the abolition debate arrived at a very late stage. On the other hand, the
climax of capital accumulation from manufacturing during the seventeenth
century was not followed by an abolitionist movement.4
In 2006, Piet Emmer, Olivier Pétré-Grenoilleau and Jessica Roitman fol-
lowed Drescher’s lead by claiming that the British colonial achievements
in the Atlantic constitute an exception not the rule, hence looking for the
‘Williams’ connections’ for other European Atlantic empires is erroneous.
The profits and spin-off effects of the trade outside of the European routes
was negligible and the entrepreneurship associated with the non-European
trades was a state-sponsored system, since protectionist laws allowed firms
that were not competitive to keep operating well into the end of the eight-
eenth century.5
Emmer et al’s position coincides with the appreciation Jan de Vries and Ad
van der Woude make of the contribution of the Atlantic system, in particular
of the plantation economy, to the growth of the Dutch economy.6 However,
since the beginning of the twenty first century, Dutch historiography has tried
to fight the idea that the output of the Dutch participation in the Atlantic
exchanges was negligible.7 Only recently, Matthias van Rossum and Karwan

Bean, ‘The fishers of men: Profits of the slave trade’, The Journal of Economic History 34:4
(1974) 885-914.
3. Important contributions: Herbert S. Klein, The Middle Passage. Comparative studies
in the Atlantic slave trade (Princeton 1978); Barbara Solow and Stanley Engerman, British
capitalism and Caribbean society (Cambridge 1987); Joseph C. Miller, The way of death:
Merchant capitalism and the Angolan slave trade, 1730-1830 (Madison 1996); David Eltis, The
rise of African slavery in the Americas (Cambridge 2000); Kenneth Morgan, Slavery, Atlantic
trade and the British economy, 1600-1800 (Cambridge 2000); Joseph E. Inikori, Africans and
the industrial revolution in England: a study in international trade and economic development
(Cambridge 2002); J.A. Rawley and Stephen D. Behrendt, The transatlantic slave trade. A
history (Lincoln 2005).
4. Seymour Drescher, ‘The long goodbye: Dutch capitalism and antislavery in compara-
tive perspective’, The American Historical Review 99:1 (1994) 44-69.
5. Piet Emmer, Olivier Pétré-Grenoilleau and Jessica Roitman, A Deus ex Machina revisited:
Atlantic colonial trade and European economic development (Leiden 2006) introduction.
6. Jan de Vries and Ad van der Woude, The first modern economy. Success, failure, and
perseverance of the Dutch economy, 1500-1815 (Cambridge 1997) 474.
7. Victor Enthoven, ‘An assessment of Dutch Transatlantic commerce, 1585-1817’,
in: Johannes Postma and Victor Enthoven (eds.), Riches from Atlantic commerce. Dutch
transatlantic trade and shipping, 1585-1817, (Leiden 2003) 385-446; R. van Welie, ‘Slave trad-

tseg_2012-4_def.indd 4 26-11-2012 14:29:13

 Amsterdam merchants in the slave trade and African commerce » 5

Fatah-Black revised Emmer et al’s position by stating that the impact of the
Dutch slave trade on the economy of the Republic was greater than what his-
torians have claimed so far. However, they do not claim that this impact had
consequences for the Dutch industrialization, as the Williams’s proposition
suggests.8
In spite of the debate about the profitability of the slave trade for European
and Dutch capital accumulation, David Eltis et al estimate that the Dutch
transported more than half million enslaved Africans from Africa into the
Americas, during roughly two hundred years.9 Therefore, regardless whether
slave trade was a competitive enterprise, merchants operating within the
Dutch Republic kept slave trading operations in their business portfolios.
This article will assess the Dutch participation in the slave trade during the
period between 1580 and 1674, highlighting the relative place this activity
took in the portfolio of the Amsterdam business community. We start with
a general assessment of the Dutch slave trading activities during the end of
the sixteenth and the seventeenth century, since this period has been grossly
neglected.10 The historical community has given precedence to the Dutch
slave trading practices of the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries for
which sources are more abundant.11
The primary sources supporting the claims in this article will be the tstd
published by David Eltis and his co-authors and a sample of notarial contracts
from Amsterdam.12 Even if these sources present undeniable methodologi-

ing and slavery in the Dutch colonial empire: a global comparison’, Nieuw West-Indische
Gids 82:1-2 (2008) 45-94.
8. Matthias van Rossum and Karwan Fatah-Black, ‘Wat is winst? De economisch impact
van de Nederlandse trans-Atlantische slavenhandel’, Tijdschift voor Sociale en Economische
Geschiedenis 9-1 (2012) 23.
9. David Eltis et al, Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database, 1999 (henceforth tstd). For the
most updated version of the dataset, see: http://www.slavevoyages.org.
10. Exceptions: Wim Klooster, ‘Het begin van de Nederlandse slavenhandel in het Atlan-
tisch gebied’, in: Maurits Ebben, Henk den Heijer and J. Schokkenbroek (eds.), Alle streken
van het kompas: Maritieme geschiedenis in Nederland (Zutphen 2010) 249-262; Filipa Ribeiro
da Silva, Dutch and Portuguese in western Africa. Empires, merchants and the Atlantic System,
1580-1674 (Leiden 2011) 271-324.
11. Henk den Heijer, Goud, ivoor en slaven. Scheepvaart en handel van de Tweede Westindische
Compagnie op Afrika, 1674-1740 (Zutphen 1997); Corrie Folmer-van Prooijen, Van goederen
naar slavenhandel. De Middelburgse Commercie Compagnie, 1720-1755 (Leiden, unpublished
dissertation, 2000); Ruud Paesie, Lorrendrayen op Africa: de illegale goederen- en slavenhandel
op West-Afrika tijdens het achttiende-eeuwse handelsmonopolie van de West-Indische Compagnie,
1700-1734 (Amsterdam 2008).
12. This sample comprises 374 commercial and financial contracts subscribed by indi-
viduals and firms. These sources have been extracted from a broader sample of 16,000
contracts gathered for the study of economic activities and cross-cultural trade with western
Africa and within the Atlantic World between the 1590s and 1780s. For western Africa, we
have searched the Notary collection for the activities of more than 200 businessmen in the

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 6 » Catia Antunes & Filipa Ribeiro da Silva

cal challenges, they are the only systematic data available, since accounting
books or correspondence from private merchants are scarce or difficult to
come by. The information provided by the tstd will put into perspective the
Dutch participation in the slave trade during the selected chronology, under-
lining the difference between private and Dutch West India Company (wic)
investment as well as the regional distribution of slave trade participation
within the Republic. For this analysis, we singled out the tstd thirty most
prominent slave trading operators within the Dutch Republic, all of them
merchants in Amsterdam. In the next section, we will assess the role Afri-
can operations played in the overall activities of these selected few, using for
this purpose a sample of their notarial contracts.13 Following the paper trail
left by these men, we are able to reconstruct business strategies, investment
preferences, composition of partnerships and the relative significance of the
African commodity trade and the slave trade for the Amsterdam business
community.
When looking into the business portfolios of the most prominent Amster-
dam slave traders, we bring into the historical narrative the role individual
merchants played in the traffic of enslaved Africans and show the relative
value of this activity in the overall volume of business of this Dutch elite. If
there was capital accumulation in the Dutch Republic during the seventeenth
century, the slave trade played but a very small direct role in that accumula-
tion, as Pierre Gervais generally claims that

merchant activity was a central element in the networks and webs of

relationships over the Atlantic (…) When closely analyzed, however, daily
merchant practice does not fit easily into regional categories, whether Atlantic
or Imperial.14

regions of Senegambia and Cape Verde, the gulf of Guinea, São Tomé and Príncipe, Loango
and Angola.
13. Afonso Fidalgo (in partnership with Rodrigo Fidalgo), Aron de Pas, Diogo Dias Que-
rido, Diogo Nunes Belmonte, Dirck Pietersen Wittepaert, Duarte Palacios (in partnership
with David Palacio), Francisco Feroni, Hans van Hontom, Heerman Abrahamsz, Hen-
rico Mathias, Isaac Coijmans, Jacob van der Wel, Jacob Venturin, Jan Baptista Liefrinck,
Jan Vlasbloem, Jan Pietersz Baecker, Julian Henriques, L. W. Verpoort, Luis Henriques
Reinel, Manuel Dias Henriques, Manuel Lopes Homem, Manuel Rodrigues Cartagena,
Manuel Solis Y Ulhoa (in partnership with Diogo Lopes Ulhoa), Marcus Broen, Mathijs ten
Broecke, Michiel van Ameland, Miguel de Pas, Nicolaes Vis, Philip van Hulten and Willem
van Meeckeren.
14. Pierre Gervais, ‘Neither Imperial, nor Atlantic: A merchant perspective on interna-
tional trade in the Eighteenth Century’, History of European Ideas 34:4 (2008) 465-473,
abstract.

