Windows of global exchange: Dutch ports and the slave trade,1600–1800

Ports in the Republic and the Slave Voyages

In general terms, the port system of the United Provinces of the Netherlands, commonly referred to as the Dutch Republic (and nowadays the Netherlands), was divided into three distinct areas. The south (closer to the border with present-day Belgium) was dominated by the ports of Middleburg, Flushing, Veere and Zierikzee, all within the province of Zealand. These southern ports were particularly important as gateways to the River Scheldt and as markers of the political border between the Northern (breakaway provinces controlled by the States-General) and Southern Spanish Netherlands. The second area comprised the delta ports of Dordrecht, Den Briel, Maassluis, Schiedam, Delfshaven and Rotterdam, which developed around the estuaries of the Rhine and the Meuse rivers, roughly in the present-day province of South Holland. The third area was formed by Kampen (a former Hanseatic town), Medemblik, Enkhuizen, Hoorn and Amsterdam, with these ports together dominating the Zuiderzee region and access to the River IJssel.

Historically, the ports of Zealand were closely linked to the ports of Flanders in the Southern Netherlands. In direct collaboration with Antwerp, the ports of Flushing, Middleburg, Veere and Zierikzee maintained the sustainability of the River Scheldt as a primary gateway for luxury and bulk products imported from and into the Baltic, the Mediterranean and other regions and continents. ⁴ Even though these Zealand ports were efficient as transit ports in the Scheldt complex, they were at a disadvantage compared to their Flemish counterparts. The Zealand hinterland was mainly agricultural and generally unable to provide its ports with high-end products for the highly demanding international routes. For this reason, the success of the Zealand ports was heavily dependent on their relationships with Flanders, on residual fishing activities and on military-strategic positioning.

The start of the Dutch Revolt against Philip II in the mid-sixteenth century triggered a severe decline in the Zealand ports as the politically imposed border severed their links with Flanders and ruined the economic position of almost all of them. The only exception was Flushing, which functioned as an advanced naval base for the newly founded Republic from which to attack the Southern Netherlands and enforce the Dutch blockade of the River Scheldt. ⁵

The steep decline of the Zealand ports was also felt in the Rhine and Meuse delta. In that area, however, only the leading port, Dordrecht, seems to have been seriously affected. ⁶ Since the city had acquired its staple rights over the Lower Meuse within the political sphere of the Habsburg rulers, the outbreak of the Revolt gave the smaller ports of Rotterdam, Delfshaven, Schiedam, Vlaardingen and Den Briel the confidence to challenge Dordrecht’s prominence by supporting the cause of the Prince of Orange and complementing their fisheries and inland trade in the Rhine and the Meuse with luxury and bulk products from the Baltic and the Mediterranean.

When looking at the developments in Zealand and the delta area, we witness the rise to pre-eminence of a formerly lesser port. However, if Flushing took over from Middleburg because of its better strategic military position, Rotterdam replaced Dordrecht because, together with the other ports in the region, it joined the political fight for economic rights. ⁷ This emergence of new centres of gravity in Zealand and the delta was a sign of a slow but permanent economic shift from the south to the north, in the direction of the Zuiderzee ports.

The rise of the Zuiderzee complex started in the early sixteenth century. Kampen capitalized on the gains of its participation in the Hanse, while Hoorn, Enkhuizen and Harlingen specialized in the fisheries and the Baltic trade. Amsterdam was, at the time, the smallest port in the area and showed no specific tendency to specialize. The competitive advantage of the Zuiderzee ports, compared to their counterparts in Zealand and the Delta, was the role they played as connectors between the Baltic, the Low Countries (via sea routes) and the Central European markets (through the main inland waterways). ⁸

The Dutch Revolt changed the balance of the Zuiderzee complex as much as it influenced the destinies of the Zealand and Delta ports. Hoorn and Enkhuizen were the first to support the Prince of Orange and, in return, both ports received substantial commercial privileges. Harlingen, Kampen and Amsterdam, by contrast, delayed offering their support and, because of this hesitation, their economic position deteriorated. Amsterdam’s pre-eminence only started after it had sworn fidelity to the States-General and in response to a set of international incentives, including migratory flows from the Southern Netherlands, especially Antwerp. ⁹

