‘ British Capital , Industry and Perseverance ’ versus Dutch ‘ Old School ’ ? The Dutch Atlantic and the Takeover of Berbice , Demerara and Essequibo , 1750-18151 gert oostindie

Recent historiography has reconsidered the idea that the Dutch role in the early modern Atlantic was of little significance, particularly in comparison to the accomplishments of the Dutch East India Company (voc) in Asia. Revisionist studies have emphasised that in spite of the limited and fragmented nature of the Dutch Atlantic ‘empire’, the Atlantic contribution to the Dutch economy was significant and possibly even greater than the voc’s share. Moreover, this scholarship stresses the vital role of Dutch Atlantic colonies (Curaçao and St Eustatius), (partly Jewish) networks and individuals in connecting the various subempires of the Atlantic. While Oostindie subscribes to many of these conclusions, he argues against excessive revisionism. His analysis of the development of the lesser Dutch Guianas, adjacent to Suriname, is used as a counter-weight to this revisionist impulse. He demonstrates that the spectacular economic and demographic development of these colonies was due mainly to British and (British) American involvement culminating in the eventual British takeover of ‘Guiana’.


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'british capital, industry and perseverance' versus dutch 'old school'? oostindie In the same revisionist vein Suriname, the major Dutch plantation colony in the wider Caribbean, is now studied in a broader Atlantic framework beyond its bilateral relationship with the Dutch Republic. The colony's main connections in finance, governance and European migration were with the Netherlands and the major demographic link was with western Africa, but its commercial network was more diverse than that. Research pioneered by Johannes Postma points to strong trade connections with the North American colonies and to a lesser extent, the British and Dutch Caribbean islands. 3 The same may be said for Berbice, Demerara and Essequibo, three smaller plantation colonies west of Suriname, which were Dutch territories prior to the Napoleonic Wars and British thereafter. Before the British takeover, these colonies functioned in much the same geopolitical and economic space as Suriname, but the thesis of this article is that the idea of a remarkable Dutch cross-imperial role in the wider Atlantic should be turned on its head in this particular case. In the second half of the eighteenth century the significant entrepreneurs in these 'lesser Guianas' were increasingly British West Indian and American rather than Dutch. This explains the sudden economic and demographic development in these plantation frontiers, as well as successive and finally, definitive British imperial takeovers. Hence, this article questions the uniqueness of the Dutch as agents connecting the various parts of the Atlantic -transgressing national colonial borders cannot be understood as an exclusively Dutch prerogative.

Colonisation, governance and demography
Throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Berbice and Essequibo visitors. 4 Modern scholarship on the Dutch period is limited in scope, partly because most archival sources are in Dutch. 5 For the present article no British archives could be consulted but hopefully future historians will add a British Atlantic perspective to the themes discussed here.
From a demographic and economic point of view the history of Berbice, Demerara and Essequibo was of little significance prior to the 1770s. The only episode attracting wider scholarly attention has been the massive 1763-1764 slave revolt in Berbice. 6 As was the case in Suriname, plantations were laid out as polders and enslaved Africans performed most of the work. Amerindians were more populous than in Suriname and were successfully deployed to 'british capital, industry and perseverance' versus dutch 'old school'? oostindie counter slave revolts and marronage. 7 As for the white population, attracting competent European men to the West Indies was notoriously difficult and this was certainly the case for the Guianas. 8 As in all Dutch colonies, Dutch citizens were supplemented by large contingents of Germans and smaller groups of Scandinavians,British,French and Swiss. 9 Dutch Atlantic governance was not uniform. Whereas the voc had an unequivocal state-like authority, as well as a trade monopoly, stretching eastward from (and including) the Cape Colony, the prerogatives of the wic were blurred. Its trade monopoly was undermined by interlopers, and by the 1730s the company was forced to surrender this prerogative entirely. The wic had ruled the early colonies of Dutch Brazil and New Netherland, centred in Manhattan, and would retain full responsibility for the six Antilles and Elmina in present-day Ghana. Suriname in contrast was governed by a mixed publicprivate institution, the 'Sociëteit van Suriname', in which the wic was but one partner. In the lesser Guianas, governance was even more complicated. After some trial and error the Amsterdam-based 'Sociëteit van Berbice' was founded in 1720. Essequibo, including Demerara, became a colony of the wic, with the 7 De Villiers, Storm, 390 (29-8-1772

