Dutch West India Company

Dutch West India Company (Dutch: Geoctroyeerde Westindische Compagnie or GWIC; English: Chartered West India Company) was a chartered company (known as the "WIC") of Dutch merchants. Among its founding fathers was Willem Usselincx (1567–1647). On June 2, 1621, it was granted a charter for a trade monopoly in the West Indies (meaning the Caribbean) by the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands and given jurisdiction over the African slave trade, Brazil, the Caribbean, and North America. The area where the company could operate consisted of West Africa (between the Tropic of Cancer and the Cape of Good Hope) and the Americas, which included the Pacific Ocean and the eastern part of New Guinea. The intended purpose of the charter was to eliminate competition, particularly Spanish or Portuguese, between the various trading posts established by the merchants. The company became instrumental in the Dutch colonization of the Americas.

Read more about Dutch West India Company:  History, The First West India Company, The Second West India Company

Famous quotes containing the words dutch, west, india and/or company:

    ‘Tis probable Religion after this
    Came next in order; which they could not miss.
    How could the Dutch but be converted, when
    The Apostles were so many fishermen?
    Besides the waters of themselves did rise,
    And, as their land, so them did re-baptize.
    Andrew Marvell (1621–1678)

    The [nineteenth-century] young men who were Puritans in politics were anti-Puritans in literature. They were willing to die for the independence of Poland or the Manchester Fenians; and they relaxed their tension by voluptuous reading in Swinburne.
    —Rebecca West (1892–1983)

    India has 2,000,000 gods, and worships them all. In religion other countries are paupers; India is the only millionaire.
    Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)

    We are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not. Otherwise they turn up unannounced and surprise us, come hammering on the mind’s door at 4am of a bad night and demand to know who deserted them, who betrayed them, who is going to make amends. We forget all too soon the things we thought we could never forget.
    Joan Didion (b. 1934)