The Dutch Atlantic World: an Illusive Reality - Assignment Example

The Dutch Atlantic World: an illusive reality? With the emerging specialty field of Atlantic history, historians are starting to challenge the idea of an empire-centered approach confined to connections within the national histories of the Netherlands. From 1990s onwards, scholars incorporated a much larger framework into their analysis of the Dutch Atlantic. They have been gradually moving away from the Dutch Republic point of departure to the idea of a constantly evolving and transforming world without a fixed centre. In order to understand this aspect, it will be significant to discuss three historians who propose an alternative approach to the dominant monocentric readings people are familiar with. The first two authors, Karwan Fatah-Black and Victor Enthoven, study the demographic network of the Dutch colonies trying to demonstrate the interconnectedness within the Atlantic world. With this same objective, Gert Oostindie analyzes the commercial networks of the Dutch World. He took a closer look at the lesser Guianas, which demonstrate the weakness of Dutch governance in comparison with the “genius” of the British well before the British takeover of these colonies. In this research, Oostindie contested the overall weight of the Dutch Atlantic world, which also mirrors a preoccupation with the relevance of the term Dutch Atlantic history. Therefore, this essay will discuss recent developments in the historiography of the Dutch Atlantic world. The Dutch Atlantic history Before immersing into the Dutch Atlantic history covered by the three hereunder mentioned authors, it is significant to briefly denote the main aspects of Dutch history of the Americas. It has been understood by the direct relationship between the Dutch Republic on the one hand, and, West Africa and the Americas one the other hand, neglecting the further interdependence with the rest of the world that played a crucial role in Dutch colonial history. This Eurocentric perspective greatly emphasizes on the discovery of a “New World” that has been dominated by the political and economic rivalries of the European powers of Portugal, Spain, England, France, and the Dutch Republic. During the seventeenth and eighteenth century, the Dutch Republic carried along a salient position in the world. Its colonies stretched from the Dutch East India Company-managed Asia, the plantation economies of Brazil, the Caribbean and the Guianas, the slave exporting area of West Africa to the trading post New Netherland in North America. Especially the glorious Golden Age in the seventeenth century contributed to the economic and cultural resurgence of the Dutch Republic (Postma 8). The Dutch Republic counted as a liberal country which openness undoubtedly attracted the critique of other countries such as the Spanish and other Catholic peoples who witnessed the country as “the land of money-hungry heretics” (Postma 10). The opportunity to regain freedom in the Netherlands opened the gate to many political and religious dissenters while the opportunities of its booming economy attracted many exiled Spanish Jews, French Huguenots and other Protestant dissenters who all contributed to the growing wealth of Holland in the arts, scientific experimentation and technological and organizational advancements (Postma 10). This Dutch capitalist world was based on colonial production of goods made possible by the slavery system. The dominating historiography reads Dutch colonial history in a way that the Dutch connected the dots with these different places around the world, making the “Dutchness” of the colonies seem incontestable and all-present in the economic, political, social and cultural systems of the colonies. This will be contested in the next readings to the point that the critical reader should wonder if the Dutch Atlantic World is even a correct denomination. The Dutch Atlantic: the case of Suriname One of the first and most recent authors to discuss will be Karwan Fatah-Black from the Leiden University in the Netherlands. He conducted his research for his doctoral thesis on the place of Suriname in the early modern Atlantic world. Although his doctoral thesis was defended in 2013, it is unfortunately still not available to the wider public. For this reason, this paper will turn to Fatah-Black’s article “A Swiss Village in the Dutch Tropics: The Limitations of Empire-Centered Approaches to the Early Modern Atlantic World” where he examines the case of Suriname from a less detailed yet indispensable angle. Fatah-Black’s article tries to demonstrate the place of Suriname as a non-exclusive Dutch affair in the Atlantic empire by referring to the movements of settlers and passengers. Instead of following the migrants’ trajectory from and to the Dutch colony, he focuses on the network of interconnections of inward and outward movements from Suriname, such as the arrival of Huguenots in the 1680s, the Palatine Germans in the 1730s and the Swiss settlers of the late 1740s. Throughout the article, Fatah-Black