Amsterdam Merchants in the Slave Trade and African Commerce, 1580s-1670s

Abstract

1 Williams argued for a link between capital accumulation from the slave trade and the British Industrial Revolution and for a connection between the growth of industrial capitalism and abolitionist ideas. For Williams, capital accumulation from the slave trade and the plantation economy had helped finance the Industrial Revolution. When industrial capitalism became the engine of economic growth in Great Britain, he argued, the plantation complex and associated slave trade became secondary in the priorities of entrepreneurs and state officials. For these reasons, the development of an abolitionist movement was deeply ingrained in the rise of industrial capitalism. 2 The debate around Williams' proposal ensued in the 1960s and 1970s, but it gained new strength with the new approaches of the

Underwriting slavery: insurance and slavery in the Dutch Republic (1718–1778)

“…It corresponds to findings of Catia Antunes and Filipa Ribeiro da Silva on the involvement of Amsterdam merchants in the seventeenth-century slave trade. 66 One half of the underwriters were either registered insurers or office holders. Most of the registered or known insurers were wealthy merchants or bankers who insured ships as a side activity.…”