CHAPTER VII.

THE CONSTITUTION OF THE DUTCH WEST INDIA COMPANY AS BEARING ON THE QUESTION OF TITLE.

Allusion has already been made to the peculiar character of the Dutch West India Company as a private trading corporation engaged in the government of a colony. In order to establish fully the character of its acts as influencing the question of title, it is necessary to examine separately the constitution of the Company, the purposes for which it was organized, and the mode in which these purposes were carried out.

The Dutch West India Company was originally chartered in 1621, at the close of the truce between Spain and the Netherlands. Its charter was renewed in 1647, a year before the war came to an end.

The Company, as stated in its original charter, was created for purposes of trade. It was considered by the States-General that the maritime and commercial enterprise of the Dutch would be wasted if left to individual enterprise. It was in order to concentrate all the efforts of such individuals and to direct them in a single channel that the West India Company was formed. So says the preamble of the charter (V. C. vol. iii, p. 1):

"And being desirous that the aforesaid inhabitants not only be maintained in their navigation, commerce and trade, but also that their commerce should increase as much as possible, especially in conformity with the Treaties, Alliances, Conventions, and Agreements formerly made concerning the commerce and navigation with other Princes, Republics and nations, which Treaties we intend shall be punctually kept and observed in all their parts:

And we, finding by experience that without the common help, aid and means of a General Company no profitable business can be carried on, protected and maintained in the parts hereafter enumerated, on account of the great risks from sea pirates, extortions and other things of the same kind, which are incurred upon such long and distant journeys:

We, therefore, being moved by many different and pregnant considerations, have, after mature deliberation of the Council and for very pressing causes, decided that the navigation, trade and commerce in the West Indies, Africa, and other countries hereafter enumerated, shall henceforth not be carried on otherwise than with the common united strength of the merchants and inhabitants of these lands, and that to this end there shall be established a General Company which, on account of our great love for the common welfare, and in order to preserve the inhabitants of these lands in full prosperity, we shall maintain and strengthen with our assistance, favour and help, as far as the present state and condition of this country will in any way allow, and which we shall furnish with a proper Charter, and endow with the privileges and exemptions hereafter enumerated, to wit:

I.

That for a period of twenty-four years no native or inhabitant of this country shall be permitted, except in the name of this United Company, either from the United Netherlands or from any place outside them, to sail upon or to trade with the coasts and lands of Africa, from the Tropic of Cancer to the Cape of Good Hope, nor with the countries of America and the West Indies, beginning from the southern extremity of Newfoundland through the Straits of Magellan, Le Maire, and other straits and channels lying thereabouts, to the Strait of Anjan, neither on the North nor on the South Sea, nor with any of the islands situated either on the one side or the other, or between them both; nor with the Australian and southern lands extending and lying between the two meridians, reaching in the east to the Cape of Good Hope, and in the west to the east end of New Guinea, inclusive."

The object of the charter was not to make that a public enterprise which had theretofore been private. The West Indian commerce of the Dutch was to be concentrated; but it was concentrated in the hands of a private corporation. Other corporations and individuals could only engage in it through and under the Company which had the monopoly.

The monopoly of trade so given to the Company did not give it any rights as against other States, or the subjects of other States, and asserted no rights on the part of the Netherlands as against other States or their subjects. The territory to which it re

ferred included the whole of North and South America, a part of Africa, the whole of Australia and the islands of the South Sea. At the date of the charter, a large part of this territory had already been taken up by various European States; and obviously the charter never meant, nor was intended to mean, a conveyance to the West India Company of rights which had been. acquired by such States, except in so far as such acquisitions might be made from the enemy of the Republic as an incident of war. To infer otherwise would be to suppose that the Dutch West India Company was a gigantic scheme of land piracy, by which a private corporation created by the Dutch Government was to rob all the other States of Europe of the soil which they had acquired and occupied. It is true that proclamations issued later forbade all the world to trade with the countries named in the charter, but these proclamations, which, according to their terms, would have prohibited England, France and Spain from visiting or trading with their own colonies, otherwise than through the Company, must be set down as mere Dutch rhodomontade. The object and purpose of the West India Company in 1621 was the development of Dutch trade with Africa, Australia and the countries of the New World. While the company was ostensibly a trading company, it was also, from the beginning, used as a part of the military organization of the Netherlands in the war with Spain.