The Golden Age of the Dutch Republic (roughly between 1580 and 1650) witnessed the expansion of Amsterdam into a global market for products and services. Dutch participation in the European routes and overseas exchanges was led, directly or indirectly, from or through Amsterdam. By the mid-seventeenth century, however, there were signs of change in the international conjuncture. The Dutch were consequently at risk of losing their dominance in the Baltic, the Mediterranean and the South Atlantic. These international developments, allied with growing environmental challenges and the economic specialization of some Dutch ports with reduced hinterland networks, catapulted the Dutch Republic into a general commercial decline. ¹⁰ As a result, the Dutch ports became regional players within the enlarged context in Europe and overseas.

When analysing the Dutch ports’ participation in Atlantic exchanges, especially in the acquisition, shipping and sale of enslaved Africans, we witness a complementary trend to the one described above. When compared to its northern seaboard neighbours, the Dutch Republic was the most important slave trader in the region. Indeed, from the 1590s until well into the 1870s, excepting the first forty years of the nineteenth century, the Netherlands was one of the most active areas in the slave trade (see Figure 1).

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Figure 1.

Departure of Slave Shipping Trips in the Northern Seabord, 1590–1870.

Even though the Dutch Republic, and later the Kingdom of the Netherlands, encompassed a limited amount of territory, the agglomeration of port systems was quite intense, as we stated earlier. It is not surprising, therefore, that the available data point towards a broad participation in the slave trade on the part of most Dutch ports. Following the regional division noted above, the Zuiderzee and delta ports and the province of Zealand all participated heavily in slave trading and shipping activities in the Atlantic (see Figure 2). However, their participation during the early modern period was not evenly distributed, with the Zuiderzee ports taking the lead from the 1590s onwards and reaching a peak during the 1660s. The subsequent decline of the Zuiderzee participation in this trade coincided with the general decline of the Golden Age, although it was not until the 1740s that the ports of Zealand took over. The delta ports, on the other hand, always maintained a modest direct participation in these activities.

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Figure 2.

Dutch Regions Investing in Slave Shipping, 1590–1900.

The traditional historiography on Dutch participation in the slave trade has always emphasized the predominance of the ports of Zealand as the main entrepreneurs in slave commerce and shipping. ¹² Figure 3 seems to contradict these common assumptions. Until the 1740s, the port of Amsterdam and its outport, Texel, controlled the majority of the departures of ships contracted to engage in the Atlantic slave trade, thus leaving the ports of Zealand and the delta with only very modest shares of this business. Elsewhere we have argued extensively why Amsterdam was able to dominate this specific trade throughout the seventeenth and much of the eighteenth centuries. ¹³ Suffice it to say here that individual entrepreneurship and a continuing shortfall in the available shipping capacity of the WIC provided the Amsterdam business community with yet another source of income.

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Figure 3.

Ports in the Republic for Slave Voyages, 1590–1800.

The ports of Zealand started becoming significant for the slave trade and shipping around the mid-eighteenth century. During this period, the WIC and MCC relied on the shipping and entrepreneurial capacities of the Zealand investors to meet the import quotas needed to sustain the plantation economies in the Dutch, English, French and Scandinavian Caribbean and on the Dutch Wild Coast. There is therefore a direct correlation between the intensification of the Zealand ports’ participation and the rise and development of the Dutch plantation complex.

The shift from Amsterdam to the Zealand ports, mostly Flushing, somewhat contradicts the perception of Peter Sigmond of the development of the Dutch port system. Even though most ports in the Dutch Republic declined in their international participation, losing out in the direct competition with the English on most European routes, these ports nonetheless seem to have flourished in the overseas trades, with slave trading activities as a case in point. While generally declining as transit ports, the Dutch harbours remained strong receptors, transformers and exporters of colonial goods, mostly from the Atlantic. ¹⁴ But which ports and port systems in Africa were used by maritime investors in the Dutch Republic in their slaving enterprises?

