Chapter De slavenhandel van de Sociëteit van Berbice, 1721-1786 – Het masker van Amsterdamse doopsgezinden afgetrokken

Abstract

From 1720 until 1821, the slave colony Berbice west of Surinam was owned and governed by the Society of Berbice, a joint-stock company which had its seat in Amsterdam. In the period from 1722 to 1772, an average of ten percent of the shareholders was Mennonite (appendix I), though they accounted for only two or three percent of the population of Amsterdam. Holding ten or more shares afforded shareholders the right to elect the Board of Directors (appendix II); on two occasions a Mennonite co-director was chosen. The slave colony produced sugar, coffee, cacao and cotton for the Dutch market. Until 1763, the year of the great slave rebellion in Berbice, the shareholders received dividends of three or four percent. The first two paragraphs describe a rich Mennonite merchant who was not only a shareholder but also a part owner of four private plantations. In 1763 there were 115 private plantations in Berbice with between 3,000 to 4,000 slaves. The Society of Berbice itself, and consequently its shareholders, owned eleven extensive company plantations complete with 1,450 slaves to do the murderous work of sugar production. As joint owners of these company plantations the shareholders were jointly responsible for the purchase and transport of enslaved Africans to Berbice. Various slavers entered fifty times before notaries of Amsterdam into contracts with the Board of Directors and the private plantation owners. From 1721 to 1786, these slavers transported with 47 ships 11,000 to 12,000 enslaved Africans to Berbice (appendix III).