charles ii proclamation regarding the royal african company’s monopoly

Between 16 the colony was governed by the Chartered Society of Surinam which was owned by the City of Amsterdam, the WIC, and a family of private financiers. Slaves were shipped from Africa to work on the sugar estates generating great wealth. After exchanging New York for Surinam, settlers rapidly developed the colony’s plantations. The presence of so many sugar refineries was a tell-tale sign of participation in slavery. The nation provided more than half of the sugar consumed in sweet-toothed Europe. The Republic’s unrivaled economic power was associated with the import of sugar crystals to their local bakeries (‘suikerbakkerijen’). By 1752 over 150 factories in the Netherlands were involved in sugar production the raw material of which was provided by plantations in the West Indies. In 1662, there were over fifty refineries in Amsterdam alone. Having lost control over Brazil to the Portuguese, the Company refocused its attention to the Caribbean. The conquest of northeast Brazil by the West India Company (WIC) during the 1630s turned Dutch dealers from transporters into producers. The growing popularity of coffee and tea had caused a surge in demand for refined sugar. Since the turn of the seventeenth century, Dutch merchants were keen to obtain a share of the profitable sugar (“White Gold”) market that was dominated by Portuguese traders. What motivated Dutch negotiators to agree to the exchange? The terms were later confirmed in the Treaty of Westminster. Once hostilities were ended, England and the victorious United Provinces signed the Treaty of Breda in July 1667 by which the Dutch handed over New Amsterdam, while the English abandoned Surinam to the Netherlands. Its cargo included 1,000 pounds of elephant-teeth and 270 slaves. A valuable trophy of war was the frigate York. The invaders captured Fort Willoughby and renamed it Fort Zeelandia. By 1663, the settlement of around 30,000 acres was protected by Fort Willoughby and consisted of some fifty plantations, cultivated by enslaved Indigenous and African people.įour years later privateer Abraham Crijnssen, working on behalf of the Admiralty of Zeeland, engaged the English forces. In 1650 William Willoughby, the English Governor of Barbados, furnished out a vessel at his own expense to establish a plantation near the mouth of the Surinam River. Soon after the Second Anglo-Dutch (Sea) War broke out in which Charles II unsuccessfully tried to end Dutch domination of world trade. New Amsterdam was reincorporated under English law as the city of New York. He subsequently sent a delegation to sign the Articles of Capitulation. The colony was provisionally ceded by Peter Stuyvesant.

In August 1664 four English frigates sailed into the harbor of New Amsterdam, demanding the surrender of New Netherland.

Charles ii proclamation regarding the royal african company’s monopoly