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 Amsterdam merchants in the slave trade and African commerce » 7

Dutch participation in the slave trade, 1580-1674

The Dutch interest in the Atlantic dates back to the sixteenth century. Dutch
men served in the Portuguese and Spanish empires and operated rudimen-
tary commercial partnerships directly from the Republic.15 Historiography
has failed to recognize the importance of this early Dutch commitment to the
Atlantic by preferring to address the successes and failures of the wic and
the Middelburg Commercial Company (mcc) during the eighteenth centu-
ry.16 For this reason, most of the statements about the Dutch Atlantic activi-
ties during the long seventeenth century portrait the experience of the wic,
grossly neglecting the role private merchants played before and alongside the
Company.
There is a consensus among historians that the wic dominated the Dutch
Atlantic operations and concomitantly the slave trade between the western
coast of Africa and the Americas. Ruud Paesie questions this consensus for
the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century and the data available on
the tstd contradicts this dominant view for the late sixteenth and seventeenth
century as well.17 According to the tstd, for the period between 1580 and
1674, forty-five percent of the Dutch slave trade was in the hands of private
merchants, while the wic was left with twelve percent. It is unknown whether
the other forty-three percent of entries belong to private entrepreneurs or
to the wic, but if all the unknown instances were voyages organized by the
Company, we end up with a Dutch Atlantic where private slave trade reaches
almost half of the total of registered slave voyages.18 It is therefore a serious
mistake to ignore the participation of private merchants in the Dutch Atlantic
exchanges before and during the monopoly of the first wic.19
One other myth that has plagued Dutch Atlantic historiography is the
entrenched believe that the merchant communities of the province of Zealand
were major players in the Atlantic trades. Once again, this legend has arisen
because of the known disputes between Zealanders and Amsterdammers

15. José António Gonsalves de Mello, Tempo dos Flamengos. Influência da ocupação holan-
desa na vida e na cultura do norte do Brasil (Rio de Janeiro 2001) 241; Piet Emmer, ‘The
First Global War: the Dutch versus Iberia in Asia, Africa and the New World, 1590-1609’,
e-Journal of Portuguese History 1:1 (2003); José Manuel Santos Pérez & George F. Cabral de
Souza (eds.), El Desafio Holandês al Domínio Ibérico en Brasil en el siglo xvii (Salamanca
2006); Klooster, ‘Het begin van de Nederlandse Slavenhandel’, 249.
16. Henk den Heijer, De Geschiedenis van de wic (Zutphen 2002); Den Heijer, Goud, ivoor
en slaven; Folmer-Van Prooijen, Van goederen naar slavenhandel.
17. Paesie, Lorrendrayen op Africa.
18. http://www.slavevoyages.org, 17-02-2012.
19. I. de Groot-Teunissen, ‘Herman van Coopstad en Isaac Jacobus Rochussen. Twee Rot-
terdamse slavenhandelaren in de achttiende eeuw’, Rotterdams Jaarboekje 3 (2005) 171-200.

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 8 » Catia Antunes & Filipa Ribeiro da Silva

within the wic and from the eighteenth century successes of the mcc.20 Once
again, the tstd contradicts the preponderance of Zealand as the main instiga-
tor of slave trade during the period 1580-1674. During these decades the main
ports of departure of slave trading vessels, either ran by private merchants or
by the wic, were Amsterdam (three and half percent) and its fore port – Texel
(roughly forty percent). Combined they represent forty-three percent of the
ships that departed from the Republic into the Atlantic to participate in the
slave trade. The share of the ports of Zealand and Flushing combined amount
to a meager twelve percent of the total.21 This means that if Zealand, and most
specifically Middelburg, was an important slave investment outlet, that did
not happen before the dawn of the eighteenth century.
Current Dutch historiography has also failed to clarify whether slave trade
was a European or an Atlantic driven process.22 The tstd supports Pierre
Gervais’s claim that the Atlantic did not generate changing processes, Europe
did, since about sixty-eight percent of Dutch slave trade departed from the
Republic, followed by twenty-two and half percent of voyages initiated in Bra-
zil (mostly Pernambuco). A negligible part of the voyages departed from else-
where in Europe and from within the Atlantic.23
The tstd also shows that Dutch slave trade was mostly in the hands of
metropolitan private investors from Amsterdam, who determined the strat-
egy, volume and destination of the enslaved Africans imported from the
western coast of Africa into Dutch Brazil and other European colonies in the
Americas, leaving the wic with a small role to play.

Business portfolios of the Amsterdam merchant elite, 1580-1674

Amsterdam private entrepreneurship was paramount for the Dutch slave

trade during the late sixteenth and most of the seventeenth century. But, was
slave trade an important activity for the Amsterdam merchant elite as seems
to have been the case elsewhere in Europe?24

20. Den Heijer, De Geschiedenis van de wic, chapter 1; Doeke Roos, Zeeuwen in de West-
indische Compagnie (1621-1674) (s.p. 1992); P.J. Winter, De Westindische Compagnie ter
kamer, stad en lande (The Hague 1978) 2.
21. http://www.slavevoyages.org, 17-02-2012.
22. Gervais, ‘Neither Imperial, nor Atlantic’, 1-2.
23. http://www.slavevoyages.org, 17-02-2012.
24. J.H. Bebbet, ‘Cary Helyar, merchant and planter of seventeenth-century Jamaica’, The
William and Mary Quarterly 21:1 (1964) 53-76; D.D. Thoms, ‘The Mills family: London
sugar merchants in the eighteenth century’, Business History 11 (1969) 3-10; John Norman
Kennedy, ‘Bahian elites, 1750-1822’, The Hispanic American Historical Review 53:3 (1973) 415-
439; T.M. Devine, ‘An eighteenth-century business elite: Glasgow-West India merchants, c.
1750-1815’, The Scottish Historical Review 57:163-1 (1978) 40-67; Rae Flory and David Grant

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 Amsterdam merchants in the slave trade and African commerce » 9

In the tstd, there are thirty prominent merchants from the city of Amster-
dam that appear to be the largest slave traders in the Dutch Republic during
the seventeenth century.25 This group is composed by men born in Amster-
dam and other towns in the Republic, foreigners, Christians and Jews, young
and old, operating as individual investors or within partnership, investing in
European and overseas routes. According to the sample of notarial contracts,
Atlantic investments accounted for about forty-four percent of the business
ventures of these gentlemen and within this percentage only about one quarter
pertained to direct or indirect investment in African exchanges, whilst the lion
share of the investments (fifty-six percent) were directed to European ventures.
The share of the European investments was divided through ventures in
the Baltic, Iberian and Mediterranean markets. Dutch and foreigners, Chris-
tians and Jews, participated equally in the Baltic trade, considered one of the
main sources of capital accumulation of Dutch towns after the Revolt of the
Low Countries. Merchants and skippers played a key role as intermediaries
in the grain and timber trades in what is commonly known as ‘the mother
trade’.26 The Baltic trade was directly linked to the Iberian and Mediterranean
markets. Amsterdam middlemen shipped timber and grain to Iberian, Italian
and Eastern Mediterranean towns and in exchange transported salt, wine,
olive oil, cork and fruit (dried and fresh) into the Baltic and the Republic.27
Besides the bulk trade, there was also a significant volume of luxury prod-
ucts from the overseas empires being shipped from Iberia into the Baltic and
northwestern Europe.28