African Slave Ports: a Web of Systems

Scholarship on the WIC and its participation in the slave trade has traditionally emphasized the role of the Gold Coast and the port of Elmina in Dutch slaving in the Atlantic. ¹⁵ However, the information recently gathered in the TSTD clearly shows the important function that other regions and ports on the West Coast of Africa played in the Dutch slave trade.

Evidence suggests that Dutch vessels operating in the transatlantic slave trade acquired enslaved Africans in four main regions along the coast of West Africa: the Bight of Benin, the Bight of Biafra and the Gulf of Guinea islands (part of the sub-port system of the Gulf of Guinea), the Gold Coast and West-Central Africa (part of the West-Central African sub-system). The port system of the Gulf of Guinea islands included the Grain, Ivory, Gold and Slave Coasts up to Cape Lopez, and the archipelago of São Tomé. It is important to stress the relevance of the fortress ports on the Gold Coast (Elmina, Axim and Shama in present-day Ghana), the smaller lodges along the gulf, the ports of São Tomé and Santo António in Príncipe (present-day São Tomé and Príncipe), Fernão Pó and Annobon (present-day Equatorial Guinea), the coastal ports along the Bights of Benin and Biafra (in particular Ardra) and the ports further south up to Cape Lopez. Internationally, these ports served two main functions. On the one hand, they were points of departure for cargos of gold, slaves and ivory exported to Europe and the Americas. On the other hand, they ensured a military presence of the Dutch and other Europeans in the region, thus safeguarding against often-failed attempts at achieving political sovereignty and commercial jurisdiction. At a regional level, these ports facilitated some intra-African commerce between neighbouring regions and secured connections between the fortresses and the trading posts, while at a local level they served as nodes in a network of commercial exchanges between trading centres along the coast.

The West-Central African sub-system included small trading posts on the Loango Coast ¹⁶ and in Congo and Angola, more specifically Mayumba, Malemba, Loango, Cacongo, Cabinda, Luanda and Benguela (in present-day Angola). At an international level, Luanda and Benguela emerged as the main gateways for exports of enslaved Africans and various African products, including ivory, redwood, beads, and wax. However, smaller ports north of the River Congo and along the Loango Coast also became important players in this business. At both regional and local levels, these ports were connected to inland markets through a network of land routes and waterways that facilitated the transport of commodities and enslaved Africans from the interior to the coast, thus feeding into the intraregional and Atlantic trades. Unlike the Gulf of Guinea sub-system, however, these ports were rarely used to ensure the military presence of the Dutch on the coast, with the sole exception of the short-lived Dutch rule over Angola (1641–48).

Until the 1630s, the extent of Dutch slaving activities was limited, as David Eltis, David Richardson and Jelmer Vos have demonstrated, partly owing to the absence of direct or strong links between Dutch merchants and the colonial areas where slave labour was in high demand, with the exception of Brazil. ¹⁷ During this early period of Dutch participation in the transatlantic slave trade, West-Central Africa was the main gateway for Dutch slave traders, both for private merchants participating in this commerce (1590s–1623) and during the subsequent years dominated by the commercial monopoly of the WIC (see Figure 4). The sources for this initial period often fail to specify the main ports of embarkation of slaves, though Luanda appears to have been dominant (see Figure 5). This evidence does not come as a surprise, given the involvement of Portuguese Sephardic Jews based in the Dutch Republic in these early Dutch slaving activities and their connections with commercial branches and economic activities in the Iberian American colonies that depended on the use of slave labour for the production and trade in sugar (Brazil), and silver and precious stones (Spanish American colonies). ¹⁸

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Figure 4.

Major regions of slave embarkation, 1590–1830.

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Figure 5.

Major ports of slave embarkation, 1590–1830.

