Quite as interesting, and even more exciting, was the history of Dutch enterprise in other seas during this eventful period.  The granting of the East India Company’s charter led a certain Willem Usselincx to come forward as an earnest and persistent advocate for the formation of a West India Company on the same lines.  But Oldenbarneveldt, anxious to negotiate a peace or truce with Spain and to maintain good relations with that power, refused to lend any countenance to his proposals, either before or after the truce was concluded.  He could not, however, restrain the spirit of enterprise that with increasing prosperity was abroad in Holland.  The formation of the Northern or Greenland Company in 1613, specially created in order to contest the claims of the English Muscovy Company to exclusive rights in the whale fishery off Spitsbergen, led to those violent disputes between the fishermen of the two countries, of which an account has been given.  The granting of a charter to the Company of New Netherland (1614) was a fresh departure.  The voyage of Henry Hudson in the Dutch service when, in 1610, he explored the coast of North America and sailed up the river called by his name, led certain Amsterdam and Hoorn merchants to plan a settlement near this river; and they secured a charter giving them exclusive rights from Chesapeake bay to Newfoundland.  The result was the founding of the colony of New Netherland, with New Amsterdam on Manhattan island as its capital.  This settlement was at first small and insignificant, but, being placed midway between the English colonies on that same coast, it added one more to the many questions of dispute between the two sea-powers.

Willem Usselincx had all this time continued his agitation for the erection of a West India Company; and at last, with the renewal of the war with Spain in 1621, his efforts were rewarded.  The charter granted by the States-General (June 3, 1621) gave to the company for twenty-four years the monopoly of navigation and trade to the coast-lands of America and the West Indies from the south-end of Newfoundland to the Straits of Magellan and to the coasts and lands of Africa from the tropic of Cancer to the Cape of Good Hope.  The governing body consisted of nineteen representatives, the Nineteen.  The States-General contributed to the capital 1,000,000 fl., on half of which only they were to receive dividends.  They also undertook in time of war to furnish sixteen ships and four yachts, the company being bound to supply a like number.  The West India Company from the first was intended to be an instrument of war.  Its aims were buccaneering rather than commerce.  There was no secret about its object; it was openly proclaimed.  Its historian De Laet (himself a director) wrote, “There is no surer means of bringing our Enemy at last to reason, than to infest him with attacks everywhere in America and to stop the fountain-head of his best finances.”  After some tentative efforts, it was resolved to send out an expedition in great force; but the question arose, where best to strike?  By the advice of Usselincx and others acquainted with the condition of the defences of the towns upon the American coast, Bahia, the capital of the Portuguese colony of Brazil, was selected, as specially vulnerable.  Thus in the West, as in the East, Portugal was to suffer for her unwilling subjection to the crown of Castile.