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The dimension of the Dutch slave trade from Western Africa1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2009

Johannes Postma
Johannes Postma
Affiliation:
Mankato State College
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Extract

The Dutch share in the Atlantic slave trade has been assessed largely by means of speculation. This article relies extensively on documents of the Dutch West Indian Companies (WIC), which maintained a dozen or more trading stations on the Guinea Coast, and became the principal agents of the Dutch slaving activities. For approximately 16 years (1630–1795), the Dutch played a substantial role in the Atlantic slave trade. Based on the combined criteria of available documentary evidence and fluctuating techniques of the trade, the Dutch slave trade has been outlined in three successive stages, viz. the monopoly of the first WIC (1630–74), the monopoly of the second WIC (1675–1734), and the free trade period (1735–95). Information on the first period is scarce, leaving much to speculation, but for the years after 1675 a reliable assessment is possible.

On the whole, the Dutch share constituted about 10 per cent of the overall Atlantic slave trade. Annual averages (calculated by decades) ranged from less than a thousand to over 6,000 slaves. During selected years in the 1630s and 1640s, the Dutch may have become the single most active slave trading nation, but toward the end of the seventeenth century the Dutch trade stagnated while other nations drastically increased their volume. When the WIC began to relinquish its monopoly of the slave trade (1730), the volume of the Dutch trade increased until it reached its peak during the 1760s and early 1770s. As a result of the American Revolutionary War and the ensuing Anglo-Dutch war, Holland's participation in the slave trade virtually came to a halt. Feeble efforts to revivie the trade in subsequent decades failed as a result of the unstable political situation in Europe following the revolution in France and also due to the movement to suppress the slave trade.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 13 , Issue 2 , April 1972 , pp. 237 - 248
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1972

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References

2 Unger, W. S., ‘Bijdragen tot de geschiedenis van de Nederlandse slavenhandel (I)’, Economisch-Histothch Jaarboek, XXVI (1956), 153;Google Scholarvan Brakel, S., ‘Bescheiden over de slavenhandel der WIC’, Economisch-Historisch Jaarboek, IV (1918), 53;Google ScholarMichael, Crowder, The Story of Nigeria (London: Faber & Faber, 1966), 73;Google ScholarFage, J. D., A History of West Africa (London: Cambridge University Press, 1969), 66.Google Scholar

3 Lerone, Bennett, Before the Mayflower (Baltimore, Maryland: Penguin Books, 1966– first published in 1962), 29–30;Google ScholarDaniel, P. Mannix and Malcolm, Cowley, Black Cargoes (New York: Viking Press, 1962), 50 and 55.Google Scholar

4 This refers to my own dissertation, ‘The Dutch Participation in the African Slave Trade; Slaving on the Guinea Coast, 1675–1795’. Michigan State University, 1970.Google Scholar

5 Philip, Curtin, The Atlantic Slave Trade: A Census (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1969), 55, 8 and 117.Google Scholar

6 The bulk of these minutes were preserved in Elmina until 1872, when the Dutch surrendered their West African trading posts to the English. The documents that had been kept in Africa were then taken to the Netherlands, where they are currently kept in the collection ‘Archief van de Nederlandse Bezittingen ter Kuste van Guinea’ in the Rijksarchief at The Hague.

7 More detailed descriptions of documentary evidence can be located in Postma, ‘The Dutch participation …’ 95 ff., and translated copies of some of the crucial documents are included in its appendices.

8 Unger, , ‘Bijdragen’, 137;Google ScholarBennett, Before the Mayflower, 29–30.Google Scholar

9 Menkman, W. R., De West-Indische Compagnie (Amsterdam: P. N. van Kampen, 1947), 26–27.Google Scholar According to Menkman, Dutch merchants started the triangular slave trade before 1700, indeed as early as 1582, but more recent scholarship does not support these allegations; see Unger, , 237.Google Scholar

10 Unger, , ‘Bijdragen’, 138.Google Scholar

11 See Postma, , ‘The Dutch participation…’, 16, for a more extensive treatment of this subject.Google Scholar

12 Unger, , ‘Bijdragen’, 238–40 and 242.Google Scholar

13 Menkman, , West-Indische Compagnie, 125;Google ScholarSnapper, F., Oorlogsinvloeden op de overzeese handel van Holland (Amsterdam: Published Ph.D. dissertation, 1959), 77.Google Scholar