Smith, ‘Bahian merchants and planters in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries’, The
Hispanic American Historical Review 58:4 (1978) 571-594; Alex Dupuy, ‘French merchant
capital and slavery in Saint-Domingue’, Latin American Perspectives 12:3 (1985) 77-102; Ken-
neth Morgan, ‘Bristol West India merchants in the eighteenth century’, Transactions of the
Royal Historical Society 3 (1993) 185-208; H. Nader, ‘Desperate men, questionable acts: the
moral dilemma of Italian merchants in the Spanish slave trade’, Sixteenth Century Journal
33:2 (2002) 401-422; Simon D. Smith, ‘Merchants and planters revisited’, The Economic
History Review 55:-3 (2002) 434-465.
25. See footnote 13.
26. Milja van Tielhof, The ‘mother of all trades’: the Baltic grain trade in Amsterdam from
the late 16th to the early 19th century (Leiden 2002); Christiaan van Bochove, The economic
consequences of the Dutch: economic integration around the North Sea, 1500-1800 (Amsterdam
2008).
27. Marie-Christien Engels, Merchants, interlopers, seamen and corsairs: the ‘Flemish’
community in Livorno and Genoa (1615-1635) (Hilversum 1997); De Vries and Van der
Woude, The first modern economy, 669; Catia Antunes, Globalisation in the early modern
period: The economic relationship between Amsterdam and Lisbon, 1640-1705 (Amsterdam
2004); Maartje van Gelder, Trading places: the Netherlandish merchants in early modern Venice
(Leiden 2009);
28. Hans Pohl, Die Portugiesen in Antwerpen (1567-1648): zur Geschiechte einer Minderheit
(Wiesbaden 1977); Jonathan Israel, Conflicts of empires: Spain, the Low Countries, and the

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 10 » Catia Antunes & Filipa Ribeiro da Silva

For the Amsterdam slave traders, the Baltic represented only nine per-
cent of the business portfolio, being the only exception to this rule Louis de
Geer, known for his upstanding role as representative of the king of Swe-
den, holder of monopolies within the Swedish export of metals and later on
even named the ‘father of Swedish Early Modern industry’.29 The low par-
ticipation in the Baltic trade was compensated by a vast participation in the
Mediterranean and Iberian trades, for twenty-eight and sixty-three percent,
respectively. The overwhelming participation in the Iberian markets and low
engagement in the Baltic indicates that these merchants did not thrive on the
bulk trade by exchanging grain and timber for Mediterranean and Iberian
agricultural products, but they rather excelled in the luxury trades, being
the middlemen of the Iberian colonial output within the northern European
markets.
It should come as no surprise that the re-export of colonial/luxury prod-
ucts from Iberian ports into Amsterdam was actually the main activity of the
Amsterdam businessmen involved in the slave trade. It is difficult to deter-
mine whether there was a transfer of knowledge from the Iberian experience
into the exchanges with western Africa, although we assume that to be a
probability. We think that part of the success of the Amsterdam business com-
munity in the African dealings derived from their acquired knowledge about
the functioning of the Iberian markets and institutions while participating in
the European Iberian exchanges. They gathered the necessary information
and know-how to work within the loop holes of the Spanish and Portuguese
monopolies in the Atlantic and in so doing became extremely successful
in their African and transatlantic adventures. Consequently, the experience
and learning process of the Iberian re-export dynamics helped forging the
Amsterdam participation in the Atlantic trade and appears inexorably inter-
twined with the slave trade in the business portfolios of these Amsterdam
merchants.
Within the contracts that formed the European portfolio of the Amster-
dam slave traders, the majority of businessmen preferred mixed ventures,
where commercial and financial activities could be combined, more often
than not within partnerships, rather than on solo ventures. The typology of
the contracts show that the first investment choice was primarily trade, while
financial investments were only complementary to the commercial activities.
Perhaps the best example is the direct relationship between freight contracts
and different forms of maritime insurance for cargos, crews and ships, in an

struggle for world supremacy, 1585-1713 (London 1997); Antunes, Globalisation in the early
modern period.
29. J. Thomas Lindblad, ‘Rehabilitatie van Louis de Geer (1587-1652) als vader van de
Zweedse industrie: reactie op een artikel in een vorig nummer’, Tijdschift voor Geschiedenis
105:1 (1992) 51-7.

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 Amsterdam merchants in the slave trade and African commerce » 11

attempt to protect one’s investment against natural disasters, warfare, embar-

goes, piracy and privateering.30
Summarizing, the most prominent slave traders in the Republic resided in
Amsterdam and held a diverse business portfolio that included investments
in Europe and the Atlantic. Within the European continent, the Baltic, Iberian
and Mediterranean markets seem to have been the business targets of the
group, although Iberian interests supplanted business ventures elsewhere.
Even though, and by and large engaged in commercial transactions, Amster-
dam slave traders reserved a part of their capital to invest in financial prod-
ucts, most frequently in maritime insurances and personal credit schemes.

The African trades in the Amsterdam portfolios, 1580-1674

The Amsterdam slave traders invested forty-four percent of their capital in the
Atlantic in general. The African share of that investment accounted for only
twenty-one percent, whereas the slave trade represented about ten percent.
But, were the main slave traders in the Republic equally engaged in the slave
trade, regardless of their place of birth or religious congregation?
The correlation between slave trade and religious affiliation of slave trad-
ers has been an issue of contention among historians. Arguments have been
made for the over representation of certain religious groups in slave trading
activities. In this context, although shocking, the public statements by Leon-
ard Jeffries in 1991 about Jewish overwhelming prevalence in the slave trade
were neither new, nor unexpected.31 Specialists on Atlantic exchanges and
the slave trade, most prominently David Davis, Seymour Drescher, Eli Faber
and Saul Friedman were forced to issue a strong response to this unfounded
allegations, so they claimed.32

30. Sabine Go, Marine insurance in the Netherlands 1600-1870: a comparative institutional
approach (Leiden 2009); Ribeiro da Silva, Dutch and Portuguese in western Africa, 271-279;
Filipa Ribeiro da Silva, ‘Crossing empires: Portuguese, Sephardic, and Dutch business net-
works in the Atlantic slave trade, 1580-1674’, The Americas 68:1 (2011) 22-25.
31. Public address July 20, 1991, Albany, New York. Nation of Islam Historical Research
Department, The secret relationship between Blacks and Jews (Chicago 1991).
32. Seymour Drescher, ‘The role of Jews in the Transatlantic slave trade’, Immigrants and
Minorities 12 (1993) 113-125; David B. Davis, ‘Jews in the slave trade’, in: Jack Salzman and
Cornel West (eds.), Struggles in the promised land: Towards a history of Black-Jewish relations
in the United States (New York 1997) 65-72; Eli Faber, Jews, slaves and the slave trade. Setting
the record straight (New York 1998); Saul S. Friedman, Jews and the American slave trade (New
Brunswick 1998); ‘aha Council Issues Policy Resolution about Jews and the slave trade’,
aha Perspectives (Mar. 1995).

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 12 » Catia Antunes & Filipa Ribeiro da Silva

For Robert Stein, Jewish participation in the slave trade was ‘on a small
scale and had slight impact’.33 Eli Faber concurs by explaining that

… interest regarding the extent to which Jews participated in the institution of

slavery in the Americas has stemmed from allegations that they predominated
in the slave trade and that they owned slaves well in excess of their proportion
among the white population (…) they did neither. (…) their participation (…)
was quite small’.34

But was the Amsterdam Jewish community less involved in the slave trade
than its Christian counterpart?

Figure 1 Dutch participation in the transatlantic slave trade, 1596-1675

400

350

300
Number of contracts

250

200

150

100

50

0
Jews Christians Total
Total No. of contracts 166 204 370
Contracts for Western Africa 63 38 101
Contracts for Slave Trade 20 22 42

Sources: Sample constructed based on 374 contracts from the Notarial Archives of Amster-
dam (gaa, na). For details on sampling method, please see note 12.

