Excerpts from Voyages of the Slavers St. John and Arms of Amsterdam, 1659, 1663, documenting the Dutch slave trade to New Netherland.

New Netherland’s last director, Peter Stuyvesant, dramatically expanded New Netherland’s, and specifically New Amsterdam’s, role in the slave trade among Africa, the West Indies, and North America. While slavery in New Netherland was unique in some ways, it was similar to practices elsewhere in the American colonies in that Africans were kidnapped, exported, traded, and sold against their will for the purpose of unpaid labor. Most enslaved Africans in New Netherland belonged to the West India Company and labored to help build and support the colony. (This document uses the long “s,” which looks like an “f.” The Caribbean island of Curaçao was another Dutch West India Company colony.)

Citation Information
Excerpts from “Voyages of the slavers St. John and Arms of Amsterdam, 1659, 1663: together with additional papers illustrative of the slave trade under the Dutch,” Digital Public Library of America, https://dp.la/item/b41bd16ab2c6692c2366d13ae4b8a59a.
Note: These citations are programmatically generated and may be incomplete.
Courtesy of HathiTrust.

Tips for Students

For this source, consider:

  • the author's point of view
  • the author's purpose
  • historical context
  • audience