14 Ratelband, K., ed., Vijf Dagregisters van het kasteel Sao Jorga Da Mina aan de Goudkust (The Hague: M. Nijhoff, 1953), 1.Google Scholar

15 Unger, , ‘Bijdragen’, 143–4.Google Scholar

16 Archief van de Tweede West-Indische Compagnie, vol. 831. This volume contains several asiento slave contracts. Hereafter cited as WIC. See also Wright, I. A., ‘The Coymans Assiento’, Bijdragen voor Vaderlandse geschiedenis en oudheidkunde, VI (1924), 24;Google Scholar and Van, Brakel, ‘Bescheiden over de slavenhandel’, 53.Google Scholar

17 WIC, vol. 831, pp. 47 and 401. For more details on the Dutch asiento trade see Postma, ‘The Dutch participation …’, 116–18.Google Scholar

18 The frequently cited work of Unger (see notes 2 and 25) has thus far been the most authoritative on the slaving activities of the old WIC, whose documents he consulted, although his articles focus on the eighteenth century free trade of Middelburg. Unfortunately, Unger's writings have only been published in Dutch.

19 For a discussion of the WIC monopoly see Postma, , ‘The Dutch participation …’, 57–64, and also the sections on the free trade period below.Google Scholar

20 ‘Archief der Verspreidde West-Indische Stukken’, Folder 928, Rijksarchief, The Hague.

21 See bimonthly accounts in WIC, vol. 108, pp. 32, 45, 46 and 53.Google Scholar

22 The information is compiled in Appendix A, 229−40, of Postma, ‘The Dutch participation…’.

23 Listed as Appendix C, 258–63, of Postma, ‘The Dutch participation …’.Google Scholar

24 See the table of calculations in ibid., 99.

25 It appears that the WIC rarely purchased child slaves during the seventeenth century, but that this category of slaves rose to nearly ten per cent during the first half of the eighteenth century. In subsequent years, according to Unger, Dutch free traders averaged as many as 22.5 per cent non-adult slaves in their cargoes. See Unger, , ‘Bijdragen, II’, Economisch-Historisch Jaarboek, XXVIII (1958–1960), 49.Google Scholar See also 204–20 in Postma, ‘The Dutch participation …’, where I made the unfortunate error of giving 5 instead of 7Û12; per cent as an accounting discrepancy.Google Scholar

26 These are tabulated in Postma, , 207.Google Scholar

27 This information was drawn from insurance policies preserved in the ‘Archief der Maatschappij van Assurantie’, vols. 215–17, Gemeente Archief, Rotterdam. See also Appendix A-4 in Postma, ‘The Dutch participation …’.Google Scholar

28 An average free trade cargo has been estimated at 288 slaves per ship. See the calculation on p. 151 of Postma, ‘The Dutch participation …’.

29 They are tabulated in Appendix A-3 in ibid, 239.

30 The information is listed in ibid, Appendix B, 241–57.

31 WIC, vol. 269.

32 See Postma, , 249, for a detailed calculation.Google Scholar

33 See citation 28 above.

34 Willem, Bosman, A New and Accurate Description of the Coast cf Guinea (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1967–first published in 1704), 89.Google Scholar

35 See 71−4 and Appendix H in Postma, ‘The Dutch participation…’. The appendix documents 51 captured interlopers during the last thirty years of the WIC monopoly.

36 The details of these fluctuations and the reasons for them are beyond the scope of this article. They are discussed in considerable detail in my dissertation, chapters V and VI.

37 Curtin, , Atlantic Slave Trade, 266.Google Scholar

38 A detailed study of this last slaver has been made by Emmer, P. C., ‘De Tweede Reis van het Fregatship “Dc Standvastigheid”’ (Unpublished thesis, University of Leiden, 1968).Google Scholar

39 Curtin, , Atlantic Slave Trade, 248, cites statistics indicating that three illicit Dutch slavers had been apprehended by the British, but these ships may well have belonged to planters in the Dutch colonies.Google Scholar

40 Curtin's, estimates (p. 268) have been accepted as the most reliable to date.Google Scholar