Amsterdam merchants participated equally in the western African trades,

regardless of their religious background (see Figure 1), this if we consider that
all the members of the Portuguese Nation of Amsterdam within our sample
were actually Jews.35 Between the 1580s and 1620s, Amsterdam Christian

33. Robert Stein, The French slave trade in the Eighteenth Century: an old regime business
(Madison 1979) 159-160.
34. Faber, Jews, slaves and the slave trade, 1.
35. The Portuguese Nation of Amsterdam is often synonym for the Sephardic Jewish com-
munity of Amsterdam. Even though not all members of the Portuguese Nation of Amster-

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 Amsterdam merchants in the slave trade and African commerce » 13

merchants, Protestants and Catholics alike, born in- or outside of the Repub-
lic were engaged in the African commodity trade and gradually also drawn
into the slave trade by providing insurances for ships and cargos contracted
by members of the Portuguese Nation of Amsterdam for their slave voyages.
Amsterdam Christian direct participation in the slave trade only became sig-
nificant after the 1650s, when the wic relaxed its monopoly. In the sample of
contracts under scrutiny in this study Henrico Matias, Louis de Geer, Fran-
cisco Ferroni, Marcus Broen and Isaac Coijmans were the most active Chris-
tian participants in the African commodity trade and the slave trade between
the 1650s and 1670s (see Figure 2).
Contrary to the Amsterdam Christian group, the Portuguese Sephardim
were active in African commodity and slave trades since the 1580s. Diogo
Nunes Belmonte, Miguel de Pas, Duarte and David de Palacios and Manuel
Dias Henriques were the most important merchants during the period prior
to the 1640s (see Figure 3).36

Figure 2 Largest Amsterdam Christian participants in the overall African trade and
slave trade, 1580-1674
105

90

75
Number of contracts

60

45

30

15

0
Total (no.) 11 5 103 5 13 28 11 3
African trade (no.) 4 3 10 3 5 4 2 3
Slave trade (no.) 4 2 8 0 1 3 1 1

Sources: Ibid.
Note: The data pertain to individuals with five or more Notarial Contracts related to the
African commerce and the Slave Trade.

dam were Jewish, it is safe to assume that most were. Yosef Kaplan, ‘Wayward new Chris-
tians and stubborn new Jews: the shaping of a Jewish identity’, Jewish History 8:1-2 (1994):
27-41.
36. Ribeiro da Silva, Dutch and Portuguese in western Africa, 278, 282-283, 286-287, 307,
312-314, 317; Ribeiro da Silva, ‘Crossing empires’, 22, 30, 17.

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 14 » Catia Antunes & Filipa Ribeiro da Silva

Figure 3 Largest Amsterdam Jewish participants in the overall African trade and the
slave trade, 1580-1674
45

40

35
Number of contracts

30

25

20

15

10

0
David de Diogo Diogo Manuel Manuel Manuel
Aron de Duarte de Miguel de
Palacios / Dias Nunes Dias Lopes Solis Y
Pas Palacios Pas
Palache Querido Belmonte Henriques Homem Ulhoa
Total (no.) 6 8 14 41 20 32 6 5 27
African trade (no.) 3 5 5 15 9 5 1 3 11
Slave trade (no.) 0 4 0 5 0 2 1 2 1

Sources: Ibid.
Note: The data pertain to individuals with five or more Notarial Contracts related to the
African commerce and the Slave Trade.

The analysis of the period 1580-1674 shows that the commercial participation
of Christian and Jewish merchants in the overall western African commerce
was similar, contradicting Jeffries’ claims that the Jews were overwhelm-
ingly involved in the slave trade, but also clearly nuancing Stein’s and Faber’s
statements that Jewish participation was small. The knowledge Sephardic
merchants had about the Iberian colonial markets and their networks in the
major European and Atlantic colonial port cities was crucial for their early
commitment to the western African and the slave trades. In the long run,
their participation in these commercial branches contributed substantially
for the growth of the Republic’s trade with western Africa and its increasing
input in the slave trade in the course of the seventeenth century. A good exam-
ple of this learning process is Diogo Nunes Belmonte, member of the Portu-
guese Nation of Amsterdam, who in 1612 participated in the trade with Sene-
gambia with two Portuguese Sephardic merchants from Venice. Together,
they entrusted a cargo of exchange goods to Jacob Pelegrino, also a member
of the Nation, to be traded at the Petite Côte of Senegal. The cargo was trans-
ported on board of the Jonas, under skipper Douwe Annes, from Enkhuizen.
The return cargo was to be delivered at Livorno.37 Less than five years later

37. gaa, na 258/83: 1614-01-28; na 645/887: 1620-01-22.

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 Amsterdam merchants in the slave trade and African commerce » 15

the same Diogo Nunes Belmonte appears as main investor in several slav-
ing voyages in association with skippers and merchants with connections in
Amsterdam, Lisbon, Seville and the Spanish West Indies.38
The geographical distribution of Amsterdam merchants’ participation in
the western African trade shows that the main areas of commercial interest
were the north of Africa, Angola and the gulf of Guinea. Amsterdam Chris-
tian merchants concentrated their activities in the gulf of Guinea, whereas
Sephardic Jews operated mainly in the north of Africa, Angola and Sene-
gambia (see Figure 4). Nevertheless, the African products traded by the two
groups show little difference. In the gulf of Guinea, Christian merchants
traded mainly in gold, ivory and wax, although identical goods were pur-
chased by the Jewish merchants.39

Figure 4 Participation of Amsterdam merchants in the African commerce and the slave
trade: Zoning, 1580-1674
45

40

35
Percentage of contracts

30

25

20

15

10

0
Jews Christians Jews Christians
African Commerce Slave Trade
Africa unspecified region (%) 1 22 5 40
North of Africa (%) 39 1 14 2
Senegambia (%) 7 0 0 0
Gulf of Guinea (%) 0 14 0 10
Angola (%) 16 1 29 0

Sources: Ibid.

In the north of Africa, the Sephardim traded mostly in gold, silver and pre-
cious stones, while in Senegambia gold, ivory and hides were at the core of
their commercial activities.40 As for the slave trade, the Angolan coast, the

38. gaa, na 254/188–188v: 1614-05-22; na 164/162: 1620-11-11. For further details on Bel-
monte’s business connections, see: Ribeiro da Silva, ‘Crossing Empires’ 307, 312-313, 317.
Ribeiro da Silva, Dutch and Portuguese in western Africa, chapter 7.
39. gaa, na 2227/271-276: 1668-06-02.
40. gaa, na 638/210-211: 1630-06-28.

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 16 » Catia Antunes & Filipa Ribeiro da Silva

north of Africa and the gulf of Guinea took up twenty-nine, sixteenth and ten
percent, respectively, of the group’s total investment in slaving activities (see
Figure 4).41
The comparative analysis of the Christian and Jewish investment prefer-
ences reveals distincitve features. The Christians concentrated their slaving
activities in the gulf of Guinea, whereas the Sephardim operated mainly in
the north of Africa, Angola and Senegambia (see Figure 4). The former con-
centrated their activities in supplying areas where the Portuguese were less
active, such as the Grain, Ivory and Slave coasts, while the latter prefered
areas under Portuguese commercial influence in order to be able to capital-
ise on their merchant network connections acquired while engaging in the
Iberian and Mediterranean markets. In both cases, there was a clear attempt
to avoid the areas closely controlled and policed by Portuguese officials, pri-
vate merchants in the royal service, leaseholders of royal monopolies or tax
farmers.
The difference between Christian and Jewish investment strategies went
beyond the geographical selection for the slave imports. Another divergent
strategy consisted of the choice of trading routes within which to operate.
Christian slave routes linked ports and regions under wic jurisdiction or
commercial influence as was the case of the Gold Coast and Curaçao, the
major Dutch slave entrepot in the Caribbean catering to the Dutch, French,
English and Spanish colonies in the region (see Figure 6).42. The Jewish slave
ships, on the other hand, connected the Portuguese and Spanish colonies
and trading posts in western Africa and the Americas (see Figure 4).43 This
difference in strategy should be seen as a cunning institutional safeguard. By
remaining within the regions under Portuguese and wic influence, both mer-
chant communities attempted to function within the premises allowed within
the legal systems that protected the contracts they signed in Amsterdam. In
case of accident or conflict, the Christian merchants could take their cases
to the town, provincial and supreme courts in the Republic, while the Por-

41. In the north of Africa, slave trade is directly associated with ransoming of captives,
since certain types of slaves were welcome in the Barbary States, Spanish and Portuguese
fortress towns and free cities in the north of Africa. José Alberto Tavim, ‘Abraão Benza-
merro, ‘judeu de sinal’, sem sinal, entre o Norte de África e o reino de Portugal’, Mare
Liberum 6 (1993) 115-141; Tavim, ‘“Subir a Fez’ durante o século xvi. Contribuição para o
estudo de um mellah’, in: Carmen Ballesteros and Mery Ruah (eds.), Os Judeus Sefarditas
entre Portugal, Espanha e Marrocos (Lisbon 1999) 87-117.
42. gaa, na 2231/82-89: 1669-09-09; Marisa Vega Franco, El trafico de esclavos con America;
asientos de Grillo Y Lomelín, 1663-1674 (Seville 1984) 194-202; Enriqueta Vila Vilar, ‘La
sublevación de Portugal y la trata de negros’, Ibero-Americkanisches Archiv 2 (1976) 171-92;
Postma, The Dutch in the Atlantic, 33-38, 349-353.
43. gaa, na 258/81v: 1613-03-19; na 254/188-188v: 1614-05-22.