In the 1630s and 1640s, the naval attacks by the WIC and the subsequent takeover of the Portuguese fortresses on the Gold Coast, in Angola and on the island of São Tomé granted the WIC access to new areas, where trade in slaves was an important commercial activity for the coastal, regional and long-distance routes. The growing presence and commercial influence of firstly Dutch private merchants and, after 1623, the WIC on the Slave Coast and in its networks of ports, formerly under the economic influence of Portuguese merchants based in the archipelago of São Tomé, also facilitated Dutch penetration in this trade. The interest of the WIC in these new areas was further stimulated by the takeover of the north-eastern captaincies of Brazil. The Brazilian economy at the time had a growing demand for slaves, especially for use in sugar production and multiple construction works. The combination of these factors resulted in an increase in Dutch participation in the slave trade and a concomitant growth in the number of regions and ports on the African coast visited by Dutch vessels, with a consequent diversification of slave embarkation regions.

Traditional scholarship argues that the WIC attack on Elmina and other Gold Coast forts was driven by the demand for slave labour in Brazil. ²⁰

Two decades after the conquests in the Gold Coast, however, Elmina still played only a minor role in Dutch slaving activities. Between the 1630s and 1650s, the WIC bought its slaves in three main regions: the Bights of Benin and Biafra, the islands of the Gulf of Guinea, and West-Central Africa (see Figure 4), with Ardra and Luanda (especially between 1641 and 1648) emerging as the main ports of embarkation (see Figure 5). ²¹

In the 1650s and following decades, Dutch slave vessels shifted their activities to Ardra, the ports along the Loango Coast and the coastal area north of the River Congo, as a direct consequence of the Portuguese takeover of Angola and São Tomé and gradual reclaiming of commercial influence on the Bights of Benin and Biafra (the Costa da Mina), as well as the financial difficulties of the WIC resulting from the war effort and the company’s mismanagement of its commercial and human resources.

Until the 1720s, growing numbers of vessels transported slaves from the Bight of Benin and the Gold Coast, in particular Whydah and Elmina, while the supplying areas of the Bight of Biafra and West-Central Africa, which had previously been important, became increasingly less significant within the Dutch context. In the region of West-Central Africa, there was even a redefinition and shift in the main sub-region and primary ports of supply. After the 1740s, Dutch activities began to be concentrated in the area designated by Johannes Postma as ‘Congo North’, which corresponded to a group of ports located between Cape Lopez and the mouth of the Congo River, including Mayumba, Kiloango, Loango, Boary, Malembo, Cabinda and the River Congo (also known as the River Zaire). ²² Until the late eighteenth century, the ports of Ardra (in the Bight of Benin), Loango and north of the River Congo (in West-Central Africa) constituted the main points of embarkation used by Dutch slave traders.

Elmina only became visible as an important centre for slave purchases between 1730 and 1740, and again between 1770 and 1790. Moreover, during the time that the Gold Coast and Elmina were taking the lead in the Dutch slave trade, their prominent positions were constantly being challenged by the ports in the coastal areas of Loango and north of the Congo, as well as by the Windward Coast. These were regions that fell out of the WIC’s effective control and, for this reason, were often visited by the vessels of private slave traders (often called lorrendraaiers) and privateers operating on the fringes of or completely outside the company’s monopoly. The activities of privateers from Zealand and later of the MCC, for instance, were concentrated in these areas. ²³ . Increasing European competition on the Gold and Slave Coasts and in the Bight of Benin was also an important factor driving Dutch slave traders southwards, particularly on MCC ships, ²⁴ to the coastal regions of Loango and Congo. For most of the second half of the eighteenth century, with the exception of the 1750s, 1780s and 1790s, the complex of ports in the coastal region north of the River Congo, together with Malembo and the neighbouring area of Loango, became the main gateways visited by Dutch vessels searching for enslaved Africans to supply New World colonies.

Thus, Dutch slave vessels essentially relied on six main ports of embarkation on the West Coast of Africa – Luanda, Ardra, Whydah, the Congo North ports, Malembo and Elmina – throughout the early modern period. Luanda was the main gateway for slaves until 1650, while in the following decades this key role was taken over by Ardra, Loango, New Calabar, the Congo North ports and Malembo. It was only in 1720–40 and 1780–1800 that Elmina was able to challenge these ports’ leading positions and serve as the almost exclusive gateway for Dutch slave vessels. These data clearly challenge the pivotal role attributed to Elmina in the scholarship on the WIC, the company’s trade with West Africa and its role in overall Dutch participation in the transatlantic slave trade. ²⁵ The next question to ask is where Dutch slavers disembarked their human cargos?

