Dutch trade and credit in the Barbados Sugar Boom of the 17th Century

Since the 17th Century, the Dutch had been credited with starting and bankrolling sugar plantations in Barbados in the second quarter of the seventeenth century. Revisionist Anglophone historians, following Russell Menard’s work, have emphasized the pivotal role of the English. Particularly the circles of Martin Noell, what Brenner called the 'London New Merchants’, were supposedly instrumental. Combining archival material from Barbados and the UK with Dutch archival sources, this paper reintroduces the Dutch in the Barbados sugar boom of the 1640s. 


Joris van den Tol is Rokos PDRA at Queens' College Marie Curie Fellow