The Dutch West India Company was a chartered company of Dutch merchants as well as foreign investors. Among its founders was Willem Usselincx (1567–1647) and Jessé de Forest (1576–1624). On 3 June 1621, it was granted a charter for a trade monopoly in the Dutch West Indies by the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands and given jurisdiction over Dutch participation in the Atlantic slave trade, Brazil, the Caribbean, and North America. The area where the company could operate consisted of West Africa 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 largely ephemeral Dutch colonization of the Americas in the seventeenth century. From 1624 to 1654, in the context of the Dutch-Portuguese War, the GWC held Portuguese territory in northeast Brazil, but they were ousted from Dutch Brazil following fierce resistance.
Piet Pieterszoon Hein was a Dutch admiral and privateer for the Dutch Republic during the Eighty Years' War. Hein was the first and the last to capture a large part of a Spanish treasure fleet which transported huge amounts of gold and silver from Spanish America to Spain. The amount of silver taken was so big that it resulted in the rise of the price of silver worldwide and the near bankruptcy of Spain.
The Iberian Union was the dynastic union of the Kingdom of Spain and the Kingdom of Portugal under the Spanish Crown that existed between 1580 and 1640, and which brought the entire Iberian Peninsula, as well as Portuguese overseas possessions, under the Spanish Habsburg kings Philip II, Philip III and Philip IV. The union began following the Portuguese crisis of succession and the ensuing War of the Portuguese Succession, and lasted until the Portuguese Restoration War in which the House of Braganza was established as Portugal's new ruling dynasty.
The Dutch Gold Coast or Dutch Guinea, officially Dutch possessions on the Coast of Guinea was a portion of contemporary Ghana that was gradually colonized by the Dutch, beginning in 1612. The Dutch began trading in the area around 1598, joining the Portuguese which had a trading post there since the late 1400s. Eventually, the Dutch Gold Coast became the most important Dutch colony in West Africa after Fort Elmina was captured from the Portuguese in 1637, but fell into disarray after the abolition of the slave trade in the early 19th century. On 6 April 1872, the Dutch Gold Coast was, in accordance with the Anglo-Dutch Treaties of 1870–71, ceded to the United Kingdom.
Dutch Brazil, also known as New Holland, was the northern portion of the Portuguese colony of Brazil, ruled by the Dutch during the Dutch colonization of the Americas between 1630 and 1654. The main cities of the Dutch colony of New Holland were the capital Mauritsstad, Frederikstadt, Nieuw Amsterdam (Natal), Saint Louis, São Cristóvão, Fort Schoonenborch (Fortaleza), Sirinhaém, and Olinda.
Joost van Trappen Banckert was a Dutch Vice Admiral who worked most of his sailing life for the admiralty of Zeeland.
The Dutch–Portuguese War was an armed conflict involving Dutch forces, in the form of the Dutch East India Company and the Dutch West India Company, against the Portuguese Empire. Beginning in 1602, the conflict primarily involved the Dutch companies invading Portuguese colonies in the Americas, Africa, and the East Indies. The war can be thought of as an extension of the Eighty Years' War being fought in Europe at the time between Spain and the Netherlands, as Portugal was in a dynastic union with the Spanish Crown after the War of the Portuguese Succession, for most of the conflict. However, the conflict had little to do with the war in Europe and served mainly as a way for the Dutch to gain an overseas empire and control trade at the cost of the Portuguese. English forces also assisted the Dutch at certain points in the war. Because of the commodity at the center of the conflict, this war would be nicknamed the Spice War.
Moses Cohen Henriques was a Dutch pirate of Portuguese Sephardic Jewish origin, operating in the Caribbean.
Loango-Angola is the name for the possessions of the Dutch West India Company in contemporary Angola and the Republic of the Congo. Notably, the name refers to the colony that was captured from the Portuguese between 1641 and 1648. Due to the distance between Luanda and Elmina, the capital of the Dutch Gold Coast, a separate administration for "Africa South" was established at Luanda during the period of the Dutch occupation.