The American Players and the Enslavement of Africans

Dutch participation in slave trading and shipping activities in the Atlantic was not limited to outbound shipping from the Republic and inbound shipping from Africa into the Americas: Dutch slaving activities were also initiated in the Americas. Scholarship on the Dutch slave trade in the Americas has traditionally focused on the Caribbean in general and on the port of Curaçao in particular. This emphasis on Curaçao has helped perpetuate a view of the island as the epicentre of Dutch slave operations in the Americas, owing to its major role as the slave entrepôt for the Caribbean islands and neighbouring regions on the American mainland. ²⁶ However, the data assembled by Postma and Van der Oest, as well as the information available in the TSTD, challenge this idea (see Figure 6). ²⁷

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Figure 6.

Major ports of slave disembarkation, 1590–1830.

For most of the transatlantic slave trade, vessels sailing under the Dutch flag and carrying enslaved Africans landed in four main American areas: Brazil, the Caribbean region, the Guianas and the Spanish American colonies. Over time the role and importance of each of these regions in the Dutch slave trade changed, with no region appearing to have dominated as an area of disembarkation over the entire period.

Even if the Dutch Caribbean, and Curaçao in particular, was undoubtedly the main point for Dutch slave landings in the Americas between the 1660s and 1690s, two other regions and their ports challenged this leading position both before and after that period. The ports in the Brazilian captaincy of Pernambuco (Frederikstad, Recife and Porto Calvo) in the 1630s and 1640s, and the ports of Suriname (Paramaribo and the natural harbours at the mouth of the Corantijn and Marowijne rivers) were at the forefront of Dutch slave operations for most of the eighteenth century. ²⁸ However, the short-lived preponderance of Curaçao as the main Dutch slave transit port in the Americas did not undermine its prominent position in the context of the intra-Caribbean trade. ²⁹

The rise and decline of the ports of Pernambuco, Curaçao and Suriname can be understood in the light of three main events. In the case of the Pernambucan ports, their importance resulted from the Dutch takeover of the north-eastern captaincies of Brazil in 1630, followed by a series of attempts to promote the continuation of sugar production, as well as the commissioning of extensive construction works in the main Dutch cities in the colony, all of which swelled the demand for slave labour. The loss of these territories to Portugal in 1654 put an end to Dutch sugar plantation and trading activities in the South Atlantic, and so also brought Dutch slaving in these ports to a halt.

The rise of Curaçao as a main slave entrepôt for the Caribbean regions and adjacent areas on the American mainland was directly linked to the removal of Portuguese slave traders from the management and conduct of the Spanish asiento after Portugal’s independence in 1640. This left the largest market for African slave labour without its regular suppliers. Curaçao, the local officers of the WIC, the WIC Chamber of Amsterdam and several merchants based in the Republic moved in to take advantage of this situation by assuming the role of importers and re-exporters of enslaved Africans who were transported from Africa to the island and, from there, re-sold and re-shipped around the region. Curaçao’s rise was also directly connected to the negotiations and subsequent formal agreements between the directors of the WIC, the holders of the Spanish asiento and several Amsterdam-based merchants, including Francisco Ferroni and Joseph and Balthasar Coijmans. ³⁰ By 1690, however, the supply of slaves to Spanish America had fallen into the hands of the English and later the French. The loss of the subcontracting of the Spanish asiento is visible in the performance of Curaçao as a dominant slave entrepôt for the intra-Caribbean slave trade, as well as for the transatlantic Dutch slave trade. ³¹

