INTRODUCTION

The Dutch have not left many deep and enduring marks on the political and economic institutions of the New World; their presence as colonists, rulers, traders, and investors is not invisible (indeed, their presence as rulers is not yet over), but it hardly bears comparison with the transforming impact of an England or Spain, or even a Portugal or France. This negligible legacy was not the result of Dutch indifference. In fact, from the early days of the Dutch Republic an “Atlantic dream” – a New World redeemed from its Spanish/Catholic yoke, populated by Dutch settlers and Calvinist Indians, forming a productive and profitable part of a global trading economy – captured the imaginations of merchants, the House of Orange, and many Reformed clergymen and their followers. In 1630 the new Dutch West India Company published a pamphlet with this bit of promotional verse:

The “Atlantic reality” never came close to fulfilling the high hopes of the early promoters, but this was not for want of trying. The Netherlands launched repeated efforts to achieve something in the New World: It fought and worked to build an empire, indeed, to construct a groot desseyn (grand design) in the Western Hemisphere comparable to the inter-Asian trading network operated out of Batavia.