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The British Caribbean World: Barbados

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Abstract

Here the author engages the reader in a discussion about the “Myth of the Dutch” and the “Sephardic Moment” and the impact of the English Trade and Navigation Act of 1651 on trade and sugar production in Barbados. Historical accounts of the “Sugar Revolution” in Barbados in the mid-seventeenth century held that the Dutch played an important role. In Sweet Negotiations (2006), Menard disputes the long-held view and demonstrates that investment in land and slaves derived from English sources, not from Dutch investments. From a different point of view, Schreuder draws attention to the Amsterdam sugar market and the role of the Sephardic merchant network in the Atlantic sugar trade. Meanwhile, the navigation acts ensured that sugar was channeled through London rather then delivered directly to Amsterdam.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Celso Furtado, “The Development of Brazil,” Editors of Scientific American, Technology and Economic Development (Knopf, New York, 1963) p. 168; Quote, see Matthew Edel, “The Brazilian Sugar Cycle of the Seventeenth Century and the Rise of West Indian Competition,” Caribbean Studies, vol. 9, no. 1, 1969, pp. 24–44; p. 24.

  2. 2.

    See Christian J. Koot, Empire at the Periphery: British Colonists, Anglo-Dutch Trade, and the Development of the British Atlantic, 1621–1713 (New York University Press, New York, London, 2011) for a detailed analysis about why British colonists traded with Dutch merchants, what goods they exchanged, and, how this pattern changed over time.

  3. 3.

    Russell R. Menard, Sweet Negotiations: Sugar, Slavery, and Plantation Agriculture in Early Barbados (University of Virginia Press, Charlottsville, London, 2006), pp. 46–54. See also John J. McCusker and Russell R. Menard, “The Sugar Industry in the Seventeenth Century: A New Perspective on the Barbadian ‘Sugar Revolution’,” in Stuart B. Schwartz (ed.), Tropical Babylons: Sugar and the Making of the Atlantic World, 1450–1680 (University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, London, 2004), pp. 289–330.

  4. 4.

    Carla G. Pestana, The English Atlantic in an Age of Revolution, 1640–1661 (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, London, UK, 2004).

  5. 5.

    Pieter Emmer, “The Jewish Moment and the Two Expansion Systems in the Atlantic, 1580–1650,” in Paolo Bernardini and Norman Fiering (eds.), The Jews and the Expansion of Europe to the West, 1450–1800 (Berghahn Books, Oxford, 2001), pp. 501–531; 512–514; and Seymour Drescher, “Jews and New Christians in the Atlantic Slave Trade,” in Bernardini and Fiering (eds.), The Jews and the Expansion of Europe to the West (2001), pp. 439–470; See also Gordon Merrill, “The Role of Sephardic Jews in the British Caribbean Area during the Seventeenth Century,” in Caribbean Studies, vol. 4, No. 3, 1964, pp. 32–49, who had suggested a central role to Sephardic Jewish migrants in the sugar revolution of the Caribbean region.

  6. 6.

    James A. Williamson, The Caribbean Islands Under the Proprietary Patents (Oxford, 1926); Williamson was the first scholar to draw attention to capitalists structures of the plantation-slave system as it developed in the Caribbean region under British rule. For a comparative analysis of the Dutch in the Atlantic economy, see Pieter Emmer, The Dutch in the Atlantic Economy, 1580–1880 (Variorum Collected Studies Series, Ashgate. Aldershot UK, Brookfield, USA, 1998): for a summary, see Introduction, pp. 1–9.

  7. 7.

    Ralph Davis, The Rise of the Atlantic Economies (Cornell University Press, Ithaca, New York, 1973).

  8. 8.

    David Watts, The West Indies: Pattern of Development, Culture, and Environmental Change since 1492 (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1987), pp. 142–143.

  9. 9.

    Alan Burns, History of the British West Indies (Barnes and Noble, New York, 1965), p. 196, refers to Courteen as a partner in an Anglo-Dutch shipping firm who along with his brother and the Powell brothers established the first plantation on the island. See also Cornelis C. Goslinga, The Dutch in the Caribbean and on the Wild Coast, 1580–1680 (University of Florida Press, Gainesville, 1971).

  10. 10.

    This version of events is disputed McCusker and Menard in “The Sugar Industry in the Seventeenth Century,” in Schwartz (ed.), Tropical Babylons (2004), pp. 289–330, and Menard, Sweet Negotiations (2006), pp. 50–53.

  11. 11.

    Koot, Empire at the Periphery (2011); pp. 65–70. Interimperial trade in the Atlantic was more common than recognized earlier; see, for instance, Willem Klooster, Illicit Riches: Dutch Trade in the Caribbean, 1648–1795 (KITLV Press, Leiden, 1998), and, by the same author, “Anglo-Dutch Trade in the Seventeenth Century: An Atlantic Partnership?” in Allan I. MacInnes and Arthur H. Williamson (eds.), Shaping the Stuart World, 1603–1714, The Atlantic Connection (Brill, Leiden, Boston, 2006), pp. 261–282.

  12. 12.

    Wim Klooster, Illicit Riches (1998), pp. 41–43.

  13. 13.

    Pieter Emmer, “The Dutch and the Making of the Second Atlantic System,” in Barbara L. Solow (ed.), Slavery and the Rise of the Atlantic System (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1991), pp. 75–96, reprinted in Pieter Emmer, The Dutch in the Atlantic Economy, 1580–1880 (Variorum Collected Studies Series, Ashgate. Aldershot, UK, Brookfield, USA, 1998): Chapter 1, pp. 11–32.

  14. 14.

