The fitting out of great fleets and the maintenance of numerous garrisons of mercenaries at an immense distance from the home country had exhausted their resources and involved the company in debt.  The building of Mauritsstad and the carrying out of Joan Maurice’s ambitious schemes for the administration and organisation of a great Brazilian dominion were grandiose, but very costly.  The governor, moreover, who could brook neither incompetence nor interference on the part of his subordinates, had aroused the enmity of some of them, notably of a certain Colonel Architofsky, who through spite plotted and intrigued against him with the authorities at home.  The result was that, the directors having declined to sanction certain proposals made to them by Joan Maurice, he sent in his resignation, which was accepted (1644).  It must be remembered that their position was a difficult one.  The charter of the company had been granted for a term of twenty-four years, and it was doubtful whether the States-General, already beginning to discuss secretly the question of a separate peace with Spain, would consent to renew it.  The relations with Portugal were very delicate; and a formidable rebellion of the entire body of Portuguese settlers, aided by the natives, was on the point of breaking out.  Indeed the successors of Joan Maurice, deprived of any adequate succour from home, were unable to maintain themselves against the skill and courage of the insurgent Portuguese leaders.  The Dutch were defeated in the field, and one by one their fortresses were taken.  The Reciff itself held out for some time, but it was surrendered at last in 1654; and with its fall the Dutch were finally expelled from the territory for the acquisition of which they had sacrificed so much blood and treasure.

The West India Company at the peace of Muenster possessed, besides the remnant of its Brazilian dominion, the colony of New Netherland in North America, and two struggling settlements on the rivers Essequibo and Berbice in Guiana.  New Netherland comprised the country between the English colonies of New England and Virginia; and the Dutch settlers had at this time established farms near the coast and friendly relations with the natives of the interior, with whom they trafficked for furs.  The appointment of Peter Stuyvesant as governor, in 1646, was a time of real development in New Netherland.  This colony was an appanage of the Chamber of Amsterdam, after which New Amsterdam, the seat of government on the island of Manhattan, was named.  The official trading posts on the Essequibo and the Berbice, though never abandoned, had for some years a mere lingering existence, but are deserving of mention in that they were destined to survive the vicissitudes of fortune and to become in the 18th century a valuable possession.  Their importance also is to be measured not by the meagre official reports and profit and loss accounts that have survived in the West India Company’s records,