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 Amsterdam merchants in the slave trade and African commerce » 17

Ill. 1  ‘View of the island of Goree near the Cape Verde Peninsula, ca. 1665’.
Source: nl-HaNa - 4.velh 619.55.

tuguese Jews could take their cases to the Portuguese courts and the Dutch
courts simultaneously. This meddling between two legal systems put a high
premium on cross-cultural partnerships, since they were the best equipped
to fully access both legal systems were the original contractual agreements
to fail.44
The data provided by the tstd underlines the role of Amsterdam Christian
businessmen in the various western African regions. During the 1650s and
through the 1670s, forty-four percent of the merchants concentrated their
portfolios in the bight of Benin, twenty-eight percent in west central Africa,
and thirteen percent in the bight of Biafra and the gulf of Guinea Islands. If
we add up their total participation in all the coastal regions around the gulf of
Guinea, we come up with an astonishing sixty percent, against twenty-eight
percent of participation in west central Africa (see Figure 5).

44. Cátia Antunes, ‘Prosecuting the Persecutor: Contracts, Sugar, Jews, and Inquisitors,
1580-1640’, Mediaevalia 32:1 (2012) 219-236.

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 18 » Catia Antunes & Filipa Ribeiro da Silva

Figure 5 Amsterdam Christian slave ships’ owners: Major regions of slave purchase,
1650s-1670s

45

40

35
Percentage of voyages

30

25

20

15

10

Sources: http://www.slavevoyages.com, 17-02-2012.

Note : These names have been identified based on the information available for the owners
of vessels involved in the trans-Atlantic slave trade for the period of 1650-1675. For details
on these men and their slave ventures, see: http://www.slavevoyages.org, 17-02-2012.

The discrepancy between the notarial data and the tstd can be ascribed to the
fact that the latter only has data on shipowners for the period of 1650s-1670s,
while the contracts we have examined have information for the early voyages,
as well. These different results are also related to the political and military
context of these decades. During the 1650s-1670s, private merchants par-
ticipated in the wic slave trade and at that point the Company had already
consolidated its position in the Gold Goast and the bights of Benin and Biafra.
It is therefore not surprising that private merchants would take a preference
to these areas. This situation contrasted sharply with the period prior to the
chartering of the wic, when Amsterdam merchants could trade almost any-
where along the western coast of Africa, as long as they avoided the Portu-
guese royal fleets stationed at- or patrolling the Gold Coast.
In terms of slave landings, Amsterdam Christian merchants catered
mainly to the Dutch and French Caribbean, and the Spanish Americas for
forty-six, twelve and twenty-one percent, respectively. Yet, if we account for
the slave landings in all the Caribbean islands and the Guianas we come
to an amazing sixty percent. The emergence of the Caribbean in general,
and Curaçao in particular as a platform for re-distribution of slaves was only
possible because the wic sponsored a colony of settlement in Curaçao and

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 Amsterdam merchants in the slave trade and African commerce » 19

the Dutch Guiana, the rise of a plantation economy in the British, French
and Danish Caribbean colonies, and the end of the Portuguese control over
the Spanish asiento – source of the supply of slave labour into the Spanish
American colonies (see Figure 6).45 Similar insights into the Amsterdam
Portuguese Sephardic operations are impossible to make because the tstd
only identifies ship owners rather than freighters, which was the role most
Sephardim played in the slave trade.46 To reconstruct the activities of the latter
group, notarial sources have been paramout.

Figure 6 Amsterdam Christian slave ships’ owners: Major regions of slave landing,
1650s-1670s
50
45
40
35
Percentage of voyages

30
25
20
15
10
5
0

Sources: http://www.slavevoyages.com, 17-02-2012.

Note: Slave landing regions include North America (New York), Spanish Americas (Span-
ish Americas, Spanish Central America, Rio de La Plata) Spanish Caribbean (Spanish West
Indies), French Caribbean (Guadalupe, Martinique, Other French Caribbean) British Ca-
ribbean (Jamaica, Barbados).

45. Stuart B. Schwartz, Tropical Babylons: Sugar and the making of the Atlantic World, 1450-
1680 (Chapel Hill 2004); David Eltis, The rise of African slavery in the Americas (Cambridge
2000); Postma and Enthoven (eds.), Riches from Atlantic, various chapters; Wim Klooster,
Illicit riches; Henriqueta Vila Vilar, ‘Los asientos portugueses y el contrabando de negros’,
Anuário de Estudios Americanos 30 (1973) 557-99; Vila Vilar, Hispanoamerica y el comercio de
esclavos (Sevilla 1977); Vila Vilar, Aspectos sociales en América colonial. De extranjeros, contra-
bando y esclavos (Bogotá 2001).
46. Stacey Sommerdyck and Filipa Ribeiro da Silva, ‘Reexamining the geography and
merchants of the West Central African slave trade: Looking behind the numbers’, African
Economic History 38 (2010) 77-105.

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 20 » Catia Antunes & Filipa Ribeiro da Silva

Commercial partnerships and investments for western Africa, 1580-1674

One other way of looking at Amsterdam’s participation in the slave trade is by

studying the typology of notarial contracts used for the western African com-
merce. For the commodity trade, most contracts were freight contracts, pow-
ers of attorney, commercial credits and insurances, amounting to forty-six,
nineteen, fourteen and thirteen percent, respectively (see Figure 7), whilst for
the slave trade freight contracts, commercial credit, powers of attorney and
ransoms represented thirty-eight, twenty-one, nineteen and fourteen percent
of the contracts (see Figure 7). These results reflect a preocupation on the part
of the merchants to gather the required capital for their commercial opera-
tions and to recruit the most suitable agents.47

Figure 7 Participation of Amsterdam merchants in the African commerce and the

slave trade, 1580-1674: typology of contracts
35

30
Percentage of contracts

25

20

15

10

0
Jews Christians Jews Christians
African Commerce Slave Trade
Power of Attorney (%) 15 4 14 5
Freight contract (%) 33 13 14 24
Ransom (%) 1 1 12 2
Insurance (%) 10 3 7 0
Comercial credit (%) 2 12 0 21
Statement (%) 2 0 0 0
Bottomry (%) 0 3 0 0
Labour contract (%) 0 2 0 0

Sources: Sample constructed based on 374 contracts from the Notarial Archives of Amster-
dam (gaa, na). For further details on sampling method, please see note 12.

47. David Ross, ‘The career of Domingo Martinez in the Bight of Benin, 1833-64’, Journal
of African History 6:1 (1965) 79-90; Daniel L. Schafer, ‘Family ties that bind: Anglo-African
slave traders in Africa and Florida, John Fraser and his descendents’, Slavery and Abolition
20:3 (1999) 1-21; Stephen D. Behrendt, ‘African merchants, notables and the slave trade
at Old Calabar, 1720: Evidence from the National Archives of Scotland’, History in Africa
30 (2003) 37-61; Mariana P. Candido, ‘Merchants and the business of the slave trade at
Benguela, 1750-1850’, African Economic History 35 (2007) 1-30; Tobias Green, The rise of the
trans-atlantic slave trade in western Africa, 1300-1589 (Cambridge 2011).