    Wim Klooster, “An Overview of Dutch Trade with the Americas, 1600–1800,” in Johannes Postma and Victor Enthoven (eds.), Riches from Atlantic Commerce (Brill, Leiden, Boston, 2003), pp. 365–383; pp. 370–372; For an account of the impact of the 1651 Act of Navigation and the First Anglo-Dutch War on trade among the Barbados planters and Dutch merchants, see Koot, Empire at the Periphery (2011), p. 48. Defying the navigation rules, in the years from 1650 to 1659, as many as 10 and sometimes as many as 30 Dutch vessels traded in Barbados; Koot, Empire at the Periphery (2011), p. 60. A description given by Wim Klooster, “De Ruyter’s Attack on Barbados: The Dutch Perspective,” in the Journal of the Barbados Museum and Historical Society, vol. LX, 2014, pp. 42–53, illustrates how the Second Anglo-Dutch War was fought at sea along the coast of West Africa, the Caribbean (Barbados), New Netherlands, and Newfoundland.

  15. 15.

    See Daniel M. Swetschinski, “Conflict and Opportunity in ‘Europe’s Other Sea’: The Adventure of Caribbean Jewish Settlement,” American Jewish Historical Quarterly, vol. 72, 1982, pp. 212–240; Stephen A. Fortune, Merchants and Jews: The Struggle for British West Indian Commerce, 1650–1715 (University of Florida, Gainesville, 1984), and Paolo Bernardini and Norman Fiering (eds.), The Jews and the Expansion of Europe to the West, 1450–1800 (2001). See, in particular Chapter 22, James C. Boyajian, “New Christians and Jews in the Sugar Trade, 1550–1750: Two Centuries of Development of the Atlantic Economy,” pp. 471–484. See also Chapter 24, Pieter Emmer, “The Jewish Moment and the Two Expansion Systems in the Atlantic, 1580–1650,” pp. 501–516.

  16. 16.

    Koot, Empire at the Periphery (2011), pp. 70–71 recounts the negotiations conducted by Isaack de Fonseca from Bridgetowne in 1656 on behalf of the governor of Barbados and Peter Stuyvesant on Curacao to facilitate free trade between the islands. Regular cargo shipments were conducted between Amsterdam and Barbados whereby Sephardic merchants carried both Dutch and English licenses in order to avoid seizure of their shipments.

  17. 17.

    Watts, The West Indies (1987), pp. 156–160, refers to R. Ligon, A True and Exact History of the Island of Barbados (London, 1657). See also Koot, Empire at the Periphery (2011), pp. 54–55, pp. 64–65.

  18. 18.

    Watts, The West Indies (1987), pp. 158–159. Frank C. Innis, “The pre-sugar era of European settlement in Barbados,” Journal of Caribbean History, vol. 1, 1970, pp. 1–22; Richard B. Sheridan, “The Plantation Revolution and the Industrial Revolution, 1625–1775,” Caribbean Studies, vol. 9, no. 3, October 1969, pp. 5–25, argues that the English tobacco growers had a crisis of overproduction in 1636 which led to a search for alternative crops. He suggests that the Dutch, subsequently, introduced sugarcane, technology, capital, and slaves. See also Klooster, “Anglo-Dutch Trade in the Seventeenth Century,” in Macinnes and Williamson (eds.), Shaping the Stuart World (2006), pp. 261–281; pp. 270–271. The role of the Dutch in introducing the sugar plantation—slave system has become a hotly disputed and controversial matter and will be discussed in the next section of this chapter.

  19. 19.

    Watts, The West Indies (1987), p. 160; J.H. Galloway, The Sugar Cane Industry: an Historical Geography from its Origins to 1914 (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1989), p. 80. See also Richard Dunn, Sugar and Slaves: The Rise of the Planter Class in the English West Indies, 1624–1713 (University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 1972), and Richard Sheridan, Sugar and Slavery: An Economic History of the British West Indies, 1623–1775 (Caribbean Universities Press, Barbados, 1974). Menard, Sweet Negotiations (2006), pp. 49–66 prefers to refer to “sugar boom.”

  20. 20.

    Burns, History of the British West Indies (1965), pp. 228–235.

  21. 21.

    Menard, Sweet Negotiations (2006), pp. 49–66.

  22. 22.

    See Table 1, p. 18, in Menard, Sweet Negotiations (2006).

  23. 23.

    Matthew Parker, The Sugar Barons: Family, Corruption, Empire, and War in the West Indies (Walker and Company, New York, 2011), Chapter 1, “White Gold, 1642,” pp. 9–13. Dunn, Sugar and Slaves (1972).

  24. 24.

    Robert C. Batie, “Why Sugar? Economic Cycles and the Changing of Staples in the English and French Antilles, 1624–54,” Journal of Caribbean History, VIII, 1, November 1976, pp. 3–41.

  25. 25.

    Ligon, A True and Exact History (1657). According to Parker, The Sugar Barons (2011), pp. 34–51, based on original documents, two planters, Drax and Hilliard, had begun to grow sugarcane and were processing cane on their estates using windmills of Dutch design. They also increased their slave holdings in which they engaged London merchants.

  26. 26.

    Edel, “The Brazilian Sugar Cycle of the Seventeenth Century,” 1969, pp. 24–44. See also Batie, “Why Sugar?,” 1976, pp. 3–41.

  27. 27.

    McCusker and Menard, “The Sugar Industry in the Seventeenth Century,” in Stuart B. Schwartz (ed.), Tropical Babylons: Sugar and the Making of the Atlantic World, 1450–1680 (University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 2004), pp. 289–330; and Menard, Sweet Negotiations (2006), Chapter 3: pp. 49–66.

  28. 28.

    See also Jan de Vries and Ad van der Woude, The First Modern Economy: Success Failure, and Perseverance of the Dutch Economy, 1500–1815 (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, New York, 1997), pp. 464–467.

  29. 29.

    Stuart B. Schwartz, “A Commonwealth within Itself: The Early Brazilian Sugar Industry, 1550–1670,” in Schwartz (ed.) Tropical Babylons (2004), pp. 158–200; Figure 6.1, p. 169.

  30. 30.