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Zeeland Chamber retaining preferential status. Neither form of governance would be a financial success for the shareholders in the Republic. 10 Up to the 1780s the demographic and hence economic significance of the lesser Dutch Guianas paled in comparison to Suriname. 11 In 1780 the colonial population of Suriname, excluding Amerindians and Maroons, was some 60,000 inhabitants, twice the number of the lesser Guianas. The population of Suriname decreased to 53,000 by 1795 and 50,000 fifteen years later, while Berbice grew from 7,500 (1782) to over 26,000 (1812) and Essequibo and Demerara from 24,000 to 76,000. This growth was the result of massive imports of enslaved Africans, particularly once British slave traders had taken over -between 1796 and 1808, when the colony was in British hands (except for 1802-1803) British slavers unloaded over 72,000 enslaved Africans in the colony, more than 6,000 per year on average. 12

British ascendance
The start of the informal British takeover coincided with the appointment in 1737 of Laurens Storm van 's Gravesande (1704-1775) as secretary to Essequibo. In 1743 he was promoted to the rank of governor, a position he would hold until 1772. Throughout his amazingly long period in office Storm found Dutch military support and investment in the colony insufficientindeed judging by the growth figures of Suriname and data on loans from the Republic, by far the largest part of Dutch capital invested in the Guianas went to Suriname. 13 Much to Storm's frustration the military problem was never solved -the archives are full of references to the sorry state of defences, which, in effect, consisted of less than 200 (mainly non-Dutch) men for the three colonies combined, poorly equipped and hardly capable of facing domestic slave unrest and even less foreign intrusions. As governor L'Espinasse wryly remarked in 1785, 'our fortresses amount to nothing & even if they did, we have no men for their defence and no gunpowder to give them'. 14 A couple of years later the Dutch government commissioners Boeij and Van Grovestins concluded that the 'defence in this colony is not worth mentioning' to the point that all whites were at the mercy of their slaves as 'there is no power to suppress them' -but equally there was no way to protect the colony against foreign intrusion. Their proposal to increase the total of military men to 600 was never carried out, not surprisingly as the commissioners also calculated that the annual deficit in the upkeep of the colonies was already enormous. 15 Storm's solution to the lack of economic vitality was to draw foreign capital and entrepreneurs. Thus he arranged with the Zeeland Chamber of the wic for a new policy for attracting British planters to his colony by offering them land for free, with ten years' exemption from land tax. Why the British? Of course his policy reflected a lack of confidence in a new impetus coming from the Republic itself or from the local Dutch planters, but why not investors from other European nationalities? This is not clear from his writings. We may assume that his hopes for British investors and resident planters indicate that he was aware of a strong British interest in opening new frontiers in the Caribbean -perhaps he had already learned of this before he first set foot in the colony because he travelled from the Republic to Dutch St. Eustatius and thereafter on a British barque on to Essequibo. 16 Indeed by the mid-eighteenth century British individuals from the metropolis and even more from the colonies, were ubiquitous in the Atlantic, much more than any other nation's citizens, Dutch included.
In 1743 Storm wrote to his superiors in Zeeland that his colony had seven British plantations and many more would follow. He hoped, 'this Colony with the blessings of the Almighty will flourish within a few years'. One year later he praised the British planters, who had left their 'utterly depleted' fields in Barbados and Antigua to enjoy the 'exceptional fertility' of his colony, for 'sparing effort nor zeal nor investments' in starting plantations. 17 Meanwhile in Barbados, Governor Thomas Robertson (1742-1747

