Conceived in Liberty (52 page)

The
immediate
impact of these acts on New England merchants and the New England economy was not great. New England imports were largely manufactured goods from England anyway, and thus were not greatly affected. And the restrictions—such as the enumerated articles and the prohibition of direct imports of wines from the Canary Islands—were simply ignored. The Massachusetts merchants blithely continued to ship enumerated articles direct to European ports—for example, tobacco to Holland—and to import goods direct from Europe. The New England merchants were happily able to save the South from immediate devastation at the hands of the Navigation Acts by first importing Southern tobacco to Boston and then exporting it direct to foreign countries. In this way, the South, for a time, was enabled to avoid the drastic burden of the Navigation Acts. The distracted English government did not attempt to enforce any of these restrictions until the Anglo-Dutch wars were over in the mid-1670s. The position of the merchants was backed fully by the Massachusetts General Court, which declared that it simply was not subject to “the laws of England any more than we live in England.” On this issue the Boston merchants and the Puritan theocracy were allied: the
former to prevent British restrictions on their trade, the latter to keep England from interfering with the Puritan regime in Massachusetts.

Indeed, the Massachusetts merchants, able to avoid the restrictions of the Navigation Acts, were also able to take advantage of the provisions driving out their efficient Dutch competitors. The London merchants, having used governmental power to crush Dutch competitors, suddenly found to their dismay the Massachusetts merchants outcompeting them in marketing colonial products in Europe, in shipping, and in supplying the colonies with imported manufactures—including European products competing with English goods. The king’s revenue was of course diminished by direct trade with Europe, because the taxes levied at English ports were avoided.

The most flourishing trade in New England during the Dutch wars of the 1660s and 1670s was the essentially uneconomic supplying of war contracts to provision the English attempts at conquest. Massachusetts’ major provisions were naval stores, especially masts, channeled through Portsmouth, New Hampshire. This became the biggest business seen in New England up to that time. Once again, London merchants were the key entrepreneurs in this trade, using their influence to obtain government war contracts. The most favored Massachusetts merchants were those with connections to the London contractors. The leading New England mast supplier was Peter Lidget, but the Massachusetts mast industry was able to flourish largely because it was highly competitive and not centrally organized. In 1670, for example, Richard Wharton was able to obtain for his company a ten-year monopoly of the supply of naval stores (including masts) in Massachusetts and Plymouth, but the endeavor quickly failed because the grant of privilege was impossible to enforce. Once again the market process was able to dissolve even a monopoly created by government privilege.

*
Oliver P. Chitwood,
A History of Colonial America,
3rd ed. (New York: Harper, 1961), p. 219.

The British seizure of New Netherland—the vast if thinly settled Dutch territory in North America—wrought a permanent change in the pattern of English colonization in the New World. The grant of this vast area to the proprietorship of the Duke of York, younger brother of Charles II, and its seizure by Col. Richard Nicolls in 1664, brought under English control a great land area that much later was to constitute the “middle colonies.”

How had New Netherland been formed? Seventeenth-century Dutch policies cannot be fully comprehended without recognizing the fierce and continuing political divisions within the Dutch republic over constitutional and foreign policies. Early in their long revolutionary struggle against Spain for religious toleration, freedom from taxation, and independence from central imperial rule, the seven northern Dutch-speaking Calvinist provinces of the Netherlands had established a loose confederation. Governing these United Provinces was a States-General representing the completely autonomous provincial legislatures or states. Not being burdened by the overweening state power of the other European countries, the Dutch maritime cities, especially those in the provinces of Holland and Zeeland, were able to forge the greatest economic progress in Europe. The Dutch freely engaged in trade throughout Europe, even after Spain’s union with Portugal had cut off their supplies of spices, sugar, and salt from the East Indies, Brazil, and the West Indies. The war against Spain, however, continued even after Spanish troops had been driven from the northern provinces, after the ten Catholic southern provinces had gained recognition of their rights by Spain, and after France and then England had determined to make peace with Spain. The struggle for national
liberation thus became transformed into a war of Dutch aggression against the southern provinces. A regular standing army was developed, serving to expand the executive power in the central government, as well as central government power over the constitutionally independent provincial governments. Thus, the central executive, not to mention the officer class of the army, had a vested interest in continuing the war. This continuation of the war for the benefit of the executive-military authorities forced the syndicates of merchants who had successfully and rapidly developed private trade to the East Indies to seek a means of mutual defense from attacks by the Spanish or Portuguese fleets. Under the leadership of Amsterdam, these syndicates or chambers created the United East India Company in March 1602. This company, under the control of the local chambers, organized joint voyages to the East Indies for their mutual protection during wartime. After the war, however, the company became a monopoly for governing Dutch settlements in the Indies.