concentrates on the story of the physician Louis De Bussy who wanted to start a Swiss village in Suriname but failed in the upset when he recruited Swiss families in Amsterdam under false pretenses by which he got banned from the colony and travelled to British North America. The connections De Bussy set up between Switzerland, Suriname and British North America illustrate the further structure of the Atlantic world in the eighteenth century in which Suriname was connected to Europe, Africa, the Caribbean and North America (Fatah-Black 32). The origins of interconnectedness of the colony can be found in its management from 1683 till 1795 by the Geoctroyeerde Sociëteit van Suriname consisting of three parties who governed according to the charter of the States General of the Dutch Republic. During that time social and territorial control by white Europeans was increasingly demanded due to attacks by French (1703-17014) causing slaves to flee, increasing the number of maroons which were considered a threat to the colony even though they did not always attack (Fatah-Black 39). In the difficulty of finding native Dutch, the Suriname Company lured Europeans from the hinterland and from other colonies with favorable regulations, such as religious freedom or exemption of taxation, causing diversification of the small white European group in the colony. Fatah-Black tries to authenticate the connections of this group to other parts of the Atlantic by a reconstruction of figures of the movement of people, though in how far this reconstruction can be held legitimate remains the core question. In my point of view, there exists a lack of quantitative data making a general statement of the interconnected movement of people inconclusive. Nevertheless, it remains important to denote the inter-imperial movements Fatah-Black points at in the case of Suriname. This in fact already starts before Dutch occupation with the initial colonization attempts by French and British where the latter attracted many Jews from other colonies to settle in English Suriname. Later during the re-established Dutch occupation, there existed a common movement to the British Atlantic colonies when hardship was found in Suriname by English planters leaving for Barbados and Jamaica (1668-1672), German Palatines leaving for Georgia (1733-1740) and Jews leaving for more regional destinations (1750) (Fatah-Black 39-42). Fatah-Black interprets these inter-colonial settler movements, made possible by the high demand for experienced settlers, in the eyes of the settlers “as an Atlantic world perceived as a single space in which destinations were easily switched” (2014: 40). The figures for Suriname illustrate this common movement of settling from one Atlantic colony and from there on moving to another. In the 1730s, the movement of people from Suriname to another region was 9 persons, but this figure gradually rose to 10 in the 1750s, 16 in the 1760s and 36 in the 1770s (Fatah-Black 43). The Jewish migration in particular is remarkable, between 1771 and 1795 322 arrived in Suriname and 311 left again (2014: 43). In the early 1730s the net immigration to Suriname (excluding slaves and military personnel) was 51 persons per year, rising to 61 in the 1750s, thereafter, the figures dropped to 33 annually in the 1770s. This pattern follows the general trend of economic productivity in Suriname that started with an initially booming economy to a decline of its plantation economy in the 1770s. Besides the lack of conclusive statistical data incorporating the entire flow of people and the quantitative distinction between Dutch and other Europeans moving to and from Suriname, the article does manifest statistical evidence of the inter-colonial emigration of settlers from Suriname. Still I find too little evidence from the other English, Swiss and especially German settlers to deduct a substantial interconnected movement of people. Further on, not only arguments need to be found of the movements of people but also of the interconnected movement of goods and culture to legitimize this Dutch Atlantic history. Fatah-Black recognizes this and tries to mention some cultural aspects of interconnection such as the genealogy of Dutch historiography. The empire-centered Dutch historiography of Suriname surged in the mid-nineteenth century while during the rule of the Suriname Company (1683-1795) historiographical books were often written by the English, French and German in their proper language (Fatah-Black 34). Although this is a well-grounded starting point, more cultural interconnections are needed to legitimize a Dutch Atlantic World. The essay “A Swiss Village in the Dutch Tropics” by Karwan Fatah-Black overlooks the wider context in which an Atlantic history should take place. The narrow scope on Suriname and its flow of people leaves the other Dutch colonies whereas other modes of analysis unnoticed. Perhaps this is the major pitfall in analyzing the Dutch Atlantic history because there exists a lack of the necessary data to conduct an integrated analysis. Nevertheless, I would