In October 1630, in the wake of the Dutch seizure of Olinda and Recifefrom the Portuguese, the board of the West India Company decided, with the approval of the States General, on a limited and provisional release of its monopoly. To attract immigration and to boost the local economy, it decided to open the trade on the coasts of Brazil to "all inhabitants of the United Provinces [ ... ] together with all Portuguese, Brazilian, and other inhabitants of Brazil," provided the traders paid taxes and dues to the West India Company and used only Company ships for their trade.3 When the edict was renewed four years later, with substantially reduced freight rates, many independent merchants started to engage in Dutch Brazil's colonial market. Yet before long, the private profits they made evoked disapproval among some shareholders ofthe West India Company who wanted to see the Company's monopoly reinstated in its entirety. Asone pamphleteer argued in 1636, all Dutch power and prosperity were based on the "weak and changeable foundation" of trade, and only a strong Company that simultaneously pursued "conquests and commerce"could "make the foundation of our State stronger." Invoking the example of Rome's struggle against Carthage, the pamphleteer claimed that the Dutch could outdo its rival Spain by moving the war to the colonial arena, thereby forcing other nations to "seek their commerce more and more in our quarters." Moreover, the Dutch should ensure that "the poor wild Cannibals, Man-eaters, would be brought to the knowledge of the true Faith, and not by our enemies to the damned Idolatry of the Papacy." Those who supported the opening up of Brazil's trade, he argued, would only frustrate this civilizing mission of commerce and conquest. Weakened by "opulence and luxury," they forsook the primecreed of republican politics- the principle that the common good should always prevail over private interests. 4
This argument against the participation of the independent merchantsin the Brazil trade was backed by several shareholders of the West India Company, for example in Utrecht, who argued that the release of its monopoly left the Company only with the costs of the war while the freetraders were able to make "excessively large gains." 5 In line with these complaints, the States General eventually decided at the end of December 1636 to reinstate the original monopoly of the West India Company, and they forcefully reiterated this resolution in March and April the following year.
The rulings of the States General met with great criticism among those who favored the status quo, in particular private merchants and shareholders in Amsterdam. To a large extent, the debate over the monopoly of the West India Company confirmed or even deepened the existing ideological rift between the two seaborne provinces" of Zeeland and Holland. 6 As a true frontier province, Zeeland generally favored fervent anti-Spanish policies, and accordingly it supported a strong, militant West India Company to fight the Habsburg monarchy throughout the Atlantic, combining conquest with commerce. Yet the province of Holland, dominated by its largest city, Amsterdam, advocated a more lenient attitude, categorically championing commercial expansion over the costly uncertainties of war. Free trade in Brazil was considered to be paramount for such expansion. To make their case in the public debate, Amsterdam merchants claimed that freedom of trade entailed the best means to promote Dutch colonization. Dutch Brazil was in need of immigrants willing to cultivate the land, they argued, but these new colonists could be attracted only if they were offered comprehensive commercial liberties. Without "free men,"one pamphleteer argued, conquered "lands cannot be cultivated," and without cultivation the whole Dutch colonial enterprise in Brazil would eventually fail.7 Claims such as these were in turn countered by advocatesof the Company's monopoly, who, according to the account of Caspar Barlaeus, argued that such colonies of free men would easily develop into degenerate communities that might try to outdo the motherland, just as Tyre was once outshone by its colony in Carthage. 8
Bookmarks