The fundamental cleavage in the politics of the United Provinces developed when the merchants of the cities of Holland and of other provinces, led by the foremost Dutch statesman, Johan van Oldenbarneveldt, successfully pursued peace negotiations with Spain despite the complete opposition of the Dutch military leaders. The Dutch merchants desired peace in order to end the threat of military dictatorship and the burden of taxes, and to gain access to world markets through free and peaceful trade. These merchants formed the basis of the Republican party, standing for liberal principles of peace, free trade, liberty, and, in particular, the maintenance of the original Dutch confederation of towns and provinces. In that confederation, each level of governmental power was strictly limited by the application of a virtual unanimity principle. The Republicans, furthermore, tended to be Arminians, following the liberal Dutch Protestant theologian Jacobus Arminius, who emphasized free will, natural law, and religious toleration as over against the Calvinist doctrines of predestination and state enforcement of religious conformity.

Opposition to the peace negotiations with Spain was centered in the Orange party, composed largely of gentry dependent upon their lucrative and powerful military positions and whose leader was the Prince of Orange, the military commander of the Netherlands. The Orange party sought greater powers for the central government, a strong standing army, and ultimately the substitution of an Orange monarchy for the republican confederation. Allied with the nobility and military in the Orange party was the great part of the Calvinist ministers; the Orange party, in fact, was often termed the “Calvinist party.” The Calvinist ministers found the discipline of war more suitable to Calvinist practices than was the increased standard of living resulting from peaceful trade. Furthermore, a strong central government, resulting from war, was seen as the best means of enforcing religious conformity, especially against the Arminians, who were protected by the provincial independence of Holland.

Holland was the center of strength of the Republican party, containing as it did the least influence by nobles or the military and the greatest commercial and maritime strength. The Orange party, however, had strong support even in the cities of Holland from Calvinist emigrés from southern Netherlands, largely French-speaking Walloons who formed an important and wealthy part of the population. Like most emigrés throughout history, the bulk of the southerners were not content to live in the free atmosphere of their newfound home. Instead, unable to persuade the majority of their original countrymen of the justice of their cause, they tried to win by dragging their new fellow citizens into war and thus riding to power on the backs of foreign troops and guns. Emigrés always tend to constitute a menace to those who graciously welcome their migration. In the Dutch republic, the Orange party had strong support from the southern emigrés, whooping for a war of aggression against the Spanish Netherlands to “liberate” the reluctant Catholics in behalf of Calvinism.

The peace negotiated by the Dutch Republicans, the Twelve Year Truce of Antwerp (April 1609), gained the recognition by Spain of the virtual independence of the United Provinces and of the right of the Dutch to engage in Eastern trade similar to the right won by England in the treaty of 1604. Also in 1609 the Dutch East India Company hired the English explorer Henry Hudson to find a northeast arctic route to the Orient. Hudson was instructed not to seek a northwest passage through North America, as the Republican-run company was anxious to avoid any danger to peace with Spain by challenging Spain’s imperial claims in the New World. Disobeying his instructions, Hudson, on failing to find a northeast route, sailed to North America and explored, among other areas, Delaware Bay and the Hudson River as far north as the fur trading region near Albany.