argue Fatah-Black could have tried to be more ambitious by mentioning, even without the hard proof of a quantitative and qualitative body of statistics, other interconnected flows in Suriname. The Dutch Atlantic versus Dutch Asia In “Dutch Crossings, migration between Netherlands and the New World 1600-1800”, Victor Enthoven responds to an article written by Emmer and Klooster “The Dutch Atlantic” in which the Dutch demography in the Atlantic is compared to that of the British Empire and the Dutch East India Company (VOC). Enthoven disagrees with the statistical estimations and the conclusion made by Emmer in which he states that the Dutch Atlantic was a drain on the Dutch population. He tries to give a more accurate estimation of the migration to the Dutch settlements, which involves interconnectedness as already suggested by Karwan Fatah-Black. Enthoven compares the weight of the migration flows in the Dutch Atlantic with that of the Dutch East India Company in Asia. The figures demonstrate that the need for European settlers in the Dutch Atlantic was far greater than in Asia. As Fatah-Black already referred to with Suriname, the Dutch colonies in the Atlantic were predominantly non-Dutch which makes the term of a Dutch Atlantic World ambiguous since many Jews, Germans, and other European nationalities predominantly inhabited the colonies. Continuing this line of thought, Enthoven also refers to the Jewish Atlantic Diaspora of the Dutch World where Amsterdam attracted New Christians, Crypto-Jews, conversos, Spanish, and Portuguese Marranos, Sephardim and Ashkenazi for religious or commercial reasons (Enthoven 164). From there on, Jews mainly travelled to Dutch Brazil, Suriname and Curaçao where they exercised a great influence on the blooming economic wealth of the colony (Enthoven 164). During the Dutch occupation of Brazil, many Jewish families migrated to Brazil and the figures illustrate that half of the Europeans in Dutch Brazil were Jews, 1500 out of 3000 (Enthoven 166). After the fall of Dutch Brazil in 1654, a Dutch Jewish exodus took place to the West Indies with the final destination of New Amsterdam, modern New York. Little evidence exists on the data of Jewish families who settled in the West Indies but in September 1654 twenty-three Jews arrived in New Amsterdam, forming the first Jewish community (Enthoven 166). During the 1650-1660s, many Jews returned to the Dutch settlements on the Wild Coast, Cayenne, Essequibo, Pomoroon, Morucca, and Aperwacque but the second Anglo-Dutch War (1664-1667) ended their promising firms (Enthoven: 166). The Jews left again for English Suriname, which returned to Dutch rule at the end of the war in 1667. Suriname counted the largest Jewish community of that time, in 1791, 60 percent out of 3360 Europeans was Jewish (Enthoven 166). The same occurred in Curaçao were the second biggest Jewish community was set up, in 1789, 30 percent out of 3814 Europeans was Jewish (Enthoven 166). In comparison with Fatah-Black, Enthoven heavily accentuates this significance of the Jewish community in transforming the Dutch World into an interconnected world. Due to their special assets such as their proficiency in the Spanish language and their extensive family networks across the Atlantic they transformed the colonies into polycentric centres of the world (Enthoven 167). Enthoven also provides accurate statistical data that underline the overarching presence of Jews in the Dutch colonies. It would be more convincing if his essay would provide figures of the proliferation of the trading network and compare those with the every time increasing and decreasing presence of the extreme economically active Jews of Dutch Brazil, Suriname and Curaçao. In this way, the flows of goods and people would be interlinked in such a way that the pretended Dutchness of the colonies could be thoroughly contested. However, Enthoven does not neglect the Dutch Atlantic world, he refers to the period when the English gained the Dutch North American possessions and the colony remained Dutch in nature due to a remaining Dutch community in New Amsterdam, modern New York and the Pennsylvania Dutch (Enthoven 167). His first argument is more convincing than the second though. In fact, the Pennsylvania Dutch were German immigrants who travelled from the German Rhine lands via the Rhine River to Rotterdam and then to America to work as laborers. In this demographic network the link with the Dutch Republic is clear but in how far this accounts for a Dutch influence in the British colonies remains to be seen. Further on, a minority of non-Europeans moving between Europe, Africa, America and the West Indies also depicts the polycentric Dutch Atlantic World. This group of Amerindians, Africans, Creoles, and Mulattoes travelled to the Dutch Republic but mostly moved back to the New World (Enthoven 169). In Suriname’s case, 931 people of colour travelled to the Netherlands during the eighteenth century with an average of 17 per year (Postma 168). Enthoven estimates that of the 1.9 million individuals leaving the Netherlands