    J.J. Reesse, De Suikerhandel van Amsterdam van het Begin der 17den Eeuw to 1813 (Haarlem, 1908); for a summary, see Herbert I. Bloom, The Economic Activities of the Jews of Amsterdam in the Seventeenth Century (The Bayard Press, Williamsport, PA, 1937), pp. 36–40. See also Odette Vlessing. “The Portuguese-Jewish Merchant Community in Seventeenth-Century Amsterdam,” in C. Lesger and L. Noordegraaf (eds.), Entrepreneurs and Entrepreneurship in Early Modern Times (Hollandse Historische Reeks, XXIV, The Hague, 1995), pp. 223–243.

  31. 31.

    There were 50 to 60 sugar refineries in operation in Amsterdam during the decade of the 1650; see Reesse, De Suikerhandel (1908), p. 30 ff. During the same decade, the average annual import of Asian sugar was 1200.000 pounds; see Table 3.14 in Niels Steensgaard, “The Growth and Composition of the Long-Distance Trade in England and the Dutch Republic before 1750,” in James D. Tracy (ed.), The Rise of Merchant Empires: Long Distance Trade in the Early Modern World (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge UK, 1993), pp. 102–152. The prosperity of the Amsterdam sugar refinery business came to an end during the late 1660s when several owners declared that their business was affected by the impact of implementation of the English trade and navigation laws. See also Appendix 2.

  32. 32.

    Wim Klooster, The Dutch Moment: War, Trade, and Settlement in the Seventeenth-Century Atlantic World (Cornell University Press, Ithaca, London, 2016), pp. 168–169. For the most part, the Dutch slave trade under the auspices of the WIC was conducted primarily as asiento trade centered on Curacao.

  33. 33.

    Carole Shammas, “The revolutionary impact of European demand for tropical goods,” in John J. McCusker and Kenneth Morgan (eds.), The Early Modern Atlantic Economy (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2000), pp. 163–185; Eddy Stols, “The Expansion of the Sugar Market in the Seventeenth Century,” in Schwartz (ed.), Tropical Babylons (2004), pp. 273–274; C. Lesger, The Rise of the Amsterdam Market and Information Exchange (Ashgate, Aldershot UK, Burlington VT, 2006).

  34. 34.

    Jonathan I. Israel, Dutch Primacy in World Trade, 1585–1740 (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1989), p. 265.

  35. 35.

    From a Dutch perspective on the issue, see Klooster, “Anglo-Dutch Trade in the Seventeenth Century,” in McInnis and Williamson (eds.), Shaping the Stuart World (2006), pp. 269–274. Klooster doubts the determining influence of the Dutch in the Sugar Revolution but he ignores the influence of Sephardic merchants who are not mentioned in his essay.

  36. 36.

    The term “Sugar Revolution” implies a major transition with widespread and lasting socioeconomic change in colonial societies due to the introduction of sugar cane production. See, for instance, Dunn, Sugar and Slaves: 1972 and Sidney W. Mintz, Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History (Hammondsworth, Middlesex, UK and New York, 1985), among others. Menard prefers to refer to “sugar boom” as he disputes revolutionary change in the plantation economy of Barbados in the mid-seventeenth century.

  37. 37.

    Menard, Sweet Negotiations (2006). An earlier version of Menard’s ideas occurred in a paper published jointly with John J. McCusker: see John J. McCusker and Russel R. Menard, “The Sugar Industry in the Seventeenth Century: A New Perspective on the Barbadian ‘Sugar Revolution,’” in Schwartz (ed.), Tropical Babylons (2004), pp. 289–330. In this paper the authors make reference to an article I published in the Journal of the Barbados Museum and Historical Society in 2002, suggesting that I supported the long-held view that the Dutch taught the Barbadians how to grow, harvest, and process sugarcane and how they loaned them the capital to develop plantations, sold them the slaves, and, shipped the product across the Atlantic to markets in European via Amsterdam where the sugar was refined. Rereading the article, I do not think that I was definitive about the role of the Dutch in the Barbados sugar revolution as suggested by Menard and McCusker but, be that as it may, I do point out that Dutch merchants and the WIC sought to expand sugar production and sell slaves in the Caribbean when their hold over sugar production and trade in Northeast Brazil was threatened by the Portuguese planters’ uprisings.

    See, Yda Schreuder, “The Influence of the Dutch Colonial Trade on Barbados in the Seventeenth Century,” in Journal of the Barbados Museum and Historical Society, Vol. XLVIII, 2002, pp. 43–63. In the article I do suggest a relationship between the two simultaneous occurring events but I also point out that the Brazil system of share cropping was quite different from the land-labor system that developed in Barbados and that the initial investments in sugar plantations in Barbados occurred due to land clearance and consolidation by formerly successful cotton and tobacco planters along with investment by wealthy new arrivals—among them Royalists—from England during the English Civil War (1642–1646).

  38. 38.

    Richard Ligon, A True and Exact History (1657).

  39. 39.

    Vincent T. Harlow, A History of Barbados, 1625–1685 (Clarendon Press, Barbados, 1926), p. 42, quoting Ligon, A True and Exact History (1657).

  40. 40.

    See Klooster, “Anglo-Dutch Trade in the Seventeenth Century,” Macinnes and Williamson (eds.), Shaping the Stuart World (2006), pp. 261–282; pp. 269–274.

  41. 41.

    Klooster, “Anglo-Dutch Trade in the Seventeenth Century,” in McInnis and Williamson (eds.), Shaping of the Stuart World (2006). See also Klooster, Illicit Riches (1998), pp. 209–220. The supply and carrying trade included a variety of European trade goods including beer and distilled liquors, and linen cloth, coarse cloth and duffels, in exchange for sugar, tobacco, indigo, ginger, cotton, and brazil wood.

  42. 42.