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With Zeeland's support Storm van 's Gravesande succeeded in enticing more planters, predominantly from Barbados, to start new plantations in Essequibo and increasingly in Demerara. In 1760 he welcomed a group of British investors, reporting back to his superiors in the Republic that all these gentlemen, including the captain of the British warship that had brought them, were eager to start plantations. 19 There is abundant evidence of British ascendance. Hartsinck mentioned that the prime British investment area, Demerara, had its first plantation in 1746 and 130 in 1769, far more that Essequibo, with only 60 plantations, and even more than Berbice, with just over 100. Storm reported that by 1760 British planters (owners or overseers) formed the majority in Demerara. In Essequibo in contrast, Dutch planters retained a clear majority over the following decades. 20 After visiting the three colonies in the mid-1760s Edward Bankroft observed that many British planters had plantations in Barbados as well as in Demerara and Essequibo. He thought much of the possibilities offered by the Guianas and added, somewhat surprisingly, that the Dutch neglected these settlements because they were mainly interested in the East Indies. In any case the lack of Dutch protectionism facilitated the influx of British planters and also of smaller pockets of French, Swiss and German planters, all arriving with modest means, but some ultimately returning to their own country in prosperity. 21 By 1800 another British visitor, Henry Bolingbroke, wrote that Barbados planters invested as much in the Guianas -'such a boundless track of country to cultivate' -as they did in their home island. The British were already thought to be roughly equal to the Dutch in terms of landed interests, and outnumbered the Dutch 'as a mercantile interest '. 22 With the rapid growth in the number of plantations along the Demerara River the balance shifted to the disadvantage of Essequibo and even more of Berbice. In the mid-1770s a new town was founded in Demerara and given the name of Stabroek. It seems though, that many, if not most, of the new investors retained their properties in Barbados and continued living on the island. In the absence of a real city in the new colony, prosperous planters preferred to appoint overseers rather than living on the plantations themselves. Nor did they generally choose to live as absentee owners in the as yet meagre urban setting of Stabroek, which was certainly not a place with the standing of Bridgetown or Paramaribo. 23 22 Bolingbroke, Voyage, 178, 223.
Around 1800 two-thirds of the white population of Demerara was estimated to be British while the rest were a cosmopolitan mix including, in addition to the Dutch, many other European nationalities. 24 The three colonies, even Berbice, experienced a rapid growth of their slave populations, 'principally owing to the importations of the English merchants and planters'. Some of these slaves were not first-generation enslaved Africans, but Creole slaves from the British West Indies and occasionally Curaçao and St. Eustatius -a great advantage because they worked so much better than Africans, according to Bolingbroke, who advocated the transfer of many more slaves from the islands to the Guianas. Dutch state commissioners Boeij and Van Grovestins had also argued that immigration of 'planters from Barbados, Grenada and other isles, leaving their depleted lands' would make this colony flourish to the benefit of the Dutch metropolis. 25 By 1800, immigrants from all over the British West Indies were arriving -not only whites but also 'free people of colour'. 26 Planters were attracted by the offer of fertile and unexploited lands, and merchants by the promise of yet another sugar revolution and the commercial opportunities this would afford.
The so-called 'British' interest in the Guianas was truly an Atlantic affair, involving Britons from the metropolis, but even more so from the British colonies in North America and the West Indies. This is best illustrated by the career of the foremost agent of British settlement, Gedney Clarke, himself a prominent Barbados planter and government official.

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Clarke must have been close to Governor Storm van 's Gravesande, who described him in 1752 as a real entrepreneur, one of the first to build a modern ('top of the bill in all of the Americas') water-powered sugar mill in Demerara, 'a man of sound judgement and fortune with truly a good heart for the prosperity of this colony'. 28 Clarke apparently acted as the informal leader of the British planters, advocating their interests where applicable.
Thus he pleaded for an administrative separation of Essequibo and its quickly expanding offshoot Demerara, where the British contingent was particularly strong, but was equally in favour of the financing and building of an English church. 29 In the mid-1750s, Clarke convinced Storm to sail to the Republic at the expense of the settlers in Demerara to speak to his superiors in Middelburg in favour of the colony. By then Storm had learned to speak English, which he thought indispensable in the governance of Demerara. Gedney Clarke jnr. had also settled in the colony as a planter and around 1760 was making handsome profits. His father moved on to settle in London. 30 In 1765 Clarke jnr. travelled to the Republic once more -at his father's insistence, he had settled in the Republic in 1755 to learn Dutch and become a citizen of Middelburg, remaining there for some years -with the same objectives as Storm had had before. Dutch citizenship, one may surmise, was attractive to him as it facilitated his commercial contacts with the Republic and enhanced his political position in the colony at the same time. 31 Echoing his father -who had died that year -he assured the metropolitan polity that he would 'do all that lies in my power for the welfare of Demerary; since my heart is full, nay as warm as ever in its service'. In the same breath, he complained about the 'lethargy' and negligence of the wic. 32 In 1774, ten years after the death of his father, Clarke jnr. was bankrupt, 'the greatest failure that ever happened here', a Barbados merchant wrote. 33 The explanation for this failure is mainly to be sought elsewhere, but his decision around 1770 to sell the family's plantations and leave the Dutch Guianas had probably not been his wisest move from an economic point of view. Many British investors would make their fortunes in these colonies in the next decades. Nevertheless the endeavours of Clarke sr. and jnr. in the preceding decades -investing, lobbying, settling, attracting compatriots -demonstrate the centrality of British Atlantic entrepreneurs in the transformation of the lesser Guianas to new West Indian frontiers. With these investments, coupled with the advent of the British settlers, came massive slave imports, both legal and illegal, and with the growing number of slaves and settlers, the number of plantations and the production of sugar, coffee and cotton increased. In Berbice sugar production actually decreased between the 1750s and 1770s but, just as in Suriname, coffee production rose spectacularly, mainly through new Dutch investment. 36 In Essequibo and particularly in Demerara, production volume and growth were far more spectacular both in sugar and coffee and to a much lesser degree, cacao and cotton. 37 The trade figures for Essequibo and Demerara calculated by Van der Oest (Table 1) are telling, even if they might not be complete and of necessity, are partly based on assumptions and extrapolation. 38 There was spectacular growth after mid-century and particularly after 1770, but limited Dutch significance -the more so as some illegal non-Dutch shipping is not included in these approximations. Throughout the entire period from 1700 to 1820

