Jacques l’Hermite, the Nassau Fleet and the Blockade of Callao (1623–6)

Following the entry of van Speilbergen into the South Sea and until the expiry of the twelve years’ truce in 1621, Dutch maritime enterprises were directed towards successful advances against Spain and Portugal in the East Indies, the English in the Malay archipelago, and the maintenance of commercial links with the Wild Coast, especially the Guianas and the vicinity of the Amazon. However, already by 1619 a new climate of national feeling had begun to coalesce, marked by the execution of van Oldenbarnevelt on a charge of high treason and the rise of Prince Maurice of Nassau and the ‘war party’ of militant Calvinists. Hardly was the treaty period complete, when on 3 June 1621 the States-General granted a charter to a new West India Company. Though there were obvious parallels with the earlier sister organisation, it has been clearly shown that the new company was envisaged from the outset as being predominantly warlike in its purpose and, therefore, markedly distinct from Usselincx’s concept of a corporation that would seek trade and settlement as its objectives in the New World. The West India Company, following the expiry of the peace agreement, would move to the offensive against Spain in a bid to deprive it of the resources of its overseas possessions. In a way, then, the new organisation offered private individuals, under licence and control, the opportunity to express their anti-Spanish attitudes through profit-making raids against Spanish settlements and shipping. Privateering would now become an expression of Dutch hostility towards Spain. But the West India Company was more than this, for it did also envisage the creation of colonies, and then commerce, but through the process of military conquest.

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