    Menard, Sweet Negotiations (2006), Chapters 1–3, pp. 11–66. Ernst van den Boogaart, Pieter Emmer, Peter Klein, and Kees Zandvliet (eds.), La expansion holandesa en el Atlantico (Madrid 1992). The next chapter will provide more detail on the trade patterns derived from freight records in the Notarial Archives of the City Archives of Amsterdam.

  43. 43.

    Robert C. Batie, “Why Sugar?,” 1976, pp. 3–41.

  44. 44.

    William A. Green, “Supply versus Demand in the Barbadian Sugar Revolution,” in Journal of Interdisciplinary History, vol. 18, no. 3, Winter 1988, pp. 403–418; Table footnote 4, p. 405, and Menard, Sweet Negotiations (2006), Table 3, p. 22, “Prices of sugar, cotton, and indigo in Amsterdam, 1624–1650 (guilders per Dutch pound).”

  45. 45.

    Menard, Sweet Negotiations (2006), Table 1, p. 18: “Commodities used in transactions in Barbados, 1639–1652 (percent).”

  46. 46.

    Batie, “Why Sugar?,” 1976, p. 17, quoting Ligon, A True and Exact History (1657).

  47. 47.

    Batie, “Why Sugar?,” 1976, p. 20, quoting Ligon (1657).

  48. 48.

    Parker, The Sugar Barons (2011), pp. 64–65; pp. 74–75.

  49. 49.

    Parker, The Sugar Barons (2011), pp. 64–65; pp. 74–75.

  50. 50.

    Klooster, The Dutch Moment (2016), pp. 167–169. Slaves were delivered to Barbados in 1645 during the Portuguese revolt in Brazil, and Drax was one of the recipients, as noted earlier.

  51. 51.

    Quote in Batie, “Why Sugar?,” 1976, p. 21; footnote 83, p. 38; Source: Elizabeth Donnan (ed.), Documents Illustrative of the History of the Slave Trade to America (Washington DC, 1930), Volume I, p. 125.

  52. 52.

    Richard Pares, Merchants and Planters (Economic History Review, Supplement 4, The University Press, Cambridge, 1960) p. 57; Watts, The West Indies (1987), p. 183.

  53. 53.

    For a description of the integrated large-scale plantation, see Parker, The Sugar Barons (2011) pp. 76–82.

  54. 54.

    Dunn, Sugar and Slaves (1972), p. 62; Batie, “Why Sugar?,” 1976, reprinted in Hilary D. Beckles and V. Sheperd et al. (eds.), Caribbean Slave Society and Economy (Kingston, London, 1991), 45; and Ligon, A True and Exact History (1657), p. 85.

  55. 55.

    See Thomas Southey, A Chronological History of the West Indies (3 volumes, London, 1827) and, Ligon, A True and Exact History (1657), p. 34.

  56. 56.

    See Watts, The West Indies (1987), p. 188; see also W. Barrett, “Caribbean sugar production standards in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,” in J. Parker (ed.), Merchants and Scholars (University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1965), pp. 169–77.

  57. 57.

    See Dunn, Sugar and Slaves (1972), p. 60.

  58. 58.

    See Klooster, “Anglo-Dutch Trade in the Seventeenth Century,” in Macinnes and Williamson (eds.), Shaping the Stuart World (2006) pp. 272–274. See also Green, “Supply versus Demand,” 1988, pp. 403–418. See also, Klooster, The Dutch Moment (2016), pp. 167–169.

  59. 59.

    Edel, “The Brazilian Sugar Cycle,” 1969, pp. 24–44; Jonathan I. Israel, “Conflict of Empires: Spain and the Netherlands, 1618–1648,” in Past and Present, 76, 1977, pp. 34–74; and, Green, “Supply versus Demand,” 1988, p. 415.

  60. 60.

    See Koot, Empire at the Periphery (2011), pp. 65–66, gives an account of the Sylvester merchants (father and sons) with English roots and Dutch connections who were well positioned to benefit from Anglo-Dutch trade. In the 1640s and early 1650s, they accumulated and managed two plantations in Barbados on over 700 acres and 240 slaves. The reports make note of the impending difficulties in trade with Amsterdam after the 1651 Trade and Navigation Act was passed but the Sylvesters do not seem to be immediately alarmed by rumors that the Commonwealth fleet was on the way.

  61. 61.

    de Vries and van der Woude, The First Modern Economy (1997), pp. 464–467.

  62. 62.

    Klooster, The Dutch Moment (2016), pp. 167–169.

  63. 63.

    Israel, Dutch Primacy in World Trade (1989), pp. 236–244.

  64. 64.

    Menard, Sweet Negotiations (2006), pp. 50–51. See also McCusker and Menard, “The Sugar Industry in the Seventeenth Century,” in Schwartz (ed.), Tropical Babylons. (2004), pp. 289–330. Klooster, in The Dutch Moment (2016), p. 169, concurs with McCusker and Menard that the transition to sugar production was essentially the result of local planters and English merchants investing in plantations and milling and boiling equipment.

  65. 65.

    During the unsettled conditions of the Civil War and during part of Cromwell’s reign, Barbados stayed Royalist and clearly favored Dutch trade. See N. Darnall Davis, Cavalier and Roundhead in Barbados (Georgetown, British Guina, 1887), p. 207. On the involvement of Sir William Davidson in Dutch trade, see Wilfred S. Samuel, “Sir William Davidson, Royalist, (1616–1689) and the Jews,” in Transactions Jewish Historical Society of England, vol. 14 (1935–1939), pp. 39–79.

  66. 66.

    For further detail on the scheme, see Chapter 6. See also Stephen A. Fortune, Merchants and Jews: The Struggle for British West Indian Commerce, 1650–1750 (University of Florida Press, Gainesville, 1984), pp. 33–38.

  67. 67.

    See David Ormrod, “The Demise of Regulated Trading in England: The Case of the Merchant Adventurers, 1650–1730,” in Lesger and Noordegraaf (eds.), Entrepreneurs and Entrepreneurship in Early Modern Times (1985), pp. 255–262.