Since fur was a leading commodity in Dutch trade from Scandinavia and Russia, the new possibility of a cheaper American source spurred the remarkably enterprising Amsterdam merchants into action. During the next four years many Amsterdam merchants outfitted small ships and engaged in a very profitable fur trade with the Indians, in exchange for beads and cloth. These individual traders also founded a settlement on Manhattan Island, explored first by Adriaen Block in 1613. In 1614 thirteen of the Amsterdam merchants there engaged in the America trade, banded together, and managed to secure from the states of Holland and Friesland a monopoly of all trade in America for the space of six voyages. Soon afterward, these merchants strengthened their hold by forming the United New Netherland Company and obtaining from the States-General a three-year monopoly of all American trade in the area between New France in the north and the Delaware River.

One of the first acts of the New Netherland Company was to found a settlement vital to the fur trade, far up the Hudson River at Fort Nassau (later Fort Orange, now the site of Albany), near the junction of the Hudson
and Mohawk rivers. The fort was built on the site of an old ruined trading post, which had been erected about 1540 by French fur traders and soon abandoned. In 1618 the commandant of Fort Nassau came to a significant agreement with the chiefs of the mighty Iroquois Indians—the Five Nations. In this durable treaty, the Dutch and Iroquois agreed to trade peacefully in muskets and ammunition in exchange for fur.

The New Netherland Company tried to renew its monopoly in 1618, but heated opposition by excluded merchants blocked an extended grant, and the American fur trade was then thrown open again to the competition of individual merchants, albeit under license of the government. To its pleased surprise the New Netherland Company found that it prospered even more under the bracing air of competition, and the company now laid plans for further expansion.

At this point, however, Dutch affairs took a fateful turn. The Orange party, rallying the army officers (largely gentry dependent upon military posts), used the theological disagreements between Arminians and Calvinists to effect a coup and overthrow the republican constitution in 1619. Using its narrow 4–3 majority in the States-General, based on control of the rural Calvinist provinces, the Orange party had convoked a national synod of the Dutch Reformed Church. When the synod condemned and ordered the persecution of the Arminian theologians, the state of Holland refused to approve, using its well-founded constitutional independence to safeguard the principle of religious toleration. At that point, Prince Maurice of Orange and his army attacked Holland and arrested Oldenbarneveldt and other Republican leaders, including Hugo Grotius, the founder of international law. A reign of terror was instituted by the Orange party: the venerable Oldenbarneveldt was tried illegally, with no provision for defense, and executed for treason in May 1619. The Arminian leaders, moreover, were persecuted and exiled.

The now dominant Orange party proceeded to renew its aggression against the southern Netherlands upon expiration of the truce in 1621, and proposed to carry the war to the American possessions of Spain and Portugal. At this point there came to the fore an eminent Walloon emigre merchant, William Usselincx, who for thirty years had propagandized for the establishment of a Dutch West India Company to establish colonies in South America for reaping such valuable tropical products as sugar and tobacco. In June 1621 the States-General chartered the Dutch West India Company under Orange control with the aim of plundering and conquering the Spanish and Portuguese colonies and monopolizing the slave trade. Although modeled on the Dutch East India Company, the West India Company was a pure creation of the state to achieve military objectives; the state contributed half the capital and ships and forced the rest of the capital and ships from reluctant Dutch merchants. In place of the independent Dutch merchants (such as the New Netherland Company), who had gained an important smuggling trade to Brazil and the Caribbean
and a free trade to the Hudson River, a monopoly of Dutch trade with and between the Atlantic coasts of Africa and the Americas was now granted to the new company. The company was also granted a monopoly of all colonization in America. A government in the form of a commercial company, this overseas instrument of Orange aggression possessed governmental and feudal powers—to rule its arbitrarily granted territories, to legislate, to make treaties, to make war and peace, to maintain military forces and fleets of warships in order to plunder, conquer, and colonize. Only the company’s appointed governor general had to be approved by the States-General. Dominant on the board of nineteen directors was the Amsterdam Chamber of the Company, which owned over forty percent of the capital and thus became the effective ruler of New Netherland.