SLAVERY IN NEW AMSTERDAM

Slavery came indirectly to New Amsterdam as a result of events elsewhere in Europe and the New World. The Dutch finally had won their independence from Spain in 1648. This meant that the Dutch West India Company, whose income depended in large part from the prosecution of war, was left with little revenue. Additionally, though the DWI had supplied slaves during the 1630’s and 1640’s from Africa to work the Brazilian sugar plantations, their ability to control that market was slipping away from them. As a result the DWI turned to the British and French West Indies where indentured servants had been producing tobacco on small and numerous farms. They convinced the planters to switch to the more profitable production of sugar, even providing them with the initial capital outlays to buy the needed equipment for it. By the 1660’s sugar was fast becoming the major crop produced by large plantations that were hungry for the slave labor provided by the DWI.

The new director of New Netherland, Peter Stuyvesant, saw these changes as an economic opportunity for his colony. Why not establish New Amsterdam as a convenient entrepôt for the slave trade in North America? He further reasoned that he could establish a profitable local market for slaves and possibly use them to repopulate areas devastated by Kieft’s War and to help protect the colony from English encroachment by New England. After the loss of Brazil in 1654, his ideas were quickly put into action. By the mid-1660’s New Netherland had about 700 slaves, 300 of whom were in New Amsterdam along with 75 free Negroes, constituting roughly 20% of the town’s population.

However, even before the loss of Brazil by the Dutch slavery did exist in New Amsterdam. As early as 1626 slaves taken from Spanish and Portuguese ships as well as from private transactions with enterprising sea captains had led to the development of a small Negro community. And in 1647 the DWI proposed that slaves from Brazil be used to help increase the agricultural output of the New Netherland colony and at the same time provide Brazil with provisions at a cheaper rate than was otherwise available. The Dutch ship Tamadore arrived in 1646 with what is thought to be the first cargo of slaves, but no evidence of any other transactions linking Brazil with New Netherland exists. By these haphazard accretions the DWI built a slave labor force that was engaged in agriculture and other unskilled tasks necessary to New Amsterdam’s survival.

The WIC saw that their slave labor force was supervised by an overseer and also that its welfare was protected by providing housing and medical care. Negroes were used in a variety of ways. For instance, when the town of Harlem was settled, it was the slaves that built the road on Manhattan Island between it and New Amsterdam.

Slavery was an integral part of the DWI’s corporate structure and was condoned both in the Netherlands and in the Dutch colonies by its political and religious leaders. The first bill of sale documenting an individual Negro transaction in New Amsterdam dates from 1646. But individual ownership in the colony before 1646 was uncommon—the practice of leasing slaves for a period of time was far more prevalent. In this way the WIC created an unfree labor pool that could be tapped by individuals.

As noted earlier the acquisition of slaves remained a haphazard affair until the loss of Brazil by the Dutch. Attempts to build an economy based on slaves were useless without assurances of a reliable slave supply. After the loss of Brazil in 1654 the DWI made the slave trade its main business for the last twenty years of its existence. Dutch ships sent food provisions from New Amsterdam to Curacao (also under Peter Stuyvesant’s domain) in return for horses, salt, and slaves. With the safe delivery of two cargoes of slaves to New Amsterdamin 1660, the DWI decided that slaves could be not only kept in New Netherland but they could be exported to the English colonies in the Chesapeake as well. At least 400 slaves entered New Netherland between 1660 and 1664. Of this number 230 were male and 170 female. With respect to the whole of the Dutch slave trade these numbers were small and they were not composed of the quality slaves assigned to plantations.

The slaves were offered for sale to the town’s residents under controlled conditions. Instructions included a directive that all slaves were to be sold at public auction only. It was important to make slaves available to both the well-to-do and the burghers and farmers. To this end payment for slaves was allowed not only in beaver and tobacco, but also in beef, pork, wheat or peas. Slave ownership represented all the town’s major ethnic groups—the Dutch, English, French, and German.

At the time of the British conquest in 1664 slavery was no longer solely in the hands of the DWI. The city’s government and its burghers and farmers had come to rely heavily on the free labor of its unfree Negroes.


Sources:

Burrows, Edwin G. , and Mike Wallace. Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.Goodfried, Joyce, D. “ Burghers and Blacks: The Evolution of a Slave Society at New Amsterdam.” New York History, 59:2 (1978: April) p. 125-144.