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, at any time when a war was in progress, there was no more important incident of oversea trade than privateering. Merchant ships found it necessary to go armed for defense, and being so armed they took out commissions as privateers, and used their armaments for offensive operations as well. Privateering against Spain was the real source of the great profits of the Dutch West India Company during the Thirty Years' War. According to Bancroft (V. C., vol. i, p. 75, note): Reprisals on Spanish commerce were the great object of the West India Company.

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The Spanish prizes, taken by the chartered

privateers, on a single occasion in 1628, were almost eighty-fold more valuable than the whole amount of exports from New Netherlands for the four preceding years."

For the purpose of injuring Spanish commerce in the seas which it most frequented, and incidentally to enlarge the profits of privateering, the States-General, in the course of the war, relaxed its trade prohibitions as to that part of the American coast within the circuit of the West Indian Islands, including the Orinoco and the coast line extending around to Florida. These waters were known to all the world as the Spanish Main. The British Case appears to lay some stress upon these "Sailing Regulations," as they were called, as if they were in some sense the definition of a territorial frontier. Such, however, was not their character or purpose. They were simply the opening to privateering enterprise of a part of the territory in which the chartered Company had theretofore been given a trade monopoly, and their object, as stated in Article I (B. C., I, p. 73), was:

"In order to injure and offer hostility to the King of Spain, his subjects, and adherents, both on land and water."

For this purpose the Netherlands threw open to all its subjects those parts of the coast west of the Orinoco "in order there to carry on all manner of warfare by sea and by land against the King of Spain, her subjects and allies." (V. C., vol. ii, p. 20.) A share of the prizes taken in this region was, however, reserved to the West India Company. The mention of the Orinoco in these regulations only indicates that it was recognized as a centre of Spanish commerce in that region, which included also the important and neighboring ports of Carthagena, Portobello and La Guayra.

The charter was from the first essentially a war measure. Efforts had for some years been made to obtain such a concession, but the Dutch Government refused to grant any charter during the Twelve Years' Truce from 1609 to 1621, and the attempts of the Dutch to make colonies on the coast of Guiana before that

date had been individual attempts, and had been checked, as in the case of the Corentin settlement, in 1613, by repressive measures on the part of Spain. As soon as the Truce was ended, however, the charter was granted (V. C., vol. i, pp. 69, 75). It doubtless contemplated the possibility that by the success of the Dutch arms during the war a foothold might be acquired at some point in the vast territories named in the Company's charter, in America, Africa or elsewhere, by conquest from Spain, a part of which might still remain in occupation at its close and be ceded by Spain in the treaty of peace, as was actually done, on the basis of uti possidetis. Ordinarily, such a foothold, if preserved at all during war, is preserved by a military occupation. The charter, however, having given the Dutch Company the trade monopoly in all territories that might possibly be subject to conquest, also provided for occupation by the West India Company, which was allowed to build "fortresses and strongholds, appoint Governors, soldiers, and officers of justice, and do everything necessary for the preservation of the places and the maintenance of good order, police, and justice" (V. C., vol. iii, p. 2). These are attributes of internal sovereignty, delegated by a Government for specific purposes to a private corporation. It was also allowed, within the limits named in the charter, to make "contracts, leagues and alliances with the Princes and natives of the lands therein comprised." The only limitation upon it was that 'the representatives of the Company shall successively communicate to us and hand over such contracts and alliances as they shall have made with the aforesaid Princes and natives, together with the situation of the fortresses, strongholds, and settlements taken in hand by them.”

These powers were renewed in the charter of 1647, and thereby projected into the period of peace following the Thirty Years' War, and they were substantially repeated in the charter of 1674, given to the new West India Company, which only terminated in