In addition, we must emphasize that the dominance of Curaçao between the 1660s and the 1690s roughly corresponded to a transitional period in Dutch colonial enterprise. During these decades, the Dutch transformed their colonial settlements in the Atlantic by transferring and adapting the knowledge about sugar cultivation and organization of the plantation complex acquired in the colony of Dutch Brazil ³² to the Dutch Caribbean and the Guiana. ³³ This forty-year process of transference and adaptation allowed the Dutch to develop commercial agriculture based on a slave labour regime. The outcome of this process became visible from the 1720s onwards, with the rise of the plantation economies in Suriname, Essequibo, Demerara and Berbice, and the subsequent growth in the volume of Dutch slave trade directed to these colonies, as shown by Postma and Van der Oest. ³⁴

The historiography’s aforementioned focus on Curaçao as a main platform for the supply of slave labour to the Spanish American colonies on the mainland and in the intra-Caribbean trade network has also helped to portray Dutch slavers mainly as carriers of enslaved Africans for colonies of other European states. ³⁵ Although some evidence confirms that Dutch slave traders were indeed engaged in this type of business, the TSTD indicates differently, especially for the period after 1674 and most of the eighteenth century, as Vos, Eltis and Richardson also recently showed. ³⁶

With the exception of the period when Curaçao dominated as a slave entrepôt (1660s–90s) and when Dutch slavers acted as carriers for non-Dutch colonial areas, most of the vessels sailing under the Dutch flag landed the enslaved Africans in territories controlled by the Dutch, either by the WIC, the Sociëteit van Suriname or the entrepreneurs responsible for the colonies of Berbice, Demerara and Essequibo, as the recent studies by Postma and Van der Oest stressed. ³⁷ This conclusion is valid both for the period prior to 1650, when slaves carried aboard Dutch vessels were landed in the ports of Dutch Brazil, as well as for the post-1680 and especially post-1710 periods, when most slaves were disembarked in Suriname, with Paramaribo most likely being the key port in these slaving operations (see Figure 7).

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Figure 7.

Major regions of slave disembarkation, 1590–1830.

In Anglophone scholarship on the Atlantic and the transatlantic slave trade, American ports such as Boston, Charleston, Havana and Montevideo are almost exclusively portrayed as disembarkation ports for slave carriers. In recent years, however, studies of Brazilian ports and Portuguese-Brazilian mercantile groups and their commercial activities in the South Atlantic have started to shed more light on the role of American ports and American-based mercantile groups in the development of slaving activities in the Atlantic. In this particular case, the focus has been mainly on slaving activities connecting Brazil with Angola, and the Bights of Benin and Biafra, but also with the coast of Mozambique in the Indian Ocean. ³⁸

Another historiographical school has underlined the direct participation of North Americans and Spanish American settlers, particularly in present-day Uruguay, in the transatlantic slave trade. ³⁹ Scholars of the Dutch Atlantic have yet to embrace this revisionist approach, even though the Brazilian ports in the regions of Pernambuco (dominated by the Dutch), Bahia and Rio, together with the port of Luanda in Angola (dominated by the Dutch between 1641 and 1648), were places of departure for Dutch vessels involved in slaving ventures during both the 1630s and 1640s. According to the information available in the TSTD, these ports in the South Atlantic were in fact responsible for organizing about one quarter of the total number of slave voyages carried out under the Dutch flag prior to 1650 (see Figures 7, 8 and 9).

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Figure 8.

Major ports of Departure in Africa and the Americas for slave vessels sailing under Dutch flag, 1590–1830.

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Figure 9.

Region where voyages began, 1571–1700.

This evidence clearly shows that, until the 1650s, American ports, particularly in the South Atlantic, played an important role as points of departure for Dutch slave voyages. This contrasts with the subsequent period, during which Dutch slave voyages appear only sporadically to have set sail from ports in the Americas. The difference between the two periods can be better understood if we consider two main points: the characteristics of Portuguese settlement in Brazil prior to Dutch rule over the north-eastern region; and the characteristics of Dutch settlement in the Caribbean and Guiana and the development of a Dutch Atlantic shipping economy in the post-1650 period.

When the Dutch WIC took control of the north-eastern captaincies of Brazil, there was an established organization in place to outfit voyages for acquiring slaves in Angola. After the Dutch takeover of Luanda in 1641, the commercial officials of the WIC basically continued a system of trade routes already in use by the Portuguese. According to the TSTD, slave vessels started to set sail directly for Africa from Brazil as early as the 1570s (see Figure 9). ⁴⁰ It is also likely that knowledge of this commercial organization was at the core of the WIC’s decision to organize the military campaigns for conquering the ports of Luanda and São Tomé in the early 1640s.

