Dutch West India Company

Dutch West India Company, trading company incorporated by the States-General of the Netherlands in 1621 to share world trade with the Dutch East India Company. In return for subsidies to the state, the West India Company was granted a monopoly of trade in the Americas and Africa as well as the Atlantic regions between them, with the right of colonizing and of maintaining armed forces. The colonizing activities of the company were notable for the settlement of New Netherland (later New York), Suriname, and Curaçao. The company also spent 30 years trying to wrest Brazil from Portuguese control, but abandoned the attempt in 1654. Armed forces of the Netherlands were used to enforce the sovereign rights of the company wherever possible, and to plunder Spanish and Portuguese settlements worldwide.

The trading career of the Dutch West India Company was not so successful as that of its sister company, the Dutch East India Company. In 1674 it was dissolved because of financial difficulties. A new company lasted until 1795, when it, too, collapsed in the course of the French invasion of the Netherlands. Another West India Company, formed in 1828, was completely unsuccessful.