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Dutch shipping amounted to less than 10 per cent of the total number of ships (though not tonnage, as the transatlantic ships were usually bigger) and this imbalance was not redressed by the massive Dutch plantation loans beginning in the 1760s. In the realm of Dutch shipping, Zeeland lost its position to Amsterdam after 1770, primarily because the loans extended from Amsterdam meant that plantation produce was to be shipped to the creditor.
Moreover, Zeeland had only one sugar refinery compared to a large number in Amsterdam. 39 During Dutch rule sugar, coffee and cotton were shipped primarily to the metropolis but clearly much more trade was going on: with Africa, with the British West Indies (primarily Barbados), St. Eustatius and Curaçao, to a lesser extent also with the French and Spanish colonies, and most of all with North America. Part of this commerce was illegal and therefore undocumented.
We do know that throughout the eighteenth century even from Suriname, a colony with much closer ties to the Republic, the number of non-Dutch ships heading primarily to North America and the West Indies exceeded ships bound for the Netherlands by a large margin. The proportion of Dutch ships was even lower in the other Dutch Guianas (Table 1)

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have their own Anglophone religious services, but they also served in the local,

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'british capital, industry and perseverance' versus dutch 'old school'? oostindie illusions: the British would not return the colony: they had had their eyes on this prize since the early 1780s. 60 Between 1796 and 1802 much property ended up in British hands.
Bolingbroke happily reported that 'the face of everything began to wear the appearance of English. Their manners, customs and language were adopted; indeed every thing was so visibly changed for the better'. 61 Not surprisingly, the 1802-1803 Dutch interregnum provoked misgivings among the British settlers, wary of the prospect of endangering their recent investments and seemingly confident that British rule would ensure the continuation of massive slave imports and hence economic growth. The losses incurred because of the Peace of Amiens were calculated to be over one million pounds.
By then it was estimated that British credit to planters in the colony amounted to 10 million pounds. 62 However there are also indications of Dutch planters and merchants shifting their loyalties. This might have had to do with sheer opportunism, including an apprehension that local conflicts might spark slave rebellions following 'the terrible example of the French islands', as one planter wrote. 63 There was also the fact that Dutch planters were massively in debt to Dutch Their new British superiors did not worry too much about such allegations and indeed both men helped to smooth the transition to indefinite British rule. This may be interpreted as sheer opportunism but then again 'national' loyalties were much less fixed around 1800 than they were to be a century later. The British were in charge now. The 'overvalued' British West Indian islands no longer mattered so much, wrote Bolingbroke: 'They have ceased to be of use: they have performed their appointed task in the civilisation of the world' . 86 Yet problems with indebtedness remained and planters looked in vain for metropolitan protection and higher prices. 87 In the short and even mid-term this would not prohibit further growth. In spite of the abolition of the slave trade in 1807 and the ascendance of free trade, plantation production continued to expand, mainly due to Caribbean and later Asian labour migration as well as technical innovation. However by the later nineteenth century things were changing once again. The sugar industry had become truly a globalised industry and the British competitive edge had waned with new producers around the globe replacing the British West Indies, including Guiana; but this was not in anyone's mind in 1815 when the transfer of sovereignty was confirmed.
Looking back to the 1750-1815 period in Berbice, Essequibo and particularly Demerara, some conclusions can be drawn regarding the place of the Dutch in the wider Atlantic. First, no matter how much one might want to emphasise the role of the Dutch as middlemen, the case of the lesser Guianas patently illustrates that subverting national colonial borders was not an exclusively Dutch activity in the early modern Atlantic. There were many more 'middlemen'. British informal and then formal takeover of the Guianas is a case in point, but so is the crucial significance of North American shipping to these Dutch colonies, both before and after the American Revolution.

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the course of the nineteenth century the British themselves would lose their hegemony in Caribbean waters to their erstwhile colonies to the North. The beginnings of this transition had been visible much earlier, also in the Guianas.
Next, scale and geopolitics and hence also maritime power mattered more than ever. It was not primarily Dutch entrepreneurial backwardness ('old school') that succumbed to British genius, as Henry Bolingbroke would have it. 88 Geopolitics were far more important; basically the fact was that the British had become hegemonic among the European powers in Atlantic waters and no longer felt the need to respect Dutch neutrality as they had done for a century since the Third Anglo-Dutch War ( Email: oostindie@kitlv.nl.