  68. 68.

    In 1662, Sir William Davidson wrote to Whitehall and recommended endenization of Daniel Bueno Henriques from Barbados, who had been on a prospecting mission to Jamaica. See Fortune, Merchants and Jews (1984), p. 35.

  69. 69.

    In one of the trade records in the Barbados file, Abraham Israel de Pisa contracts with an English skipper from London (April 29, 1669, Not. Arch. 2789/133, G.A.A.).

  70. 70.

    Menard, Sweet Negotiations (2006), pp. 52–53.

  71. 71.

    Dunn, Sugar and Slaves (1972), p. 117.

  72. 72.

    See also Parker, The Sugar Barons (2011), pp. 67–75.

  73. 73.

    Green, “Supply versus Demand” 1988, pp. 403–418.

  74. 74.

    See also Edel, “The Brazilian Sugar Cycle,” 1977.

    David W. Galenson, Traders, Planters and Slaves: Market Behavior in Early English America (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1986), and Jerome S. Handler and Frederick W. Lange, Plantation Slavery in Barbados: An Archeological and Historical Investigation (1978); Edel, “The Brazilian Sugar Cycle,” 1969, p. 27; and Israel, “A Conflict of Empires,” 1977, 34–74.

  75. 75.

    Klooster, The Dutch Moment (2016), pp. 167–169.

  76. 76.

    Galenson, Traders, Planters and Slaves (1986), and Jerome S. Handler, Frederick W. Lange, and Robert V. Riordan, Plantation Slavery in Barbados: An Archeological and Historical Investigation (Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA, 1978).

  77. 77.

    McCusker and Menard, “The Sugar Industry in the Seventeenth Century,” in Schwartz (ed.), Tropical Babylons (2004), pp. 289–330; pp. 296–297, with reference to Ernst van den Boogaart and Pieter C. Emmer, “The Dutch Participation in the Atlantic slave Trade, 1596–1650,” in Henry A. Gemery and Jan S. Hogendorn (eds.), The Uncommon Market: Essays in the Economic History of the Atlantic Slave Trade (Academic Press, New York, 1979), pp. 353–375, reprinted in Pieter Emmer, The Dutch in the Atlantic Economy, 1580–1880 (Routledge, New York 1998). See also Johannes M. Postma, The Dutch in the Atlantic Slave Trade, 1600–1815 (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1990).

  78. 78.

    Koot, Empire at the Periphery (2011), p. 57, Table 2.2. For a discussion on slave imports to Barbados, see Dunn, Sugar and Slaves (1972), p. 80.

  79. 79.

    Barbados was the most likely port of call for Dutch merchants with captured slaves on board. Whereas the WIC maintained a monopoly on the slave trade, Amsterdam merchants traded wherever profit could be made. Private merchants strongly opposed the Company monopoly, but illegal slave import to Dutch Brazil was strictly prohibited. Thus, during the sugar boom years, Barbados was the most profitable market for the slave trade as the WIC suffered steady decline.

  80. 80.

    In the 1660s, due to the slave trade, the WIC regained some of its old stature and its share price improved. Sugar shipments from the Caribbean to the Dutch Republic revived and reached the level of the mid-1640s during the heydays of the Brazil trade.

  81. 81.

    The first account of Dutch Jewish merchants participating in trade on Barbados concerns a delivery of slaves from the coast of West Africa; see Chapter 5, (recorded Notarial Archives of Amsterdam, June 9, 1648, 1690A/1009, G.A.A.).

  82. 82.

    Pieter C. Emmer, “The Dutch and the Making of the Second Atlantic System,” in Solow (ed.), Slavery and the Rise of the Atlantic System (1991), pp. 75–96; reprinted in Pieter Emmer, The Dutch in the Atlantic Economy (1998).

  83. 83.

    Hilary McD. Beckles, “Sugar and Servitude: An Analysis of Indentured Labour during the Sugar Revolution of Barbados, 1643–1655,” Journal of the Barbados Museum and Historical Society, vol. 36, 3, 1981, pp. 236–247; Hilary McD. Beckles, “The Economic Origins of Black Slavery in the British West Indies, 1640–1680: A Tentative Analysis of the Barbados Model,” Journal of Caribbean History 16, 1982, pp. 225–247.

  84. 84.

    This coincided with the price drop of sugar and the efforts to remain competitive in sugar cultivation and production, as discussed in the previous section.

  85. 85.

    According to Beckles, “The Economic Origins of Black Slavery,” 1982, pp. 225–247, Table 2, only James Drax had more black slaves than indentured servants in the presugar era. Ligon, A True and Exact History (1657), p. 46 refers to African slave labor sold in Barbados by Dutch merchants based at Pernambuco when sugar was first introduced to Barbados in the early 1640s.

  86. 86.

    Beckles, “The Economic Origins of Black Slavery,” 1982, pp. 225–247, Table 7; The statistical data in Table 7 derives from Watje, Das Hollandische Kolonialreich in Brazilien (The Hague, Leiden, 1921), pp. 30–33.

  87. 87.

    Beckles, “The Economic Origins of Black Slavery,” 1982, pp. 225–247.

  88. 88.

    Green, “Supply versus Demand,” 1988, pp. 403–418; p. 416.

  89. 89.

    In 1646, virtually no slaves arrived in Dutch Brazil, whereas in 1643, 1644, and 1645 between 4000 and 6000 slaves arrived annually. Stuart B. Schwartz, “A Commonwealth within Itself,” in Schwartz (ed.) Tropical Babylons (2004), pp. 158–200; Figure 6.1, p. 169.

  90. 90.

    van den Boogaart and Emmer, “The Dutch Participation in the Atlantic slave Trade,” in Henry A. Gemery and Jan S. Hogendorn (eds.), The Uncommon Market (1979), pp. 353–375, reprinted in Pieter Emmer, The Dutch in the Atlantic Economy, 1580–1880 (Routledge, New York 1998).

