Paper short abstract:

This paper offers an insight into the cooperative relations established between businessmen based in the Dutch Republic, Portugal, and their empires to guarantee their successful participation in the long-distance circuits connecting Western Africa, Europe and the Americas between 1580 and 1674.

Paper long abstract:

Traditional historiography on the Dutch and Portuguese overseas empires regards the relationship between these two early modern sea powers as mainly competitive. Military rivalry between Portugal and the Dutch Republic is undeniable, as are the naval encounters between the Portuguese fleets and the WIC and VOC vessels both in the Atlantic and the Indian Oceans, and their consequences for inter-continental trade.

Recent research is showing that Dutch and Portuguese merchants based in Europe and overseas have also balanced multiple forms of cooperation to safeguard their commercial and financial interests, creating partnerships and networks that transcended the military rivalry between States and the political and geographical boundaries of their empires.

This paper offers an insight into the cooperative relations established between merchants based in the Republic, Iberia and overseas to participate in Western African trade and slave trade between 1580 and 1674. Here we will be looking at their cooperative strategies to finance, insure, and equip their ships, as well as to organize commercial transactions in the coastal and long-distance circuits connecting Europe, Western Africa, and the Americas.

Our analysis will be based on a wide selection of source materials from the Notarial Collections of the Amsterdam City Archive portraying the economic activities of various segments of the Amsterdam business community, including Dutch, Flemish, German, Sephardic Jews, and other foreign merchants. The same materials will also allow us to reconstruct some of the connections of these merchants with other mercantile groups outside the Republic and with mutual business interests.