Jacob Willekens or Wilckens (1564–1649) was a Dutch admiral on a fleet to the Dutch Indies, and a herring seller, who went to sea again at the age of fifty for the Dutch West Indies Company. His most well-known success was the conquest of São Salvador da Bahia, the then capital of Brazil. His fleet, which included Dutch corsair Piet Hein as vice admiral, departed from Texel on December 22, 1623 with between 26-36 ships and 3,300 sailors towards South America. At the beginning of June 1624, they began their attack from sea and soon captured the Portuguese stronghold with little resistance. They occupied Bahia for over a year before the local population took up arms under acting governor Matias de Albuquerque and Archbishop Dom Marcos Teixeira who eventually expelled them with the help of a combined Spanish-Portuguese fleet numbering 52 warships and 12,000 soldiers in May 1625. This was the first major WIC privateering expedition to the region.
Jan, Johan or Johannes van Walbeeck was a Dutch navigator and cartographer during a 1620s circumnavigation of the earth, an admiral of the Dutch West India Company, and the first governor of the Netherlands Antilles.
Matias de Albuquerque, the first and only Count of Alegrete, was a Brazilian colonial administrator and soldier. He was nicknamed "Hero of Two Continents" for his performance, beginning in 1624, against the Dutch invaders of colonial Brazil and for his role, beginning in 1641, as a general in Portugal, fighting for João IV during the Portuguese Restoration War, where he won the battle of Montijo over the Spaniards (1644). For this victory he was rewarded by the King with the title of Count of Alegrete.
The Battle of Elmina in 1637 was a military engagement between the Portuguese and the Dutch that culminated with the capture of the historical St. George of Elmina Fort by the latter.
The recapture of Bahia was an Imperial Spain military expedition in 1625 to retake the city of Salvador da Bahia in Brazil from the forces of the Dutch West India Company (WIC).
The capture of Bahia was a military engagement between Portugal and the Dutch West India Company, that occurred in 1624, and ended in the capture of the Brazilian city of Salvador da Bahia by the latter. This capture was part of the Groot Desseyn plan of the Dutch West India Company. Although the Dutch intentions were reported to the Spanish no preventive counter-action was taken by them.
The Recapture of Angola, or Reconquest of Angola, was a military campaign fought between the Portuguese and the Dutch occupiers of Angola. Its most important episode was the siege imposed by the Portuguese on the far larger Dutch garrison of Luanda.
Filips van Zuylen was a Dutch corsair active in the 1620s. As part of the Groot Desseyn plan, he was particularly active against the Portuguese in West Africa but failed to capture the colony of Luanda, an important center for the Atlantic slave trade, in early 1624. After this initial defeat he decided to wait for reinforcements from Brazil before making a second attempt, this time with fellow corsair Piet Heyn, in October of that same year. While approaching from the south Heyn missed van Zuylen's 3-ship squadron, waiting to the north of Loanda, and decided to go ahead with the attack on his own. Heyn's fleet suffered a disastrous defeat as a result. Many of his ships became stuck in the shallows just outside Loanda and, when other ships stopped to free them, made easy targets for the Portuguese cannons. Heyn quickly realized that his seven ships could not breach the colony's heavily defended fortifications. Following a failed nighttime sortie against Portuguese merchant ships moored in the harbor, he ordered a withdrawal and the Dutch corsair fleet retreated back to friendly ports. In 1641, another Dutch corsair, named Cornelis Jol, succeeded in capturing Luanda after a brutal battle. Nevertheless, the colony did not last long under Dutch rule, as it was recaptured by the Portuguese in 1643.
Jan Valckenburgh was a civil servant of the Dutch West India Company. Valckenburgh began as a simple assistant-trader, but managed to make career up to one of the highest ranks, that of Director-General of the Dutch Gold Coast, twice.
The History of Dutch slavery talks about slavery in the Netherlands itself, as well as the establishment of slavery outside the Netherlands in which it played a role.
The Recapture of Recife was a military engagement between the Portuguese forces under Francisco Barreto de Meneses and the Dutch forces of Captain Walter Van Loo. After the Dutch defeats at Guararapes, their surviving men, as well as other garrisons of New Holland, joined in the area of Recife (Mauritsstad) in order to make a last stand. However, after fierce fighting, the Portuguese victoriously entered the city and the remaining Dutch were ousted from Brazil.
