To “experiment with a parcel of negros”

Abstract

In late 1659, the Dutch West India Company’s Amsterdam Chamber began an “experiment” intended to bring a regularized slave trade to New Amsterdam. With Curaçao as a reliable source of enslaved Africans, the Amsterdam Chamber opened the slave trade to independent investors and merchants, following a collaborative model between a state-sponsored corporation and private investors used elsewhere in the seventeenth-century Dutch Atlantic world. A variety of commercial actors responded to the experiment, devising speculative strategies to incorporate enslaved people into their commercial portfolios. This essay tracks the strategies conceived by New Amsterdam merchants, local wic representatives, and some independent Amsterdam investors, and reveals the experiment’s uneven progression, modulated by changing regional conditions and regular adjustments and reversals by the Amsterdam Chamber. This article adds a new dimension to studies of the early North American regional slave trade, typically seen from an English perspective, by appreciating Dutch New Amsterdam’s legacy.

Zooming in on New York’s Dutch History and Its African-Descended Population

“…In fact, the majority of its captives were sold to planters in Virginia and, as recent research by Dennis Maika reveals, that number did probably not exceed fifty-five. 8 Past scholars may have conflated the number of captives on the Witte Paert with those of the Gideon, which would explain why inaccurate information on the number of captives on this ship ended up in the SlaveVoyages database. More reliable information on vessels arriving in New Netherland can be found in Julie van den Hout's database Voyages of New Netherland.…”