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 Amsterdam merchants in the slave trade and African commerce » 21

The analysis of content of the freight contracts for Christian and Jewish mer-
chants demonstrates that the members of the Portuguese Nation were more
interested in the commodity trade with western Africa than the Christian
traders, with thirty-three and thirteen percent respectively. The inverse was
the case in the freight contracts for the slave trade, where Christian freight
contracts accounted for about twenty-four percent while Jewish freight con-
tracts represented only fourteen percent (see Figure 7). The chronological
analysis of the freight contracts, on the other hand, shows that Jewish mer-
chants were engaged in the overall commerce with western Africa and the
slave trade mainly in the period prior to the 1640s, whereas Christian mer-
chants increased substantially their share during the 1650s and 1660s.48
A similar trend can be found in the analysis of the insurances. Before the
1640s, Christians acted as insurers, whereas the Sephardim appeared mainly
as purchasers of insurances.49 What this information underlines is the shift
from a western African commodity and slave commercial portfolio held by
Jews and financed by Christians towards a world in which both groups acted
out as commercial and financial principals. Towards the 1670s, Amsterdam’s
Christian and Jewish communities were trading and financing their own
western African exchanges.
Freight contracts and insurances stress the importance of private mer-
chants in the western African commodity and slave trades, regardless of the
Portuguese and Dutch imposed commercial monopolies. But what kind of
economic relationship was there between these private merchants and the
monopoly holders, especially the wic?
Members of the Portuguese Nation of Amsterdam like Manuel, Luís and
Duarte Dias de Pas and André and Miguel de los Rios emerge in the sources
as buyers and holders of wic shares, usually from the Chamber of Amster-
dam. These shares were often bought from Dutch brokers for large sums of
money. Hence, over time, and especially after the 1640s, the participation of
the Sephardim of Amsterdam in the western African commerce and the slave
trade became indirect through shareholding in the wic.50 Christian mer-
chants like Henrico Mathias, in contrast, increased their direct commercial
engagement in the overall western African commodity and the slave trade,
and in the insurance market.51

48. Ribeiro da Silva, Dutch and Portuguese in western Africa, chap. 7.

49. gaa, na 254/188-188v: 1614-05-22.
50. gaa, na 2188A/134: 1649-02-23; na 876/24v-25: 1650-02-11; na 2189A/364: 1650-05-
11; na 2189B/662: 1650-08-26; na 2189B/688: 1650-08-27; na 2189B/706: 1650-08-31; na
2189B/709: 1650-08-31; na 2189B/940: 1650-10-21; na 2189B/954: 1650-10-27.
51. gaa, na 322/675-699: 1675-04-27; na 3221/695: 1675-04-27.

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 22 » Catia Antunes & Filipa Ribeiro da Silva

Ill. 2  ‘Drawing of the city of Luanda, c. 1665’. Source: nl-HaNa 4.velh 619.63.

The growing participation of Amsterdam’s merchants in the slave trade from

within the wic was related to changes in the juridical framework regulating
the comercial activities in the Dutch Atlantic. From 1580 until 1621 we may
speak of an era of free trade. After the establishment of the Dutch wic (1621-
1624), private merchants were prohibited from trading with western Africa
and other areas in the Atlantic, and were forced to remove their assets and
personnel from the commercial posts within a period of two years (1623).52
These commercial restrictions were in effect until 1638 for Brazil and the
Caribbean, 1647 for Angola, and 1648 for north America. However, from the
early 1640s onwards, signs of economic decline emerged and the wic’s inca-
pacity to conduct trade and guarantee shipping of commodities and slaves in
the intercontinental routes led to a gradual opening up of the monopoly to

52. J.A. Schiltkamp, ‘Legislation, jurisprudence, and law in the Dutch West Indian col-
onies: The Order of Government of 1629’, Pro Memorie 5:2 (2003) 320-321; Henk den
Heijer, ‘Directores, Stadhouderes e Conselhos de Administração’, in: M. Wiesebron
(ed.), O Brasil em Arquivos Neerlandeses (1624-1654). Brazilië in de Nederlandse Archieven
(1624-1654) (Leiden, 2005) 17-43..

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 Amsterdam merchants in the slave trade and African commerce » 23

private entrepreneurs.53 In order to gain access to the wic monopoly areas,

private merchants were to pay commercial fees of two and half percent over
the value of the imports and exports.54 The shift in policy on the part of the
Company stresses the ever increasing weight of private entrepreneurship in
the western African commerce and the slave trade, on the one hand, and the
inability of the Company to function as a commercial enterprise, as the data
in the tstd clearly shows (see Figure 8).

Figure 8 Dutch participation in the transatlantic slave trade, 1596-1675

90

80

70

60
No. of slave voyages

50

40

30

20

10

Sources: Jelmer Vos, David Eltis and David Richardson, ‘The Dutch in the Atlantic world:
New perspective from the slave trade with particular reference to the African origins of the
traffic’, in: David Eltis and David Richardson (eds.), Extending the frontiers: Essays on the New
Transatlantic Slave Trade Database (New Haven 2008) 249.

In the 1630s and 1640s, the increasing participation of the Republic in

the slave trade was stimulated by the takeover of the northeastern Brazil-
ian captancies and Angola by the wic, whereas the boost in the next twenty
years was motivated by the transfer of the plantation economy to Suriname,
the transformation of Curaçao in a major entrepot for the supply of slave

53. gaa 54: Reglement […] over the openstellen van de handel op S. Paulo de Loanda. The
Hague, 1648; Klaas Ratelband, Os Holandeses no Brasil e na Costa Africana. Angola, Kongo e
São Tomé (1600-1650) (Lisbon 2003) 310-315.
54. Ernest van den Boogaart and Pieter C. Emmer, ‘The Dutch participation in the Atlantic
slave trade, 1596-1650’, in: Henry A. Gemery and Jan S. Hogenborn (eds.), The uncommon
market: Essays in the economic history of the Atlantic slave trade (New York 1979) 353-375.

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 24 » Catia Antunes & Filipa Ribeiro da Silva

labour to the Caribbean markets and the Spanish Americas. The growth of
the 1650s and 1660s was also facilitated by the increasing presence of the
wic employees in the Gold Coast, and the bights of Benin and Biafra. This
growth was further extended when the Company granted permission for pri-
vate merchants to trade in enslaved Africans and multiple commodities in
western Africa. Thus, the direct access of private merchants to the western
African coastal supply markets and the American consumption markets for
slave labour made the difference for the participation of private capital in the
slave trade. Despite never becoming major slave traders when compared to
the English or the Portuguese, the merchants of the Republic acquired a sta-
ble quota in the slave trade as well as the ability to supply multiple European
colonies in the Caribbean and in the Americas, catering to the demands of
Danish, French, English and Spanish, at least until the beginning of the War
of the Spanish Succession (1701-1714).55
If freight contracts and insurances reflect the commercial and financial
interest of Amsterdam merchants in the western African trades, powers of
attorney and commercial credit provide an insight into the social composi-
tion of the partnerships behind the western African business. The two key
elements in these partnerships were their cross-cultural nature (they bound
men from different origins, places of birth and religious backgrounds) and
their subversive nature (they sistematically ignored the constrains imposed
by the rules of commercial monopoly imposed by different states). For exam-
ple, in 1664, Francisco Ferroni granted a power of attorney to Martin Noell
so that he might sign an agreement with the agents of Domingo Grillo and
Ambrósio Lomelini in Barbados for the supply of 600 to 1000 ‘Black Indians
or Moors’ to the Spanish West Indies. Martin Noel was a merchant in Lon-
don and an investor in the Royal Company of the Merchants Adventurers’ of
England, whereas Grillo and Lomelini were merchants of Italian descent and
leaseholders of the Spanish asiento. A few years later, Ferroni was himself
promoted to the role of representative for Grillo and Lomelini in Amsterdam.
During the year of 1675, and on behalf of the latter, he signed a contract
with the directors of the wic, Chamber of Amsterdam, to supply slaves to
the Spanish West Indies via Curaçao. The agreement was worth 100,000
guilders. Given the restrictions on the transport of bullion between Curaçao
and Cartagena de las Indias by Dutch owned ships, arrangements were made
for payment to Grillo’s and Lomelini’s factor in the island. Joseph de Castillo,

55. Johannes M. Postma, The Dutch in the Atlantic slave trade, 33-38; Han Jordaan, ‘The
Curaçao slave market: From Asiento trade to free trade, 1700-1730’, in: Postma and Ent-
hoven (eds.), Riches from Atlantic commerce, 219-258.

