38 Atlantic African, American, and European Backgrounds to Contact, Commerce, and Enslavementprimarily as agricultural laborers and as workers in the con-
struction of public buildings and military fortifi cations.
Th e names of some of the fi rst Africans imported into
New Netherland—Paul d’Angola, Simon Congo, and An-
thony Portuguese—clearly denote their origin in West-
Central Africa. In the early 1570s, Portugal conquered
Angola and established peaceful commercial relations with
the nearby Kongo Kingdom. West-Central Africa therefore
would be an early source of labor for the Portuguese colony
of Brazil and, due to the actions of Dutch warships and
privateers on the Atlantic, both British Virginia and Dutch
New Netherland would import a number of Africans from
this region as well. When the Dutch West India Company
was fi rst chartered in 1621, it began an aggressive campaign
against Portuguese claims in Atlantic Africa and the Ameri-
cas in an attempt to undermine the Portuguese trade mo-
nopoly and to acquire Africans by more direct means. Th e
company captured portions of Brazil by 1637 and moved
to wrest control of a number of possessions in Africa away
from its Portuguese rivals.
In an attempt to fulfi ll its public promise to provide the
colonists with as many enslaved African laborers as possi-
ble, the company sought to become the primary conduit of
Africans entering Dutch American colonies. In the decade
between 1637 and 1647 alone, the Dutch West India Com-
pany claimed the Portuguese possessions of Elmina, Prínc-
ipe, Angola, and São Tomé through military conquest. Even
though the Dutch could only manage to control Angola
from 1641 to 1648, they had eff ectively replaced the Portu-
guese as the dominant European power in Atlantic Africa
by the mid-1640s. Th is complex web of interconnections
within the Atlantic World, fostered by trade, international
rivalry, and war, became an essential component in the de-
velopment of a number of Euro-American societies.
By 1627, a total of 14 Africans had arrived in Dutch
New Netherland and this initially slow trickle became a tor-
rent over the course of the next half century. Th e absence of
cash crops such as sugar, tobacco, or rice did not slow the
need for African labor in Dutch North America. In fact,
the importation of Africans became the principal focus for
the company with the arrival of the fi rst slave ship in 1635.
In addition, as a result of its direct control over large por-
tions of Brazil between 1637 and 1654, the company was able
to create a unique trade relationship between New Nether-
land and Brazil. In a trade arrangement draft ed in 1648, the
colonists in New Netherland agreed to ship fi sh, fl our, andDutch New Netherland
Th e history of forced labor in New Netherland began in
1625 with the arrival of a Dutch warship that unloaded a
cargo of Africans plundered from a Portuguese vessel on
the Atlantic. Th e status of the fi rst Africans brought to
Dutch North America was not clearly defi ned initially and
there existed a number of avenues forced laborers could use
to obtain freedom that were open for at least a few decades.
Th e idea of permanent and racialized slavery did not de-
velop in the region until the mid-1660s. Like their coun-
terparts in the Chesapeake, the fi rst Africans arriving in
New Netherland inhabited a nebulous social space between
indentured servitude and slavery. Initially it seemed that
they would have the same opportunities as their European
counterparts and would, perhaps, share the fruits and re-
wards the New World off ered. To borrow the words of Peter
Wood, the “terrible transformation” that led to the eventual
development and proliferation of race-defi ned slavery dur-
ing the second half of the 17th century helped determine
the poisonous race relations that have manifested through-
out much of North American history.
Established primarily as a fur-trading post by the
Dutch West India Company, New Netherland and its Dutch
settlers struggled during the early years of the colony’s his-
tory to fi nd suffi cient sources of revenue and labor. Con-
centrating most of their eff orts on major territorial claims
in West Africa and the Caribbean—Gorée and Curaçao,
respectively—the directors of the company had little in-
terest in investing the signifi cant amount of capital neces-
sary to make New Netherland a successful settler colony.
As a result, the Dutch West India Company proposed two
separate plans to solve the economic problems faced by its
North American colony. Th e fi rst solution was the estab-
lishment of patroonships or landed estates granted to the
wealthy. Patroonships, much like the headrights bestowed
by the Virginia Company in the Chesapeake, were incen-
tives meant to encourage immigration to America. Wealthy
Dutch settlers receiving landed estates under this system
had the responsibility of attracting and paying the neces-
sary transportation costs for up to 50 new settlers each. Th is
plan met with only limited success with the establishment
of only one patroonship during the entire period of Dutch
rule in New Netherland. Th e company’s second and most
successful plan was the importation of Africans to be used