The speed at which the Netherlands accumulated wealth in the seventeenth century was nothing short of a world miracle, especially in Amsterdam. Until 1578, the city had resisted the Spanish and was one of the last Dutch towns to fall.
The moment the war ended, refugees flooded in, seeking a more stable environment. They brought wealth, connections, and technology from Antwerp and elsewhere. Within a few decades, Amsterdam had become Northern Europe's commercial and financial center, and on a global scale, Europe's trading hub.
The same pattern played out in New Amsterdam in the Americas, now New York. At the time, there was a Dutchman named Peter Stuyvesant. In 1643, he lost a leg during a failed raid on Saint Martin, which was still occupied by the Spanish. In 1647, he was appointed director-general of New Netherland and governor of the Leeward Islands. To attract settlers, he introduced a new system known as "patroonship": anyone who could bring fifty adult men over as tenant farmers could receive a landed estate from the company.
The company mentioned here was not one run by him personally, but the Dutch West India Company. It had far less presence than the East India Company, but it had indeed brought the Netherlands immense wealth.
Its main business was the trade in slaves and precious metals. Before Georgiana could lose her temper, Fargeon added that 75 percent of its trade came from precious metals, while 13 percent came from the slave trade.
They transported slaves from Africa's Gold Coast to Suriname, sold them to middlemen for two hundred guilders each, then brought sugar from the New World back to the Netherlands for trade before heading south to Africa again, forming a triangular route. But by 1792, declining Dutch national income had reduced demand for precious metals