tseg_2012-4_def.indd 24 26-11-2012 14:29:18

 Amsterdam merchants in the slave trade and African commerce » 25

merchant in Brussels, was also involved in the business, providing part of the
initial capital for the venture.56
Powers of attorney were also used to sort out problems brought about by the
need of ransoming. Sephardic merchants signed multiple contracts regard-
ing ransoming, while the Christian involvement in this type of exchanges
was insignificant. This difference may be explained by the levels of engage-
ment of the Amsterdam Sephardim in the north African trade. The ships that
operated in the trading circuits linking the north of Africa and the Republic
were often targetted by pirates of the Barbary States and the Ottoman empire
sailing via Gibraltar, along the Maroccan coast into the open Atlantic. These
attacks often led to the capture of ships and cargoes and to the enslavement
of crews and passengers, forcing merchants and their agents to negociate
the ransom of ships, cargos and crews.57 On October 1637, the Santa Maria
was freighted by David de Palacios to sail from Hamburg to the north of
Africa calling at Lisbon. While sailing towards its destination, the ship was
attacked by Ottoman pirates. Ship and cargo were taken to Sale and the crew
enslaved and sold at the local slave market. George Bijsterveld, Dutch consul
in Marocco made an attempt at ransoming the crew, but negotiations con-
cerning the liberation of non-Dutch sailors were made difficult by the state
of war between Marocco and the Habsburg Empire.58 Similar mechanisms of
capture and enslavement were used by European merchants against Moorish
ships and crews. For instance, in 1634, some English, Dutch and French mer-
chants with economic interests in Sale and Madeira reported that 22 Moors
had been enslaved and bought by the governor of Madeira.59 In both cases,
as in many others, the Portuguese Nation of Amsterdam intervened as inter-
mediary to setlle the ransoming demands, which often included the exchange
of prisioners for slaves, products or species.60

56. gaa, na 1148/205: 1664-03-12; na 3221/395: 1675-04-27; na 3678B/919: 1669-07-01;

na 2231/82-89: 1669-09-09.
57. Jonathan Israel, The Jews of Spanish North Africa, 1600-1669 (London 1979); Géza
Dávid and Pál Fodor (eds.), Ransom slavery along the Ottoman borders (early fifteenth – early
eighteenth centuries) (Leiden 2007); Janice E. Thompson, Mercenaries, pirates and sovereigns.
State-building and extraterritorial violence in early modern Europe (Princeton 1994).
58. gaa, na 1420/188: 1637-04-23.
59. gaa, na 948/236-238: 1635-03-02.
60. Moulay Belhamissi, Les captifs algériens et l’Europe chrétienne (1518-1839) (Algiers 1988);
Philippe Contamine, ‘Un contrôle étatique croissant. Les usages de la guerre du xive au
xviiie siècle: rançons et butins’, in: Philippe Contamine and Nicole Genet (eds.), Guerre
et concurrence entre les Etats européens du xive au xviiie siècle (Paris 1998) 199-236; Alexis
Bernard, ‘Le logiche del profitto. Schiavi e società a Siviglia nel Seicento’, Quaderni Storici
107:2 (2001) 379-389; Francisco Vidal Castro, ‘Le rachat de captifs en al-Andalus (viiie-
xve s.). Théorie et pratique du droit et des institutions islamiques’, Hypothèses (2006) 313-
327; Michel Fontenay, La Méditerranée entre la Croix et le Croissant. Navigation, commerce,
course et piraterie (xvie-xixe siècle) (Paris 2010); Maura Fortunati, ‘Captivi, riscatti ed assicu-

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 26 » Catia Antunes & Filipa Ribeiro da Silva

Between commercial and financial investment, the Amsterdam slave trad-

ers only tighed up ten percent of their total portfolio to the slave trade and
about one fifth to the western African commodity exchanges. Why such a
modest commitment?
The low participation of the Amsterdam merchants in the commerce with
western Africa and the slave trade is directly related to the patterns of con-
sumption in Europe and the Americas, to the legal and fiscal frameworks
regulating these commercial branches, and the specific risks and specificities
inherent to these multiple activities. From the fifteenth century onwards, the
northern European and Baltic towns were the major consumption markets
for the Portuguese and Spanish colonial products, since Iberian consump-
tion markets failed to respond to the new imports.61 African ivory, gold, pep-
per, wax and ambergris as well as Brazilian sugar and dyewood, and Spanish
American silver and gold made their way from Iberian ports to the north.
Until 1585 Antwerp was the main redistribution centre for Iberian colonial
goods in northern Europe (including the Baltic and Scandinavia), a position
taken by Amsterdam in the 1590s.62 However, since the third quarter of the
sixteenth century, African products had to compete fiercely to guarantee their
place in the consumption markets. African sugar from São Tomé faced com-
petition from the Brazilian sugar, known for its higher quality.63 African gold
struggled against the Spanish American gold, whereas African pepper bat-
tled against Asian pepper. Only African ivory had a guaranteed consumption
outlet, though the demand remained limited, since ivory catered to a niche
market of high valued manufactured pieces of personalised design for an elite
of wealthy consumers.
The competion African products had to face to succeed in the European
markets, on the one hand, and the small niche markets they were catering
to, on the other hand, made profits look potentially high but at the same time
uncertain, increasing the risks of investment in general. The growth of the
overall transaction costs might have put some of the Amsterdam commercial
elite off from engaging extensively in the western African commodity trade.
The demand for slave labour, in contrast, was concentrated mainly in
Iberia, the Mediterranean bassin and in the Portuguese and Spanish Ameri-

razione alla vigilia dei Codici’, in: Vito Piergiovanni (ed.), Corsari e riscatto dei captivi (Milan
2010) 113-134.
61. Cátia Antunes, ‘Sea and land: the integration of the Dutch and the Portuguese urban
Hinterland in the European maritime system during the seventeenth century’, in: Simonetta
Cavaciochi (org.), Ricchezza del mare. Ricchezza dal mare. Secc. xiii-xviii (Florence 2006)
115-146.
62. Cátia Antunes, Globalisation in the early modern period.
63. For sugar prices in Amsterdam: N.W. Posthumus, Nederlandse prijsgeschiedenis (Leiden
1943).

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 Amsterdam merchants in the slave trade and African commerce » 27

can colonies.64 Until the 1580s, Lisbon and the Iberian southern ports were
important redistribution centres for the transport of enslaved Africans (from
both north and sub-Saharaan Africa) into Europe. These ports catered to the
Atlantic Islands of Madeira and the Canaries as well as to Brazil and the Span-
ish West Indies and America mainland. Later, during the sixteenth century,
these commercial circuits were readjusted and the Iberian American colonies
started to be supplied directly from western Africa. Therefore, the merchants
investing in this business had a guaranteed market for the enslaved Africans
imported into Europe and the Americas. Nevertheless, Amsterdam based
merchants had a very limited involvement in this commercial branch. We
hypothezise that participating in slave circuits posed various challenges to
most private businessmen.65 Firstly, between the 1580s and the 1670s the
Portuguese and Spanish slave trades were held as monopolies by the Iberian
Crowns. Private merchants could only acquire permission to operate within
these trades by purchasing commercial licenses from the Iberian monarchs
or their monopoly holders, the so-called contratadores and assentistas.66 Sec-
ondly, the high taxes imposed by the Portuguese and the Spanish Crowns
over the slave trade constituted another challenge that cannot be ignored.67
Finally, all the aforementioned overseas areas were under the control of the
Habsburgs, sworn enemies of the Republic. The conflict involving the Repub-
lic, Spain, Portugal and their overseas Empires had a major impact on the
Atlantic trade in general and on the African and slave trades in particular,