to an Atlantic destination in a 200-year period between 1600 and 1800, about 1.2 million returned to Europe (Enthoven 169). This means 35% or 700 000 people remained in the Atlantic world and probably engaged further in the transatlantic Dutch World. Enthoven takes his research a step further by comparing the demographic flows of the Dutch Americas to Dutch Asia. In Asia, the VOC employed many more Europeans than in the Dutch Atlantic World and the policy of establishing settlements overseas only occurred on a small scale over time, therefore the demand for Europeans was not as great as in the Atlantic (Enthoven 169). In a similar way, the Dutch Asiatic World also employed many non-Dutch and as in the Dutch Atlantic many Germans from the Rhine lands were put in the service of the VOC. Though Enthoven’s essay is built on a critique of Emmer and Klooster’s analysis of the burden on the Dutch population for the Atlantic, he builds up arguments for the transatlantic Dutch World. For this reason, it is difficult to point at the lack of data on the flow of goods or culture and the further involvement with the demographic network because he only addresses the wrongly estimated weight of the Dutch population for the Atlantic colonies. Nevertheless, by finger pointing at Emmer and Klooster’s, he hints at the non-Dutch nature of the Dutch Atlantic World. His essay develops Karwan-Fatah Black’s arguments further with more statistical evidence but still more research needs to be conducted on the interconnection of other aspects besides demographic flows. The non-Dutch demography of the Dutch colonies questions the nature of the Dutch Atlantic Word but perhaps this “impure” Dutch society foreruns our modern construction of a multicultural society. The controversy of the Dutch Atlantic World In “’British capital, industry, and perseverance’ versus Dutch ‘Old School’, Gert Oostindie ponders about the intermediary role of the Dutch in the Atlantic World. In his eyes, recent historiography draws too much attention on the importance of the Dutch Atlantic in comparison with Dutch Asia. He follows the common thought of revisionists who emphasize the importance of the Dutch Atlantic Empire despite its limited and fragmented nature but he remains critical of excessive revisionism (Oostindie 1). In his analysis of the Dutch Guianas, where British-American involvement was great, Oostindie questions the significance of the Dutch Atlantic, which returns again to the ambiguity of the Dutch Atlantic World previously mentioned in the analysis of Fatah-Black and Enthoven. In comparison with Fatah-Black and Enthoven, Gert Oostindie demonstrates the transatlantic nature of the Dutch Atlantic by tracking the circuit of trade in the colonies. In his words, the Dutch players were “disproportionally active as brokers connecting various parts of the Atlantic across national colonial boundaries” (Oostindie 29). He gives the example of Curaçao whose commerce of African slaves and European and tropical products connected to western Africa, Spain, the Spanish and French Caribbean islands, North America and the Dutch Republic (Oostindie: 29). In a similar way, St. Eustatius paralleled this transatlantic commercial orientation but in this case it was more strongly connected to the North American colonies. Even the Danish colony St. Thomas functioned as a Dutch connector in the Atlantic. As previously seen with Suriname’s demographic networks spanning across the Atlantic, Oostindie turns to statistical evidence of its diversifying commercial network. He perceives the demographic evidence discussed with Fatah-Black and Enthoven mainly as a monocentric relationship with the Dutch Republic and West Africa. Finance, governance and European migration directly links with the Dutch Republic while the rest of demography directly links with western Africa. Unlike Fatah-Black and Enthoven; who regard the demographic network as diverse, Oostindie focuses on the diversity of the commercial network. By referring to Postma’s work “Riches from Atlantic Commerce: Dutch Transatlantic Trade and Shipping”, Suriname’s trade analysis shows strong connections with the North American colonies and lesser connection to the British and Dutch Caribbean islands (Postma 31). The same applies for the ‘lesser Guianas’, the three small colonies west of Suriname: Berbice, Demerara and Essequibo, but in this case the Dutchness should be questioned in the second half of the eighteenth century. Before 1770, the demographic and economic networks were negligible in comparison with Suriname. They found real difficulties in attracting European men, especially Dutch, in this way, many Germans and smaller groups of British, French, Swiss and Scandinavians inhabited the colonies. Oostindie already points at an informal British takeover of the lesser Guianas in 1737 with the appointment of the Dutch Laurens Storm van ‘s Gravesande as the secretary of Essequibo (Oostindie 35). After five years, Storm became governor, a position held until 1772, in which he could criticize the Dutch governance and