  91. 91.

    Jacob M. Price, “Credit in the Slave Trade and Plantation Economics,” in Barbara L. Solow (ed.), Slavery and the Rise of the Atlantic System (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1981), pp. 293–339.

  92. 92.

    K.G. Davies. “The Origins of the Commission System in the West India Trade: The Alexander Prize Essay,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, Vol. 2 (1952), pp. 89–107. R.C. Nash, “The Organization of Trade and Finance in the British Atlantic Economy, 1600–1830,” in Peter A. Coclanis (ed.), The Atlantic Economy During the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (University of South Carolina Press, Columbia, SC., 2005), pp. 95–151.

  93. 93.

    Gordon Merrill, “The role of Sephardic Jews in the British Caribbean Area during the Seventeenth Century,” in Caribbean Studies, vol. 4. no. 3, October, 1964, pp. 32–49; pp. 39, 42–44. See also Stephen A. Fortune, Merchants and Jews, The Struggle for British West Indian Commerce, 1650–1750 (University of Florida Press, Gainesville, 1984), p. 22, with reference to the settlement of Jewish refugees from Brazil in Cayenne, a group which later joins the Barbados community. Others went to Suriname and New Zeeland (Essequibo) to later move to Barbados and Jamaica.

  94. 94.

    Pieter Emmer, “The Dutch and the Making of the Second Atlantic System,” in Barbara L. Solow (ed.), Slavery and the Rise of the Atlantic System (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1991), pp. 75–96, reprinted in Pieter Emmer, The Dutch in the Atlantic Economy, 1580–1880 (Variorum Collected Studies Series, Ashgate. Aldershot UK, Brookfield, USA, 1998): Chapter 1, pp. 11–32.

  95. 95.

    Pieter Emmer, “The Jewish Moment and the Two Expansion Systems in the Atlantic, 1580–1650,” in Paolo Bernardini and Norman Fiering (eds.), The Jews and the Expansion of Europe to the West, 1450–1800 (Berghahn Books, Oxford, 2001), pp. 501–531; pp. 512–514.

  96. 96.

    Drescher, “Jews and New Christians in the Atlantic Slave Trade,” in Bernardini and Fiering (eds.), The Jews and the Expansion of Europe to the West (2001), pp. 439–470.

  97. 97.

    Lesger, The Rise of the Amsterdam Market (2006), pp. 100–138.

  98. 98.

    Arjan Poelwijk, In dienste vant Suykerbacken: De Amsterdamse Suikernijverheid en haar ondernemers, 1580–1630 (Verloren, Hilversum, 2003).

  99. 99.

    Israel, Dutch Primacy in World Trade (1989), p. 309. Note, perhaps not coincidental with the migration of Sephardic sugar merchants to Hamburg rather than Amsterdam (see previous chapter).

  100. 100.

    Reesse, De Suikerhandel van Amsterdam (Haarlem, 1908), pp. 30–32, and pp. 107–110. By 1680, only 20 refineries remained, although not knowing much about the size or production capacity of individual refineries, it is difficult to assess to what extent changes in technology and scale of production explain the number of refinery operations or if indeed supply and distribution had declined.

  101. 101.

    The standard source of information on the sugar trade and refining industry in Amsterdam is Reesse, De Suikerhandel van Amsterdam (1908). For a detailed analysis of the industry, see Gyorgy Novaky, “On trade, production and relations of production: The sugar refineries of seventeenth-century Amsterdam,” in Tijdschrift voor Sociale Geschiedenis, volume 23, no. 4, 1997, pp. 459–489. Novaky collected data from the Hart’s Register on Occupations, derived from “Poorterboeken” which list gainfully employed residents of Amsterdam.

  102. 102.

    Novaky, “On Trade, Production and Relations of Production,” 1997, pp. 459–489.

  103. 103.

    de Vries and van der Woude, The First Modern Economy (1997), pp. 326–329; Eddy Stols, “The Expansion of the Sugar Market in the Seventeenth Century,” in Schwartz (ed.), Tropical Babylons (2004), pp. 273–274.

  104. 104.

    See Violet Barbour, Capitalism in Amsterdam in the Seventeenth Century (The Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science, The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, 1949), pp. 7–171; pp. 62–63; 67–68, with reference to Reesse, De Suikerhandel (1908), pp. 105 ff, and 127 ff, and J.G. van Dillen (ed.), Bronnen tot de Geschiedenis van het Bedrijfsleven en het Gildewezen van Amsterdam (Rijks Geschiedkundige Publikaties, the Hague, volume I, 1929, and volume II, 1933), volume I, p. 504.

  105. 105.

    Eddy Stols, “The Expansion of the Sugar Market in Western Europe,” in Schwartz (ed.), Tropical Babylons (2004), pp. 237–288.

  106. 106.

    Jonathan I. Israel, “The Economic Contribution of Dutch Sephardi Jewry to Holland’s Golden Age, 1595–1713,” in Jonathan I. Israel, Empires and Entrepots (The Hambledon Press, London 1990), pp. 417–447; Table 14, p. 422, derived from J.G. van Dillen, “Vreemdelingen te Amsterdam in the eerste helft der zeventiende eeuw: De Portugeesche Joden,” Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis, 50, 1935, pp. 4–35.

  107. 107.

    Israel, “Economic Contribution,” in Israel, Empires and Entrepots (1990), pp. 433–434.

  108. 108.