64. Linda A. Newson and Susie Minchin, From capture to sale: the Portuguese slave trade to
Spanish South America in the early seventeenth century (Leiden 2007); Maria Manuel Torrão,
‘Formas de participação dos portugueses no comércio de escravos com as Índias de Castela:
abastecimento e transporte’, in: ii Reunião Internacional de História de África: A dimensão
atlântica da África: Rio de Janeiro, 30 de Outubro a 1 de Novembro de 1996 (São Paulo 1997)
203-222; Torrão, ‘Rotas comerciais, agentes económicos e meios de pagamento’, in: Maria
Emília Madeira Santos (org.), História geral de Cabo Verde, ii: 17-123 (Lisbon/Praia 1995);
Maria da Graça A.M. Ventura, Portugueses no Peru ao tempo da União Ibérica: mobilidade,
cumplicidades e vivências, 3 vols. (Lisbon 2005); J.L. Vogt, ‘The early São Tomé-Príncipe slave
trade with Mina, 1500-1540’, The International Journal of African Historical Studies 6:3 (1973)
453-467; Olivier Pétré-Grenouilleau, Les traites négrières: Essai d’histoire globale (Paris 2004);
Herbert S. Klein, ‘The Atlantic slave trade to 1650’, in: Stuart B. Schwartz (ed.), Tropical
Babylons: Sugar and the making of the Atlantic World, 1450-1680 (Chapel Hill 2004) 201-236;
Avelino Teixeira da Mota, ‘Entrée d’esclaves noirs a Valence (1445-1482): le remplacement
de la voie Saharienne par la voie Atlantique’, in: Sol, le parole et l’écrit: 2000 ans d’histoire
africaine: Mélanges en hommage a Raymond Mauny, 2 (Paris 1981) 579-594.
65. Pétré-Grenouilleau, Les traites négrières; Klein, ‘The Atlantic slave trade to 1650’, 201-
236; Mota, ‘Entrée d’esclaves noirs a Valence’, 579-594.
66. Newson & Michin, From capture to sale, chap. 1; Ribeiro da Silva, ‘Transferring Euro-
pean fiscal systems overseas: The Portuguese home and colonial fiscal systems: a compari-
son’, in: Simonetta Cavaciochi (org.), Fiscal systems in the European economy from the 13th to
the 18th centuries (Florence 2008) 1: 553-556, 558-560.
67. Ibid., 1: 552-553, 567.

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 28 » Catia Antunes & Filipa Ribeiro da Silva

by affecting shipping, routes, supplying areas and consumption markets.68

Together, these circumstances drove many merchants away from investing
in the slave trade.
In order to trade in western African commodities and slaves, merchants
in Amsterdam needed to acquire extensive know-how about the supply areas
and the consumption markets. These men and their supercargoes were
required to have a fair knowledge of the coastal markets in western Africa and
in the Americas, the demand and consumption patterns, trading practices,
possible competitors and partners, prices, and exchange rates in the different
American markets.69 The western African commerce and the slave trade also
required extensive commercial expertise and wide trading networks covering
several geographical areas. To guarantee a certain level of agency, the busi-
nessmen in the Republic needed either to live in the posts on the western
coast of Africa, take part in commercial ventures, hire supercargoes or place
their employees and/or representatives in key points in the commercial cir-
cuits either on the shore or on board of floating trading posts. Supercargoes,
chief- and junior-factors were instructed on how to behave towards potential
competitors on the coast as well as on how to negotiate with African and Eura-
frican traders. Knowledgeable supercargoes and factors were also needed in
the American ports of disembarcation, in order to guarantee the success of
business.70
Trade with western Africa also posed a whole set of logistical problems. A
journey between the Republic, western Africa and the Americas combining
long-distance and coastal circuits could last from seventeen up to twenty-
seven months.71 This timeline increased the costs with wages, victuals, and
insurance and, consequently, reduced the amount or postponed the moment
to collect the profits, driving many merchants away from investing in the
slave trade and other branches of the African commerce. European routes

68. Antunes, Globalisation in the early modern period; Ribeiro da Silva, Dutch and Portuguese
in western Africa, chap. 7.
69. Filipa Ribeiro da Silva, ‘Dutch vessels in African waters. Routes, commercial strategies,
trading practices and intra-continental trade (c. 1590s-1674)’, Tijdschrift voor Zeegeschiedenis
1 (2010) 19-38; J.D. La Fleur (trans. & ed.), Pieter van den Broecke’s journal of voyages to Cape
Verde, Guinea and Angola (1605-1612) (London 2000)26-29; ‘Andreas Josua Ulsheimer’s
voyage of 1603-4’, in: Adam Jones (ed.), German sources for West African history 1559-1669
(Wiesbaden 1985) 21-23, 64-65; ‘Samuel Brun’s voyages of 1611-20’, in: ibid., 4-59, 71-78.
Adam Jones (trans. & ed.), Western Africa in the mid-seventeenth century: An anonymous
Dutch manuscript (Atlanta 1995) 197-200.
70. Ribeiro da Silva, Dutch and Portuguese in western Africa, chap. 6, 7; Cátia Antunes &
Filipa Ribeiro da Silva, ‘Cross-cultural entrepreneurship in the Atlantic: Africans, Dutch
and Sephardic Jews in western Africa, 1580-1674’, Itinerario: International Journal on the
History of European Expansion and Global Interaction 35:1 (2011) 49-76.
71. Ribeiro da Silva, ‘Dutch vessels in African waters’, 26; Postma, The Dutch in the Atlantic,
152, Table 7.1: Time dimension of triangular slaving missions.

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 Amsterdam merchants in the slave trade and African commerce » 29

were less risky and therefore cheaper, providing the expectation of perhaps
not higher, but certainly safer returns.

Conclusion

This article has questioned four main believes about the Dutch Republic’s
involvement in the western African exchanges during the early modern period
and their applicability to the first decades of Dutch participation in those com-
mercial branches. In the first place, private entrepreneurs were responsible
for a bit less than half of the total investment against a smaller share held by
the wic. In the second place, ports in Zealand seem to have been supplanted
by Amsterdam concerning slaving enterprises up to roughly forty-three per-
cent of the total. In the third place, western Africa represented about one fifth
of the total Amsterdam investment, while slave trading activities took up a
meager ten percent. Finally, merchants in Amsterdam, regardless of their
religious background invested in equal shares in the African trades. In short,
the largest slave traders in the Dutch Republic before 1674 were private mer-
chants, from multiple origins and diverse religious backgrounds, residing in
Amsterdam and for whom slave trading was but a minor business.
These statements contradict Emmer et al’s statement that the Atlantic was
not important for European businessmen. For the Dutch case before 1674,
the Atlantic in general was important, the western African exchanges as well,
it was the slave trade that was minor when compared to other investments in
the slave traders’ portfolios. So perhaps, instead of returning to the discussion
initiated by Williams in 1944 about the profitability of slave trade, historians
might be better off understanding the profitability of the Atlantic in general.
However, that is not an easy task. Since it is almost impossible to discern what
was European and what was Atlantic in these exchanges, as proposed by Ger-
vais, we think that the future research agenda for the Atlantic should consider
the gains and losses of the Atlantic exchanges within the Atlantic itself (being
the Europeans simple participants in a complex nexus of networks) and the
spin-offs of the Atlantic output within Europe (with emphasis to the share
of this output that was actually retained by Africans and ‘Americans’). It is
our view that only when we understand this intrinsic dialogue of exchanges
between the European and Atlantic spaces will we be able to assess the pivotal
role the Atlantic played in the economic growth of Europe before the Indus-
trial Revolution.

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 30 » Catia Antunes & Filipa Ribeiro da Silva

About the authors

Cátia Antunes is currently a Lecturer at the History Institute, Leiden Univer-

sity. She obtained her ma in History Cum Laude (1998) at the New University
of Lisbon in Portugal and her PhD (2004) in Economic History at Leiden
University. Her new book Atlantic entrepreneurship: Cross-cultural business
networks, 1580-1776 is now forthcoming. From September 2012 onwards, Cátia
initiated in September 2012 the projects Challenging Monopolies, Building
Global Empires in the Early Modern Period within the vidi granting scheme
of the Dutch National Science Foundation (nwo) and Fighting Monopolies,
Defying Empire: 1500-1750 – a Comparative Overview of Free Agents and Informal
Empires in Western Europe and the Ottoman Empire within the erc-Starting
Grant Scheme (European Research Council).
E-mail: [email protected].

Filipa Ribeiro da Silva (1974) is currently a Post-doctoral fellow at the Inter-

national Institute of Social History in Amsterdam. Filipa studied History and
Portuguese overseas expansion at the New University of Lisbon in Portu-
gal, where she obtained her ba honors (1996) and Master degree (2002). In
2009, she received her PhD at Leiden University. Between 2009 and 2011
Filipa was a post-doctoral research fellow of the Project Slave trade, slavery
and abolition in European histories and identities, financed by the European
Union 7th Framework Programme, at the Wilberforce Institute for the study
of Slavery and Emancipation at the University of Hull. Dutch and Portuguese
in western Africa: Empires, merchants and the Atlantic system, 1580-1674 (Leiden:
Brill, 2011) is her latest book.
E-mail: [email protected].

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