Dutch Slave-Trade in the United States

The Dutch Slave-Trade (the Farming Colonies)

In the book “The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States of America 1638-1870” (1), W. E. B. Du Bois explained the following: The Dutch seem to have commenced the slave-trade to the American continent, the Middle colonies and some of the Southern receiving supplies from 25them. John Rolfe relates that the last of August, 1619, there came to Virginia “a dutch man of warre that sold us twenty Negars.”1 This was probably one of the ships of the numerous private Dutch trading-companies which early entered into and developed the lucrative African slave-trade. Ships sailed from Holland to Africa, got slaves in exchange for their goods, carried the slaves to the West Indies or Brazil, and returned home laden with sugar.2 Through the enterprise of one of these trading-companies the settlement of New Amsterdam was begun, in 1614. In 1621 the private companies trading in the West were all merged into the Dutch West India Company, and given a monopoly of American trade. This company was very active, sending in four years 15,430 Negroes to Brazil,3 carrying on war with Spain, supplying even the English plantations,4 and gradually becoming the great slave carrier of the day.

The commercial supremacy of the Dutch early excited the envy and emulation of the English. The Navigation Ordinance of 1651 was aimed at them, and two wars were necessary to wrest the slave-trade from them and place it in the hands of the English. The final terms of peace among other things surrendered New Netherland to England, and opened the way for England to become henceforth the world’s greatest slave-trader. Although the Dutch had thus commenced the continental slave-trade, they had not actually furnished a very large number of slaves to the English colonies outside the West Indies. A small trade had, by 1698, brought a few thousand to New York, and still fewer to New Jersey.5 It was left to the English, with their strong policy in its favor, to develop this trade.

Resources

Notes and References

1. W. E. B. Du Bois, “The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States of America 1638-1870” (1893), Longmans, Green and Co., London, New York, Bombay and Calcuta.

See Also

Further Reading

• American Colonization Society. Annual Reports, 1818–1860. (Cf. above, United States Documents.)
• William B. Hodgson. The Foulahs of Central Africa, and the African Slave Trade. [New York, (?)] 1843.
• Daniel Drayton. Personal Memoir, etc. Including a Narrative of the Voyage and Capture of the Schooner Pearl. Published by the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, Boston and New York, 1855.
• Robert Proud. History of Pennsylvania. 2 vols. Philadelphia. 1797–8.
• Rufus W. Clark. The African Slave Trade. Boston, [1860.]
• James Madison. The Papers of James Madison, purchased by order of Congress; being his Correspondence and Reports of Debates during the Congress of the Confederation and his Reports of Debates in the Federal Convention. 3 vols. Washington, 1840.
• Friends. Observations on the Inslaving, importing and purchasing of Negroes; with some Advice thereon, extracted from the Epistle of the Yearly-Meeting of the People called Quakers, held at London in the Year 1748. Second edition. Germantown, 1760.
• James Swan. A Dissuasion to Great-Britain and the Colonies: from the Slave-Trade to Africa. Shewing the Injustice thereof, etc. Revised and Abridged. Boston, 1773.