    Herbert I. Bloom, The Economic Activities of the Jews of Amsterdam in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (The Bayard Press, Williamsport, PA, 1937), pp. 125–127. Antonio Lopes Suasso appears to be the largest depositor with 107,667 guilders, followed by Abraham Alewijn, Johaco de Pinto, Simon and Louis Rodriques de Sousa, Jenronimus Nunes da Costa, Jacob del Monte (all around 30 to 40,000 guilders), and Jeronimias Noiret, Isaac Jan Nijs, and Jacob and Moses Nunes Rodriques (no amount mentioned). On Jeronimo Nunes da Costa, see Jonathan I. Israel, “An Amsterdam Jewish Merchant of the Golden Age: Jeronimo Nunes da Costa (1620–1697), Agent of Portugal in the Dutch Republic,” Studia Rosenthaliana, vol. 18, no. 1, January 1984, pp. 21–40.

  109. 109.

    Daniel M. Swetschinsky, Reluctant Cosmopolitans: The Portuguese Jews of Seventeenth-Century Amsterdam (The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, London, Portland, 2000), pp. 20–22.

  110. 110.

    Bloom, The Economic Activities of the Jews of Amsterdam (1937), 36–40.

  111. 111.

    Isaac Mocado and Abraham Davega, alias Raphael Duarte, and David de Aguilar opened sugar refineries in 1657 and 1660 (see Bloom, The Economic Activities of the Jews of Amsterdam, p. 39), and Salomon, Moses, and Isaac del Pina bought property from the city to build a refinery in 1656. Sephardic merchants in Amsterdam received sugar in trade via Portugal throughout the 1650s. For instance, Simon and Luis Rois (Rodriques) de Sousa traded with Antonia da Silva of Oporto and Sebastiaan Coutinho. See Bloom, The Economic Activities of the Jews of Amsterdam (1937), pp. 37–39. Swetschinski, Reluctant Cosmopolitants (2000), pp. 154–155, also lists Ishac Mocatta, Abraham da Vega, and David de Aguilar as sugar refiners.

  112. 112.

    Swetschinsky, Reluctant Cosmopolitants (2000), pp. 154–155. The Mocattas were engaged in business in both London and Amsterdam in the reexport trade of sugar (see Chap. 7).

  113. 113.

    Eddy Stols, “The Expansion of the Sugar Market in Western Europe,” Chapter 8 in Schwartz (2004), Tropical Babylons (2004), pp. 237–288; p. 273.

  114. 114.

    In the years 1637–1644, when the sugar production from Brazil was at its peak, the average annual import of sugar to the Dutch Republic was approximately 8,000,000 pounds. In the same years the Dutch East India Company (VOC) imported about 1,950,000 pounds of sugar from South-Asian sources which brought the Dutch sugar market to a point of saturation, and in 1642 the Board of Directors of the VOC reduced its orders for sugar from Asia because of declining prices. Prices recovered during the uncertain time in Brazil until 1654 when a steady price decline set in. Prices for muscovado (raw sugar) at the Amsterdam market fell from around 1/2 guilder per pound in the early 1650s to 0.16 guilders in 1688. See N.W. Posthumus, Nederlandse Prijsgeschiedenis (Brill, Leiden, 1937–1964), 119. Translated in English: Inquiry into the History of Prices in Holland: Volume 1 (Brill, Leiden, 1946).

  115. 115.

    Victor Enthoven, “An Assessment of Dutch Transatlantic Commerce, 1585–1817,” in Postma en Enthoven (eds.), Riches from Atlantic Commerce (2003), pp. 385–445; Table 14.14, p. 438. The data derived from H. Brugmans, “Statistiek van den in- en uitvoer van Amsterdam,” October 1, 1667–September 30, 1668, Bijdragen en Mededelingen van het Historisch Genootschap, 19, 1898.

  116. 116.

    See Barbour, Capitalism in Amsterdam in the Seventeenth Century (1949), p. 92, footnote 31. English customs records for 1698–1699 state that London exported only about 13,657 cwt. of sugar refined in England. In the same year, about 125,211 cwt. of raw sugar was exported. Of this amount, the Dutch Republic imported about half or 67,700 cwt. for refining in Amsterdam.

  117. 117.

    Menard, Sweet Negotiations (2006), pp. 51–52, refers to Niels Steengaard, “The Growth and Composition of the Long Distance Trade of England and the Dutch Republic in the Early Modern World,” in James D. Tracy (ed.), The Rise of Merchant Empires and Long Distance Trade in the Early Modern World, 1350–1750 (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1990), pp. 102–152 and claims that as early as the 1640s the East India Company was importing more than a million pounds of sugar annually from Asia, which Menard suggests was enough to meet the need of Amsterdam refiners. In light of the cost of transportation for sugar from South-East Asia (see previous footnote), this assessment does not seem justified. Imports from Asia were only profitable when the sugar price was high. The average annual import of Asian sugar was 1200.000 pounds at its apex in the mid-1650s; see Steensgaard referred to above.

  118. 118.

    Jonathan I. Israel, “Menasseh ben Israel and the Dutch Sephardic Colonization Movement of the Mid-Seventeenth Century (1645–1657),” in Yosef Kaplan (ed.), Menasseh Ben Israel and His World (Brill, Leiden, 1989), 146–147; Wim Klooster, “Networks of Colonial Entrepreneurs: The founders of the Jewish Settlements in Dutch America, 1650s and 1660s,” in Kagan and Morgan (eds.), Atlantic Diasporas (Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 2008), pp. 31–49, pp. 226–236; and, by the same author, “The Essequibo Liberties: The Link between Jewish Brazil and Jewish Suriname,” Studia Rosenthaliana, vol. 42–43, (2010–2011), pp. 77–82. A Dutch colony was founded in Cayenne where the WIC granted Jewish merchants to settle in 1659. The French conquered the colony in 1664 at which time the Jewish colonists left and settled in some of the English colonies, including Suriname which became a Dutch colony in 1667. See Klooster, The Dutch Moment (2016), pp. 224–227.

  119. 119.

    Henk den Heijer, “The Dutch West India Company, 1621–1791,” in Postma and Enthoven (eds.), Riches from Atlantic Commerce (2003), Table 4.2, p. 88. See also Chapter 2.

  120. 120.