financial support system of the colonies. He came up with a solution for the lousy Dutch management by proposing a policy to attract British planters from the metropolis, the North American colonies and the British West Indies colonies. This caused a high influx of British in the mid eighteenth century, overwhelming all other nationalities in the Guianas. In 1760, the British formed a majority in Demerara while in Essequibo the Dutch still counted as the majority. Nevertheless, the lack of Dutch protectionism caused more British to arrive in the colonies with other smaller amounts of French, Swiss and German (Oostindie: 38). It even became a norm for British investors from the West Indies to stay in Barbados and start investing in the Dutch Guianas without living on the plantation colonies. In 1800, immigrants from the British West Indies consisted of whites and free people of color travelled to the Guianas making the network even more diverse. This British interest in the Dutch colonies made the network Atlantic rather than the Dutch making it Atlantic. As with the story of physician Louis de Bussy in Suriname, Oostindie wants to make his case stronger by pointing out stories of individuals in the Atlantic. The gentry’s capitalist family of Gedney Clarke, father and son illustrate the transatlantic economic network of the Dutch Atlantic world (S.D. Smith in Oostindie: 38). The family born in New England in 1711 moved to Barbados in 1733 where he started an economic network including the North Atlantic world while building a network as planter and merchant with the North American colonies, Great Britain, the West Indies and the Dutch Guianas (Oostindie 38). One important aspect where Oostindie does not attach much importance too is governor Storm’s decision to learn English; he thought it was indispensible to speak English in the Dutch colony Demerara (Oostindie 39). This cultural aspect, language, is a key factor that illustrates the polycentric nature of the Atlantic world besides trade and demography. Also the fact that Storm recognized Clarke’s positively, “a real entrepreneur” (39) “a man of sound judgment and fortune with truly a good heart for the prosperity of this colony” (39) illustrates that the Dutch themselves were not that important in the colony; again returning to the question of the genuine Dutchness of the Dutch Atlantic. The growth of trade after the middle of the eighteenth century expanded to such a degree, not only sugar, coffee and cotton was exported to the metropolis but also trade links with Africa, the British West Indies (particularly Barbados), St. Eustatius, Curaçao, the French and Spanish colonies and especially the trade link established with North America had a quintessential impact on the economic importance of the Dutch Atlantic (Oostindie 41). Only one problem occurs for the further analysis of the transatlantic economic network of the Dutch World, most of this trade circuits were illegal and therefore have been left undocumented. Conclusion It is clear from the discussion of the above-mentioned articles that a more comprehensive study yet has to emerge on the Dutch Atlantic history. The three articles lack an integrated view of the Dutch Atlantic because they are either too narrows in scope, for example with the case of Suriname, or use a too narrow mode of analysis, only inspecting the demographic or commercial networks. Therefore, I suggest an all-encompassing study of the Dutch Atlantic is needed including the colonies of the Atlantic Ocean as well as its ventures in Asia to generate a valid statement on the existence of such Dutch Atlantic that stood in contact with the wider world. There is also the urgent need from historians outside of the Netherlands to engage with the Atlantic study of the Dutch Republic. Exactly because the three discussed authors indicate the non-Dutch character of the Dutch Atlantic, historians from the other European countries that were well represented in the Dutch World should start investigating. Ideally, historians from non-western countries also should have a look upon the Dutch Atlantic history to come close to true objectivity on the Dutch history. Until that is not accomplished, I belief it is hard to claim the validity of a Dutch Atlantic with the eye on the existing fragmented studies on the Dutch Atlantic. Works cited Enthoven, Victor. “Dutch Crossings.” Journal: Atlantic Studies Volume 2, Issue 2, 2005. Print. Fatah-Black, Karwan. "A Swiss Village in the Dutch Tropics: The Limitations of Empire-Centred Approaches to the Early Modern Atlantic World." BMGN - Low Countries Historical Review, 2013. Print. Oostindie, Gert. "‘British Capital, Industry and Perseverance’ versus Dutch ‘Old School’?: The Dutch Atlantic and the Takeover of Berbice, Demerara and Essequibo, 1750-1815." BMGN - Low Countries Historical Review, 2012. Print. Postma, Johannes Menne. The Dutch in the Atlantic slave trade 1600-1815. Cambridge: Cambridge University press, 1990. Print. Vogel, Hans, and Van den Doel H.W.. Holanda y América. Madrid: MAPFRE, 1992. Print. Read More