After the 1650s, the transfer of the main Dutch commercial activities and plantations to the Caribbean and the Guianas almost brought about the end of Dutch slave voyages from American ports. Two reasons for this may be suggested. First, the new centres lacked the logistical and economic structures necessary to organize this type of venture. In particular, the settlement and development of the Dutch Caribbean and Suriname depended on the initiative and capital of merchants based in the Dutch Republic. In other words, the Dutch adopted a model identical to the one implemented by England, Scotland, France and, to a certain extent, the Scandinavian kingdoms when seeking to develop their plantation economy. This contrasted with the economic organization of the Lusophone South Atlantic, where considerable volumes of trade, agricultural production and mineral extraction were channelled into exchanges between colonial spaces rather than with Portugal. ⁴¹

Moreover, the Brazilian economy evolved over the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries from one based mainly on sugar and dyewood to a more diversified system able to combine the production and extraction of various products, specifically eau-de-vie (cachaça), tobacco and gold. ⁴² These three products were not only in high demand in Europe, but also in Africa. This allowed Brazilian merchants to engage directly in the slave trade. By contrast, the colonial Caribbean economies became highly specialized in the production of cash crops; products for which there was little or no demand in African markets at the time. Without facilities for ship building and outfitting, without competitive exports for Africa, and with substantial parts of the production output committed to supplying European markets as part of the mortgage schemes and ‘debt economy’ organized from Amsterdam, colonial landowners and small and mid-size merchants stood little chance – unlike their Brazil-based counterparts – of succeeding in any attempt to try to organize their own slave trade activities. ⁴³

Conclusion

This article started out by questioning whether the changes in the slave trade and shipping enterprises led by the Dutch were a European or an Atlantic-driven process, following the enticing proposal by Pierre Gervais in his 2008 article. ⁴⁴ We can but conclude that, in the Dutch case, most of the entrepreneurial initiative indeed resided in Europe or in the hands of Europeans. The Dutch European ports took the lead in this effort, starting with the overwhelming participation of Amsterdam in this traffic, followed by the Zealand ports after 1740.

Dutch European participation also extended to the use and development of a plurality of port sub-systems and a multiplicity of individual ports on the West Coast of Africa. However, even though traditional historiography has portrayed this overall participation as being mainly institutionally driven by the chartered companies and has underlined the pre-eminence of Dutch settlement in Elmina, we have demonstrated that private entrepreneurship was the key element in Dutch slave trading, and that Elmina was not the only outlet for slave exports, with ports in West-Central Africa also playing a pivotal role. There is an urgent need, therefore, to proceed towards a revisionist approach to the intrinsic institutional, economic and military value of the Dutch presence and business participation in the region during the early modern period.

Slave traders operating from the Dutch Republic were also responsible for most of the organization and fulfilment of the slave trade and shipping in the Americas. The data provided by the TSTD underlines the role of Curaçao as a transit port for imports of slaves into the Caribbean, while also stressing the major role played by the ports of Suriname in meeting the labour demands of the Dutch colonies.

The only significant instance in which Dutch slave imports and shipping depended solely on entrepreneurs living in Atlantic space was the case of Dutch Brazil (1630s–50s). Following the existing Luso-Brazilian model of linking the American colonies with the very restricted African settlements and trading posts, the Dutch temporarily took hold of a South Atlantic commercial route that operated independently and despite prohibitions in Europe. Yet this exception, inherited from the Luso-Brazilian experience, is insufficient to contradict Gervais’s assumption that most of what happened in the Atlantic was actually determined in Europe. This was indeed so in the Dutch case. However, the Dutch demand for slaves within an Atlantic context also gave rise to a 200-year continuum of exchanges and mutual maritime port influences, whereby the term ‘windows of global exchange’ would seem to encapsulate the perpetual entanglement of spaces and histories.