Fighting a foregone conclusion. Local interest groups, West Indian merchants, and St. Eustatius, 1780-1810

Abstract

After the island of St. Eustatius was sacked by the British during the Fourth Anglo Dutch War (1780-1784), there were fierce debates as to how to restore its prosperity. These debates illustrate the workings of locally-based (colonial) interest groups in the Dutch Atlantic. These local interest groups have been ignored by historians, who have fixated on whether there was a West Indian lobby similar to the one in Great Britain. This article shows that the suggestions merchants on St. Eustatius made as to how to rebuild the wealth of the once prosperous 'emporium to the world' were part of larger debates in the Dutch Republic about how best to govern its colonies in the rapidly changing 'post-mercantilist' world at the end of the eighteenth century.

Iedereen kent iedereen

“…De situatie op Sint-Eustatius is geheel anders. Dit eiland kent een glorieuze geschiedenis als de Golden Rock, en was in de achttiende eeuw een van de belangrijkste doorvoerhavens van goederen en slaven in het Caribisch gebied (Ayisi, 1995;Roitman & Jordaan, 2015;Van den Bor, 1979). Sinds die glorietijd is het eiland in verval geraakt, en binnen de Nederlandse Antillen was het volgens commentatoren het meest armlastige en hulpbehoevende gebied.…”

The Ties that Bind

“…With a territory of 21km2 and a total population of approximately 4,000, St. Eustatius (affectionately called "Statia" by locals) is one of the smallest nonsovereign jurisdictions in the world.4 The island is located in the northeastern Caribbean, immediately to the northwest of larger St. Kitts, and to the southeast of smaller Saba. In the late eighteenth century the island was an important transit port in the slave trade, and on November 16, 1776, the Governor of the island, Johannes de Graaff, was the first foreign leader to recognize the sovereignty of the United States by offering the "First Salute" to the crew of an American ship (Ayisi 1995:24-25;Van den Bor 1979:9-12;Roitman & Jordaan 2015). In this period of progress and wealth, the island was known as the "Golden Rock," and in 1790 the population of St. Eustatius exceeded 8,000, more than twice what it is today.…”