    See Dunn, Sugar and Slaves (1972), pp. 202–205, Table 21, p. 203. Furthermore, other geopolitical events of the mid-seventeenth century affected sugar production and Atlantic trade patterns. The Spanish embargo was lifted with the 1648 Munster Peace Treaty, which marked the end of the Eighty Years’ War and reestablished trade relations with Spain. A few years later, the First English Navigation Act of 1651 was implemented, which marked the start of strained trade relationships with England followed by the First English-Dutch war (1652–1654).

  121. 121.

    Novaky, “On trade, production and relations of production,” 1997, p. 470.

  122. 122.

    Menard, Sweet Negotiations (2006), Chapter 1, pp. 11–29. See Table 1, p. 18.

  123. 123.

    Novaky, “On trade, production and relations of production,” 1997, p. 473; de Vries and van der Woude, The First Modern Economy (1997), pp. 464–466.

  124. 124.

    Posthumus, Inquiry into the History of Prices in Holland: Volume I, (1946–64), pp. 119, 139, pp. 277–279; Noel Deerr, The History of Sugar, Volume 2 (London, 1950), p. 528, calculated that the average price for muscovados (raw sugar) in London fell by 50 percent during the ten-year period between early 1650s and 1660s.

  125. 125.

    McCusker and Menard, “The Sugar Industry in the Seventeenth Century” in Schwartz (ed.), Tropical Babylons (2004), pp. 289–330. For a brief introduction, see Carole Shammas, “The revolutionary impact of European demand for tropical goods,” in McCusker and Morgan (eds.), The Early Modern Atlantic Economy (2000), pp. 163–176.

  126. 126.

    National Archives, the Hague (Algemeen Rijks Archief A.R.A. 1430) referred to in the Notarial Archives (see Chap. 4). See also Chap. 7 for the reexport trade of sugar from London to Amsterdam.

  127. 127.

    See Shammas, “The revolutionary impact of European demand for tropical goods,” in McCusker and Morgan, The Early Modern Atlantic Economy (2000), pp. 163–176, and Eddy Stols, “The Expansion of the Sugar Market in Western Europe,” in, Schwartz (ed.), Tropical Babylons (2004), pp. 237–288.

  128. 128.

    Dunn, Sugar and Slaves (1972).

  129. 129.

    See Chap. 4.

  130. 130.

    David Ormrod, The Rise of Commercial Empires: England and the Netherlands in the Age of Mercantilism , 1650–1770 (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2003), pp. 181–206.

  131. 131.

    See also David Ormrod, “The Demise of Regulated Trading in England: The Case of the Merchant Adventurers, 1650–1730,” in C. Lesger and L. Noordegraaf (eds.), Entrepreneurs and Entrepreneurship in Early Modern Times (Hollandse Historische Reeks, 24, Den Haag, 1995), pp. 253–268.

  132. 132.

    See R.C. Nash, “The Organization of Trade and Finance in the British Atlantic Economy: 1600–1711,” in Peter A. Coclanis (ed.), The Atlantic Economy during the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century, 1600–1820 (University South Carolina Press, Columbia S.C. 2005), pp. 98–99. In Barbados, the system tied in with the Royal African Company’s slave trade where slaves were delivered in return for bills of exchange in value of sugar. There are some questions about the extent to which commission and consignment trade was conducted. But from evidence presented by Nash (2005) it seems that during the last decade of the seventeenth century a reversal occurred and that by 1700 many Barbados planters reverted to selling their crops on the island rather than in London, which restored the role of some of the island merchants, many of whom had ties to the transfer trade.

  133. 133.

    Odette Vlessing, “The Economic Influence of the Portuguese Jews on the Dutch Golden Age,” in Ilruolo Economico delle Minoranza in Europa, secc. XIII–XV, 2000, pp. 303–324; pp. 322–323, suggests that finance and stock trade became the Portuguese Jews’ main source of income in Amsterdam in the second half of the seventeenth century, which facilitated trade with England and other sugar supply areas.

  134. 134.

    Stephen A. Fortune, Merchants and Jews: The Struggle for British West Indian Commerce, 1650–1750 (University of Florida Press, Gainesville, 1984), pp. 46–47. Among the Barbados Jews who were offered denization or naturalization papers were Lewis (or Luis) Dias, Ralph Mercado, Antonio Rodriquez, Baruch Lourzada (or Lousada), David da Costa, Moses Pereyra, Benjamin Levy, Moses Hamesgago, Jeronimo Rodriquz, and David Israel, who had connections in Amsterdam, New York, and Brazil. Most of these merchants were well-to-do and were thus able to partake in long-distance trade. Lewis Dias was trading from Barbados to the Spanish Dominions and Portugal under the commercial name of Joseph Mendez. All of the last names or family names appear in Wilfred S. Samuel, “A Review of the Jewish Colonists in Barbados in the Year 1680,” (1936). See for a compilation, Martyn J. Bowden, “Houses, Inhabitants and Levies: Place for the Sephardic Jews of Bridgetown, Barbados, 1679–1729,” In Journal of the Barbados Museum and Historical Society, vol. LVII, pp. 1–53; pp. 4–5. Five of the names listed appear on the list of “The Jews of Bridgetown, 1679–1680” as “Magnates.” The rest are listed as “Well-to-Do” and three (all women-widows) are listed as “in Moderate or Poor Position.” The Pereyra family had a sugar refinery in Amsterdam.

  135. 135.

    Fortune, Merchants and Jews (1984), p. 47. At the same time, some English or Creole merchants were leaving the island as the commission system was introduced whereby larger planters contracted directly with London (or Bristol) sugar import firms making local merchants on the island redundant.

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    Yda Schreuder

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Schreuder, Y. (2019). The British Caribbean World: Barbados. In: Amsterdam's Sephardic Merchants and the Atlantic Sugar Trade in the Seventeenth Century. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97061-5_3

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