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Preparations for the West India Company (1600s)

Type Event Region Europe Time 1601–1610

In the early 17th century Dutch merchants and politicians lobbied for a chartered company for West Africa, the Americas and the Caribbean, culminatin…

Timeline

  1. 1601–1605Amsterdam · NetherlandsIn the early 1600s merchant Willem Usselincx lobbied the provincial estates in Amsterdam and The Hague, advocating a West India Company modeled on the East India Company to monopolize the West African slave trade, Brazilian sugar and Caribbean trade, breaking Spanish-Portuguese spheres of influence in the Atlantic.
  2. 1603–1608Rotterdam · NetherlandsAfter 1603, dissatisfied with the East India Company's monopoly, merchants including Isaac le Maire organized risky expeditions such as the 'New Brabant Company', passing through the Strait of Magellan into the Pacific to explore West Indies trade. These activities provided a precedent for later integrating dispersed Atlantic venture capital into the West India Company.
  3. 1609–1610The Hague · NetherlandsAfter the Twelve Years' Truce of 1609, the Dutch Republic's parliament repeatedly debated proposals to establish a West India Company. By 1610 the plan had not yet been approved, but capital raising, fleet planning and West African base concepts were taking shape, laying institutional and commercial groundwork for the WIC's formal founding in 1621.

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