Preliminary Programme

How did interaction between the Dutch East and West India Companies and free agents differ within different geographic spheres? It has been argued that the Dutch West India Company could not enforce its monopoly in the Atlantic because of the ‘openness’ of the region. The Indian Ocean is positioned as the contrast: the Dutch East India Company could enforce, protect and maintain its monopoly in the ‘closed’ Indian Ocean basin. This paper will test the validity of these geographic arguments through an examination of court cases between free agents and each of the companies.
Based on the archive of the Hoge Raad van Holland Zeeland and West-Friesland (1582-1795) this paper argues that the VOC and WIC faced different types of opposition in their respective charter areas. More specifically, the opposition faced by the VOC was levelled at its charter and thus attacked the legal foundation of the Company’s monopoly. In contrast, the WIC faced more open conflict such as defiance and smuggling. Following this, it is posited that the different types of opposition faced by the Companies in their charter areas necessitated different responses from their respective directors, the judiciary (Hoge Raad) and from the state (States-General).
This paper examines the role of geography in the types of opposition faced by the Companies as well as in the Companies’ responses to challenges from free agents.
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Jurisdictional fragmentation was a defining principle of early modern European societies (EPSTEIN, 2000). The case of the Spanish empire is one of the most striking ones (GRAFE, 2012). That principle meant the existence of spaces of privilege for some actors at the expense of political debarment of others. However, privileges were not everlasting and they were frequently subject to transfer. This context framed the practice of trade and promoted constant clashes between actors who tried to enforce the implementation of their own privileges and others who contested the exclusive space enjoyed by the former. Through the examination of a case study, this paper analyzes how a single network performed both as enforcer and contester vis-à-vis other actors. The activities of the Genoese company of D.Grillo&A.Lomellino will be the case in point.

Between 1663 and 1674 Grillo&Lomellino had the exclusive right to exploit the slave trade with the Americas of the Spanish Monarchy. The relationship between the Crown and the Genoese was framed via an asiento contract, which entailed the creation of an ad hoc jurisdictional space. Although the Crown authoritatively delimitated a field of political exclusion on behalf of Grillo&Lomellino Co, its safeguarding was executed by the company in practice. The Genoese faced the problem of guaranteeing their own privileges within and across the borders of the Spanish empire on a transatlantic scale while they also challenged the exclusive jurisdictions of other actors in order to expand their own businesses. This setting led to a highly conflictive scenario in which the collaboration with other networks and actors was crucial for Grillo&Lomellino.

This contribution aims at problematizing our understanding about how of the agency of private networks was framed and exercised in competitive jurisdictionally fragmented scenarios in relation to the oblique processes of the making of Early Modern global empires.
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At the end of the sixteenth century, Portuguese merchants knew no formal national or cultural boundaries in engaging in business operations and partnerships in different regions of the Globe. They constituted self-organizing networks, operating simultaneously within and outside Imperial monopolist constraints. Mostly operating in Africa, Brazil and Spanish Indies or in the East, Portuguese merchants engaged in different business networks which allowed them to participate in trading opportunities in distinctive productive and consuming markets, which functioned according to specific rules? Did these geographical and social diversity made their cooperative strategies vary and adapt to the market they operated in?
Focusing on the period of Iberian Union (1580-1640), times of formal and informal geographical enlargement of markets and opportunities for the Portuguese merchants, this paper aims to understand how the same merchants operated at the same time in the East and in the Atlantic. Did they interact with the same kind of agents? Did they choose the same type of correspondents or, on the other hand, different realities meant different cooperative strategies?
Departing from the Portuguese notarial records of the two most busiest port cities, Porto and Lisbon, this paper will discuss if different trading markets of investment and different products determined different strategies of merchants associations.
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To answer the question how Free Agents (entrepreneurs operating outside the myriad of interests of the centralized, state-sponsored monopolies) opposed the Dutch state chartered companies in Brazil and Formosa, this study will focus on geographical differences between the two colonial spheres. How did the terrestrial situations create opportunities, obstructions or necessities for collaboration between Free Agents and the VOC and WIC? And, furthermore, what prospects did this collaboration offer for the economic dynamism of the regions?
When the Dutch East India Company (VOC) arrived on Formosa in 1624 in an attempt to penetrate the Chinese demand-market for silver, they encountered an already functioning silk-for-silver trade run by semi-formal pirate-smugglers called 'Wokou'. Zheng Zhilong, or Iquan as the Dutch called him, was one of the Wokou and a copybook Free Agent: He converted to Catholicism in order to trade with the Portuguese in Macao; married a Japanese woman to be able to trade in Japan; and collaborated with the VOC when he needed assistance in defeating other pirates.
When the Dutch West India Company (WIC) arrived in Brazil and captured this colony from the Portuguese in 1630 they also needed to take over the Portuguese trading system. However, the company failed in their attempts. Therefore, it could not successfully exploit and maintain all of its monopolies, and needed to collaborate with free traders. Similarly, in the late 1640s and early 1650s a privateering company from Zeeland used the WIC’s facilities in Brazil as a moneybox for their prize.
Thus, this paper will, with a comparative East-West approach, contribute to research how the geographical aspect of the long durée facilitated or obstructed the collaboration between Free Agents and the VOC and WIC. Furthermore, this study questions if and how a variety of geographical conditions created a difference between the East and West from an economic point of view. (Show less)